Internet DRAFT - draft-pppext-mmp-discovery

draft-pppext-mmp-discovery









Draft-pppext-mmp-discovery-00.txt                 G. Malkin/Bay Networks
                                                           November 1997


                       Multi-link Multi-node PPP


Abstract

   This document specifies a standard way for Multi-link PPP to operate
   across multiple nodes.  Both the mechanism by which the Bundle Head
   is discovered and the PPP fragment encapsulation are specified.


Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet Draft.  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. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by
   other documents at any time.  It is not appropriate to use Internet
   Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "working
   draft" or "work in progress."

   Please check the I-D abstract listing contained in each Internet
   Draft directory to learn the current status of this or any other
   Internet Draft.

   It is intended that this document will be submitted to the IESG for
   consideration as a standards document.  Distribution of this document
   is unlimited.


Acknowledgements

   I would like to thank Joe Frazier for filling in some of the details
   and reviewing this document.


1.  Introduction

   Multi-link PPP [MP] allows a dial-in user to open multiple PPP
   connections to a given host.  In general, this is done on an on-
   demand basis.  That is, a secondary link, or multiple secondary
   links, are established when the data load on the primary link, and



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   any previously established secondary links, nears capacity.  As the
   load decreases, the secondary link(s) may be disconnected.

   Many dial-in hosts which support multi-link PPP dial the same phone
   number for all links.  This implies that there exists a rotary at the
   Point Of Presence (POP) which routes incoming calls to a bank of
   modems.  These may be physically independent modems connected to
   Remote Access Server (RAS) and a rotary of analog phone lines, or a
   RAS with internal modems connected to analog lines or a T1/E1 or
   T3/E3 channel.  In any case, a given RAS can only handle just so many
   simultaneous connections.  A typical POP may need to support hundreds
   of connections, but no RAS today can handle that many.  This creates
   a problem when a user's primary PPP connection is established to one
   RAS in a POP and a secondary connection is established to another.
   This may occur because the first RAS has no available modems, or
   because incoming calls are assigned to ports in a round-robin
   fashion, for example, and the second call is simply assigned to
   another RAS.

   The solution to this problem is to provide a mechanism by which a RAS
   can determine if a Multi-link PPP connection is a primary or
   secondary and, if a secondary, where the Bundle Head (the process
   within a RAS which reassembles the PPP fragments transmitted over the
   primary and secondary links) resides.  If the Bundle Head resides on
   a different RAS, a protocol must be used to transfer the PPP
   fragments to the RAS containing the Bundle Head so that the PPP frame
   can be reassembled.

   Section 2 of this document specifies the Discovery Mechanism.
   Section 3 specifies the Transfer Protocol.  Section 4 specifies the
   configuration parameters needed for the Discovery Protocol.


2.  Bundle Head Discovery Mechanism

   When a user dials into a RAS and negotiates Multi-link PPP (MP)
   during the Link Control Protocol (LCP) phase, the RAS must determine
   which one of the following three cases exists:

   1- This is the primary (first) link of the MP connection.  In this
      case, the RAS should create the Bundle Head.

   2- This is a secondary link of the MP connection and the Bundle Head
      resides on this RAS.  In this case, the RAS should add the link to
      the Bundle (standard MP).

   3- This is a secondary link of the MP connection and the Bundle Head
      resides on a different RAS.  In this case, the RAS should



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      establish a path (see section 3) to the RAS that has the Bundle
      Head, and use that path to transfer MP fragments.

   In operation, a RAS will make the determination for case 2 first
   (because it is the easiest and requires no communication with other
   RASes.  If the Bundle Head is not local, the Discovery Protocol is
   used to determine where the Bundle Head is, if it exists at all.

2.1 Packet Format

   See "IANA Considerations" (section 6) for UDP port number assignment.

   A Discovery Message has the following format:

      +------+------+------------+----------+----======----+
      | type |length| IP address | checksum | endpoint ID  |
      +------+------+------------+----------+----======----+

   where:

   type - 1 octet

      Message type: 1-query, 2-response.

   length - 1 octet

      The length (in octets) of the endpoint ID.

