6lo T. Watteyne, Ed. Internet-Draft Analog Devices Intended status: Standards Track P. Thubert, Ed. Expires: 30 May 2020 Cisco Systems C. Bormann Universitaet Bremen TZI 27 November 2019 On Forwarding 6LoWPAN Fragments over a Multihop IPv6 Network draft-ietf-6lo-minimal-fragment-06 Abstract This document introduces the capability to forward 6LoWPAN fragments. This method reduces the latency and increases end-to-end reliability in route-over forwarding. It is the companion to using virtual reassembly buffers which is a pure implementation technique. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 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." This Internet-Draft will expire on 30 May 2020. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 1] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Overview of 6LoWPAN Fragmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Limits of Per-Hop Fragmentation and Reassembly . . . . . . . 5 3.1. Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.2. Memory Management and Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. Forwarding Fragments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. Virtual Reassembly Buffer (VRB) Implementation . . . . . . . 7 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 9. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1. Introduction The original 6LoWPAN fragmentation is defined in [6LoWPAN] and it is implicitly defined for use over a single IP hop through possibly multiple Layer-2 (mesh-under) hops in a meshed 6LoWPAN Network. Although [6LoWPAN-HC] updates [6LoWPAN], it does not redefine 6LoWPAN fragmentation. This means that over a Layer-3 (route-over) network, an IP packet is expected to be reassembled at every hop at the 6LoWPAN sublayer, pushed to Layer-3 to be routed, and then fragmented again if the next hop is another similar 6LoWPAN link. This draft introduces an alternate approach called 6LoWPAN Fragment Forwarding (FF) whereby an intermediate node forwards a fragment as soon as it is received if the next hop is a similar 6LoWPAN link. The routing decision is made on the first fragment, which has all the IPv6 routing information. The first fragment is forwarded immediately and a state is stored to enable forwarding the next fragments along the same path. Done right, 6LoWPAN Fragment Forwarding techniques lead to more streamlined operations, less buffer bloat and lower latency. It may be wasteful if some fragments are missing after the first one since the first fragment will still continue till the 6LoWPAN endpoint that will attempt to perform the reassembly, and may be misused to the point that performances fall behind that of per-hop recomposition. This specification provides a generic overview of FF, discusses advantages and caveats, and introduces a particular 6LoWPAN Fragment Forwarding technique called Virtual Reassembly Buffer that can be used while conserving the message formats defined in [6LoWPAN]. Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 2] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 2. Overview of 6LoWPAN Fragmentation We use Figure 1 to illustrate 6LoWPAN fragmentation. We assume node A forwards a packet to node B, possibly as part of a multi-hop route between IPv6 source and destination nodes which are neither A nor B. +---+ +---+ ... ---| A |-------------------->| B |--- ... +---+ +---+ # (frag. 5) 123456789 123456789 +---------+ +---------+ | # ###| |### # | +---------+ +---------+ outgoing incoming fragmentation reassembly buffer buffer Figure 1: Fragmentation at node A, reassembly at node B. Node A starts by compacting the IPv6 packet using the header compression mechanism defined in [6LoWPAN-HC]. If the resulting 6LoWPAN packet does not fit into a single Link-Layer frame, node A's 6LoWPAN sublayer cuts it into multiple 6LoWPAN fragments, which it transmits as separate Link-Layer frames to node B. Node B's 6LoWPAN sublayer reassembles these fragments, inflates the compressed header fields back to the original IPv6 header, and hands over the full IPv6 packet to its IPv6 layer. In Figure 1, a packet forwarded by node A to node B is cut into nine fragments, numbered 1 to 9 as follows: * Each fragment is represented by the '#' symbol. * Node A has sent fragments 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 to node B. * Node B has received fragments 1, 2, 3, 6 from node A. * Fragment 5 is still being transmitted at the link layer from node A to node B. The reassembly buffer for 6LoWPAN is indexed in node B by: * a unique Identifier of Node A (e.g., Node A's Link-Layer address) * the datagram_tag chosen by node A for this fragmented datagram Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 3] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 