| < draft-ietf-aaa-proto-eval-01.txt | draft-ietf-aaa-proto-eval-02.txt > | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A new Request for Comments is now available in online RFC libraries. | ||||
| AAA Protocol Evaluation David Mitton | RFC 3127 | |||
| INTERNET-DRAFT Nortel Networks | ||||
| Category: Informational Michael St.Johns | ||||
| October 2000 Excite@Home | ||||
| Stuart Barkley | ||||
| UUnet | ||||
| Dave Nelson | ||||
| Cabletron | ||||
| Basavaraj Patil | ||||
| Nokia | ||||
| Mark Stevens | ||||
| Ellacoya Networks | ||||
| Barney Wolff | ||||
| Databus Inc. | ||||
| Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting: | ||||
| Protocol Evaluation | ||||
| draft-ietf-aaa-proto-eval-01.txt | ||||
| Status of this Memo | ||||
| This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all | ||||
| provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. | ||||
| This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo | ||||
| does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this | ||||
| memo is unlimited. | ||||
| 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. | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| This document represents the preliminary findings of the AAA WG panel | ||||
| evaluating protocols proposed against the AAA Network Access Require- | ||||
| ments. Due to time constraints this document is not as fully developed | ||||
| as desired. And may be updated on the working group list. | ||||
| This document is a draft submission of the Authentication, Authoriza- | ||||
| tion, and Accounting (AAA) Working Group of the Internet Engineering | ||||
| Task Force (IETF). Comments should be submitted to the mailing list | ||||
| aaa-wg@merit.edu. | ||||
| Table of Contents | ||||
| 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 | ||||
| 1.1 Chairman's Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 | ||||
| 1.2 Members of the Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 | ||||
| 1.3 Requirements Validation Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 | ||||
| 1.4 Proposal Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 | ||||
| 1.5 Final Recommendations Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 | ||||
| 2. Protocol Proposals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 | ||||
| 3. Item Level Composite Compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 | ||||
| 3.1 General Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 | ||||
| 3.2 Authentication Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 | ||||
| 3.3 Authorization Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 | ||||
| 3.4 Accounting Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 | ||||
| 3.5 MOBILE IP Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 | ||||
| 4. Protocol Evaluation Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 | ||||
| 4.1 SNMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 | ||||
| 4.2 Radius++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 | ||||
| 4.3 Diameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 | ||||
| 4.4 COPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 | ||||
| 4.5 Summary Recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 | ||||
| 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 | ||||
| 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 | ||||
| 7. Author's Addresses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 | ||||
| 8. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 | ||||
| 9. Appendix Summary Evaluations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 | ||||
| 10. Appendix Review of the Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 | ||||
| 11. Appendix Position Briefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 | ||||
| 11.1 SNMP PRO Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 | ||||
| 11.2 SNMP CON Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 | ||||
| 11.3 RADIUS+ PRO Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 | ||||
| 11.4 RADIUS+ CON Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 | ||||
| 11.5 DIAMETER PRO Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 | ||||
| 11.6 DIAMETER CON Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 | ||||
| 11.7 COPS PRO Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 | ||||
| 11.8 COPS CON Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 | ||||
| 12. Appendix Meeting Minutes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 | ||||
| 12.1 Minutes of 22-Jun-2000 Teleconference . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 | ||||
| 12.2 Minutes of 27-Jun-2000 Teleconference . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 | ||||
| 12.3 Minutes of 29-Jun-2000 Teleconference . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 | ||||
| 12.4 Minutes of 06-Jul-2000 Teleconference . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 | ||||
| 12.5 Minutes of 11-Jul-2000 Teleconference . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 | ||||
| 1. Introduction | ||||
| Due to time constraints, this document is not as complete or as well | ||||
| polished as we wished. This version was rushed to meet the publication | ||||
| deadline of the June 2000 Pittsburg meeting. Since the meeting has | ||||
| passed, we do not wish to revise this document, so that we don't give | ||||
| the appearance of changing our findings as presented. Only formating | ||||
| and errors of fact have been corrected. | ||||
| 1.1. Chairman's Note: | ||||
| This document is the result of 6 weeks of intense work by the panel | ||||
| listed below. Our mission was to evaluate the various AAA proposals and | ||||
| provide recommendations to the AAA working group and to the IESG on the | ||||
| viability of each of the proposals. | ||||
| The evaluation process had three distinct phases. 1) Validate the AAA | ||||
| requirements document [AAAReqts] against the base requirements documents | ||||
| for NASREQ, MOBILEIP and ROAMOPS. 2) Evaluate each of the SNMP, | ||||
| Radius++, Diameter and COPS proposal claims against the validated | ||||
| requirements. 3) Provide final recommendations based on side by side | ||||
| comparison for each proposal on a requirement by requirement basis. | ||||
| In general, the ONLY information the evaluators were allowed to use | ||||
| throughout the process was that provided in the source documents (the | ||||
| requirements document and the proposal) or documents referenced by the | ||||
| source documents. In other words, if it wasn't written down, it gen- | ||||
| erally didn't exist. Our cutoff for acceptance of information was 1 | ||||
| June 2000 - any submissions after that time were not considered in the | ||||
| panel's deliberations. | ||||
| 1.2. Members of the Group | ||||
| The group was chaired by Michael St.Johns. David Mitton was the docu- | ||||
| ment editor. Following are the background statements and any conflicits | ||||
| of interest from them and the rest of the panel. | ||||
| Michael St. Johns, Excite@Home | ||||
| I have no known conflicts of interest with respect to the AAA process. | ||||
| I have neither advocated nor participated in the creation of any of the | ||||
| submissions. My company is a service company (ISP) and will not be | ||||
| involved in the manufacture or sale of AAA enabled products. Other | ||||
| than my participation as the chair of the AAA evaluation process, I have | ||||
| not had any contact with the AAA standards process. | ||||
| David Mitton, Nortel Networks | ||||
| I have been Nasreq WG co-chair and author of several Nasreq drafts. As | ||||
| well as, previously contributed to several RADIUS drafts. | ||||
| I have been a RADIUS NAS implementor and Technical Prime on our Server | ||||
| products, so know it extremely well. In my current job role I am | ||||
| involved with Nortel's IP Mobility products, which support Diameter. | ||||
| I have written a presentation on COPS vs NASreq Requirements for a | ||||
| Nasreq meeting, but have not implemented it, nor consider myself an | ||||
| through expert on the subject. | ||||
| Stuart Barkley, UUnet | ||||
| I've been working for 5 years at UUNET on various parts of our dialup | ||||
| network. I have extensive experience with designing, developing and | ||||
| operating our SNMP based usage data gathering system. I've also been | ||||
| involved in our radius based authentication and authorization systems in | ||||
| an advisory position. | ||||
| I've participated in radius/roamops/nasreq/aaa groups for the past | ||||
| several years. I'm not an author or contributer on any of the require- | ||||
| ments or protocol documents being presented although I have been peri- | ||||
| pherally involved in these working groups. | ||||
| Dave Nelson, Cabletron | ||||
| Very active in the RADIUS WG, especially during the early years. No | ||||
| involvement in the AAA submission. Have not contributed to the develop- | ||||
| ment of Diameter. | ||||
| No involvement with SNMPv3 or the AAA submission. David Harrington, a | ||||
| proponent, works in a different group within my company. We have not | ||||
| discussed the submission. No involvement with the COPS protocol. | ||||
| Basavaraj Patil, Nokia | ||||
| I am a contributor to the AAA requirements document (draft-ietf- | ||||
| mobileip-aaa-reqs-03.txt) submitted by the Mobile IP WG. I was a member | ||||
| of the team that was constituted to capture the Mobile IP requirements | ||||
| for AAA services. | ||||
| As part of the co-chairing activity of the Mobile IP WG I have realized | ||||
| the need for AAA services by Mobile IP and hence closely followed the | ||||
| work done in the AAA WG, RADIUS, RoamOps and TR45.6. | ||||
| My present work at Nokia does involve looking at AAA protocols (to some | ||||
| extent at least) for use in wireless networks. I have also done some | ||||
| work with AAA protocols such as DIAMETER in my previous job at Nortel | ||||
| Networks. | ||||
| Mark Stevens, Ellacoya Networks | ||||
| I am the co-chair of the IETF RAP working group which is the working | ||||
| group that has developed the COPS protocol. I have not contributed to | ||||
| the documents describing how COPS can satisfy AAA requirements. | ||||
| I participated in early AAA working group meetings, but have not been an | ||||
| active participant since the group's rechartering. The company that | ||||
| currently employees me builds devices might benefit from being AAA | ||||
| enabled. | ||||
| Barney Wolff, Databus Inc. | ||||
| I have implemented RADIUS client, proxy and server software, under con- | ||||
| tract to AT&T. That software is owned by AT&T and I have no financial | ||||
| interest in it. | ||||
| I have been a member of the RADIUS WG for several years, and consider | ||||
| myself an advocate for RADIUS against what I consider unjustified | ||||
| attacks on it. | ||||
| I've never worked for any of the companies whose staff have produced any | ||||
| of the proposals, although I obviously might at some future time. | ||||
| 1.3. Requirements Validation Process | ||||
| For each of the base requirements documents, the chair assigned a team | ||||
| member to re-validate the requirement. The process was fairly | ||||
| mechanical; the evaluator looked at what was said in [AAAReqts], and | ||||
| verified that the references and supporting text in the basis document | ||||
| supported the requirement in [AAAReqts] as stated. Where the reference | ||||
| was wrong, too general, missing or otherwise did not support the | ||||
| requirement, the evaluator either deleted or downgraded the requirement. | ||||
| The results of that process were sent to the AAA mailing list and are | ||||
| also included in this document in the appendixes. The group's used | ||||
| [AAAReqts] as modified by our validation findings to evaluate the AAA | ||||
| proposals. | ||||
| 1.4. Proposal Evaluation | ||||
| For each of the four proposals, the chair assigned two panel members to | ||||
| write evaluation briefs. One member was assigned to write a 'PRO' brief | ||||
| and could take the most generous interpretation of the proposal; he | ||||
| could grant benefit of doubt. The other member was assigned to write a | ||||
| 'CON' brief and was required to use the strictest criteria when doing | ||||
| his evaluation. | ||||
| Each brief looked at each individual requirement and evaluated how close | ||||
| the proposal came in meeting that requirement. Each item was scored as | ||||
| one of an 'F' for failed to meet the requirement, 'P' for partially | ||||
| meeting the requirement, or 'T' for totally meeting the requirement. | ||||
| The proposals were scored only on the information presented. This means | ||||
| that a particular protocol might actually meet the specifics of a | ||||
| requirement, but if the proposal did not state, describe or reference | ||||
| how that requirement was met, in might be scored lower. | ||||
| The panel met by teleconference to discuss each proposal and the PRO and | ||||
| CON briefs. Each of the briefers discussed the high points of the brief | ||||
| and gave his summary findings for the proposal. We then discussed each | ||||
| individual requirement line-by-line as a group. At the conclusion, the | ||||
| members provided their own line-by-line evaluations which were used to | ||||
| determine the consensus evaluation for the specific requirement relative | ||||
| to that proposal. The meeting notes from those teleconferences as well | ||||
| as the individual briefs are included in the appendixies. | ||||
| 1.5. Final Recommendations Process | ||||
| The panel met for one last time to compare the results for the four pro- | ||||
| posals and to ensure we'd used consistent scoring criteria. We did a | ||||
| requirement by requirement discussion, then a discussion of each of the | ||||
| protocols. | ||||
| The final phase was for each member to provide his final summary evalua- | ||||
| tion for each of the protocols. Each proposal was scored as either Not | ||||
| Acceptable, Acceptable Only For Accounting, Acceptable with Engineering | ||||
| and Fully Acceptable. Where a proposal was acceptable with engineering, | ||||
| the member indicated whether it would be a small, medium or large | ||||
| amount. | ||||
| It should be noted that score indicates the opinion of the team member. | ||||
| And it may take into consideration background knowledge or additional | ||||
| issues not captured in the minutes presented here. | ||||
| 2. Protocol Proposals | ||||
| The following proposal documents were submitted to the AAA WG for con- | ||||
| sideration by the deadline. | ||||
| - SNMP: | ||||
| [SNMPComp] "Comparison of SNMPv3 Against AAA Network Access | ||||
| Requirements", B. Natale, draft-natale-aaa-snmpv3-comp-00.txt | ||||
| - RADIUS Enhancements: | ||||
| [RADComp] "Comparison of RADIUS Against AAA Network Access | ||||
| Requirements", Ekstein, T'Joens, DeVries, | ||||
| draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-comp-00.txt | ||||
| [RADExt] "Framework for the extension of the RADIUS(v2) protocol", | ||||
| T'Joens, Ekstein, DeVries, draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-00.txt | ||||
| - DIAMETER | ||||
| [DIAComp] "Comparison of DIAMETER Against AAA Network Access | ||||
| Requirements", Calhoun, draft-calhoun-aaa-diameter-comp-00.txt | ||||
| - COPS for AAA: | ||||
| [COPSComp] "Comparison of COPS Against the AAA NA Requirements", | ||||
| Khosravi, Durham, Walker, draft-durham-aaa-cops-reqments-00.txt | ||||
| [COPSAAA] "COPS Usage for AAA", Durham, Khosravi, Weiss, Filename, | ||||
| draft-durham-aaa-cops-ext-00.txt | ||||
| 3. Item Level Composite Compliance | ||||
| For each requirement item, the group reviewed the proposal's level of | ||||
| compliance. Where the proposal was lacking, the evaluators may have | ||||
| made supposition on how hard it would be to resolve the problem. The | ||||
| following shows the combined results for each requirement item. | ||||
| Key: | ||||
| T = Total Compliance | ||||
| P = Partial Compliance | ||||
| F = Failed Compliance | ||||
| Where two are shown eg: P/T, there was a tie. | ||||
| 3.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 3.1.1 Scalability - SNMP:P, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| SNMP was downgraded due to a lack of detail of how the current agent | ||||
| model would be adapted to a client request based transaction. The | ||||
| RADIUS proposal did not address the problem adequately. There are open | ||||
| issues in all proposals with respect to webs of proxies. | ||||
| 3.1.2 Fail-over - SNMP:P, RADIUS:P, Diameter:P, COPS:T/P | ||||
| The group particularly noted that it didn't not think any protocol did | ||||
| well in this requirement. Insufficient work has been done to specify | ||||
| link failure detection and primary server recovery in most submissions. | ||||
| COPS has some mechanisms but not all. How these mechanisms would work | ||||
| in a web of proxies has not been addressed. | ||||
| 3.1.3 Mutual Authentication - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T/P, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| Many of the submissions missed the point of the requirement. There | ||||
| should be a way for the peers to authenticate each other, end-to-end, or | ||||
| user-to-server. However, the group questions who really needs this | ||||
| feature, and if it could be done at a different level. | ||||
| Mutual authentication in RADIUS is only between hops. | ||||
| 3.1.4 Transmission Level Security - SNMP:T, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T, | ||||
| COPS:T | ||||
| All protocols have methods of securing the message data. | ||||
| 3.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality - SNMP:P, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T, | ||||
| COPS:T | ||||
| This requirement usually comes from third-party situations, such as | ||||
| access outsourcing. | ||||
| Diameter and COPS both use CMS formats to secure data objects. The | ||||
| group is concerned if this method and it's support is perhaps too heavy | ||||
| weight for NAS and some types of edge systems. | ||||
| 3.1.6 Data Object Integrity - SNMP:F, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| How to guard the data object from changes was not adequately described | ||||
| in the SNMP proposal. The RADIUS solution was not very strong either. | ||||
| 3.1.7 Certificate Transport - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| All protocols can figure out some way to transport a certificate. | ||||
| 3.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - SNMP:P, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| The requirement does not give a definition of "how reliable" it must be. | ||||
| The SNMP and RADIUS proposals lacked in providing solutions to message | ||||
| retransmission and recovery. | ||||
| 3.1.9 Run over IPv4 - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.1.10 Run over IPv6 - SNMP:P, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| The SNMP proposal indicated that this area is still in the experimental | ||||
| stages. | ||||
| 3.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - SNMP:F, RADIUS:P, | ||||
| Diameter:T, COPS:P | ||||
| The SNMP proposal did not address this requirement. COPS claims sup- | ||||
| port, but does not work through some of the issues. Diameter was the | ||||
| only protocol that attempted to address this area to a fair extent. | ||||
| 3.1.12 Auditability - SNMP:F, RADIUS:F, Diameter:T, COPS:P | ||||
| We treated this requirement as something like "non-repudiation". There | ||||
| is a concern that digital signatures may be too computationally expen- | ||||
| sive for some equipment, and not well deployed on those platforms. | ||||
| The SNMP and RADIUS proposals did not attempt to work this requirement. | ||||
| COPS suggests that a History PIB will help solve this problem but gives | ||||
| no description. | ||||
| 3.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required - SNMP:P/T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, | ||||
| COPS:T | ||||
| The requirement is interpreted to mean that any application level secu- | ||||
| rity can be turned off in the presence of transport level security. | ||||
| Pretty much every protocol can use an enveloping secure transport that | ||||
| would allow them not to use an internal secret. | ||||
| 3.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, | ||||
| Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 3.2.1 NAI Support - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.2.2 CHAP Support - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.2.3 EAP Support - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| The requirement for clear-text passwords comes from one-time-password | ||||
| systems and hard-token (SecurID) systems. | ||||
| 3.2.5 Reauthentication on demand - SNMP:T, RADIUS:P, Diameter:P, COPS:T | ||||
| To supply this, the proposal must have asynchronous peer-to-peer cabili- | ||||
| ties, and there must defined operation for such state changes. | ||||
| We also distinguished event-driven resuthentication from timer-driven | ||||
| (or lifetime-driven). Also concerned about how this would work in a | ||||
| proxy environment. | ||||
| 3.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication - SNMP:P, RADIUS:T/P, Diameter:T, | ||||
| COPS:T | ||||
| This requirement really means authorization with trivia authentications | ||||
| (e.g. by assertion or knowlege). | ||||
| 3.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 3.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - SNMP:P/F, RADIUS:T, | ||||
| Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| There is difficulty in interpreting what is static or dynamic with | ||||
| respect to the viewpoint of the client, server, administrator or user. | ||||