   IP address - 4 octets

      The IP address of the RAS transmitting the message.

   checksum - 2 octets

      The ones-complement checksum of the endpoint ID.  This is the
      standard IP checksum except that the checksum is not self-
      inclusive (i.e., the checksum is done only over the endpoint ID).
      A value of zero indicates that no checksum has been generated.
      See "Endpoint Identifier Matching" (section 2.2) for the use of
      this field.

   endpoint ID - variable length

      The endpoint identifier of the connection.  From the discovery
      protocol's point of view, this is an opaque value.  However, to
      ensure multi-vendor interoperability, the format of this field
      must be defined.  The descriptions of, and legal values for, the
      fields in the endpoint ID are defined in [MP].



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         +------+------+--==--+------+------+--==--+------+--==--+
         |remote|remote|remote|local |local |local |user  | user |
         |EPD   |EPD   |EPD   |EPD   |EPD   |EPD   |name  | name |
         |class |length|data  |class |length|data  |length| data |
         +------+------+--==--+------+------+--==--+------+--==--+

      Notes:
         EPD = EndPoint Descriminator.
         remote = dial-in host.
         local = RAS.
         class and length fields are 1-octet in length.
         data fields are of variable (including zero) length.

2.2 Endpoint Identifier Matching

   Comparing endpoint IDs can be time consuming.  First, the classes of
   the EPDs must be determined, then the values compared.  These
   comparisons might be fast arithmetic compares or slow octet-wise
   compares of 20-octet long values.  To improve performance, because
   the protocol is time-driven, the checksum field may be used for a
   fast comparison.

   When a Bundle Head is created, the checksum is created and stored
   along with the Endpoint ID.  When a Query or Response Message is
   generated, the checksum is created and stored in the message.  When a
   RAS receives a message, it can do a quick comparison of the checksum
   in the message to the checksums in its tables.  If a checksum does
   not match, the Endpoint ID cannot match.  However, if a checksum does
   match, the Endpoint IDs must be properly compared to verify the
   match.

   Obviously, there is a cost associated with creating the checksums,
   but they are created only once per message and once for each Bundle
   Head creation.  However, the comparisons occur multiple times in
   multiple RASes for each new secondary connection.  Therefore, there
   is a net savings in processing.

2.3 Protocol Operation

   Throughout this section, configurable variables are specified by
   their names (e.g., ROBUSTNESS refers to the number of transmits).

   The Discovery Protocol begins by sending to MULTICAST, ROBUSTNESS
   Query Messages at QUERY_INTERVAL intervals.  If no Response Message
   for that Request is received within QUERY_INTERVAL of the last
   broadcast (a total time of ROBUSTNESS * QUERY_INTERVAL), the RAS
   assumes that this is the primary link and begins to build the Bundle
   Head.  It then sends to MULTICAST a Response Message (in case another



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   link comes up after the time-out but before the Bundle Head is
   built).  If a Response Message is received (i.e., a Bundle Head
   exists on another RAS), no additional Query Messages are sent and the
   RAS establishes a path the RAS containing the Bundle Head.

   If a RAS receives a Query Message for an MP connection for which it
   has the Bundle Head, it sends a unicast Response Message to the
   querier.  Note that no repetition of the Response Message is
   necessary because, if it is lost, the querier's next query message
   will trigger a new Response Message.

2.4 Contention Handling

   If, while sending Query Messages, a Query Message for the same MP
   connection is received, it indicates that the Dial-in Node has
   brought up multiple links simultaneously.  The resolution to this
   contention is to elect the bundle head.  To do this, each RAS waits
   until all Query Messages have been sent (ROBUSTNESS *
   QUERY_INTERVAL).  At that time, the RAS with the lowest IP address,
   as taken from the Query Message, becomes the Bundle Head.  That RAS
   then sends TWO response messages, with a QUERY_INTERVAL interval, and
   indicates to the MP process that a Bundle Head should be formed.
   When the other RAS(es) receive the Response Message, they cease
   broadcasting (if they haven't already sent all ROBUSTNESS Query
   Messages), stop listening for additional Response Messages, and
   indicate to their respective MP processes where the Bundle Head
   resides.

