Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) C. Loibl
Request for Comments: 8955 next layer Telekom GmbH
Obsoletes: 5575, 7674 S. Hares
Category: Standards Track Huawei
ISSN: 2070-1721 R. Raszuk
NTT Network Innovations
D. McPherson
Verisign
M. Bacher
T-Mobile Austria
December 2020
Dissemination of Flow Specification Rules
Abstract
This document defines a Border Gateway Protocol Network Layer
Reachability Information (BGP NLRI) encoding format that can be used
to distribute (intra-domain and inter-domain) traffic Flow
Specifications for IPv4 unicast and IPv4 BGP/MPLS VPN services. This
allows the routing system to propagate information regarding more
specific components of the traffic aggregate defined by an IP
destination prefix.
It also specifies BGP Extended Community encoding formats, which can
be used to propagate Traffic Filtering Actions along with the Flow
Specification NLRI. Those Traffic Filtering Actions encode actions a
routing system can take if the packet matches the Flow Specification.
This document obsoletes both RFC 5575 and RFC 7674.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8955.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Definitions of Terms Used in This Memo
3. Flow Specifications
4. Dissemination of IPv4 Flow Specification Information
4.1. Length Encoding
4.2. NLRI Value Encoding
4.2.1. Operators
4.2.2. Components
4.2.2.1. Type 1 - Destination Prefix
4.2.2.2. Type 2 - Source Prefix
4.2.2.3. Type 3 - IP Protocol
4.2.2.4. Type 4 - Port
4.2.2.5. Type 5 - Destination Port
4.2.2.6. Type 6 - Source Port
4.2.2.7. Type 7 - ICMP Type
4.2.2.8. Type 8 - ICMP Code
4.2.2.9. Type 9 - TCP Flags
4.2.2.10. Type 10 - Packet Length
4.2.2.11. Type 11 - DSCP (Diffserv Code Point)
4.2.2.12. Type 12 - Fragment
4.3. Examples of Encodings
5. Traffic Filtering
5.1. Ordering of Flow Specifications
6. Validation Procedure
7. Traffic Filtering Actions
7.1. Traffic Rate in Bytes (traffic-rate-bytes) Sub-Type 0x06
7.2. Traffic Rate in Packets (traffic-rate-packets) Sub-Type
0x0c
7.3. Traffic-Action (traffic-action) Sub-Type 0x07
7.4. RT Redirect (rt-redirect) Sub-Type 0x08
7.5. Traffic Marking (traffic-marking) Sub-Type 0x09
7.6. Interaction with Other Filtering Mechanisms in Routers
7.7. Considerations on Traffic Filtering Action Interference
8. Dissemination of Traffic Filtering in BGP/MPLS VPN Networks
9. Traffic Monitoring
10. Error Handling
11. IANA Considerations
11.1. AFI/SAFI Definitions
11.2. Flow Component Definitions
11.3. Extended Community Flow Specification Actions
12. Security Considerations
13. References
13.1. Normative References
13.2. Informative References
Appendix A. Example Python code: flow_rule_cmp
Appendix B. Comparison with RFC 5575
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
This document obsoletes "Dissemination of Flow Specification Rules"
[RFC5575] (see Appendix B for the differences). This document also
obsoletes "Clarification of the Flowspec Redirect Extended Community"
[RFC7674], since it incorporates the encoding of the BGP Flow
Specification Redirect Extended Community in Section 7.4.
Modern IP routers have the capability to forward traffic and to
classify, shape, rate limit, filter, or redirect packets based on
administratively defined policies. These traffic policy mechanisms
allow the operator to define match rules that operate on multiple
fields of the packet header. Actions, such as the ones described
above, can be associated with each rule.
The n-tuple consisting of the matching criteria defines an aggregate
traffic Flow Specification. The matching criteria can include
elements such as source and destination address prefixes, IP
protocol, and transport protocol port numbers.
Section 4 of this document defines a general procedure to encode Flow
Specifications for aggregated traffic flows so that they can be
distributed as a BGP [RFC4271] NLRI. Additionally, Section 7 of this
document defines the required Traffic Filtering Actions BGP Extended
Communities and mechanisms to use BGP for intra- and inter-provider
distribution of traffic filtering rules in order to mitigate DoS and
DDoS attacks.
By expanding routing information with Flow Specifications, the
routing system can take advantage of the ACL (Access Control List) or
firewall capabilities in the router's forwarding path. Flow
Specifications can be seen as more specific routing entries to a
unicast prefix and are expected to depend upon the existing unicast
data information.