| 3.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability - SNMP:P, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T/P, | ||||
| COPS:P | ||||
| It was noted that any new cability in a new AAA protocol would not be | ||||
| able to map directly back to RADIUS. But this is already a problem | ||||
| within a RADIUS environment. | ||||
| 3.3.3 Reject Capability - SNMP:T/P/F, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:P | ||||
| 3.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - SNMP:F, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.3.5 Reauthorization on Demand - SNMP:P/F, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T/P, | ||||
| COPS:T | ||||
| Some evaluators wondered how the server will know that re-authorization | ||||
| is supposed to be done? Will it interface to something external, or | ||||
| have sufficent internals? | ||||
| 3.3.6 Support for Access Rules & Filters - SNMP:P, RADIUS:P, | ||||
| Diameter:P, COPS:T/P | ||||
| Only the Diameter proposal actually tackled this issue, but the group | ||||
| felt that the rules as designed were too weak to be useful. There was | ||||
| also concern about standardizing syntax without defining semantics. | ||||
| 3.3.7 State Reconciliation - SNMP:F, RADIUS:P/F, Diameter:P, COPS:T/P | ||||
| All of the protocols were weak to non-existent on specifying how this | ||||
| would be done in a web of proxies situation. | ||||
| 3.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect - SNMP:T, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 3.4.1 Real Time Accounting - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, | ||||
| COPS:T | ||||
| 3.4.4 Batch Accounting - SNMP:T, RADIUS:F, Diameter:P, COPS:P | ||||
| Some members of the group are not sure how this fits into the rest of | ||||
| the AAA protocol, which is primarly real-time and event driven. Would | ||||
| this be better met with FTP? | ||||
| 3.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.4.6 Accounting Timestamps - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.4.7 Dynamic Accounting - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T, Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 3.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - SNMP:T, RADIUS:T/P, | ||||
| Diameter:T, COPS:T | ||||
| 3.5.2 Firewall Friendly - SNMP:F, RADIUS:T, Diameter:P, COPS:P | ||||
| There was considerable discussion about what it means to be "firewall | ||||
| friendly". It was suggested that not making the firewall look into | ||||
| packets much beyond the application port number. Protocols such as SNMP | ||||
| and COPS are at a disadvantage, as you must look far into the packet to | ||||
| understand the intended operation. DIAMETER will have the disadvantage | ||||
| of SCTP, which is not well deployed or recognized at the moment. | ||||
| SNMP and COPS also have the problem that they are used for other types | ||||
| of operations than just AAA. | ||||
| Should firewalls have AAA Proxy engines? | ||||
| We didn't look NAT friendly issues either. | ||||
| 3.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent - SNMP:F, RADIUS:P, Diameter:T, | ||||
| COPS:T | ||||
| The group is not clear on how this requirement impacts the actual proto- | ||||
| col. Raj explained it to us, but we mostly took it on faith. | ||||
| 4. Protocol Evaluation Summaries | ||||
| 4.1. SNMP | ||||
| SNMP is generally not acceptable as a general AAA protocol. There may | ||||
| be some utility in its use for accounting, but the amount of engineering | ||||
| to turn it into a viable A&A protocol argues against further considera- | ||||
| tion. | ||||
| 4.2. Radius++ | ||||
| Radius++ is not considered acceptable as an AAA protocol. There is a | ||||
| fairly substantial amount of engineering required to make it meet all | ||||
| requirements, and that engineering would most likely result in something | ||||
| close to the functionality of Diameter. | ||||
| 4.3. Diameter | ||||
| Diameter is considered acceptable as an AAA protocol. There is some | ||||
| minor engineering required to bring it into complete compliance with the | ||||
| requirements but well within short term capabilities. Diameter might | ||||
| also benefit from the inclusion of a broader data model ala COPS. | ||||
| 4.4. COPS | ||||
| COPS is considered acceptable as an AAA protocol. There is some minor | ||||
| to medium engineering required to bring it into complete compliance with | ||||
| the requirements. | ||||
| 4.5. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| The panel expresses a slight preference for Diameter based on the per- | ||||
| ception that the work for Diameter is further along than for COPS. How- | ||||
| ever, using SCTP as the transport mechanism for Diameter places SCTP on | ||||
| the critical path for Diameter. This may ultimately result in COPS being | ||||
| a faster approach if SCTP is delayed in any way. | ||||
| 5. Security Considerations | ||||
| AAA protocols enforce the security of access to the Internet. The | ||||
| design of these protocols and this evaluation process took many security | ||||
| requirements as critical issues for evaluation. A candidate protocol | ||||
| must meet the security requirements as documented, and must be | ||||
| engineered and reviewed properly as developed and deployed. | ||||
| 6. References | ||||
| [AAAReqts] "Criteria for Evaluating AAA Protocols for Network Access", | ||||
| Aboba, et.al., draft-ietf-aaa-na-reqts-05.txt, April 2000 | ||||
| [AAAComp] "AAA Protocols : Comparison between RADIUS, DIAMETER and | ||||
| COPS", Ekstein, T'Joens, Sales, Paridaens, draft-ekstein-nasreq- | ||||
| protcomp-01.txt, Jan 2000 | ||||
| [SNMPComp] "Comparison of SNMPv3 Against AAA Network Access Require- | ||||
| ments", Natale, draft-natale-aaa-snmpv3-comp-00.txt, June 2000 | ||||
| [RADComp] "Comparison of RADIUS Against AAA Network Access Require- | ||||
| ments", Ekstein, T'Joens, DeVries draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-comp- | ||||
| 00.txt, May 2000 | ||||
| [RADExt] "Framework for the extension of the RADIUS(v2) protocol", | ||||
| T'Joens, Ekstein, DeVries, draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-00.txt, June 2000 | ||||
| [DIAComp] "Comparison of DIAMETER Against AAA Network Access Require- | ||||
| ments ", Calhoun, draft-calhoun-aaa-diameter-comp-00.txt, April 2000 | ||||
| [COPSComp] "Comparison of COPS Against the AAA NA Requirements", Khos- | ||||
| ravi, Durham, Walker, draft-durham-aaa-cops-reqments-00.txt, May | ||||
| 2000 | ||||
| [COPSAAA] "COPS Usage for AAA", Durham, Khosravi, Weiss, Filename, | ||||
| draft-durham-aaa-cops-ext-00.txt, Jun-2000 | ||||
| 7. Author's Addresses | ||||
| David Mitton | ||||
| Nortel Networks | ||||
| 880 Technology Park Drive | ||||
| Billerica, MA 01821 | ||||
| Phone: 978-288-4570 | ||||
| Email: dmitton@nortelnetworks.com | ||||
| Michael StJohns | ||||
| Excite@Home MS 430/3 | ||||
| 450 Broadway | ||||
| Redwood City, CA | ||||
| Phone: 650-556-5368 | ||||
| Email: stjohns@corp.home.net | ||||
| Stuart Barkley | ||||
| UUNET | ||||
| F1-1-612 | ||||
| 22001 Loudoun County Parkway | ||||
| Ashburn, VA 20147 US | ||||
| Phone: 703-886-5645 | ||||
| Email: stuartb@uu.net | ||||
| David B. Nelson | ||||
| Enterasys Networks, Inc. (a Cabletron Systems company) | ||||
| 50 Minuteman Road | ||||
| Andover, MA 01810-1008 | ||||
| Phone: 978-684-1330 | ||||
| Email: dnelson@enterasys.com | ||||
| Basavaraj Patil | ||||
| Nokia | ||||
| 6000 Connection Dr. | ||||
| Irving, TX 75039 | ||||
| Email: Basavaraj.Patil@nokia.com | ||||
| Mark Stevens | ||||
| Ellacoya Networks | ||||
| 7 Henry Clay Drive | ||||
| Merrimack, NH 03054 | ||||
| Phone: 603-577-5544 ext. 325 | ||||
| Email: mstevens@ellacoya.com | ||||
| Barney Wolff, Pres. | ||||
| Databus Inc. | ||||
| 15 Victor Drive | ||||
| Irvington, NY 10533-1919 USA | ||||
| Phone: 914-591-5677 | ||||
| Email: barney@databus.com | ||||
| 8. Full Copyright Statement | ||||
| Copyright (C) The Internet Society (July 2000). All Rights Reserved. | ||||
| This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to oth- | ||||
| ers, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or | ||||
| assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and dis- | ||||
| tributed, 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. However, this document itself may not | ||||
| be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or | ||||
| references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, | ||||
| except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in | ||||
| which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Stan- | ||||
| dards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into | ||||
| languages other than English. | ||||
| The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be | ||||
| revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. | ||||
| This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS | ||||
| IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK | ||||
| FORCE DISCLAIMS 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 FIT- | ||||
| NESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE." | ||||
| 9. Appendix Summary Evaluations | ||||
| Composite Results | ||||
| SNMP Radius++ Diameter COPS | ||||
| 1.1.1 P P T T | ||||
| 1.1.2 P P P T/P | ||||
| 1.1.3 T T/P T T | ||||
| 1.1.4 T P T T | ||||
| 1.1.5 P P T T | ||||
| 1.1.6 F P T T | ||||
| 1.1.7 T T T T | ||||
| 1.1.8 P P T T | ||||
| 1.1.9 T T T T | ||||
| 1.1.10 P T T T | ||||
| 1.1.11 F P T P | ||||
| 1.1.12 F F T P | ||||
| 1.1.13 P/T T T T | ||||
| 1.1.14 T T T T | ||||
| 1.2.1 T T T T | ||||
| 1.2.2 T T T T | ||||
| 1.2.3 T T T T | ||||
| 1.2.4 T T T T | ||||
| 1.2.5 T P P T | ||||
| 1.2.6 P T/P T T | ||||
| 1.3.1 P/F T T T | ||||
| 1.3.2 P T T/P P | ||||
| 1.3.3 T/P/F T T P | ||||
| 1.3.4 F T T T | ||||
| 1.3.5 P/F P T/P T | ||||
| 1.3.6 P P P T/P | ||||
| 1.3.7 F P/F P T/P | ||||
| 1.3.8 T P T T | ||||
| 1.4.1 T T T T | ||||
| 1.4.2 T T T T | ||||
| 1.4.3 T T T T | ||||
| 1.4.4 T F P P | ||||
| 1.4.5 T T T T | ||||
| 1.4.6 T T T T | ||||
| 1.4.7 T T T T | ||||
| 1.5.1 T T/P T T | ||||
| 1.5.2 F T P P | ||||
| 1.5.3 F P T T | ||||
| 10. Appendix Review of the Requirements | ||||
| Comments from the Panel on draft-ietf-aaa-na-reqts-05.txt | ||||
| 5.1 General Requirements | ||||
| Scalability - In clarification [a], delete "and tens of thousands of | ||||
| simultaneous requests." This does not appear to be supported by any | ||||
| of the three base documents. | ||||
| Transmission level security - [Table] Delete the ROAMOPS "M" and | ||||
| footnote "6". This appears to be an over generalization of the | ||||
| roaming protocol requirement not necessarily applicable to AAA. | ||||
| Data object confidentiality - [Table] Delete the MOBILE IP "S" and | ||||
| footnote "33". The base document text does not appear to support this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| Reliable AAA transport mechanism - In clarification [h] delete | ||||
| everything after the "...packet loss" and replace with a ".". The | ||||
| requirements listed here are not necessarily supported by the base | ||||
| document and could be mistakening taken as requirements for the AAA | ||||
| protocol in their entirety. | ||||
| Run over IPv4 - [Table] Replace the MOBILE IP footnote "17" with | ||||
| footnote "33". This appears to be a incorrect reference. | ||||
| Run over IPv6 - [Table] Replace the MOBILE IP footnote "18" with a | ||||
| footnote pointing to section 8 of [8]. This appears to be an | ||||
| incorrect reference. | ||||
| Auditability - Clarification [j] does not appear to coincide with the | ||||
| NASREQ meaning of Auditability. Given that NASREQ is the only | ||||
| protocol with an auditability requirement, this section should be | ||||
| aligned with that meaning. | ||||
| Shared secret not required - [Table] General - This section is | ||||
| misleadingly labeled. Our team has chosen to interpret it as | ||||
| specified in clarification [k] rather than any of the possible | ||||
| interpretations of "shared secret not required". We recommend the tag | ||||
| in the table be replaced with "Dual App and Transport Security Not | ||||
| Required" or something at least somewhat descriptive of [k]. Delete the | ||||
| NASREQ "S" and footnote "28" as not supported by the NASREQ document. | ||||
| Delete the MOBILE IP "O" and footnotes "34" and 39" as not supported | ||||
| by the MOBILE IP document. | ||||
| 5.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| NAI Support - [Table] Replace MOBILE IP footnote "38" with "39". This | ||||
| appears to be a more appropriate reference. | ||||
| CHAP Support - [Table] Delete MOBILE IP "O" as unsupported. | ||||
| EAP Support - [Table] Delete MOBILE IP "O" as unsupported. | ||||
| PAP/Clear-Text Support - [Table] Replace NASREQ footnote "10" with | ||||
| "26" as being more appropriate. Replace ROAMOPS "B" with "O". The | ||||
| reference text appears to not explictly ban this and specifically | ||||
| references clear text for OTP applications. Delete MOBILE IP "O" as | ||||
| unsupported. | ||||
| Re-authentication on demand - Clarification [e] appears to go beyond | ||||
| the requirements in NASREQ and MOBILE IP. [Table] Delete MOBILE IP | ||||
| footnote "30" as inapplicable. | ||||
| Authorization Only without Authentication - Clarification [f] does not | ||||
| include all NASREQ requirements, specifically that unneeded | ||||
| credentials MUST NOT be required to be filled in. Given that there | ||||
| are no other base requirements (after deleting the MOBILE IP | ||||
| requirement) we recommend that clarification [f] be brought in line | ||||
| with NASREQ. [Table] Delete MOBILE IP "O" and footnote "30". The | ||||
| referenced text does not appear to support the requirement. | ||||
| 5.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| Static and Dynamic... - Clarification [a] appears to use a | ||||
| particularly strange definition of static and dynamic addressing. | ||||
| Recommend clarification here identifying who (e.g. client or server) | ||||
| thinks address is static/dynamic. [Table] ROAMOPS "M" appears to be a | ||||
| derived requirement instead of directly called out. The footnote "1" | ||||
| should be changed to "5" as being more appropriate. A text | ||||
| clarification should be added to this document indentifying the | ||||
| derived requirement. | ||||
| RADIUS Gateway capability - [Table] Delete the MOBILE IP "O" and | ||||
| footnote "30". The referenced text does not appear to support the | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| Reject capability - [Table] Delete the NASREQ "M" and footnote "12". | ||||
| The NASREQ document does not appear to require this cability. | ||||
| Reauthorization on Demand - [Table] Delete the MOBILE IP "S" and | ||||
| footnotes "30,33" The referenced text does not support this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| Support for Access Rules... - Clarification [e] has a overbroad list | ||||
| of requirements. NASREQ only requires 5-8 on the list, and as The MOBILE IP | ||||
| requirement is not supported by its references, this clarification | ||||
| should match NASREQ requirements. [Table] Delete the MOBILE | ||||
| IP "O" and footnotes "30,37" as not supported. | ||||
| State Reconciliaton - Clarification [f] should be brought in line with | ||||
| NASREQ requirements. The clarification imposes overbroad requirements | ||||
| not required by NASREQ and NASREQ is the only service with | ||||
| requirements in this area. | ||||
| 5.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| Real-Time accounting - [Table] Replace MOBILE IP footnote [39] with a | ||||
| footnote pointing to section 3.1 of [3] as being more appropriate. | ||||
| Mandatory Compact Encoding - [Table] Delete MOBILE IP "M" and footnote | ||||
| "33" as the reference does not support the requirement. | ||||
| Accounting Record Extensibility - [Table] Delete NASREQ "M" and | ||||
| footnote "15" as the reference does not support the requirement. | ||||
| Accounting Time Stamps - [Table] Delete MOBILE IP "S" and footnote | ||||
| "30" as they don't support the requirement. Replace MOBILE IP | ||||
| footnote "40" with a footnote pointing to section 3.1 of [3] as being | ||||
| more appropriate. | ||||
| Dynamic Accounting - [Table] Replace the NASREQ footnote "18" with a | ||||
| footnote pointing to section 8.4.1.5 of [3]. Delete the MOBILE IP "S" | ||||
| and footnote "30" as the reference does not support the requirement. | ||||
| Footnote section. | ||||
| [40] should be pointing to 6.1 of [4]. | ||||
| [41] should be pointing to 6.2.2 of [4]. | ||||
| [45] should be pointing to 6.4 of [4]. | ||||
| [46] should be pointing to 8 of [4]. | ||||
| 11. Appendix Position Briefs | ||||
| 11.1. SNMP PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluation of SNMP AAA Requirements | ||||
| PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluator - Stuart Barkley | ||||
| Ref [1] is draft-natale-aaa-snmpv3-comp-00.txt, aka 'the document' | ||||
| Ref [2] is the aaa eval criteria as modified by us, aka 'the requirements' | ||||
| The document uses T to indicate total compliance, P to indicate partial | ||||
| compliance and F to indicate no compliance. For each section I've | ||||
| indicated my grade for the section. If there is a change, I've | ||||
| indicated that and the grade given by the authors. | ||||
| 1 Per item discussion | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability - Grade T | ||||
| The document indicates that SNMP can adequately handle that scale from | ||||
| the requirements document. Since most current uses are ppp connections | ||||
| and SNMP is already capable of handling the interface table and other | ||||
| per session tables it is clear that basic capacity exists. Additions to | ||||
| support other tables and variables scales in a simple linear fashion | ||||
| with the number of additional variables and protocol interactions. | ||||
| Regardless of the final selected protocol handling the scaling required | ||||
| is not a trivial undertaking. SNMP can draw upon existing network | ||||
| management practices to assist in this implementation. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP is of vital importance to the operation of most networks. | ||||
| Existing infrastructures can handle required failover or other redundant | ||||
| operations. | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication - Grade T | ||||
| The use of shared secrets described in the document is a well understood | ||||
| method of integrity control. Although shared secrets don't necessarily | ||||
| provide full authentication since other parties may also have the same | ||||
| secrets, the level of authentication is sufficient for the task at hand. | ||||
| In many cases the SNMP infrastructure will already exist and shared | ||||
| secrets should already be properly managed on an operational network. A | ||||
| failure of the SNMP shared secret approach regardless of the AAA | ||||
| protocol will likely leave equipment and systems open to substantial | ||||
| misuse bypassing any more elaborate AAA authentication. | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission Level Security - Grade T | ||||
| SNMPv3 provides many additional security options which were not | ||||
| available or were more controversial in previous SNMP versions. | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality - New Grade P (from T) | ||||
| The document discusses SNMPv3 which can provide data confidentially for | ||||
| data passing over the wire. There is substantial implied AAA | ||||
| architecture (brokers and proxies) in the requirements that full | ||||
| conformance is difficult to determine. In particular, the evaluator has | ||||
| difficulty with the concept of "the target AAA entity for whom the data | ||||
| is ultimately destined", but will concede that the desired requirement | ||||
| is only partially met (most especially with the transfer of a PAP | ||||
| password). | ||||
| 1.1.6 Data Object Integrity - New Grade T (from P) | ||||
| SNMP has full capabilities that allow the authentication of the data. | ||||
| Brokers, proxies or other intermediaries in the data chain can verify | ||||
| the source of the information and determine that the data has not been | ||||
| tampered with. The document downgrades the grade to P because of | ||||
| confusion over the integrity checking role of intermediaries. | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport - Grade T | ||||
| The requirements require the capability of transporting certificates but | ||||
| do not have any specific use for the certificates. The requirements | ||||
| make assumptions that the protocol selected will be dependent upon | ||||
| certificates, but this is not necessarily true. SNMP can transport | ||||
| arbitrary objects and can transport certificates if necessary. The | ||||
| document indicates some issues with size of certificates and current | ||||
| maximum practical data sizes, however if the compact encoding | ||||
| requirement extends to the internal certificate information this should | ||||
| be less of an issue. | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - New Grade T (from P) | ||||
| The requirements is stated rather strongly and makes substantial | ||||
| assumptions of AAA protocol architecture and based upon current | ||||
| protocols and their failings. SNMP allows for great flexibility in | ||||
| retransmission schemes depending upon the importance of the data. | ||||
| 1.1.9 Run over IPv4 - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP has operated in this mode for many years. | ||||
| 1.1.10 Run over IPv6 - New Grade T (from P) | ||||
| SNMP must support IPv6 for many other systems so support for this should | ||||