2.5 MP Operation

   MP must use the following algorithm to ensure that there are no
   windows of vulnerability during which multiple Bundle Heads might be
   created for the same MP connection.

   When an MP link is negotiated, MP first checks to see if it already
   has the Bundle Head for this connection (i.e., is this a secondary
   link).  If it does, it should attach to it and not initiate a
   discovery.  As an optimization, if MP does not have a Bundle Head for
   this connection, but does have a existing secondary link for it, MP
   should attach to the known Bundle Head without initiating discovery.

   If MP knows of no Bundle Head for this connection, it should initiate
   a discovery.  If the discovery should locate a Bundle Head, it should
   attach to the indicated bundle head.  If no Bundle Head is found, MP
   should create a Bundle Head.






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3.  Transfer Protocol

   The Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) [L2TP] will be used to transfer
   PPP fragments from a RAS containing a secondary link to the RAS
   containing the Bundle Head.  By specifying the use of an existing
   protocol, it is neither necessary to create nor implement a new
   protocol.


4.  Configuration

   There are two required configuration switches and two conditional
   configuration switches.  None of the switches are optional.

4.1 Robustness - required

   This switch sets the number of transmits (repetitions) for Query
   Messages.  It may be set between 1 and 15.  The default is 3.  Be
   aware that lower settings may create windows of vulnerability.
   Higher settings may cause MP timeouts, but may be needed on very
   lossy or congested networks.

4.2 Query Interval - required

   This switch sets the interval between Query Messages and the interval
   between MULTICAST Response Messages.  It should be calibrated in
   deciseconds (1/10 second) and may be set between 1 and 15.  The
   default is 1.  Be aware that higher settings may cause MP timeouts,
   but may be needed on very slow systems/networks.

4.3 Multicast - conditional

   This switch selects between the use of the forwardable and
   nonforwardable IP multicast addresses for the Discovery Mechanism.
   For systems which do not support IP multicast, and therefore use the
   limited broadcast address, this switch should not be implemented.
   The default value should be nonforwardable.  See "IANA
   Considerations" (section 6) for multicast address assignments.

4.4 TTL - conditional

   This switch sets the IP Time-To-Live (TTL) of all Discovery packets.
   For systems which are using the limited broadcast address, this
   switch should not be implemented and the TTL should be set to 1.  The
   default value should be 1.






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5.  Security Considerations

   No security is designed into the Discovery Mechanism.  When using the
   non-forwardable multicast address (or limited broadcast address), the
   discovery packets are restricted to a single LAN.  If the LAN is
   physically secure, there is no need for software security.  If the
   forwardable multicast address is used, but the range is limited to a
   small, physically secure network (e.g., a POP), there is still no
   need for software security.  If the discovery packets are allowed to
   cross an internet (and this is NOT recommended for timing reasons),
   authentication of RASes may be done with IPSEC.  For increased
   security on a LAN or in a POP, IPSEC may still be used.

   L2TP security is discussed in [L2TP].


   6.  IANA Considerations

   UDP port number: 581
   Forwardable multicast address: TBA
   Non-forwardable multicast address: TBA


7.  References

   [MP]    "The PPP Multilink Protocol (MP)," K. Sklower, et al., RFC
           1990, August 1996.

   [L2TP]  "Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol 'L2TP'," K. Hamzeh, et al.,
           draft-ietf-pppext-l2tp-08.txt, November 1997.


Author's Address

   Gary Scott Malkin
   Bay Networks
   8 Federal Street
   Billerica, MA  01821

   Phone: +1 (978) 916-4237
   Email: gmalkin@baynetworks.com










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