Because it may be hard for node B to correlate all possible Link- Layer addresses that node A may use (e.g., short vs. long addresses), node A must use the same Link-Layer address to send all the fragments of the same datagram to node B. Conceptually, the reassembly buffer in node B contains: * a datagram_tag as received in the incoming fragments, associated to Link-Layer address of node A for which the received datagram_tag is unique, * the actual packet data from the fragments received so far, in a form that makes it possible to detect when the whole packet has been received and can be processed or forwarded, * a state indicating the fragments already received, * a datagram_size, * a timer that allows discarding a partially reassembled packet after some timeout. A fragmentation header is added to each fragment; it indicates what portion of the packet that fragment corresponds to. Section 5.3 of [6LoWPAN] defines the format of the header for the first and subsequent fragments. All fragments are tagged with a 16-bit "datagram_tag", used to identify which packet each fragment belongs to. Each datagram can be uniquely identified by the sender Link- Layer addresses of the frame that carries it and the datagram_tag that the sender allocated for this datagram. [6LoWPAN] also mandates that the first fragment is sent first and with a particular format that is different than that of the next fragments. Each fragment but the first one can be identified within its datagram by the datagram- offset. Node B's typical behavior, per [6LoWPAN], is as follows. Upon receiving a fragment from node A with a datagram_tag previously unseen from node A, node B allocates a buffer large enough to hold the entire packet. The length of the packet is indicated in each fragment (the datagram_size field), so node B can allocate the buffer even if the first fragment it receives is not fragment 1. As fragments come in, node B fills the buffer. When all fragments have been received, node B inflates the compressed header fields into an IPv6 header, and hands the resulting IPv6 packet to the IPv6 layer which performs the route lookup. This behavior typically results in per-hop fragmentation and reassembly. That is, the packet is fully reassembled, then (re)fragmented, at every hop. Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 4] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 3. Limits of Per-Hop Fragmentation and Reassembly There are at least 2 limits to doing per-hop fragmentation and reassembly. See [ARTICLE] for detailed simulation results on both limits. 3.1. Latency When reassembling, a node needs to wait for all the fragments to be received before being able to generate the IPv6 packet, and possibly forward it to the next hop. This repeats at every hop. This may result in increased end-to-end latency compared to a case where each fragment is forwarded without per-hop reassembly. 3.2. Memory Management and Reliability Constrained nodes have limited memory. Assuming a reassembly buffer for a 6LoWPAN MTU of 1280 bytes as defined in section 4 of [6LoWPAN], typical nodes only have enough memory for 1-3 reassembly buffers. To illustrate this we use the topology from Figure 2, where nodes A, B, C and D all send packets through node E. We further assume that node E's memory can only hold 3 reassembly buffers. +---+ +---+ ... --->| A |------>| B | +---+ +---+\ \ +---+ +---+ | E |--->| F | ... +---+ +---+ / / +---+ +---+ ... --->| C |------>| D | +---+ +---+ Figure 2: Illustrating the Memory Management Issue. When nodes A, B and C concurrently send fragmented packets, all 3 reassembly buffers in node E are occupied. If, at that moment, node D also sends a fragmented packet, node E has no option but to drop one of the packets, lowering end-to-end reliability. Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 5] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 4. Forwarding Fragments A 6LoWPAN Fragment Forwarding technique makes the routing decision on the first fragment, which is always the one with the IPv6 address of the destination. Upon a first fragment, a forwarding node (e.g. node B in a A->B->C sequence) that does fragment forwarding MUST attempt to create a state and forward the fragment. This is an atomic operation, and if the first fragment cannot be forwarded then the state MUST be removed. When a forwarding node receives a fragment other than a first fragment, it MUST look up state based on the source Link-Layer address and the datagram_tag in the received fragment. If no such state is found, the fragment MUST be dropped; otherwise the fragment MUST be forwarded using the information in the state found. Since the datagram_tag is uniquely associated to the source Link-Layer address of the fragment, the