| be possible by the time the requirement becomes effective. The document | ||||
| indicates that experimental versions satisfying this requirement are | ||||
| already in existence. | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - New Grade T (from P) | ||||
| The requirements make significant assumptions about the final | ||||
| architecture. It is well within the capabilities of SNMP to provide | ||||
| intermediaries which channel data flows between multiple parties. The | ||||
| document downgrades SNMPs compliance with this requirement due to issues | ||||
| which are covered more specifically under "Data Object Confidentially" | ||||
| which the evaluator has downgraded to P. | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability - New Grade T (from F) | ||||
| Data flows inside SNMP are easily auditable by having secondary data | ||||
| flows established which provide copies of all information to auxiliary | ||||
| servers. The document grades this as a failure, but this support is | ||||
| only minor additions within a more fully fleshed out set of data flows. | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required - Grade T | ||||
| Shared secrets are not required by SNMP. They are desirable in many | ||||
| instances where a lower level does not provide the necessary | ||||
| capabilities. The document supplies pointers to various security modes | ||||
| available. | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP has long had the ability for other parties to create new | ||||
| unambiguous attributes. | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP easily supports this. NAIs were defined to be easily carried in | ||||
| existing protocols. | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP can easily provide objects to pass the necessary information for | ||||
| CHAP operation. | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support - New Grade T (from P) | ||||
| SNMP can easily provide objects to pass the necessary information for | ||||
| EAP operation. As with CHAP or PAP MIB objects can be created to | ||||
| control this operation thus the upgrade from the document grade. | ||||
| 1.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords - New Grade P (from T) | ||||
| SNMP can easily provide objects to pass the necessary information for | ||||
| PAP operation. The requirement about non-disclosure of clear text | ||||
| passwords make assumptions about the protocol implementation. The | ||||
| choice to use clear text passwords is inherently insecure and forced | ||||
| protocol architecture don't really cover this. This requirement grade | ||||
| is downgraded to P (partial) because the document does not really | ||||
| address the confidentially of the data at application proxies. | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthorization on demand - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP can easily provide objects to control this operation. | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication - New Grade T (from T) | ||||
| The document makes an incorrect interpretation of this requirement. | ||||
| However, SNMP makes no restriction which prevents to desired | ||||
| requirements. No actual change of grade is necessary, since both the | ||||
| actual requirements and the incorrect interpretation are satisfied by | ||||
| SNMP. | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP can easily provide objects to control this operation. | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability - Grade T | ||||
| As the document describes, with the addition of any necessary | ||||
| compatibility variables SNMP can be gatewayed to RADIUS applications. | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability - Grade T | ||||
| Any of the active components in the SNMP based structure could decide to | ||||
| reject and authentication request for any reason. Due to mixing | ||||
| different levels of requirements the document doesn't attempt to | ||||
| directly address this, instead indicating that a higher level | ||||
| application can cause this operation. | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - New Grade T (from ?) | ||||
| Nothing in SNMP explicitly interacts with the selection of any tunneling | ||||
| mechanisms the client may select. The document author was unclear about | ||||
| the needs here. | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauth on Demand - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP can easily provide objects to control this operation. | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for ACLs - Grade T | ||||
| The document indicates that should it be desired SNMP can provide | ||||
| objects to control these operations. In addition, active components can | ||||
| apply substantial further configurable access controls. | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation - Grade T | ||||
| The requirements describe an over broad set of required capabilities. | ||||
| The document indicates concern over incompatibilities in the | ||||
| requirements, however SNMP can provide methods to allow active | ||||
| components to reacquire lost state information. These capabilities | ||||
| directly interact with scalability concerns and care needs to be taken | ||||
| when expecting this requirement to be met at the same time as the | ||||
| scalability requirements. | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect - Grade T | ||||
| The document indicates that SNMP can easily provide objects to control | ||||
| this operation. | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real Time Accounting - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP can provide this mode of operation. The document outlines methods | ||||
| both fully within SNMP and using SNMP to interface with other transfer | ||||
| methods. Many providers already use SNMP for real time notification of | ||||
| other network events. This capability can directly interact with | ||||
| scalability concerns and implementation care needs to be taken to make | ||||
| this properly interact is large scale environments. | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding - Grade T | ||||
| The document indicates the possibility of controlling external protocols | ||||
| to handle data transmissions where the BER encoding of SNMP objects | ||||
| would be considered excessive. SNMP BER encoded protocol elements are | ||||
| generally in a fairly compact encoding form compared with text based | ||||
| forms (as used in some existing radius log file implementations). This | ||||
| interacts with the general requirement for carrying service specific | ||||
| attributes and the accounting requirement for extensibility. With | ||||
| careful MIB design and future work on SNMP payload compression the SNMP | ||||
| coding overhead can be comparable with other less extensible protocols. | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP has a strong tradition of allowing vendor specific data objects to | ||||
| be transferred. | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting - Grade T | ||||
| There are many methods which a SNMP based system could use for batch | ||||
| accounting. The document discusses SNMP parameters to control the | ||||
| batching process and indicates that certain existing MIBs contain | ||||
| examples of implementation strategies. SNMP log tables can provide | ||||
| accounting information which can be obtained in many methods not | ||||
| directly related to real time capabilities. The underlying system | ||||
| buffering requirements are similar regardless of the protocol used to | ||||
| transport the information. | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP is very amenable to providing guaranteed delivery. Particularly in | ||||
| a pull model (versus the often assumed push model) the data gatherer can | ||||
| absolutely know that all data has been transfered. In the common push | ||||
| model the data receiver does not know if the originator of the data is | ||||
| having problems delivering the data. | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps - Grade T | ||||
| Timestamps are used for many SNMP based operations. The document points | ||||
| at the DateAndTime textual convention which is available for use. As | ||||
| with all environments the timestamps accuracy needs evaluation before | ||||
| the information should be relied upon. | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting - Grade T | ||||
| As long as there is some way to relate multiple records together there | ||||
| are no problems resolving multiple records for the same session. This | ||||
| interacts with the scalability requirement and care must be taken when | ||||
| implementing a system with both of these requirements. | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - Grade T | ||||
| SNMP can easily provide objects to transfer this information. | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly - New Grade T (from P) | ||||
| SNMP is already deployed in many operational networks. SNMPv3 addresses | ||||
| most concerns people had with the operation of previous versions. True | ||||
| SNMPv3 proxies (as opposed to AAA proxies) should become commonplace | ||||
| components in firewalls for those organizations which require firewalls. | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent - New Grade T (from ?) | ||||
| SNMP is not concerned with the LHA. This can be under control of the | ||||
| Local network to meet its needs. | ||||
| 2. Summary Discussion | ||||
| SNMP appears to meet most stated requirements. The areas where the SNMP | ||||
| proposal falls short are areas where specific AAA architectures are | ||||
| envisioned and requirements based upon that architecture are specified. | ||||
| Scaling of the protocol family is vital to success of a AAA suite. The | ||||
| SNMP protocol has proved scalable in existing network management and | ||||
| other high volume data transfer operations. Care needs to be taken in | ||||
| the design of a large scale system to ensure meeting the desired level | ||||
| of service, but this is true of any large scale project. | ||||
| 3. General Requirements | ||||
| SNMP is well understood and already supported in many ISP and other | ||||
| operational environments. Trust models already exist in many cases and | ||||
| can be adapted to provide the necessary access controls needed by the | ||||
| AAA protocols. Important issues with previous versions of SNMP have | ||||
| been corrected in the current SNMPv3 specification. | ||||
| The SNMP proposal is silent on the specific data variables and message | ||||
| types to be implemented. This is largely due to the requirements not | ||||
| specifying the necessary data elements and the time constraints in | ||||
| extracting that information from the base document set. Such a data | ||||
| model is necessary regardless of the ultimate protocol selected. | ||||
| 4. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| SNMP appears to fully meet all necessary requirements for the full AAA | ||||
| protocol family. | ||||
| 11.2. SNMP CON Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluation of SNMP AAA Requirements | ||||
| CON Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluator - Michael StJohns | ||||
| Ref [1] is draft-natale-aaa-snmpv3-comp-00.txt, aka 'the document' | ||||
| Ref [2] is the aaa eval criteria as modified by us. | ||||
| The document uses T to indicate total compliance, P to indicate partial | ||||
| compliance and F to indicate no compliance. For each section I've indicated | ||||
| my grade for the section. If there is no change, I've indicated that and the | ||||
| grade given by the authors. | ||||
| Section 1 - Per item discussion | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability - Although the document indicates compliance with | ||||
| the requirement, its unclear how SNMP actually meets those | ||||
| requirements. The document neither discusses how SNMP will scale, | ||||
| nor provides applicable references. The argument that there is an | ||||
| existence proof given the deployed SNMP systems appears to assume | ||||
| that one manager contacting many agents maps to many agents | ||||
| (running AAA) contacting one AAA server. A server driven system | ||||
| has substantially different scaling properties than a client | ||||
| driven system and SNMP is most definately a server (manager) | ||||
| driven system. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over - The document indicates the use of application level | ||||
| time outs to provide this mechanism, rather than the mechanism | ||||
| being a characteristic of the proposed protocol. The protocol | ||||
| provides only partial compliance with the requirement. Eval - P | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication - There is some slight handwaving here, | ||||
| but the protocol's USM mode should be able to support this | ||||
| requirement. Eval - No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission Level Security - The authors should elaborate on | ||||
| the specific use of the SNMPv3 modes to support these | ||||
| requirements, but the text is minimally acceptable. Eval - No | ||||
| Change (T) | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality - The authors describe a mechanism | ||||
| which does not appear to completely meet the requirement. VACM is | ||||
| a mechanism for an end system (agent) to control access to its | ||||
| data based on manager characteristics. This mechanism does not | ||||
| appear to map well to this requirement. Eval - P | ||||
| 1.1.6 Data Object Integrity - There appears to be some handwaving | ||||
| going on here. Again, SNMP does not appear to be a good match to | ||||
| this requirement due to at least in part a lack of a proxy | ||||
| intermediary concept within SNMP. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport - The document does indicate compliance, | ||||
| but notes that optimization might argue for use of specialized | ||||
| protocols. Eval - No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - The document indicates some confusion | ||||
| with the exact extent of this requirement. Given the | ||||
| modifications suggested by the eval group to the explanatory text | ||||
| in [2] for the related annotation, the point by point explanatory | ||||
| text is not required. The document does indicate that the use of | ||||
| SNMP is irrespective of the underlying transport and the support | ||||
| of this requirement is related at least partially to the choice of | ||||
| transport. However, SNMP over UDP - the most common mode for SNMP | ||||
| - does not meet this requirement. Eval - No Change (P) | ||||
| 1.1.9 Run over IPv4 - While the evaluator agrees that SNMPv3 runs over | ||||
| V4, the authors need to point to some sort of reference. Eval - | ||||
| No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.1.10 Run over IPv6 - The document indicates both experimental | ||||
| implementations and future standardization of SNMPv3 over IPv6. | ||||
| Eval - No Change (P) | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - The section of the document | ||||
| (5.5.3) that, by title, should have the discussion of SNMP proxy | ||||
| is marked as TBD. The section notes that the inability to | ||||
| completely comply with the data object confidentiality and | ||||
| integrity requirements might affect the compliance of this section | ||||
| and the evaluator agrees. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability - The document indicates no compliance with this | ||||
| requirement. Eval - No Change (F) | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required - Slight handwaving here, but SNMPv3 | ||||
| does not necessarily require use of its security services if other | ||||
| security services are available. However, the interaction with | ||||
| VACM in the absence of USM is not fully described and may not have | ||||
| good characteristics related to this requirement. Eval - P | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - SNMP complies | ||||
| via the use of MIBs. Eval - No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support - The document indicates that MIB objects can be | ||||
| created to meet this requirement, but gives no further | ||||
| information. Eval - P | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support - The document indicates that MIB objects can be | ||||
| created to meet this requirement, but gives no further | ||||
| information. Given the normal CHAP model, its unclear exactly how | ||||
| this would work. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support - The document notes that EAP payloads can be | ||||
| carried as specific MIB objects, but also notes that further | ||||
| design work would be needed to fully incorporate EAP. Eval - No | ||||
| Change (P) | ||||
| 1.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords - The document notes the use of MIB | ||||
| objects to carry the clear text passwords and the protection of | ||||
| those objects under normal SNMPv3 security mechanisms. Eval - No | ||||
| Change (T) | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthorization on demand - While there's some handwaving here, | ||||
| its clear that the specific applications can generate the signals | ||||
| to trigger reauthorization under SNMP. Eval - No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication - The author appears to be | ||||
| confusing the AAA protocol authorization with the AAA user | ||||
| authorization and seems to be over generalizing the ability of | ||||
| SNMP to deal with general AAA user authorization. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - The reference to MIB | ||||
| objects without more definite references or descriptions continues | ||||
| to be a negative. While the evaluator agrees that MIB objects can | ||||
| represent addresses, the document needs to at least lead the | ||||
| reader in the proper direction. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability - The transport and manipulation of | ||||
| Radius objects appears to be only a part of what is required. | ||||
| Eval - P | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability - Again, a clarification of how SNMP might | ||||
| accomplish this requirement would be helpful. The overall | ||||
| document lacks a theory of operation for SNMP in an AAA role that | ||||
| might have clarified the various approaches. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - Document indicates lack of | ||||
| understanding of this requirement. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauth on Demand - See response in 1.3.3 above. None of the text | ||||
| responding to this requirement, nor any other text in the | ||||
| document, nor any of the references describes the appropriate | ||||
| framework and theory. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for ACLs - The response text again references MIB | ||||
| objects that can be defined to do this job. There is additional | ||||
| engineering and design needed before this is a done deal. Eval - | ||||
| P | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation - The text fails to address the basic | ||||
| question of how to get the various parts of the AAA system back in | ||||
| sync. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect - Assuming that the NAS is an SNMP agent | ||||
| for an AAA server acting as an SNMP manager the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. Eval - No Change (T). | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real Time Accounting - SNMP Informs could accomplish the | ||||
| requirements. Eval - No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding - This is a good and reasonable | ||||
| response. SNMP can vary the style and type of reported objects to | ||||
| meet specific needs. Eval - No Change (T). | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility - MIBs are extensible. Eval - No | ||||
| Change (T) | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting - MIBs provide data collection at various | ||||
| times. Eval - No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - There's some weasel wording here with | ||||
| respect to what guaranteed means, but the description of | ||||
| mechanisms does appear to meet the requirements. Eval - No Change (T) | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps - Accounting records can use the | ||||
| DateAndTime Textual Convention to mark their times. Eval - No | ||||
| Change (T) | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting - The author may have partially missed the | ||||
| point on this requirement. While the number of records per | ||||
| session is not of great interest, the delivery may be. The author | ||||
| should go a little more into depth on this requirement. Eval - No | ||||
| Change (T) | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - Registration | ||||
| messages can probably be encoded as SNMP messages. Eval - No | ||||
| Change (T) | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly - There's a chicken and egg problem with the | ||||
| response to the requirement in that the author hopes that SNMP as | ||||
| an AAA protocol will encourage Firewall vendors to make SNMP a | ||||
| firewall friendly protocol. Eval - F | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent - The author disclaims an | ||||
| understanding of this requirement. Eval - F | ||||
| 2. Summary Discussion | ||||
| The documents evaluation score was substantially affected by a lack of any | ||||
| document, reference or text which described a theory of operation for SNMP in | ||||
| AAA mode. Of substantial concern are the items relating to the AAA server to | ||||
