INTERNET-DRAFT D. Eastlake 3rd Motorola Laboratories Expires: April 2006 November 2005 IP over MIME -- ---- ---- Status of This Document By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Distribution of this document is unlimited. Comments should be sent to the author. 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/1id-abstracts.html The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). Abstract The MIME encoding of IP packets is specified so they can conveniently be sent via MAIL, HTTP, etc. This may be convenient for transmitting packets for analysis, debugging, monitoring, or creating application level tunnels. D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT IP over MIME November 2005 Acknowledgement Helpful suggestions from Matt Crawford, Mike Ditto, Stanislav Shalunov, and Mark Allman have been incorporated herein. Table of Contents Status of This Document....................................1 Copyright Notice...........................................1 Abstract...................................................1 Acknowledgement............................................2 Table of Contents..........................................2 1. Introduction............................................3 2. MIME Type Specification.................................3 3. Security Considerations.................................5 4. IANA Considerations.....................................5 Copyright and Disclaimers..................................6 Normative References.......................................7 Informative References.....................................7 Author's Address...........................................7 Expiration and File Name...................................8 D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT IP over MIME November 2005 1. Introduction The Internet Protocol (IP [RFC 791]) has been profiled for transmission over a wide variety of media including Ethernet [RFC 894], point to point circuits [RFC 1661], FDDI [RFC 1390], and even avian carriers [RFC 1149]. One of the most popular encoding and labeling (AKA, tagging and bagging) techniques defined for the TCP/IP protocol suite is the MIME encoding [RFC 2045, 2046] used, for example, in email, the web, and net news. This document specifies how to transmit IP over MIME. An unambiguous MIME encoding for IP datagrams is useful in their transmission for monitoring, analysis, debugging, or illustrative purposes. In addition, IP over MIME can be used as one component in creating application level tunnels. 2. MIME Type Specification MIME media type name: APPLICATION MIME subtype name: IP Required parameters: version version=n This parameter exposes the IP Version number [RFC 791] in the MIME Content-Type. Optional parameters: dilation, address dilation=nnn Typically IP packets will be MIME labeled for transmission over email or other application level protocols. Such transmission is generally much slower than lower level network protocols. While this is not usually a concern if a packet is just being communicated for analysis, if such transmission is used to establish a tunnel, the sender of a datagram may wish to advise the recipient of the estimated rough time dilation factor. For example, if datagrams typically take around a second and occasionally up to ten seconds end-to-end but it is more like a minute and occasionally up to ten minutes if they are MIME encoded in email, a "dilation=60" parameter would be reasonable. (Since it is a ratio of times, the dilation parameter is dimensionless.) Note: Although IP and TCP are defined as protocols only loosely D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 3] INTERNET-DRAFT IP over MIME November 2005 dependent on time. The IPv4 TTL [RFC 792], although originally defined in terms of seconds, is usually implemented as a hop count which is how the corresponding IPv6 field is defined [RFC 1752]. TCP requires a retransmission timer but has no specified "time out" after which an unresponsive connection must be torn down although all practical implementations have such a time out. In the event that IP in MIME encapsulation is being used for actual connectivity, it might be desireable to scale all such timing by the dilation value if it has been provided and is reasonable. address=xxx Full, if slow, IP connectivity via an application level protocol such as SMTP [RFC 2821, 2822] might require that routing, tunneling, and/or interface entries be installed at each end. Routing entries would be best created or updated by routing protocol messages and the establishment of tunnels is beyond the scope of this MIME type specification. However, the "address=" parameter enables the sender to optionally indicate an IP address for return traffic to itself. This may only be useful in cases where the sender knows an address that is available for itself in the recipient's addressing environment. It can be viewed as a replacement for ARP [RFC 826] on the possible path to the source of the APPLICATION/IP object via the same application level protocol. (A receiver of an APPLICATION/IP object with an "address=" parameter might reasonably require that it be authenticated as meeting their policy as to from whom they would accept such information. For example, they could ignore "address=" parameters unless the APPLICATION/IP object was wrapped in an acceptable MULTIPART/SIGNED [RFC 1847] authentication, although that implies some trust relationship between the parties.) Examples: address="192.0.2.123" address="2001:DB8::123" Encoding considerations: Because of the binary nature of the body, BASE64 transfer encoding should normally be used on transports that do not support binary. Security considerations: Care should be taken under any circumstance where APPLICATION/IP content could be treated as a "live" packet. MULTIPART/ENCRYPTED and MULTIPART/SIGNED [RFC 1847] may be used to further secure and/or authenticate MIME packaged IP traffic. Interoperability considerations: See [draft-eastlake-ip-mime-*.txt]. D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 4] INTERNET-DRAFT IP over MIME November 2005 MULTIPART/MIXED [RFC 2046] may be used to package multiple IP datagrams together. Published specification: See [draft-eastlake-ip-mime-*.txt]. Applications which use this media type: Not yet in use. Additional information: (none) Person & email address to contact for further information: Donald E. Eastlake 3rd, Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com Intended usage: LIMITED USE Author/Change controller: IETF 3. Security Considerations See security considerations in Section 2 above. 4. IANA Considerations This document registers and specifies the APPLICATION/IP MIME type. D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 5] INTERNET-DRAFT IP over MIME November 2005 Copyright and Disclaimers Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf- ipr@ietf.org. D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 6] INTERNET-DRAFT IP over MIME November 2005 Normative References RFC 791 - Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, September 1981. RFC 1752 - Bradner, S. and A. Mankin, "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol", RFC 1752, January 1995. RFC 1847 - Galvin, J., Murphy, S., Crocker, S., and N. Freed, "Security Multiparts for MIME: Multipart/Signed and Multipart/Encrypted", RFC 1847, October 1995. RFC 2045 - Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. RFC 2046 - Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046, November 1996. Informative References RFC 894 - Hornig, C., "Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams over Ethernet networks", STD 41, RFC 894, April 1984. RFC 1149 - Waitzman, D., "Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers", RFC 1149, April 1990. RFC 1390 - Katz, D., "Transmission of IP and ARP over FDDI Networks", STD 36, RFC 1390, January 1993. RFC 1661 - Simpson, W., "The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)", STD 51, RFC 1661, July 1994. RFC 2821 - Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821, April 2001. RFC 2822 - Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April 2001. Author's Address Donald E. Eastlake, 3rd Motorola Laboratories 155 Beaver Street Milford, MA 01757 USA D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 7] INTERNET-DRAFT IP over MIME November 2005 Telephone: +1 508-786-7554 (w) email: Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com Expiration and File Name This draft expires May 2006. Its file name is draft-eastlake-ip-mime-10.txt. D. Eastlake 3rd [Page 8]