forwarding node MUST assign a new datagram_tag from its own namespace for the next hop and rewrite the fragment header of each fragment with that datagram_tag. Compared to Section 2, the conceptual reassembly buffer in node B now contains, assuming that node B is neither the source nor the final destination: * a datagram_tag as received in the incoming fragments, associated to Link-Layer address of node A for which the received datagram_tag is unique, * the Link-Layer address that node B uses as source to forward the fragments * the Link-Layer address of the next hop C that is resolved on the first fragment * a datagram_tag that node B uniquely allocated for this datagram and that is used when forwarding the fragments of the datagram * a datagram_size, * a buffer for the remainder of a previous fragment left to be sent, * a timer that allows discarding the stale FF state after some timeout. A node that has not received the first fragment cannot forward the next fragments. This means that if node B receives a fragment, node A was in possession of the first fragment at some point. In order to keep the operation simple, it makes sense to be consistent with [6LoWPAN] and enforce that the first fragment is always sent first. When that is done, if node B receives a fragment that is not the Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 6] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 first and for which it has no state, then node B treats this as an error and refrain from creating a state or attempting to forward. This also means that node A should perform all its possible retries on the first fragment before it attempts to send the next fragments, and that it should abort the datagram and release its state if it fails to send the first fragment. One benefit of Fragment Forwarding is that the memory that is used to store the packet is now distributed along the path, which limits the buffer bloat effect. Multiple fragments may progress in parallel along the network as long as they do not interfere. An associated caveat is that on a half duplex radio, if node A sends the next fragment at the same time as node B forwards the previous fragment to a node C down the path then node B will miss the next fragment. If node C forwards the previous fragment to a node D at the same time and on the same frequency as node A sends the next fragment to node B, this may result in a hidden terminal problem at B whereby the transmission from C interferes with that from A unbeknownst of node A. It results that consecutive fragments must be reasonably spaced in order to avoid the 2 forms of collision described above. A node that has multiple packets or fragments to send via different next-hop routers may interleave the messages in order to alleviate those effects. 5. Virtual Reassembly Buffer (VRB) Implementation Virtual Reassembly Buffer (VRB) is the implementation technique described in [LWIG-VRB] in which a forwarder does not reassemble each packet in its entirety before forwarding it. VRB overcomes the limits listed in Section 3. Nodes do not wait for the last fragment before forwarding, reducing end-to-end latency. Similarly, the memory footprint of VRB is just the VRB table, reducing the packet drop probability significantly. There are, however, limits: Non-zero Packet Drop Probability: The abstract data in a VRB table entry contains at a minimum the Link-Layer address of the predecessor and that of the successor, the datagram_tag used by the predecessor and the local datagram_tag that this node will swap with it. The VRB may need to store a few octets from the last fragment that may not have fit within MTU and that will be prepended to the next fragment. This yields a small footprint that is 2 orders of magnitude smaller compared to needing a 1280-byte reassembly buffer for each packet. Yet, the size of the VRB table necessarily remains finite. In the extreme case where a Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 7] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 node is required to concurrently forward more packets that it has entries in its VRB table, packets are dropped. No Fragment Recovery: There is no mechanism in VRB for the node that reassembles a packet to request a single missing fragment. Dropping a fragment requires the whole packet to be resent. This causes unnecessary traffic, as fragments are forwarded even when the destination node can never construct the original IPv6 packet. No Per-Fragment Routing: All subsequent fragments follow the same sequence of hops from the source to the destination node as the first fragment, because the IP header is required to route the fragment and is only present in the first fragment. A side effect is that the first fragment must always be forwarded first. The severity and occurrence of these limits depends on the Link-Layer used. Whether these limits are acceptable depends entirely on the requirements the application places on the network. If the limits are present and not acceptable for the application, future specifications may define new protocols to overcome these limits. One example is [FRAG-RECOV] which defines a protocol which allows fragment recovery. 