| server modes and AAA client to server modes and the lack of a map to the SNMP | ||||
| protocol for those modes. | ||||
| The evaluator also notes that the scaling issues of SNMP in SNMP agent/manager | ||||
| mode are in no way indicative of SNMP in AAA client/server mode. This has a | ||||
| possibility to substantially impair SNMPs use in an AAA role. | ||||
| However, SNMP may have a reasonable role in the Accounting space. | ||||
| SNMP appears to map well with existing technology, and with the requirements. | ||||
| 3. General Requirements | ||||
| SNMP appears to meet the general requirements of an IP capable protocol, but | ||||
| may not have a proper field of use for all specific requirements. | ||||
| 4. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| Recommended in Part. SNMP is NOT RECOMMENDED for use as either an | ||||
| authentication or authorization protocol, but IS RECOMMENDED for use as an | ||||
| accounting protocol. | ||||
| 11.3. RADIUS+ PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluation of RADIUS AAA Requirements | ||||
| PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluator - Mark Stevens | ||||
| Ref [1] is draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-comp-00.txt | ||||
| Ref [2] is draft-tjoens-aaa-radius++-00.txt | ||||
| Ref [3] is the aaa eval criteria as modified by us. | ||||
| The documents uses T to indicate total compliance, P to indicate partial | ||||
| compliance and F to indicate no compliance. | ||||
| For each section I've indicated my grade for the section. I have | ||||
| indicated whether or not my evaluation differs from the statements made | ||||
| with respect to RADIUS++. The evaluation ratings as given below may | ||||
| differ from the evaluations codified in the document refered to as | ||||
| draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-comp-00.txt without any indication. | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 [a] Scalability - In as much as a protocol's scalability can be | ||||
| measured, the protocol seems to transmit information in a fairly | ||||
| efficient manner.So, in that the protocol appears not to consume an | ||||
| inordinate amount of bandwidth relative to the data it is transmitting, | ||||
| this protocol could be considered scalable. However, the protocol has a | ||||
| limit in the number of concurrent sessions it can support between | ||||
| endpoints. Work arounds exist and are in use. Eval - P (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.2 [b] Fail-over - The document indicates the use of application | ||||
| level time outs to provide this mechanism, rather than the mechanism | ||||
| being a characteristic of the proposed protocol. The fail-over | ||||
| requirement indicates that the protocol must provide the mechanism | ||||
| rather than the application. The inplication is that the application | ||||
| need not be aware that the fail-over and subsequent correction when it | ||||
| happens. The application using the RADIUS++ protocol will be involved in | ||||
| fail-over recovery activities. The protocol layer of the software does | ||||
| not appear to have the capability built-in. Given the wording of the | ||||
| requirement: Eval - P (changed from T) | ||||
| 1.1.3 [c] Mutual Authentication - The RADIUS++ protocol provides | ||||
| shared-secret as a built-in facility for mutual authentication. The | ||||
| authors of the document suggest the use of IPSec to obtain mutual | ||||
| authentication functions. The RADIUS++ protocol provides no road blocks | ||||
| to obtaining mutual authentication between instances of AAA | ||||
| applications, however the protocol provides no facilities for doing so. | ||||
| Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.4 [d] Transmission Level Security - The RADIUS++ protocol provides | ||||
| no transmission level security features, nor does it preclude the use of | ||||
| IPSec to obtain transmission level security. Eval - P (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.5 [e] Data Object Confidentiality - The document describes a | ||||
| RAIDUS++ message designed to server as an envelope in which encrypted | ||||
| RADIUS messsages (attributes) may be enclosed. Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.6 [f] Data Object Integrity - Using visible signatures, the RADIUS++ | ||||
| protocol appears to meet this requirement. Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.7 [g] Certificate Transport - The document indicates compliance | ||||
| through the use of the CMS-Data Radius Attribute (message). Eval - T | ||||
| (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.8 [h] Reliable AAA Transport - The document points out that RADIUS++ | ||||
| can be considered a reliable transport when augmeted with Layer 2 | ||||
| Tunneling Protocol. The protocol itself does not provide reliablility | ||||
| features. Reliability remains the responsibility of the application or a | ||||
| augmenting protocol. Eval - P (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.9 [i] Run over IPv4 - Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.10 [j]Run over IPv6 - an IPv6 Address data type must be defined. | ||||
| Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.11[k] Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - There is no mechanism for | ||||
| rerouting requests, but an extension can be made to do so. Eval - T (no | ||||
| change) | ||||
| 1.1.12 [l] Auditability - The document indicates no compliance with this | ||||
| requirement. Eval - F (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.13 [m] Shared Secret Not Required - RADIUS++ can be configured to | ||||
| run with empty shared secret values. Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.1.14 [n] Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - Vendor escape | ||||
| mechanism can be used for this purpose.. Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 [a] NAI Support - Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.2.2 [b] CHAP Support - Subject to dictionary attacks. Eval - P | ||||
| (changed from T) | ||||
| 1.2.3 [c] EAP Support - Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.2.4 [d] PAP/Clear-text Passwords - No end-to-end security, but | ||||
| potential for encapsulation exists within current paradigm of the | ||||
| protocol. - Eval -T (no change) | ||||
| 1.2.5 [e] Reauthentication on demand - The RADIUS protocol supports | ||||
| re-authentication. In case re-authentication is initiated by the user | ||||
| or AAA client, the AAA client can send a new authentication request. | ||||
| Re-authentication can beinitiated from the visited or home AAA server by | ||||
| sending a challenge message to the AAA client. Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.2.6 [f] Authorization w/o Authentication - A new message type can be | ||||
| created to enable RADIUS++ to support Aw/oA . Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1[a] Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - Both supported. IPv6 | ||||
| would require the definition of a new address data type. Eval - P (no | ||||
| change) | ||||
| 1.3.2 [b] RADIUS Gateway Capability - The transport and manipulation of | ||||
| RADIUS objects appears to be only a part of what is required. | ||||
| Reguirement seems to be worded to prclude RADIUS. Eval - P (changed from | ||||
| T) | ||||
| 1.3.3 [c] Reject Capability - Eval -T | ||||
| 1.3.4 [d] Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - I do not see a definition in the | ||||
| AAA eval criteria document. Eval - ? | ||||
| 1.3.5 [e] Reauthorization on Demand - Implementation in the field | ||||
| demonstrate that extensions to RADIUS can support the desired behaviour. | ||||
| Re-authentication is currently coupled to re-authorization. Eval - P | ||||
| (no change) | ||||
| 1.3.6 [f] Support for ACLs - Currently done in the applications behind | ||||
| the RADIUS end points, not the within the protocol. RADIUS++ could | ||||
| define additional message types to deal with expanded access control | ||||
| within new service areas. Eval - P (no change) | ||||
| 1.3.7 [g] State Reconciliation - Eval - F (no change) | ||||
| 1.3.8 [h] Unsolicited Disconnect - RADIUS++ extensions to support. Eval | ||||
| - T. (no change) | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 [a] Real Time Accounting - Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.4.2 [b] Mandatory Compact Encoding - Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.4.3 [c] Accounting Record Extensibility - Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.4.4 [d] Batch Accounting - RADIUS++ offers no new features to support | ||||
| batch accounting. Eval - F No change) | ||||
| 1.4.5 [e] Guaranteed Delivery - Retransmission algorithm employed. Eval | ||||
| - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.4.6 [f] Accounting Timestamps - RADIUS++ extensions support | ||||
| timestamps. Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.4.7 [g] Dynamic Accounting - RADIUS++ extensions to support. Eval - T | ||||
| (no change) | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 [a] Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - RADIUS++ | ||||
| extensions can be made to include registration messages as an opaque | ||||
| payload. Eval - T (no change) | ||||
| 1.5.2 [b] Firewall Friendly - RADIUS is known to be operational in | ||||
| environments where firewalls acting as a proxy are active. Eval - T (no | ||||
| change) | ||||
| 1.5.3 [c] Allocation of Local Home Agent -Requirement statement needs | ||||
| som clarfication and refinement. Eval - F (no change) | ||||
| 2. Summary Discussion | ||||
| The RADIUS protocol, and its associated extensions, is presently not | ||||
| fully compliant with the AAA Network Access requirements. However, it | ||||
| is possible with a small effort to extend present procedures to meet | ||||
| the requirements as listed in, while maintaining a high level of | ||||
| interoperability with the wide deployment and installed base of | ||||
| RADIUS clients and servers. | ||||
| 3. General Requirements | ||||
| RADIUS++ the protocol and the application meet the majority of the | ||||
| requirements and can be extended to meet the requirements where | ||||
| necessary. | ||||
| 4. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| RADIUS++ as it could be developed would provide a level of backward | ||||
| compatibility that other protocols cannot achieve. By extending RADIUS | ||||
| in the simple ways described in the documents listed above, the | ||||
| transistion from existing RADIUS-based installations to RADIUS++ | ||||
| installations would be easier. Although accounting continues to be | ||||
| weaker than other approaches, the protocol remains a strong contender | ||||
| for continued use in the areas of Authorization and Authentication. | ||||
| 11.4. RADIUS+ CON Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluation of RADIUS++ (sic) AAA Requirements CON Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluator - David Nelson | ||||
| Ref [1] is draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-comp-00.txt, a.k.a. 'the document' | ||||
| Ref [2] is draft-tjoens-aaa-radius-00.txt, a.k.a. 'the protocol' | ||||
| Ref [3] is the AAA evaluation criteria as modified by us. | ||||
| Ref [4] is draft-ietf-radius-ext-07.txt. | ||||
| Ref [5] is draft-ietf-radius-x509-00.txt. (expired) | ||||
| Ref [6] is draft-ietf-radius-tunnel-auth-09.txt. | ||||
| The document uses T to indicate total compliance, P to indicate partial | ||||
| compliance and F to indicate no compliance. | ||||
| Evaluator's Note: The document [1] pre-dates the protocol [2]. It is | ||||
| clear from reading [2], that some of the issues identified as short | ||||
| comings in [1] are now addressed in [2]. The evaluator has attempted to | ||||
| take note of these exceptions, where they occur. | ||||
| Section 1 - Per item discussion | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability - The document [1] indicates partial compliance, | ||||
| largely in deference to the "tens of thousands of simultaneous | ||||
| requests" language in [3], that has been deprecated. The issue | ||||
| of simultaneous requests from a single AAA client is addressed in | ||||
| [1], indicating that the apparent limitation of 256 uniquely | ||||
| identifiable outstanding request can be worked around using well | ||||
| known techniques, such as the source UDP port number of the | ||||
| request. The document claims "P", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over - The document [1] indicates the use of application | ||||
| level time outs to provide the fail-over mechanism. Since the | ||||
| AAA protocol is indeed an application-layer protocol, this seems | ||||
| appropriate. There are significant issues of how to handle fail- | ||||
| over in a proxy-chain environment that have not been well | ||||
| addressed, however. The document claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| awards "P". | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication - The document [1] indicates that mutual | ||||
| authentication exists in the presence of a User-Password or | ||||
| CHAP-Password attribute in an Access-Request packet or the | ||||
| Message-Authenticator [4] in any packet. Once again, this | ||||
| addresses hop-by-hop authentication of RADIUS "peers", but does | ||||
| not fully address proxy-chain environments, in which trust models | ||||
| would need to be established. The document further indicates | ||||
| that strong mutual authentication could be achieved using the | ||||
| facilities of IPsec. This claim would apply equally to all | ||||
| potential AAA protocols, and cannot be fairly said to be a | ||||
| property of the protocol itself. The document claims "T", and | ||||
| the evaluator awards "F". | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission Level Security - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| transmission layer security, as defined in [3], is provided in | ||||
| the protocol, using the mechanisms described in section 1.1.3. | ||||
| It should be noted that this requirement is now a SHOULD in [3]. | ||||
| The document claims "P", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| end-to-end confidentiality is not available in RADIUS, but goes on | ||||
| to say that it could be added. The protocol [2] actually makes an | ||||
| attempt to specify how this is to be done, in section 4.3.2.2 of | ||||
| [2], using a CMS-data attribute, based in large part upon RFC 2630. | ||||
| The evaluator has not, at this time, investigated the applicability | ||||
| of RFC 2630 to the AAA work. The document claims "F", but in light | ||||
| of the specifics of the protocol [2], the evaluator awards "P". | ||||
| 1.1.6 Data Object Integrity - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| end-to-end integrity is not available in RADIUS, but goes on | ||||
| to say that it could be added. The protocol [2] actually makes | ||||
| an attempt to specify how this is to be done, in section 4.3.2.1 | ||||
| of [2], using a CMS-data attribute, based in large part upon RFC | ||||
| 2630. The evaluator has not, at this time, investigated the | ||||
| applicability of RFC 2630 to the AAA work. The document claims | ||||
| "F", but in light of the specifics of the protocol [2], the | ||||
| evaluator awards "P". | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| certificate transport is not available in RADIUS, but goes on | ||||
| to say that it could be added. The protocol [2] actually makes | ||||
| an attempt to specify how this is to be done, in section 4.3.2.3 | ||||
| of [2], using a CMS-data attribute, based in large part upon RFC | ||||
| 2630. The evaluator has not, at this time, investigated the | ||||
| applicability of RFC 2630 to the AAA work. Other relevant work | ||||
| in the area of certificate support in RADIUS may be found in an | ||||
| expired internet draft "RADIUS X.509 Certificate Extensions" [5]. | ||||
| The document claims "F", but in light of the specifics of the | ||||
| protocol [2], the evaluator awards "P". | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - The document [1] indicates that RADIUS | ||||
| provides partial compliance with the requirements of the original | ||||
| AAA requirements document. However, in [3], the requirement has | ||||
| been simplified to "resilience against packet loss". Once again, | ||||
| the evaluator finds that the protocol [2] meets this criteria on a | ||||
| hop-by-hop basis, but fails to effectively address these issues in | ||||
| a proxy-chain environment. The document claims "P", and the | ||||
| evaluator awards "F". | ||||
| 1.1.9 Run over IPv4 - RADIUS is widely deployed over IPv4. The | ||||
| document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.10 Run over IPv6 - The document [1] indicates that adoption of | ||||
| a limited number of new RADIUS attributes to support IPv6 is | ||||
| straightforward. Such discussion has transpired on the RADIUS WG | ||||
| mailing list, although that WG is in the process of shutting down. | ||||
| The document claims "P", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - The document [1] indicates | ||||
| that RADIUS is widely deployed in proxy-chains of RADIUS servers. | ||||
| This is equivalent to the Proxy Broker case, but the Routing | ||||
| Broker case is a different requirement. The protocol [2] does not | ||||
| describe any detail of how a Routing Broker might be accommodated, | ||||
| although it opens the door by indicating that the RADIUS++ protocol | ||||
| is peer-to-peer, rather than client/server. The document claims | ||||
| "P", and the evaluator awards "F". | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability - The document [1] indicates no compliance with | ||||
| this requirement. The document claims "F", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| RADIUS may effectively skirt the requirement of application-layer | ||||
| security by using a value of "zero" for the pre-shared secret. | ||||
| While this is a bit creative, it does seem to meet the requirement. | ||||
| The document claims "T" and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - RADIUS has a well | ||||
| defined Vendor-Specific Attribute, which, when properly used, does | ||||
| indeed provide for the ability to transport service-specific | ||||
| attributes. The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support - The document [1] indicates that RADIUS specifies | ||||
| the NAI as one of the suggested formats for the User-Name | ||||
| attribute. The document claims "T", and the evaluator agrees. | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support - CHAP support is widely deployed in RADIUS. The | ||||
| document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support - The document [1] indicates that EAP support in | ||||
| RADIUS is specified in [4]. The document claims "T", and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords - The document indicates that RADIUS | ||||
| provides protection of clear-text passwords on a hop-by-hop basis. | ||||
| The protocol [2] indicates how additional data confidentiality | ||||
| may be obtained in section 4.3.2.2 of [2], using a CMS-data | ||||
| attribute, based in large part upon RFC 2630. The evaluator has | ||||
| not, at this time, investigated the applicability of RFC 2630 to | ||||
| the AAA work. The document claims "F", but in light of the | ||||
| specifics of the protocol [2], the evaluator awards "P". | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthentication on demand - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| RADIUS may accomplish re-authentication on demand by means of an | ||||
| Access-Challenge message sent from a server to a client. The | ||||
| evaluator disagrees that this is likely to work for a given | ||||
| session once an Access-Accept message has been received by the | ||||
| client. The document claims "T", and the evaluator awards "F". | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication - This requirement, as | ||||
| applied to the protocol specification, mandates that non- | ||||
| necessary authentication credentials not be required in a | ||||
| request for authorization. The actual decision to provide | ||||
| authorization in the absence of any authentication resides in | ||||
| the application (e.g. AAA server). RADIUS does require some form | ||||
| of credential in request messages. The document [1] claims "F", | ||||
| and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - The document [1] | ||||
| indicates that RADIUS can assign IPv4 addresses, and can easily | ||||
| be extended to assign IPv6 addresses (see section 1.1.10). | ||||
| Of greater concern, however, is the issue of static vs. dynamic | ||||
| addresses. If dynamic address has the same meaning as it does | ||||
| for DHCP, then there are issues of resource management that RADIUS | ||||
| has traditionally not addressed. The document claims "P", and | ||||
| the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability - The document [1] maintains that a | ||||
| RADIUS++ to RADIUS gateway is pretty much a tautology. The | ||||
| document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability - The document [1] maintains that RADIUS Proxy | ||||
| Servers, and potentially RADIUS++ Routing Brokers, have the ability | ||||
| to reject requests based on local policy. The document claims "T" | ||||
| and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - The document [1] indicates that [6] | ||||
| defines support for layer two tunneling in RADIUS. The document | ||||
| claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauth on Demand - The document [1] indicates that RADIUS provides | ||||
| this feature by means of the Session-Timeout and Termination- | ||||
| Action attributes. While this may, in fact, be sufficient to | ||||
