Network Working Group R. Penno Internet-Draft Nortel Networks Expires: August, 2001 February, 2001 PPPoE Extensions For Seamless Service Selection draft-penno-pppoe-ext-service-00.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as 'work in progress.' The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. Abstract In the year following the publication of the PPPoE protocol much operational experience and customer feedback was gathered. One problem that access providers usually mention is that in order for users to change ISPs or Service they need to manually disconnect and reconnect their PPPoE client. We propose here a extension to the PPPoE protocol in which through a new packet type a access concentrator can request a PPPoE client to disconnect and reconnect to a new ISP or Service in a manner transparent to the user Penno, R. [Page 1] Internet-Draft draft-penno-pppoe-ext-service-00.txt February,2001 Specification of Requirements The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this document, are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [1]. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Introduction to the PPPoE Protocol. . . . . . . . . . . . .3 3. AC-Address TAG_TYPE and TAG_VALUE. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. The PPPoE Active Service Change (PADC) packet . . . . . . .3 5. Deployment Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6. Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 11. Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Author's Addresses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Full Copyright Statement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Penno, R. [Page 2] Internet-Draft draft-penno-pppoe-ext-service-00.txt February,2001 1. Introduction In the year following the publication of the PPPoE protocol much operational experience and customer feedback was gathered. One problem that access providers usually mention is that in order for users to change ISPs or Service they need to manually disconnect and reconnect their PPPoE client. We propose here a extension to the PPPoE protocol in which through a new packet type a access concentrator can request a PPPoE client to disconnect and reconnect to a new ISP, Service or Device in a manner transparent to the user. 2. Introduction to the PPPoE Protocol The PPPoE protocol is relatively new, but its basic function is to encapsulate PPP packets into Ethernet frames that will be de- encapsulated by the tunnel termination device. The PPPoE protocol has two stages; session and discover. PPP session packets are encapsulated in the Ethernet frame with the Ethertype equal to 0x8864. The Ethertype 0x8863 is used during the discovering stage, where the user's PPPoE client tries to identify the device that will terminate the PPPoE session. To obtain further and more in depth information on the PPPoE protocol refer to [RFC2516]. 3. AC-Address TAG_TYPE and TAG_VALUE We introduce a new TAG_TYPE called AC-Address. The description follows. 0x0111 AC-Address This TAG indicates the UTF-8 rendition of the MAC address of a Access concentrator. It is not NULL terminated. 4. The PPPoE Active Service Change (PADC) packet This packet may be sent anytime after a session is established to indicate that a PPPoE session MUST be terminated and a new one initiated to the Access Concentrator and Service-Name specified in the packet. It may be sent by Access Concentrator only. The DESTINATION_ADDR field is the unicast Ethernet address of the Host, the CODE field is set to 0xb9 and the SESSION_ID MUST be set to indicate which session is to be terminated. Penno, R. [Page 3] Internet-Draft draft-penno-pppoe-ext-service-00.txt February,2001 The PADC packet MUST contain at least one TAG of TAG_TYPE Service- Name or AC-Address, indicating the Service or the the address of a different Access Concentrator to which the new session MUST be established. When a PADC is received, no further PPP traffic is allowed to be Sent using that session. Even normal PPP termination packets MUST NOT be sent after sending or receiving a PADC. A PPP peer SHOULD use the PPP protocol itself to bring down a PPPoE session, but the PADC MAY be used when PPP can not be used. 5. Deployment Examples Here we give some examples on how the PADC message with the respective AC-Address and Service-Name TAG-TYPES could be used in a network. o Service or ISP Change In this model the user request to change his service profile or ISP, usually through some web page, and Access concentrator then sends a PADC message with a Service-Name TAG_TYPE. The web server and the Access concentrator usually communicate with each other through some out-of-band mechanism. o Access Concentrator Change If the Access concentrator experiences a problem or is schedule for downtime maintenance, it can send a PADC message to all connected hosts asking them to reconnect to a different Access Concentrator. In this case the PADC message would include just the AC-Address TAG_TYPE. O Service and Access Concentrator Change If the user request a new service or ISP that is not available in the Access Concentrator that it is currently connected, the Access concentrator can send a PADC message to the host indicating the Address of a Access Concentrator where the requested service is available 6. Security Considerations This is a extension to the PPPoE protocol, so the security considerations mentioned therein also apply to this document. Penno, R. [Page 4] Internet-Draft draft-penno-pppoe-ext-service-00.txt February,2001 7. References [RFC2516] Mamakos, et. al., "A Method for Transmitting PPP Over Ethernet (PPPoE)", RFC 2516, February 1999 8. Acknowledgments To be provided. Author's Addresses Reinaldo Penno Nortel Networks, Inc. 2305 Mission College Boulevard Building SC9 Santa Clara, CA 95134 Email: rpenno@nortelnetworks.com Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. 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Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Penno, R. [Page 5] Internet-Draft draft-penno-pppoe-ext-service-00.txt February,2001