6. Security Considerations Secure joining and the Link-Layer security that it sets up protects against those attacks from network outsiders. "IP Fragmentation Considered Fragile" [FRAG-ILE] discusses security threats that are linked to using IP fragmentation. The 6LoWPAN fragmentation takes place underneath, but some issues described there may still apply to 6lo fragments. * Overlapping fragment attacks are possible with 6LoWPAN fragments but there is no known firewall operation that would work on 6LoWPAN fragments at the time of this writing, so the exposure is limited. An implementation of a firewall SHOULD NOT forward fragments but recompose the IP packet, check it in the uncompressed form, and then forward it again as fragments if necessary. * Resource exhaustion attacks are certainly possible and a sensitive issue in a constrained network. An attacker can perform a Denial- of-Service (DoS) attack on a node implementing VRB by generating a large number of bogus first fragments without sending subsequent fragments. This causes the VRB table to fill up. When hop-by-hop reassembly is used, the same attck can be more damaging if the Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 8] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 node allocates a full datagram_size for each bogus first fragment. With the VRB, the attack can be performed remotely on all nodes along a path, but each node suffers a lesser hit. this is because the VRB does not need to remember the full datagram as received so far but only possibly a few octets from the last fragment that could not fit in it. An implementation MUST protect itself to keep the number of VRBs within capacity, and that old VRBs are protected by a timer of a reasonable duration for the technology and destroyed upon timeout. * Attacks based on predictable fragment identification values are also possible but can be avoided. The datagram_tag SHOULD be assigned pseudo-randomly in order to defeat such attacks. * Evasion of Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) leverages ambiguity in the reassembly of the fragment. This sounds difficult and mostly useless in a 6LoWPAN network since the fragmentation is not end-to-end. 7. IANA Considerations No requests to IANA are made by this document. 8. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Yasuyuki Tanaka, Ines Robles and Dave Thaler for their in-depth review of this document and improvement suggestions. Also many thanks to Georgies Papadopoulos and Dominique Barthel for their own reviews. 9. Normative References [6LoWPAN] Montenegro, G., Kushalnagar, N., Hui, J., and D. Culler, "Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4 Networks", RFC 4944, DOI 10.17487/RFC4944, September 2007, . [LWIG-VRB] Bormann, C. and T. Watteyne, "Virtual reassembly buffers in 6LoWPAN", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf- lwig-6lowpan-virtual-reassembly-01, 11 March 2019, . [FRAG-RECOV] Thubert, P., "6LoWPAN Selective Fragment Recovery", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-6lo-fragment- recovery-07, 23 October 2019, Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 9] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 . 10. Informative References [6LoWPAN-HC] Hui, J., Ed. and P. Thubert, "Compression Format for IPv6 Datagrams over IEEE 802.15.4-Based Networks", RFC 6282, DOI 10.17487/RFC6282, September 2011, . [FRAG-ILE] Bonica, R., Baker, F., Huston, G., Hinden, R., Troan, O., and F. Gont, "IP Fragmentation Considered Fragile", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-intarea-frag- fragile-17, 30 September 2019, . [ARTICLE] Tanaka, Y., Minet, P., and T. Watteyne, "6LoWPAN Fragment Forwarding", IEEE Communications Standards Magazine , 2019. Authors' Addresses Thomas Watteyne (editor) Analog Devices 32990 Alvarado-Niles Road, Suite 910 Union City, CA 94587 United States of America Email: thomas.watteyne@analog.com Pascal Thubert (editor) Cisco Systems, Inc Building D, 45 Allee des Ormes - BP1200 06254 Mougins - Sophia Antipolis France Phone: +33 497 23 26 34 Email: pthubert@cisco.com Carsten Bormann Universitaet Bremen TZI Postfach 330440 D-28359 Bremen Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 10] Internet-Draft fragment forwarding November 2019 Germany Email: cabo@tzi.org Watteyne, et al. Expires 30 May 2020 [Page 11]