| provide periodic re-authorization, it would not provide re- | ||||
| authorization on demand. The protocol [2] does not address this | ||||
| further. The document claims "P", and the evaluator awards "F". | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for ACLs - The document [1] describes the attributes in | ||||
| RADIUS that are used to convey the access controls described in [3]. | ||||
| Certain of these (e.g. QoS) are not currently defined in RADIUS, but | ||||
| could easily be defined as new RADIUS attributes. The document | ||||
| claims "P", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation - The document [1] addresses each of the sub- | ||||
| items, as listed in the original AAA requirements document. In | ||||
| reviewing the document against the modified requirements of [3], | ||||
| there is still an issue with server-initiated state reconciliation | ||||
| messages. While the protocol [2] makes provision for such messages, | ||||
| as servers are allowed to initiate protocol dialogs, no detailed | ||||
| message formats are provided. This is an area that has traditionally | ||||
| been a short coming of RADIUS. The document claims "P", and the | ||||
| evaluator awards "F". | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect - Much of the discussion from the previous | ||||
| section applies to this section. The document [1] claims "F", and | ||||
| the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real Time Accounting - RADIUS Accounting is widely deployed and | ||||
| functions within the definition of real time contained in [3]. The | ||||
| document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding - RADIUS Accounting contains TLVs for | ||||
| relevant accounting information, each of which is fairly compact. | ||||
| Note that the term "bloated" in [3] is somewhat subjective. The | ||||
| document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility - RADIUS Accounting may be | ||||
| extended by means of new attributes or by using the Vendor-Specific | ||||
| attribute. While it has been argued that the existing attribute | ||||
| number space is too small for the required expansion capabilities, | ||||
| the protocol [2] addresses this problem in section 3.0, and its | ||||
| subsections, of [2]. The document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting - RADIUS has no explicit provisions for batch | ||||
| accounting, nor does the protocol [2] address how this feature might | ||||
| be accomplished. The document [1] claims "F", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - RADIUS Accounting is widely deployed and | ||||
| provides guaranteed delivery within the context of the required | ||||
| application-level acknowledgement. The document [1] claims "T", | ||||
| and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps - The document [1] indicates that this | ||||
| feature is specified in [4] as the Event-Timestamp attribute. The | ||||
| document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting - The document [1] indicates that this | ||||
| requirement is partially met using the accounting interim update | ||||
| message as specified in [4]. In addition, there was work in the | ||||
| RADIUS WG regarding session accounting extensions that has not been | ||||
| included in [4], i.e. some expired internet drafts. The document | ||||
| claims "P", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - The document [1] | ||||
| claims "F", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly - The document [1] indicates that RADIUS | ||||
| deployment is know to have occurred in fire-walled environments. | ||||
| The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent - The document [1] claims "F", | ||||
| and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 2. Summary Discussion | ||||
| The document [1] and the protocol [2] suffer from having been written in | ||||
| a short time frame. While the protocol does provide specific guidance | ||||
| on certain issues, citing other relevant documents, it is not a polished | ||||
| protocol specification, with detailed packet format diagrams. There is a | ||||
| pool of prior work upon which the RADIUS++ protocol may draw, in that | ||||
| many of the concepts of DIAMETER were first postulated as internet | ||||
| drafts within the RADIUS WG, in an attempt to "improve" the RADIUS | ||||
| protocol. All of these internet drafts have long since expired, | ||||
| however. | ||||
| 3. General Requirements | ||||
| RADIUS++ meets many of the requirements of an AAA protocol, as it is the | ||||
| current de facto and de jure standard for AAA. There are long-standing | ||||
| deficiencies in RADIUS, which have been well documented in the RADIUS | ||||
| and NASREQ WG proceedings. It is technically possible to revamp RADIUS | ||||
| to solve these problems. One question that will be asked, however, is: | ||||
| "What significant differences would there be between a finished RADIUS++ | ||||
| protocol and the DIAMETER protocol?". | ||||
| 4. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| Recommended in part. What may possibly be learned from this submission | ||||
| is that it is feasible to have a more RADIUS-compliant | ||||
| RADIUS-compatibility mode in DIAMETER. | ||||
| David B. Nelson, Software Engineer V | ||||
| Enterasys Networks, Inc. (a Cabletron Systems company) 50 Minuteman Road | ||||
| Andover, MA 01810-1008 | ||||
| (978) 684-1330 | ||||
| dnelson@enterasys.com | ||||
| 11.5. DIAMETER PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluation of DIAMETER against the AAA Requirements PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluator - Basavaraj Patil | ||||
| Ref [1] draft-calhoun-diameter-framework-07.txt | ||||
| Ref [2] draft-calhoun-diameter-nasreq-03.txt | ||||
| Ref [3] is the AAA evaluation criteria as modified by us. | ||||
| Ref [4] draft-calhoun-diameter-accounting-05.txt | ||||
| Ref [5] draft-calhoun-diameter-mobileip-08.txt | ||||
| Ref [6] draft-calhoun-diameter-15.txt | ||||
| Ref [7] draft-calhoun-diameter-strong-crypto-03.txt | ||||
| Ref [8] draft-calhoun-aaa-diameter-comp-00.txt | ||||
| The document uses T to indicate total compliance, P to indicate | ||||
| partial compliance and F to indicate no compliance. | ||||
| Evaluator's note : The DIAMETER compliance document [8] claims Total | ||||
| "T" compliance with all the requirements except : - 1.2.5 - 1.5.2 | ||||
| Section 1 - Per item discussion | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability | ||||
| DIAMETER is an evolution of RADIUS and has taken into consideration | ||||
| all the lessons learned over many years that RADIUS has been in | ||||
| service. The use of SCTP as the transport protocol reduces the need | ||||
| for multiple proxy servers (Sec 3.1.1 Proxy Support of [1]) as well as | ||||
| removing the need for application level acks. The use and support of | ||||
| forwarding and redirect brokers enhances scalability. Evaluator | ||||
| concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over | ||||
| Again with the use of SCTP DIAMETER is able to detect disconnect | ||||
| indications upon which it switches to an alternate server (Sec 4.0 | ||||
| [6]). Also Requests and Responses do not have to follow the same path | ||||
| and this increases the reliability. Evaluator concurs with the "T" | ||||
| compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication | ||||
| The compliance document quotes the use of symmetric transforms for | ||||
| mutual authentication between the client and server (Sec 7.1 of [6]). | ||||
| The use of IPSec as an underlying security mechanism and thereby use | ||||
| the characteristic of IPSec itself to satisfy this requirement is also | ||||
| quoted. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission Level Security | ||||
| Although this requirement has been deprecated by the AAA evaluation | ||||
| team the document complies with it based on the definition (refering | ||||
| to hop-by-hop security). Section 7.1 of [6] provides the details of | ||||
| how this is accomplished in DIAMETER. Evaluator concurs with the "T" | ||||
| compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality | ||||
| This requirement seems to have come from DIAMETER. Ref [7] explains in | ||||
| detail the use of Cryptographic Message Sytnatx (CMS) to achieve data | ||||
| object confidentiality. A CMS-Data AVP is defined in [7]. Evaluator | ||||
| concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.6 Data Object Integrity | ||||
| Using the same argument as above and the hop-by-hop security feature | ||||
| in the protocol this requirement is completely met by DIAMETER. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport | ||||
| Again with the use of the CMS-Data AVP, objects defined as these types | ||||
| of attributes allow the transport of certificates. Evaluator concurs | ||||
| with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport | ||||
| DIAMETER recommends that the protocol be run over SCTP. SCTP provides | ||||
| the features described for a reliable AAA transport. Although the | ||||
| compliance is not a perfect fit for the definition of this tag item, | ||||
| it is close enough and the functionality achieved by using SCTP is the | ||||
| same. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.9 Run over IPv4 | ||||
| Is an application layer protocol and does not depend on the underlying | ||||
| version of IP. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.10 Run over IPv6 | ||||
| Is an application layer protocol and does not depend on the underlying | ||||
| version of IP. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers | ||||
| Section 3.1.1/2 of the framework document [1] provides an explanation | ||||
| of how DIAMETER supports proxy and routing brokers. In fact it almost | ||||
| appears as though the requirement for a routing broker came from | ||||
| DIAMETER. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability | ||||
| With the use of CMS-Data AVP [7] a trail is created when proxies are | ||||
| involved in the transaction. This trail can provide auditability. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required | ||||
| With the use of IPSec as the underlying security mechanism, DIAMETER | ||||
| does not require the use of shared secrets for message authentication. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes | ||||
| The base protocol [6] is defined by DIAMETER and any one else can | ||||
| define specific extensions on top of it. Other WGs in the IETF can | ||||
| design an extension on the base protocol with specific attributes and | ||||
| have them registered by IANA. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance | ||||
| on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support | ||||
| The base protocol [6] defines an AVP that can be used to support NAIs. | ||||
| DIAMETER goes one step further by doing Message forwarding based on | ||||
| destination NAI AVPs. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support | ||||
| Reference [2] section 3.0 describes the support for CHAP. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support | ||||
| Reference [2] section 4.0 describes the support for EAP. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords | ||||
| Reference [2] section 3.1.1.1 describes the support for PAP. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthentication on demand | ||||
| The use of Session-Timeout AVP as the mechanism for reauthentication | ||||
| is claimed by the compliance document. However no direct references | ||||
| explaining this in the base protocol [6] document were found. | ||||
| Evaluator deprecates the compliance on this to a "P" | ||||
| Note: However this is a trivial issue. | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication | ||||
| DIAMETER allows requests to be sent without having any authentication | ||||
| information included. A Request-type AVP is defined in [2] and it can | ||||
| specify authorization only without containing any authentication. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment | ||||
| The base protocol includes an AVP for carrying the address. References | ||||
| [6.2.2 of 2] and [4.5 of 5] provide detailed explanations of how this | ||||
| can be done. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability | ||||
| One of the basic facets of DIAMETER is to support backward | ||||
| compatibility and act as a RADIUS gateway in certain environments. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability | ||||
| Based on the explanation provided in the compliance document for this | ||||
| requirement evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on this | ||||
| requirement. | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling | ||||
| Ref [2] defines AVPs supporting L2 tunnels Evaluator concurs with the | ||||
| "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauth on Demand | ||||
| A session timer defined in [6] is used for reauthorization. However | ||||
| DIAMETER allows reauthorization at any time. Since this is a | ||||
| peer-to-peer type of protocol any entity can initiate a | ||||
| reauthorization request. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on | ||||
| this requirement. | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for ACLs | ||||
| DIAMETER defines two methods. One that supports backward compatibility | ||||
| for RADIUS and another one with the use of a standard AVP with the | ||||
| filters encoded in it. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance on | ||||
| this requirement. | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation | ||||
| A long explanation on each of the points defined for this tag item in | ||||
| the requirements document. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance | ||||
| for this requirement. | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect | ||||
| The base protocol [6] defines a set of session termination messages | ||||
| which can be used for unsolicited disconnects. Evaluator concurs with | ||||
| the "T" compliance on this requirement. | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real Time Accounting | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance based on explanations in [4]. | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding | ||||
| Use of Accounting Data Interchange Format (ADIF)-Record-AVP for | ||||
| compact encoding of accounting data. Evaluator concurs with the "T" | ||||
| compliance. | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility | ||||
| ADIF can be extended. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance. | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting | ||||
| Sec 1.2 of [4] provides support for batch accounting. | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery | ||||
| Sections 2.1/2 of [4] describe messages that are used to guarantee | ||||
| delivery of accounting records. Evaluator concurs with the "T" | ||||
| compliance. | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps | ||||
| Timestamp AVP [6] is present in all accounting messages. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance. | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting | ||||
| Interim accounting records equivalent to a call-in-progress can be | ||||
| sent periodically. Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance. | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages | ||||
| Ref [5] provides details of how DIAMETER can encode MIP messages. | ||||
| Evaluator concurs with the "T" compliance. | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly | ||||
| Some handwaving here and a possible way of solving the firewall | ||||
| problem with a DIAMETER proxy server. Document claims "T", evaluator | ||||
| deprecates it to a "P" 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent | ||||
| DIAMETER can assign a local home agent in a visited network in | ||||
| conjunction with the FA in that network. Evaluator concurs with the "T" | ||||
| compliance. | ||||
| Summary Recommendation | ||||
| ---------------------- | ||||
| DIAMETER is strongly recommended as the AAA protocol. The experience | ||||
| gained from RADIUS deployments has been put to good use in the design | ||||
| of this protocol. It has also been designed with extensibility in mind | ||||
| thereby allowing different WGs to develop their own specific extension | ||||
| to satisfy their requirements. With the use of SCTP as the transport | ||||
| protocol, reliability is built in. Security has been addressed in the | ||||
| design of the protocol and issues that were discovered in RADIUS have | ||||
| been fixed. DIAMETER also is a session based protocol which makes it | ||||
| more scalable. The suppport for forwarding and redirect brokers is well | ||||
| defined and this greatly improves the scalability aspect of the | ||||
| protocol. | ||||
| Lastly the protocol has been implemented by at least a few people and | ||||
| interop testing done. This in itself is a significant step and a | ||||
| positive point for DIAMETER to be the AAA protocol. | ||||
| Basavaraj Patil | ||||
| Nokia | ||||
| 6000 Connection Dr. | ||||
| Irving, TX 75039 | ||||
| 11.6. DIAMETER CON Evaluation | ||||
| Diameter CON Brief | ||||
| Evaluator: Barney Wolff | ||||
| Section 1 - Per item discussion | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability - P (was T) The evaluator is concerned with | ||||
| scalability to the small, not to the large. DIAMETER/SCTP may prove | ||||
| difficult to retrofit to existing NAS equipment. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over - P (was T) SCTP gives an indication of peer failure, | ||||
| but nothing in any DIAMETER or SCTP document the evaluator was able to | ||||
| find even mentions how or when to switch back to a primary server to | ||||
| which communication was lost. After a failure, the state machines end | ||||
| in a CLOSED state and nothing seems to trigger exit from that state. It | ||||
| was not clear whether a server, on rebooting, would initiate an SCTP | ||||
| connection to all its configured clients. If not, and in any case when | ||||
| the communication failure was in the network rather than in the server, | ||||
| the client must itself, after some interval, attempt to re-establish | ||||
| communication. But no such guidance is given. | ||||
| Of course, the requirement itself fails to mention the notion of | ||||
| returning to a recovered primary. That is a defect in the requirement. | ||||
| The evaluator has had unfortunate experience with a vendor's RADIUS | ||||
| implementation that had exactly the defect that it often failed to | ||||
| notice recovery of the primary. | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication - T | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission Level Security - T | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality - P (was T). Yes, the CMS data type | ||||
| is supported. But draft-calhoun-diameter-strong-crypto-03.txt says: | ||||
| Given that asymmetric transform operations are expensive, DIAMETER | ||||
| servers MAY wish to use them only when dealing with inter-domain | ||||
| servers, as shown in Figure 3. This configuration is normally | ||||
| desirable since DIAMETER entities within a given administrative | ||||
| domain MAY inherently trust each other. Further, it is desirable to | ||||
| move this functionality to the edges, since NASes do not necessarily | ||||
| have the CPU power to perform expensive cryptographic operations. | ||||
| Given all the fuss that has been made about "end-to-end" confidentiality | ||||
| (which really means "NAS-to-home_server"), the evaluator finds it absurd | ||||
| that the proposed solution is acknowledged to be unsuited to the NAS. | ||||
| 1.1.6 Data Object Integrity - P (was T). See above. | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport - T | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - T | ||||
| 1.1.9 Run over IPv4 - T | ||||
| 1.1.10 Run over IPv6 - T | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - T | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability - T (based on our interpretation as non-repudiation, | ||||
| rather than the definition given in reqts) | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required - T | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - T | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support - T | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support - T | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support - T | ||||
| 1.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords - T | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthentication on demand - P (was T). No mechansim was evident | ||||
| for the server to demand a reauthentication, based for example on | ||||
| detection of suspicious behavior by the user. Session-timeout is not | ||||
| sufficient, as it must be specified at the start. | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication - T | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - T | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability - P (was T). RADIUS has evolved from | ||||
| the version on which DIAMETER was based. EAP is a notable case where | ||||
| the convention that the DIAMETER attribute number duplicates the RADIUS | ||||
| one is violated. No protocol, not even RADIUS++, can claim a T on this. | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability - T (The evaluator fails to understand how any | ||||
| AAA protocol could rate anything other than T on this.) | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - T | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauth on Demand - P (was T). As with reauthentication, there is | ||||
| no evident mechanism for the server to initiate this based on conditions | ||||
| subsequent to the start of the session. | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for ACLs - P (was T). The evaluator finds the Filter-Rule | ||||
| AVP laughably inadequate to describe filters. For example, how would it | ||||
| deal with restricting SMTP to a given server, unless all IP options are | ||||
| forbidden so the IP header length is known? No real NAS could have such | ||||
| an impoverished filter capability, or it would not survive as a product. | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation - P (was T). It is difficult for the | ||||
| evaluator to understand how this is to work in a multi-administration | ||||
| situation, or indeed in any proxy situation. Furthermore, SRQ with no | ||||
| session-id is defined to ask for info on all sessions, not just those | ||||
| "owned" by the requester. | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect - T | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real Time Accounting - T | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding - T | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility - T | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting - P (was T). The evaluator suspects that simply | ||||
| sending multiple accounting records in a single request is not how batch | ||||
| accounting should or will be done. | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - T | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps - T (The evaluator notes with amusement | ||||
| that NTP time cycles in 2036, not 2038 as claimed in the DIAMETER | ||||
| drafts. It's Unix time that will set the sign bit in 2038.) | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting - T | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - T | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly - F (was T). Until such time as firewalls are | ||||
| extended to know about or proxy SCTP, it is very unlikely that SCTP will | ||||
| be passed. Even then, the convenient feature of being able to send a | ||||
| request from any port, and get the reply back to that port, means that a | ||||
| simple port filter will not be sufficient, and statefulness will be | ||||
| required. Real friendship would require that both source and dest ports | ||||
| be 1812. | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent - T | ||||
| 2. Summary Discussion | ||||
| In some areas, DIAMETER is not completely thought through. In general, | ||||
| real effort has gone into satisfying a stupendous range of requirements. | ||||
| 3. General Requirements | ||||
| DIAMETER certainly fails the KISS test. With SCTP, the drafts add up to | ||||
| 382 pages - well over double the size of RADIUS even with extensions. | ||||
| The evaluator sympathizes with the political instinct when faced with a | ||||
| new requirement no matter how bizarre, to say "we can do that" and add | ||||
| another piece of filagree. But the major places where DIAMETER claims | ||||
| advantage over RADIUS, namely "end-to-end" confidentiality and resource | ||||
| management, are just the places where some hard work remains, if the | ||||
| problems are not indeed intractable. | ||||
| More specifically, the evaluator sees no indication that specifying the | ||||
| separate transport protocol provided any advantage to defray the large | ||||
| increase in complexity. Application acks are still required, and no | ||||
| benefit from the transport acks was evident to the evaluator. Nor was | ||||
| there any obvious discussion of why "sequenced in-order" delivery is | ||||
| required, when AAA requests are typically independent. SCTP offers | ||||
| out-of-order delivery, but DIAMETER seems to have chosen not to use that | ||||
| feature. | ||||
| Whether TLV encoding or ASN.1/BER is superior is a religious question, | ||||
| but DIAMETER manages to require both, if the "strong" extension is | ||||
| implemented. The evaluator has a pet peeve with length fields that | ||||
| include the header, making small length values invalid, but that is a | ||||
| minor point. | ||||
| Finally, interoperability would be greatly aided by defining a standard | ||||
| "dictionary" format by which an implementation could adopt wholesale a | ||||
| set of attributes, perhaps from another vendor, and at least know how to | ||||
| display them. That is one of the advantages of MIBs. | ||||
| 4. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| DIAMETER is clearly close enough to meeting the myriad requirements that | ||||
| it is an acceptable candidate, though needing some polishing. Whether | ||||
| the vast increase in complexity is worth the increase in functionality | ||||
| over RADIUS is debatable. | ||||
| Barney Wolff | ||||
| 11.7. COPS PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluation of COPS AAA Requirements | ||||
| PRO Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluator - David Nelson | ||||
| Ref [1] is draft-durham-aaa-cops-reqments-00.txt, a.k.a. 'the document' | ||||
| Ref [2] is RFC 2748 a.k.a. 'the protocol' | ||||
| Ref [3] is the AAA evaluation criteria as modified by us. | ||||
| Ref [4] is draft-ekstein-aaa-protcomp-00.txt. | ||||
| Ref [5] is draft-durham-aaa-cops-ext-00.txt. | ||||
| This document uses T to indicate total compliance, P to indicate partial | ||||
| compliance and F to indicate no compliance. | ||||
| Section 1 - Per item discussion | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability - The document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over - The document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication - The document claims "T", and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission Level Security - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| transmission layer security, as defined in [3], is provided in | ||||
| the protocol, using the mechanisms described in [2]. It should | ||||
| be noted that this requirement is now a SHOULD in [3]. The | ||||
| document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| end-to-end confidentiality is provided using a CMS-data attribute, | ||||
| based in large part upon RFC 2630. The evaluator has not, at this | ||||
| time, investigated the applicability of RFC 2630 to the AAA work. | ||||
| The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.6 Data Object Integrity - The document [1] indicates that data | ||||
| object integrity is provided using a CMS-data attribute, based in | ||||
| large part upon RFC 2630. The evaluator has not, at this time, | ||||
| investigated the applicability of RFC 2630 to the AAA work. | ||||
| The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport - The document [1] indicates that | ||||
| certificate transport is provided using a CMS-data attribute, | ||||
| based in large part upon RFC 2630 and RFC 1510. The evaluator has | ||||
| not, at this time, investigated the applicability of RFC 2630 to | ||||
| the AAA work. The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - The document [1] indicates that COPS | ||||
| uses TCP, which certainly meets the requirements for a reliable | ||||
| transport. The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.9 Run over IPv4 - The document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.10 Run over IPv6 - The document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - Reasonable detail of proxy | ||||
| operations is provided in [5]. The document [1] claims "T", and | ||||
| the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability - The document [1] alludes to a History PIB that | ||||
| would enable auditing without explaining how it would work. The | ||||
| AAA Extension [5] does not provide additional insight. The | ||||
| document claims "T", and the evaluator awards "P". | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required - The document [1] claims "T" and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - The document [1] | ||||
| claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support - The document [1] indicates that NAI is to be | ||||
| supported in the Information Model, but notes that for cases | ||||
| where certificates are in use, the more restrictive syntax of | ||||
| RFC 2459 applies. The document claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| awards "P". | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support - The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support - The document claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords - The document indicates compliance, | ||||
| presumably using a CMS-data attribute, based in large part upon | ||||
| RFC 2630. The evaluator has not, at this time, investigated the | ||||
| applicability of RFC 2630 to the AAA work. The document claims | ||||
| "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthentication on demand - The document [1] claims "T", and | ||||
| the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication - This requirement, as | ||||
| applied to the protocol specification, mandates that non- | ||||
| necessary authentication credentials not be required in a | ||||
| request for authorization. The actual decision to provide | ||||
| authorization in the absence of any authentication resides in | ||||
| the application (e.g. AAA server). The document [1] claims "T", | ||||
| and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - The document claims | ||||
| "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability - The document [1] claims "T", and in | ||||
| the absence of any detailed discussion of how this is accomplished, | ||||
| in either [1] or [5], the evaluator awards "P". | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability - The document claims [1] "T" and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - The document [1] claims "T", and in | ||||
| the absence of any detailed discussion of how this is accomplished, | ||||
| in either [1] or [5], the evaluator awards "P". | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauth on Demand - The document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for ACLs - The document [1] "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation - The document [1] "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect - The document [1] claims "T", and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real Time Accounting - The document [1] claims "T", and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding - Note that the term "bloated" in [3] | ||||
| is somewhat subjective. The document [1] claims "T", and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility - The document [1] claims "T", | ||||
| and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting - The protocol [2] [5] does not address how | ||||
| in detail this feature might be accomplished. The document [1] | ||||
| claims "T", and the awards "P". | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - Guaranteed delivery is provided by TCP. | ||||
| The document [1] claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps - The document claims "T", and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting - The document claims "T", and the evaluator | ||||
| concurs. | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - The document [1] | ||||
| claims "T", and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly - The document [1] claims "T", and the | ||||
| evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent - The document [1] claims "T", | ||||
| and the evaluator concurs. | ||||
| 2. Summary Discussion | ||||
| It may appear, upon initial inspection, that the evaluator has not lent | ||||
| a critical eye to the compliance assertions of the document [1]. First, | ||||
| this memo is a "PRO" brief, and as such reasonable benefit of doubt is | ||||
| to be given in favor of the protocol submission. Second, there is a | ||||
| fundamental conceptual issue at play. The COPS-PR model provides a | ||||
| sufficient set of basic operations and commands, a stateful model, the | ||||
| ability for either "peer" to initiate certain kinds of requests, as well | ||||
| as an extensible command set, to be able to support a wide variety of | ||||
| network and resource management protocols. The details of protocol | ||||
| specific messages is left to Policy Information Base (PIB) data objects. | ||||
| Since no AAA PIB has been written, the evacuator can only | ||||
| (optimistically) assess the inherent capabilities of the base protocol | ||||
| to accomplish the intended requirements of [3], given a reasonable set | ||||
| of assumptions about what an AAA PIB might look like. | ||||
| In some senses, this akin to asserting that a given algorithm can be | ||||
| correctly implemented in a specific programming language, without | ||||
| actually providing the code. | ||||
| The PIB model used by COPS is a powerful and flexible model. The | ||||
| protocol document [5] spends a considerable amount of time enumerating | ||||
| and describing the benefits of this data model, and explaining its roots | ||||
| in Object Oriented (OO) design methodology. Analogies are made to class | ||||
| inheritance and class containment, among others. It's always hard to say | ||||
| bad things about OO. | ||||
| 3. General Requirements | ||||
| COPS-AAA would appear to meet (totally or partially) all of the | ||||
| requirements of [3], at least as can be determined without the benefit | ||||
| of an AAA PIB. | ||||
| 4. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| Recommended with reservation. Before final acceptance of COPS-AAA, | ||||
| someone is going to have to write the AAA PIB and evaluate its details. | ||||
| David B. Nelson, Software Engineer V | ||||
| Enterasys Networks, Inc. (a Cabletron Systems company) | ||||
| 50 Minuteman Road | ||||
| Andover, MA 01810-1008 | ||||
| (978) 684-1330 | ||||
| dnelson@enterasys.com | ||||
| 11.8. COPS CON Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluation of COPS against the AAA Requirements CON Evaluation | ||||
| Evaluator: David Mitton 7/7/00 | ||||
| The Primary document discussed here is [COPSComp] and the arguments | ||||
| therein based on the proposal [COPSAAA]. | ||||
| [COPSComp] "Comparison of COPS Against the AAA NA Requirements", | ||||
| draft-durham-aaa-cops-reqments-00.txt | ||||
| [COPSAAA] "COPS Usage for AAA", draft-durham-aaa-cops-ext-00.txt | ||||
| [EksteinProtoComp] "AAA Protocols : Comparison between RADIUS, DIAMETER, | ||||
| and COPS", draft-ekstein-nasreq-protcomp-01.txt | ||||
| References: (in order of relevancy) | ||||
| [COPSBase] "The Common Open Policy Service Protocol", RFC 2748 | ||||
| [COPSFwork] "A Framework for Policy-based Admission Control", RFC 2753 | ||||
| [COPSPR] "COPS Usage for Policy Provisioning", | ||||
| [COPSSPPI] "Structure of Policy Provisioning Information (SPPI)", | ||||
| draft-ietf-rap-cops-sppi-00.txt | ||||
| [COPSCMS] "COPS Over CMS", draft-jwalker-cops-cms-00.txt | ||||
| [COPSTLS] "COPS Over TLS", draft-jwalker-cops-tls-00.txt | ||||
| [COPSGSS] "COPS Extension for GSS-API based Authentication Support", | ||||
| draft-sgundave-gssauth-cops-00.txt | ||||
| Other COPS & RSVP RFCs & drafts not listed as not directly relevant. | ||||
| Compliance: T==Total, P==Partial, F=Failed | ||||
| Section 1 - Per item discussion | ||||
| Initial Note: [COPSComp] claims "unconditional compliance" with all | ||||
| requirements. | ||||
| 1.1 General Requirements | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability - P (was T) The evaluator is concerned with | ||||
| scalability of many always-on TCP connections to a server supporting a | ||||
| lot of clients, particularly with the heartbeat messages. The claim | ||||
| that the request handle is "unbounded" sounds fishy. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over - P (was T) | ||||
| COPS gives an indication of peer failure, and has mechanisms to restart | ||||
| state, but there seems to be a bias toward a single state server. COPS | ||||
| has decided that synchronizing state between multiple hot servers is out | ||||
| of scope. | ||||
| Because COPS uses TCP, it is at the mercy of the TCP timers of the | ||||
| implementation which can be significant. Connection timeout reporting | ||||
| to the application may be delayed beyond the client authentication | ||||
| timeouts. Tuning the Keep-Alive message to a tighter period will | ||||
| increase the session and system overhead. | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication - P (was T) The explanation is sort of for | ||||
| message object integrity. It does not describe authentication | ||||
| techniques. The evaluator assumes that COPS peers would authenticate | ||||
| each other at Client-Open time. But cannot understand how this would | ||||
| work if proxies are involved. | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission Level Security - T | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality - T | ||||
| Seems almost a carbon copy of the Diameter capabilities. This evaluator | ||||
| echoes the high overhead concerns of the Diameter evaluator for the CMS | ||||
| capability. TLS is not mentioned here, but is piled on later. | ||||
| 1.1.6 Data Object Integrity - T See above. | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport - T | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - T (maybe P) | ||||
| COPS meets this requirement as well as any other protocol we've | ||||
| evaluated. That is it does have one application level ACK. Statements | ||||
| such as "TCP provides guaranteed delivery" are incorrect. COPS does | ||||
| attempt to identify outages by using a keep-alive message between TCP | ||||
| peers. | ||||
| 1.1.9 Run over IPv4 - T | ||||
| 1.1.10 Run over IPv6 - T | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers - P (was T) | ||||
| How client types are supported forward is not well understood by this | ||||
| evaluator. Does each client type require the Broker to make a different | ||||
| client Open request to it's upstream servers? What about routing | ||||
| brokers? | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability - P (was T) | ||||
| (based on our interpretation as non-repudiation, rather than the | ||||
| definition given in reqts) The explanation of a History PIB is | ||||
| incomplete and therefore inconclusive. | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required - T | ||||
| Except this clause in [COPSAAA] 6.2 page 14 "COPS MUST be capable of | ||||
| supporting TLS" | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to Carry Service Specific Attributes - P (was T) | ||||
| a) COPS only allows a small number of unique objects to be added. 256 | ||||
| Object "classes" or types, with 256 subtypes or versions. Client types | ||||
| are 16 bits long, where the high bit indicates "enterprise" specific | ||||
| values. But pertain to a COPS peer-connection session. The client type | ||||
| seems to just identify the information model for the message. eg. it | ||||
| will be fixed to one value for AAA. | ||||
| b) Service specific objects are not the same as Vendor Specific Objects. | ||||
| They pertain to objects within a client type. | ||||
| c) The PIB model leads to a different model interoperability. Because | ||||
| most vendor product differ in some way, each PIB will be different, and | ||||
| sharing common provisioning profiles will be a rather difficult mapping | ||||
| problem on the server. | ||||
| d) It's not clear the different client types can be mixed or that other | ||||
| objects definitions can be used from other defined client types. It's | ||||
| really unclear how the client type of a connection propagates in a proxy | ||||
| situation. | ||||
| 1.2 Authentication Requirements | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support - T | ||||
| The requirement that RFC 2459 (X.509 profiles) be met presumes that Auth | ||||
| servers would not have a mapping or local transformation. | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support - T | ||||
| An Information Model is being invoked, which I don't see really fleshed | ||||
| out anywhere. [COPSAAA] does a bit of handwaving and definitions but | ||||
| doesn't deliver much meat. Nonetheless, this could be handled ala | ||||
| RADIUS. | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support - P (was T) | ||||
| Again with the non-existent Information Model. To do EAP, this | ||||
| evaluator thinks another Request or Decision type is needed here to | ||||
| indicate to proxys that an extended message exchange is in progress. | ||||
| 1.2.4 PAP/Clear-text Passwords - T | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthentication on demand - T | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication - T | ||||
| The comment "Please note: with existing algorithms, any authorization | ||||
| scheme not based on prior authentication is meaningless" is meaningless | ||||
| out of application context. | ||||
| 1.3 Authorization Requirements | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr Assignment - T | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability - P (was T). | ||||
| It would be interesting to see RADIUS attributes wrapped in some COPS | ||||
| "Information Model". | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability - T | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude Layer 2 Tunneling - T | ||||
| More work for the "Information Model" author! | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauthorization on Demand - T | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for Access Rules & Filters - P (was T) | ||||
| Yet more work for the "Information Model" author, including some design | ||||
| issues which alluded the RADIUS and Diameter designers. At least an | ||||
| attempt was made in Diameter. There is nothing here. | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation - P (was T). | ||||
| It is difficult for the evaluator to understand how well the COPS | ||||
| mechanisms work in a multi-administration situation, or in any proxy | ||||
| situation. Multi-server coordination, if allowed, seems to be lacking a | ||||
| description. | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited Disconnect - T | ||||
| 1.4 Accounting Requirements | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real Time Accounting - T | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory Compact Encoding - T | ||||
| This evaluator does not believe that ADIF is a compact format. But does | ||||
| believe that the Information Model author can design a PIB with | ||||
| accounting statistics that will satisfy this requirement. | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility - P (was T) | ||||
| By defining a vendor/device specific PIB for additional elements. | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting - P (was T) | ||||
| Offered description does not seem to match the requirement. | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - P (was T) | ||||
| TCP does NOT "guarantee delivery", only application Acks can do that. If | ||||
| these acks can be generated similar to the description here, then this | ||||
| requirement is met. | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps - T | ||||
| Another item for the "Information Model" author. | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting - T | ||||
| Event and interim accounting can be supported. | ||||
| 1.5 MOBILE IP Requirements | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of MOBILE IP Registration Messages - P (was T) | ||||
| Yet more work for the "Information Model" author. Hope he can handle it. | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly - P (was T) | ||||
| I guess. Because it uses TCP and can be identified by known connection | ||||
| port. But there is an issue with respect to the impact level of mixed | ||||
| COPS traffic coming through a common firewall port. | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agent - P (was T) | ||||
| Just add another element to that "Information Model" definition. | ||||
| 2. Summary Discussion | ||||
| COPS was designed to do some things similar to what we want and be | ||||
| somewhat flexible, but with a totally different set of assumptions on | ||||
| how many clients and requests would be funnelled through the | ||||
| infrastructure and the acceptable overhead. This evaluator is not sure | ||||
| that it scales well to the fast evolving access market where every | ||||
| product doesn't implement a small set of common features, but a large | ||||
| set of overlapping ones. | ||||
| 3. General Requirements | ||||
| COPS started out with small and easily met set of design goals for RSVP | ||||
| and DiffServe, and is evolving as a new hammer to hit other nails | ||||
| [COPSPR]. As COPS implementors get more operational experience, it is | ||||
| interesting to see more reliability fixes/features quickly get patched | ||||
| in. | ||||
| Understanding COPS requires that you read a number RFCs and drafts which | ||||
| do not readily integrate well together. Each application of COPS has | ||||
| spawned a number of drafts. It's not clear if one wants to or can | ||||
| implement a single COPS server that can service AAA and other | ||||
| application clients | ||||
| The COPS authors seem to overly believe in the goodness of TCP, and rely | ||||
| on it to solve all their transport problems, with concessions to | ||||
| application keep-alive messages to probe the connection status and | ||||
| sequence numbers to prevent replay attacks. This evaluator believes this | ||||
| type of approach may work for many networks but really doesn't scale | ||||
| well in larger configurations. End-to-end application acks are the only | ||||
| guaranteed delivery solution, particularly where distributed state is | ||||
| involved. | ||||
| COPS falls into an in between place on encoding. It has small number of | ||||
| simple data object blobs which are concatenated ala RADIUS/Diameter TLVs | ||||
| to form a flexible message layout. However, they attempt to limit the | ||||
| number of objects by making them arbitrarily complex ala SNMP MIBs, and | ||||
| defining yet another data structuring language for these PIBs. There is | ||||
| a lot of computer science style grandstanding in [COPSAAA] Section 1.2, | ||||
| but no translation into how a set of data objects can be used to meet | ||||
| these wonderful features in operation. (or even if we needed them) | ||||
| This will be the crux of the interoperability issue. RADIUS | ||||
| implementations interoperate because they at least, understand a common | ||||
| set of functional attributes from the RFCs. And vendor extent ions can | ||||
| be simply customized in as needed via dictionaries. If PIB definitions | ||||
| are needed for every piece and version of access equipment, before you | ||||
| can use it, then the bar for ease of configuration and use has been | ||||
| raised quite high. | ||||
| Support for PIB definition and vendor extensions will be on the same | ||||
| order as MIB integration in SNMP management products and put the | ||||
| supposed complexity of Diameter to shame. | ||||
| 4. Summary Recommendation | ||||
| COPS has a structure that could be made to serve as a AAA protocol, | ||||
| perhaps by just copying the features of RADIUS and Diameter into it. | ||||
| The author of [COPSAAA] and [COPSComp] has not done the whole job yet | ||||
| and some of the missing pieces are vexing even for those already in the | ||||
| field. | ||||
| While some of the synergy with other COPS services is attractive, this | ||||
| evaluator is concerned about the liabilities of combining AAA services | ||||
| with the new emerging COPS applications in a single server entity will | ||||
| introduce more complexity than needed and opportunities to have progress | ||||
| pulled into other rat-holes. (eg. Policy Frameworks) | ||||
| David Mitton ESN: 248-4570 | ||||
| Advisor, Nortel Networks 978-288-4570 Direct | ||||
| ServiceWare, IP Mobility 978-288-3030 FAX | ||||
| Billerica, MA 01821 dmitton@nortelnetworks.com | ||||
| 12. Appendix Meeting Notes | ||||
| 12.1. Minutes of 22-Jun-2000 Teleconference | ||||
| Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 10:34:05 -0400 | ||||
| From: Mark Stevens <markstevens@lucent.com> | ||||
| Reply-To: markstevens@lucent.com | ||||
| Organization: Lucent Technologies | ||||
| Subject: Meeting Notes | ||||
| Mike, | ||||
| Here are my meeting notes. Add your vote tallies to the bottom and | ||||
| I think we have minutes. -Mark | ||||
| Arguments for and against SNMP as an AAA protocol were given. Stuart | ||||
| Barkley gave a summary of the pro argument. Mike St. Johns gave a | ||||
| summary of the con argument. | ||||
| Dave Nelson asked for "instructions to the jury" in an effort to | ||||
| determine what evidence could and could not be used in making decisions. | ||||
| The AAA evaluation criteria is weak in some areas and in others it | ||||
| appears to be written with what might be interpretered as undue | ||||
| influence from the NASREQ working group. | ||||
| Mike St. Johns offered that we must restrict ourselves to considering | ||||
| only the evidence provided in the compliance documents and any | ||||
| supporting documents to which they may refer. | ||||
| In summary: AAA evaluation criteria document, AAA evaluation criteria | ||||
| source documents, protocol response documents and reference documents. | ||||
| The question as to what the group should do with malformed requirements | ||||
| came up. The consensus seemed to be that we would use the requirements | ||||
| as adjusted in our last meeting where the requirements made no sense. | ||||
| The floor was then given to Stuart Barkley for the pro SNMP argument. | ||||
| Highlights: | ||||
| * In most areas the requirements are met by SNMP. | ||||
| * Confidentiality and Certificate transport mechanisms may be weak, | ||||
| but workable. | ||||
| * With regard to Authentication, every technique can be supported | ||||
| although support for PAP or cleartext passwords is weak. | ||||
| * With regard to Authorization, there is nothing in the requirements | ||||
| that cannot be supported. | ||||
| * Accounting everything supported, although there is no specific | ||||
| consideration for compact encoding. SNMP not as bloated as ASCII or | ||||
| XML based encoding schemes. Requirement for compact encoding weakly | ||||
| indicated in requirements anyway. Server-specific attributes | ||||
| needed, but compact encoding preclude w/o tradeoffs. | ||||
| * With regard to mobile IP requirement, everything works well, | ||||
| although firewall friendliness is a judgment call. | ||||
| * Proxy mechanisms of SNMPv3 mitigates problems w/ firewalls. | ||||
| * Scalability is ok. | ||||
| * Overall, meets most requirements and shortfalls are minor. | ||||
| * In some cases requirements seemed to expressed in a manner that | ||||
| "stacks" the odds against SNMP. | ||||
| * SNMP is deployed everywhere already. | ||||
| * The protocol has a well-understood behaviour despite the tedium of | ||||
| MIB definition, so it has the advantage of not requiring the | ||||
| creation of a new infrastructure. | ||||
| * AAA response document is silent on architecture and MIB definition, | ||||
| but there is too much work to do at this stage of evaluation. Not | ||||
| having done the MIB definitions and architecture is not a | ||||
| limitation of the protocol. | ||||
| * SNMP is a good candidate. | ||||
| Mike St. Johns took the floor to give a summary of the con arguement. | ||||
| * Neither the requirements, core documents nor response document | ||||
| specify the mechanism of operation. | ||||
| * Liberties were taken in the assertion that the server to server | ||||
| interaction requirements were met. | ||||
| * The scaling arguments are weak. | ||||
| * Fail-over arguments are weak. | ||||
| * Security aspects work well with the manager/server paradigm, but | ||||
| not well in bidirectional interactions among peers. | ||||
| * The authentication requirements not understood by authors of the | ||||
| response document. | ||||
| * SNMP is just data moving protocol. | ||||
| * Message formats not specified. | ||||
| * What is the method for supporting authentication? Storing the | ||||
| information is handled, but what do the nodes do with it? | ||||
| * The protocol certainly shined in the area of meeting accounting | ||||
| requirements. | ||||
| * Although SNMP could certainly play a role in the accounting space, | ||||
| it is unusable in the areas of Authorization and Athentication. | ||||
| * The response document does not address how the problem will be | ||||
| solved. | ||||
| * It does not address the scalability isssues that may arise in the | ||||
| transition from a manager-agent mode of operation to a | ||||
| client-server model. | ||||
| The group then examined each requirement against SNMP in a line-by-line | ||||
| exercise. In cases where there was sufficient dissent from the rating | ||||
| assigned by the reviewer (Mike St. Johns) the group tallied a vote and | ||||
| the results of the voting are shown below. | ||||
| 12.2. Minutes of 27-Jun-2000 Teleconference | ||||
| Return-Path: <owner-aaateam@ops.ietf.org> | ||||
| From: Basavaraj.Patil@nokia.com | ||||
| Message-ID: <7B5C0390ACE7D211BC9C0008C7EABA2BCD51CA@daeis07nok> | ||||
| To: aaateam@ops.ietf.org | ||||
| Subject: Minutes of teleconference held on 6/27/00 - RADIUS++ evaluation | ||||
| Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 23:27:08 -0500 | ||||
| Logistics: | ||||
| Attendees - All (Mike St. John, Dave Mitton, Dave Nelson, Mark Stevens, | ||||
| Barney Wolff, Stuart Barkley, Steven Crain, Basavaraj Patil) | ||||
| Minutes recorded by : Basavaraj Patil | ||||
| Evaluation of RADIUS++ AAA Requirements | ||||
| Pro : Mark Stevens | ||||
| Con : Dave Nelson | ||||
| - Question raised on if all meetings held so far have been | ||||
| recorded. Last week's meeting was recorded by Mark. Previous | ||||
| meetings have been recorded by Mike. All of these minutes should be | ||||
| available in the archive. | ||||
| - Dave Nelson mentioned that Pat Calhoun has responded on the AAA WG | ||||
| mailing list to the changes made to the requirements document by the | ||||
| evaluation team. Pat's response includes arguments for inclusion of | ||||
| some of the requirements that were deleted by the eval team. | ||||
| Mike concluded that we can reinstate these requirements after | ||||
| reviewing Pat's comments in detail and the RFCs referenced. The | ||||
| intent is to take Pat's comments/document and review it between now | ||||
| and next Thursday (July 6th) and integrate the comments based on the | ||||
| findings at that time. | ||||
| Voting Procedure for evaluation : No voting during the discussion. All | ||||
| votes MUST be submitted to Mike by COB, June 28th, 00. | ||||
| - Dave Nelson's summary of the Con statement for RADIUS++. | ||||
| Overview of the points on which the evaluator disagrees with the | ||||
| compliance statement. | ||||
| Conclusion from Dave : Not recommended (Details in the con statement). | ||||
| Q: Is it possible to use it for accounting? | ||||
| A: Authentication and Authorization could be separated, but Accounting | ||||
| is the weak link in this protocol and hence is not suitable. | ||||
| - Mark Steven's summary of the Pro statment | ||||
| Agreed with most of the observations made by Dave Nelson. The | ||||
| biggest thing going for it is that it has been running in this | ||||
| environment for a while and it does meet most of the requirements in | ||||
| the document. Transition will be easy and backwards compatibility is | ||||
| a key plus point. | ||||
| Point-by-point Discussion: | ||||
| General (1.1): | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability | ||||
| BW - There is no actual limit on the number of outstanding requests. The | ||||
| protocol itself does not limit the number. | ||||
| DN - Simultaneous requests is not the same as outstanding requests. | ||||
| Discussion of workarounds that have been implemented to overcome this | ||||
| problem. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over | ||||
| DN - This is an application layer protocol and uses application level | ||||
| time-outs to provide fail-over solutions. Analogy and discussion on the | ||||
| use of round-trip-timer in TCP. | ||||
| Example of how robust a network can be based on a machine at MIT that | ||||
| was decommissioned and a new one with the same name installed in the | ||||
| network. | ||||
| Discussion of environments where proxies for primary, secondary amd | ||||
| tertiaries exist and the possible effect of flooding messages in the | ||||
| event of a fail-over detection. | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication | ||||
| No Discussion. Accepted as stated. | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission level security | ||||
| This requirement was deleted from the list by the evaluation team. It | ||||
| was deleted because it is an overgeneralization of Roam Ops. | ||||
| DN - There is a concern regarding what this really means. Referred to | ||||
| what Pat is saying about this on the list and the need for it to be | ||||
| reinstated. | ||||
| Suggestion to change the tag in the requirements document to hop-by-hop | ||||
| security. | ||||
| Does the Roamops group use transmission level security to imply | ||||
| hop-by-hop security? | ||||
| 1.1.5 Data Object Confidentiality | ||||
| Mike explained the concept of Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS - | ||||
| RFC2630). There are some issues regarding the use of CMS at an end | ||||
| point. Symmetric or Asymmetric keys can be used. | ||||
| There does not seem to be a problem with the suggested usage of CMS in | ||||
| RADIUS++. | ||||
| 1.1.6/7 Data Object Integrity/Certificate Transport | ||||
| No discussion. (I guess everyone concurs with the statement in the | ||||
| compliance document and the reviewers comments). | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport | ||||
| BW - Radius provides reliability at the application layer by doing | ||||
| retransmissions. So why is there a need for a reliable AAA transport | ||||
| protocol? | ||||
| - Is it packet loss that the protocol needs to be concerned about? | ||||
| DN - This requirement is tied to the failover issue. Explanation of the | ||||
| negative impact of retransmissions in a network, especially in the case | ||||
| of a web of proxies. | ||||
| Conclusion is that this requirement deals with packet loss. | ||||
| 1.1.9/10 Run over IPv4/6 | ||||
| Running over IPv6 should be a trivial issue. | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers | ||||
| - Discussion on what this requirement means and analogy to DNS servers | ||||
| in a network. | ||||
| - RADIUS can be extended to support this requirement and from the | ||||
| compliance document this does not appear to be fully cooked yet. | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required | ||||
| This seems to be a trivial issue to be addressed in RADIUS++. | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to carry Service Specific Attributes | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| Authentication Requirements: | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support | ||||
| Trivial - Total compliance. | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support | ||||
| Comment : RADIUS support of CHAP could be better and the response needs | ||||
| to be encrypted. | ||||
| 1.2.3/4 EAP/PAP | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthentication on Demand | ||||
| DN - Document claims that the server can reauthenticate by issung an | ||||
| Access-challenge. There is a change to the state machine and the | ||||
| suggested solution is too simplistic. Also backwards compatibility would | ||||
| be an issue. | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication | ||||
| DN - This is trivial to fix, but this is not mentioned in the compliance | ||||
| document. | ||||
| Authorization Requirements: | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr assignment | ||||
| - RADIUS does not rise to the demands of being a resource manager | ||||
| - RADIUS assigns an address and it stays assigned for the session. There | ||||
| is no concept of leasing. | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability | ||||
| This is a requirement written that is not applicable to RADIUS itself. | ||||
| 1.3.3/4/5/6/7/8 | ||||
| Call dropped. Somebody else needs to fill in here. (Mike ????) | ||||
| Accounting Requirements: | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real time accounting | ||||
| No dissent. No discussion | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory compact encoding | ||||
| Comment made regarding ASN.1 and XML in this context | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility | ||||
| No discussion | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting | ||||
| No specific wording in the document to show how this can be done. Basically it is real time accounting without the real time constraint. | ||||
| It may be a trivial issue. | ||||
| 1.4.5/6 Guaranteed Delivery/Accounting Timestamps | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting | ||||
| There is ongoing discussion in the AAA WG on this requirement. The | ||||
| RADIUS WG is also discussing this (comment). The idea here is to be | ||||
| able to send the equivalent of a phonecall in progress type of messages. | ||||
| Mobile IP Requirements: | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of Mobile IP Reg. Messages | ||||
| May be trivial. Discussion on what this requirement really is. Is it | ||||
| just the ability to carry the reg. message as payload? Does the AAA | ||||
| protocol have to delve into the reg. message and behave differently. | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agents | ||||
| This concept needs to be clarified as the author writing the compliance | ||||
| statement did not understand it either. | ||||
| -Basavaraj Patil | ||||
| If you notice anything that I recorded here as something misinterpreted, | ||||
| please feel free to make corrections. | ||||
| 12.3. Minutes of 29-Jun-2000 Teleconference | ||||
| Subject: Minutes of teleconference held on 6/29/00 - DIAMETER evaluation | ||||
| Message-ID: | ||||
| <Pine.SUN.4.21.0006291448500.2294-100000@iadserve0.iad.eng.us.uu.net> | ||||
| Sender: owner-aaateam@ops.ietf.org | ||||
| Attendees: Mike St. John, Dave Mitton, Dave Nelson, Barney Wolff, | ||||
| Stuart Barkley, Steven Crain, Basavaraj Patil. | ||||
| Missing: Mark Stevens. | ||||
| Minutes recorded by: Stuart Barkley | ||||
| Evaluation of DIAMETER AAA Requirements | ||||
| Advocates: | ||||
| Pro: Basavaraj Patil | ||||
| Con: Barney Wolff | ||||
| Summary discussion: | ||||
| PRO summary (Basavaraj Patil): | ||||
| session based | ||||
| lightweight base + extensions | ||||
| has implementation experience | ||||
| based upon radius | ||||
| fixes specific problems with radius, | ||||
| interoperates with radius | ||||
| looks like requirements are written for diameter | ||||
| CON summary (Barney Wolff): | ||||
| meets most needs, designed with requirements in mind | ||||
| issues: | ||||
| scalability in small devices (strong crypto specifically) | ||||
| failover (need guidance on failover recovery procedures) | ||||
| Data object confidentiality has been expressed as very important, | ||||
| diameter glosses over it referring to rfc2630, cost to run on NAS | ||||
| device | ||||
| ACL: filter style syntax seems inadequate | ||||
| state reconciliation: difficult over global multiple administrative | ||||
| domains | ||||
| batch accounting: implementation doesn't meet intended need | ||||
| firewall friendly: until firewalls support SCTP will be failure | ||||
| summary: | ||||
| very close | ||||
| concerns: | ||||
| size and complexity | ||||
| needs almost all extensions to actually support needs | ||||
| separation of SCTP and data (as per iesg suggestion?) | ||||
| application vs transport acks | ||||
| Point-by-point Discussion: | ||||
| General (1.1): | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability | ||||
| Handles large number of requests | ||||
| SCTP reduces proxy needs (how? what is justification for this | ||||
| statement?) | ||||
| Scalability in large | ||||
| 1.1.2 Fail-over | ||||
| Recovery from SCTP failure needs discussion (Note to DM: Include in | ||||
| final document considerations) | ||||
| 1.1.3 Mutual Authentication | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.4 Transmission level security | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.5/6 Data Object Confidentiality/Data Object Integrity | ||||
| Crypto in NAS | ||||
| NAS needs knowledge of when to use crypto | ||||
| One Time Passwords (Note to DM: Include in final document | ||||
| considerations) | ||||
| 1.1.7 Certificate Transport | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.9/10 Run over IPv4/6 | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.11 Support Proxy and Routing Brokers | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.12 Auditability | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.13 Shared Secret Not Required | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.1.14 Ability to carry Service Specific Attributes | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| Authentication Requirements: | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.2.2 CHAP Support | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.2.3/4 EAP/PAP | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.2.5 Reauthentication on Demand | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization w/o Authentication | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| Authorization Requirements: | ||||
| 1.3.1 Static and Dynamic IP Addr assignment | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway Capability | ||||
| Protocol requirement or implementation/application requirement? | ||||
| Which RADIUS versions are to be supported? Which subset? (Note to | ||||
| DM: Include in final document considerations) | ||||
| 1.3.3 Reject Capability | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.3.4 Preclude L2TP | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.3.5 Reauthorize on demand | ||||
| Raj to look at this again | ||||
| 1.3.6 Support for ACLs | ||||
| Standardizes syntax not semantics. | ||||
| Standardizes semantics in NASREQ extension, but is very weak | ||||
| 1.3.7 State reconciliation | ||||
| Appears to be weak in that server must "query the world" to restore | ||||
| its state | ||||
| Just in time reconciliation | ||||
| Simultaneous usage limitations | ||||
| More discussion needed | ||||
| 1.3.8 Unsolicited disconnect | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| Accounting Requirements: | ||||
| 1.4.1 Real time accounting | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.4.2 Mandatory compact encoding | ||||
| Is ADIF compact? | ||||
| Is ADIF UTF-8 compatible? | ||||
| 1.4.3 Accounting Record Extensibility | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting | ||||
| DIAMETER okay for small batches. Specification doesn't seem | ||||
| suitable for large batch transfers (100,000+ records) | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.4.6 Accounting Timestamps | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| 1.4.7 Dynamic Accounting | ||||
| No Discussion | ||||
| Mobile IP Requirements: | ||||
| 1.5.1 Encoding of Mobile IP Reg. Messages | ||||
| Taken of faith | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall Friendly | ||||
| Issues with SCTP being supported initially through firewalls | ||||
| 1.5.3 Allocation of Local Home Agents | ||||
| Still lack of understanding of the AAA protocol requirements here | ||||
| (versus just being a roaming attribute) | ||||
| Overall summary: | ||||
| Diameter seems to meet most requirements and is a likely candidate to | ||||
| support AAA requirements. | ||||
| Other matters: | ||||
| Votes on Diameter should be in by Sunday evening. Same format as | ||||
| before. Mike will tally up as both majority and average votes. | ||||
| Should different requirements have different weight? | ||||
| Possibility of SNMP reconsideration as per ADs? To close off our task | ||||
| in timeframe allocated, should not reopen submissions or discussions. | ||||
| Could cause to drag on for long time causing us to miss our July 15 | ||||
| date. | ||||
| Possibility of needing a few extra days to finish report due to editing | ||||
| and review needs of the group. Mike to ask ADs to consider slight time | ||||
| extension possibility. | ||||
| "No discussion" means that the topic was mentioned but there we no | ||||
| objections/issues raised on that requirement being met. | ||||
| -Stuart | ||||
| These are based upon my notes. Please send any corrections to the list. | ||||
| 12.4. Minutes of 06-Jul-2000 Teleconference | ||||
| Return-Path: <owner-aaateam@ops.ietf.org> | ||||
| From: Barney Wolff <barney@databus.com> | ||||
| To: aaateam@ops.ietf.org | ||||
| Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 15:31 EDT | ||||
| Subject: Minutes - 7/6/00 | ||||
| Minutes of AAA-Team Telecon 7/6/00 | ||||
| Pro review of COPS - Dave Nelson | ||||
| Likes the object model. | ||||
| No apparent showstoppers. | ||||
| Will resend review with typos corrected. | ||||
| Con review of COPS - Dave Mitton | ||||
| Architecture is mostly there. | ||||
| Strong dependency on info model, sceptical of object model. | ||||
| Problem with info model in multi-vendor, multi-administration | ||||
| environment. | ||||
| How does server speak to multiple client flavors? | ||||
| Will resend review with typos corrected. | ||||
| Comment by Mike StJ "replace SNMP with COPS" - :) I think. | ||||
| Per-Item discussion | ||||
| 1.1.1 Scalability - concern re always-on TCP. Direction to DM - add | ||||
| general issue of number of connections. | ||||
| 1.1.2 Failover - No hot backup, but true of all protocols. (ie, no | ||||
| explicit mention of server-server protocol that might keep a backup | ||||
| server in sync so it could take over instantly.) 1.1.3 Mutual | ||||
| Authentication - perhaps relies on TLS. Draft does not otherwise | ||||
| support this. | ||||
| 1.1.8 Reliable AAA Transport - TCP + appl heartbeat. | ||||
| 1.1.11 Proxy & Routing Brokers - client-type interaction with proxy is | ||||
| questionable. (In later discussion, it appears client-type is a field | ||||
| in the request, and perhaps all AAA is one type, so may not be an | ||||
| issue.) 1.1.13 Shared secret not req'd - runs over TLS, no multiple | ||||
| levels of security. | ||||
| 1.2.1 NAI Support - some uncertainty on the impact of RFC 2459 (X.509 | ||||
| profiles) on this - may restrict NAI in some way? | ||||
| 1.2.3 EAP Support - multi-pass handshake needs work. | ||||
| 1.2.6 Authorization without Authentication - Mike comments the | ||||
| requirement is broken. BW comment (post-meeting) - the requirement | ||||
| appears intended specifically to chastise RADIUS for requiring User-Name | ||||
| and some sort of password in an Access-Request, even if it's sent | ||||
| pre-connect, on receipt of DNIS, for example. Sure it's silly, but does | ||||
| it really matter whether an attribute is absent or filled with "NONE"? | ||||
| This was just nasty sniping at RADIUS on somebody's part, imho. | ||||
| 1.3.2 RADIUS Gateway - skepticism was expressed. | ||||
| 1.3.4 !Preclude L2 Tunnels - too much handwaving. | ||||
| 1.3.6 Access Rules - lots of work needed. | ||||
| 1.3.7 State Reconciliation - multi-server coordination is an issue. | ||||
| 1.4.4 Batch Accounting - for small batches, perhaps. | ||||
| 1.4.5 Guaranteed Delivery - application acks are an area of mystery. | ||||
| 1.5.2 Firewall-Friendly - COPS like any Swiss-Army-Knife protocol (SNMP) | ||||
| requires the firewall to look inside the packets, because passing AAA | ||||
| may be allowed but not other protocol uses. So it would be a big help, | ||||
| for both COPS and SNMP, to define a different port for its AAA | ||||
| application. | ||||
| Updated briefs and votes are due by Sunday. Some discussion of the | ||||
| structure of the final document. Next meeting is Tuesday, with | ||||
| "hangers-on". | ||||
| Reminder - we are supposed to be reacting to Pat Calhoun's reaction to | ||||
| our requirement comments, via email, to be finished on or before | ||||
| Tuesday. | ||||
| Barney | ||||
| 12.5. Minutes of 11-Jul-2000 Teleconference | ||||
| Return-Path: <owner-aaateam@ops.ietf.org> | ||||
| Message-ID: <6BE5C54C541BD211830B0000F84AA009F12038@and-exc2.ctron.com> | ||||
| From: "Nelson, David" <dnelson@enterasys.com> | ||||
| To: "'aaateam@ops.ietf.org'" <aaateam@ops.ietf.org> | ||||
| Cc: "Mitton, David " <dmitton@americasm06.nt.com> | ||||
| Subject: Minutes of 7/11/00 | ||||
| Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 17:49:09 -0400 | ||||
| Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" | ||||
| Sender: owner-aaateam@ops.ietf.org | ||||
| Present: Mike, Bernard, Paul, Bert, Raj, Dave N., Dave M., Barney, | ||||
| Stuart, Mark | ||||
| Mike St. Johns set the ground rules. | ||||
| An item by item review of the summary results was held. | ||||
| 1.1.1 Question as to why SNMP and RADIUS++ are "P"? There are issues | ||||
| regarding scaling of retries in a web of proxies (multi-layer proxy; | ||||
| primary, secondary tertiary servers at each level). | ||||
| 1.1.2 No protocol did very well. [Document Editor - take special note | ||||
| of this issue.] Similar issues as above, e.g. web of proxies. Recovery | ||||
| of state from a previously failed primary server? | ||||
| 1.1.3 Question as to how serious is the need for this requirement? | ||||
| May be some legitimate requirements from Mobile IP. Is this requirement | ||||
| an AAA-level issue? | ||||
| 1.1.4 Called hop-by-hop or transmission level? | ||||
| 1.1.5 Most protocols evaluated used CMS to meet this requirement. | ||||
| Question as to applicability of CMS for NASes and other edge devices? | ||||
| [Document Editor - take special note of this issue.] There is a | ||||
| requirement for object by object confidentiality. consider three-party | ||||
| scenarios. | ||||
| 1.1.6 Question as to why SNMP did not rate the same as for item 1.1.5? | ||||
| The evaluation is based on what was contained in the submission | ||||
| documents, rather than capabilities of the protocol itself. Too much | ||||
| hand waving. | ||||
| 1.1.7 No comments. | ||||
| 1.1.8 Question as to meaning of "reliable"? Discussion of transport | ||||
| protocols was deferred to later in the meeting. | ||||
| 1.1.9 No comments. | ||||
| 1.1.10 SNMP received "P" because of hand waving in the submission | ||||
| documents. | ||||
| 1.1.11 SNMP received "F" because this section of the submission | ||||
| document indicated "t.b.d.". DIAMETER was the only protocol submission | ||||
| to completely address this item. | ||||
| 1.1.12 We treated this requirement as "non-repudiation". There is a | ||||
| concern that digital signatures are computationally expensive and are | ||||
| not globally available. COPS has more work to do on this item. | ||||
| 1.1.13 Question that "no shared secrets" should be interpreted to mean | ||||
| that an alternative key management mechanism is available? We treated | ||||
| this as meaning that application-layer security could be turned off in | ||||
| deference to transport layer security. There had been discussion of the | ||||
| use of IKE in the AAA protocol. | ||||
| 1.1.14 No comments. | ||||
| 1.2.1 No comments. | ||||
| 1.2.2 No comments. | ||||
| 1.2.3 No comments. | ||||
| 1.2.4 Is there a need for a clear-text "password" for service such as | ||||
| OTP, SecurID, et. al.? It was noted that all plain passwords are | ||||
| exposed in clear-text at the NAS or other edge device, which is no more | ||||
| inherently trustworthy than any AAA server or proxy. | ||||
| 1.2.5 We distinguished event-driven reauthentication from timer-driven | ||||
| (or lifetime-driven). How is this requirement to be met in a proxy | ||||
| environment? | ||||
| 1.2.6 We asserted that this requirement is an oxymoron. | ||||
| 1.3.1 We had difficulty in determining what "static" meant, and from | ||||
| which reference point it was measured. | ||||
| 1.3.2 We agreed that NAIs could be handled, possibly with some | ||||
| restrictions. | ||||
| 1.3.3 No comment. | ||||
| 1.3.4 The SNMP submission documents contained significant hand waving. | ||||
| 1.3.5 Similar comments as to item 1.2.5. The question was raised as | ||||
| to how the server knows when to send this request? [Document Editor - | ||||
| take special note of this item.] | ||||
| 1.3.6 We found that the notation in DIAMETER was weak, and of a least | ||||
| common denominator nature. In general, there was concern about | ||||
| achieving interoperability when the syntax was standardized but the | ||||
| semantics were not. This area needs further work. [Document Editor - | ||||
| take special notice of this item.] | ||||
| 1.3.7 Question as to how this requirement is achieved via proxies? | ||||
| [Document Editor - take special notice of this item.] | ||||
| 1.4.1 No comment. | ||||
| 1.4.2 No comment. | ||||
| 1.4.3 No comment. | ||||
| 1.4.4 There was significant skepticism regarding batch accounting as | ||||
| part of the AAA protocol. How large are the "batches"? Should this | ||||
| requirement be met using FTP or something similar? | ||||
| 1.4.5 No comment. | ||||
| 1.4.6 No comment. | ||||
| 1.4.7 No comment. | ||||
| 1.5.1 No comment. | ||||
| 1.5.2 There was some discussion of what constitutes firewall friendly. | ||||
| It was suggested that the firewall didn't want to look into packets much | ||||
| past the application protocol address (e.g. UDP or TCP port number). | ||||
| Protocols such as SNMP and COPS that have usage other than AAA are at a | ||||
| disadvantage, since the firewall must look deep into the application PDU | ||||
| to determine the intended purpose of the packet. DIAMETER suffers from | ||||
| reliance of SCTP, which is not widely deployed or widely recognized by | ||||
| firewalls. Should firewalls also be AAA proxy engines? Has this issue | ||||
| anything to do with interoperability with NAT? [Document Editor - take | ||||
| special note of this item.] | ||||
| 1.5.3 We had some confusion as to what the requirement actually was. | ||||
| Raj seemed to be able to explain it, but the rest of us had to take it | ||||
| on faith. | ||||
| A poll was taken on overall acceptability of each of the protocols | ||||
| submitted, for requirements conformance. | ||||
| Raj | ||||
| DIAMETER Acceptable | ||||
| RADIUS++ Acceptable with Engineering (large effort) | ||||
| COPS Acceptable with Engineering (small effort) | ||||
| SNMP Acceptable for Accounting | ||||
| Dave N. | ||||
| SNMP Acceptable for Accounting | ||||
| RADIUS++ Unacceptable (would end up being like DIAMETER) | ||||
| COPS Acceptable with Engineering (small effort) | ||||
| DIAMETER Acceptable | ||||
| Dave M. | ||||
| SNMP Acceptable for Accounting | ||||
| RADIUS++ Unacceptable | ||||
| DIAMETER Acceptable with Engineering (small effort) | ||||
| COPS Acceptable with Engineering (medium effort) | ||||
| Barney | ||||
| SNMP Acceptable with Engineering (large effort) | ||||
| RADIUS++ Acceptable with Engineering (medium effort) | ||||
| COPS Acceptable with Engineering (medium effort) | ||||
| DIAMETER Acceptable with Engineering (small effort) | ||||
| Stuart | ||||
| SNMP Acceptable with Engineering (medium effort) | Title: Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting: | |||
| RADIUS++ Unacceptable | Protocol Evaluation | |||
| DIAMETER Acceptable with Engineering (small effort) | Author(s): D. Mitton, M. St.Johns, S. Barkley, D. Nelson, | |||
| COPS Acceptable with Engineering (medium effort) | B. Patil, M. Stevens, B. Wolff | |||
| Status: Informational | ||||
| Date: June 2001 | ||||
| Mailbox: dmitton@nortelnetworks.com, | ||||
| stjohns@rainmakertechnologies.com, | ||||
| stuartb@uu.net, dnelson@enterasys.com, | ||||
| Basavaraj.Patil@nokia.com, mstevens@ellacoya.com, | ||||
| barney@databus.com | ||||
| Pages: 86 | ||||
| Characters: 170579 | ||||
| Updates/Obsoletes/SeeAlso: None | ||||
| Mark | I-D Tag: draft-ietf-aaa-proto-eval-02.txt | |||
| RADIUS++ Unacceptable | URL: ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3127.txt | |||
| SNMP Acceptable for Accounting | ||||
| COPS Acceptable with Engineering (small effort) | ||||
| DIAMETER Acceptable with Engineering (small effort) | ||||
| Mike | This memo represents the process and findings of the Authentication, | |||
| Authorization, and Accounting Working Group (AAA WG) panel evaluating | ||||
| protocols proposed against the AAA Network Access Requirements, RFC | ||||
| 2989. Due to time constraints of this report, this document is not as | ||||
| fully polished as it might have been desired. But it remains mostly | ||||
| in this state to document the results as presented. | ||||
| SNMP Concern about overhead of SNMPv3 security. | This document is a product of the Authentication, Authorization and | |||
| RADIUS++ Would end up looking like DIAMETER. | Accounting Working Group of the IETF. | |||
| COPS Needs small to medium engineering effort. Unclear that we | ||||
| can separate the AAA functions such as to solve the firewall issues. | ||||
| DIAMETER Preferred protocol. Has a better set of protocol | ||||
| interactions than does COPS. COPS has a better data model than does | ||||
| DIAMETER. | ||||
| A general wrap-up discussion was held. | This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does | |||
| not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this | ||||
| memo is unlimited. | ||||
| It was considered important that as much of the thought processes and | This announcement is sent to the IETF list and the RFC-DIST list. | |||
| rationales be placed in the final report as is feasible. Mike St. John | Requests to be added to or deleted from the IETF distribution list | |||
| will work with Dave Mitton on the ID. We really need to meet the IETF | should be sent to IETF-REQUEST@IETF.ORG. Requests to be | |||
| July 14 submission deadline, even if we have to issue an update on the | added to or deleted from the RFC-DIST distribution list should | |||
| AAA WG mailing list. All agreed that the process went fairly well. In | be sent to RFC-DIST-REQUEST@RFC-EDITOR.ORG. | |||
| future evaluations of this nature, it would be well for the evaluators | ||||
| to follow the requirements documents closely, for the submitters to | ||||
| create accurate and complete conformance documents, and to allow a | ||||
| "re-spin" cycle to correct errors and omissions in the requirements | ||||
| documents and conformance documents. | ||||
| A discussion of the transport protocol was held. | Details on obtaining RFCs via FTP or EMAIL may be obtained by sending | |||
| an EMAIL message to rfc-info@RFC-EDITOR.ORG with the message body | ||||
| help: ways_to_get_rfcs. For example: | ||||
| The issue with transport is congestion control. There has been a | To: rfc-info@RFC-EDITOR.ORG | |||
| problem with streams-oriented applications over TCP. The IESG is | Subject: getting rfcs | |||
| increasingly sensitive to this issue in new protocols. It was noted | ||||
| that AAA was a transaction-oriented application. Other request-response | ||||
| applications, such as DNS, seem to scale welt to Internet-scale using | ||||
| simple application-level retries and UDP transport. TCP has problems | ||||
| with head-of-line blocking, especially when multiple sessions are using | ||||
| a single TCP connection. AAA typically will send 3 or 4 iterations and | ||||
| then indicate a failure to the upper layers. It won't continue | ||||
| retransmissions in the face of congestion, like TCP. It was noted that | ||||
| bulk data transfer may not best be implemented in the AAA protocol. | ||||
| Concern was voiced that SCTP is not a widely implemented protocol. AAA | ||||
| will implement congestion control by limiting the number of outstanding | ||||
| requests. Some RADIUS implementations send lots of traffic when they | ||||
| encounter misconfigured shared secrets, but this is likely caused by a | ||||
| lack of proper error recovery. DIAMETER, as currently drafted, relies | ||||
| on SCTP. Can AAA run over UDP? The IESG didn't say "no"; their issue | ||||
| is addressing congestion control. | ||||
| As always, corrections, and additions to the minutes are welcome. | help: ways_to_get_rfcs | |||
| David B. Nelson, Software Engineer V | Requests for special distribution should be addressed to either the | |||
| Enterasys Networks, Inc. (a Cabletron Systems company) | author of the RFC in question, or to RFC-Manager@RFC-EDITOR.ORG. Unless | |||
| 50 Minuteman Road | specifically noted otherwise on the RFC itself, all RFCs are for | |||
| Andover, MA 01810-1008 | unlimited distribution.echo | |||
| (978) 684-1330 | Submissions for Requests for Comments should be sent to | |||
| dnelson@enterasys.com | RFC-EDITOR@RFC-EDITOR.ORG. Please consult RFC 2223, Instructions to RFC | |||
| Authors, for further information. | ||||
| End of changes. 13 change blocks. | ||||
| 3832 lines changed or deleted | 40 lines changed or added | |||
This html diff was produced by rfcdiff 1.48. The latest version is available from http://tools.ietf.org/tools/rfcdiff/ | ||||