A Flow Specification received from an external autonomous system will
need to be validated against unicast routing before being accepted
(Section 6). The Flow Specification received from an internal BGP
peer within the same autonomous system [RFC4271] is assumed to have
been validated prior to transmission within the internal BGP (iBGP)
mesh of an autonomous system. If the aggregate traffic flow defined
by the unicast destination prefix is forwarded to a given BGP peer,
then the local system can install more specific Flow Specifications
that may result in different forwarding behavior, as requested by
this system.
From an operational perspective, the utilization of BGP as the
carrier for this information allows a network service provider to
reuse both internal route distribution infrastructure (e.g., route
reflector or confederation design) and existing external
relationships (e.g., inter-domain BGP sessions to a customer
network).
While it is certainly possible to address this problem using other
mechanisms, this solution has been utilized in deployments because of
the substantial advantage of being an incremental addition to already
deployed mechanisms.
Possible applications of that extension are: Automated inter-domain
coordination of traffic filtering, such as what is required in order
to mitigate DoS and DDoS attacks or traffic filtering in the context
of a BGP/MPLS VPN service. Other applications (e.g., centralized
control of traffic in a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) or Network
Function Virtualization (NFV) context) are also possible.
In current deployments, the information distributed by this extension
is originated both manually as well as automatically, the latter by
systems that are able to detect malicious traffic flows. When
automated systems are used, care should be taken to ensure the
correctness of the automated system. The limitations of the
receiving systems that need to process these automated Flow
Specifications need to be taken in consideration as well (see also
Section 12).
This specification defines required protocol extensions to address
most common applications of IPv4 unicast and VPNv4 unicast filtering.
The same mechanism can be reused and new match criteria added to
address similar filtering needs for other BGP address families, such
as IPv6 families [RFC8956].
2. Definitions of Terms Used in This Memo
AFI: Address Family Identifier
AS: Autonomous System
Loc-RIB: The Loc-RIB contains the routes that have been selected by
the local BGP speaker's Decision Process [RFC4271].
NLRI: Network Layer Reachability Information
PE: Provider Edge router
RIB: Routing Information Base
SAFI: Subsequent Address Family Identifier
VRF: Virtual Routing and Forwarding
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Flow Specifications
A Flow Specification is an n-tuple consisting of several matching
criteria that can be applied to IP traffic. A given IP packet is
said to match the defined Flow Specification if it matches all the
specified criteria. This n-tuple is encoded into a BGP NLRI defined
below.
A given Flow Specification may be associated with a set of
attributes, depending on the particular application; such attributes
may or may not include reachability information (i.e., NEXT_HOP).
Well-known or AS-specific community attributes can be used to encode
a set of predetermined actions.
A particular application is identified by a specific (Address Family
Identifier, Subsequent Address Family Identifier (AFI, SAFI)) pair
[RFC4760] and corresponds to a distinct set of RIBs. Those RIBs
should be treated independently from each other in order to assure
noninterference between distinct applications.
BGP itself treats the NLRI as a key to an entry in its databases.
Entries that are placed in the Loc-RIB are then associated with a
given set of semantics, which is application dependent. This is
consistent with existing BGP applications. For instance, IP unicast
routing (AFI=1, SAFI=1) and IP multicast reverse-path information
(AFI=1, SAFI=2) are handled by BGP without any particular semantics
being associated with them until installed in the Loc-RIB.
Standard BGP policy mechanisms, such as UPDATE filtering by NLRI
prefix as well as community matching, must apply to the Flow
specification defined NLRI-type. Network operators can also control
propagation of such routing updates by enabling or disabling the
exchange of a particular (AFI, SAFI) pair on a given BGP peering
session.
4. Dissemination of IPv4 Flow Specification Information
This document defines a Flow Specification NLRI type (Figure 1) that
may include several components, such as destination prefix, source
prefix, protocol, ports, and others (see Section 4.2 below).
This NLRI information is encoded using MP_REACH_NLRI and
MP_UNREACH_NLRI attributes, as defined in [RFC4760]. When
advertising Flow Specifications, the Length of the Next-Hop Network
Address MUST be set to 0. The Network Address of the Next-Hop field
MUST be ignored.
The NLRI field of the MP_REACH_NLRI and MP_UNREACH_NLRI is encoded as
one or more 2-tuples of the form <length, NLRI value>. It consists
of a 1- or 2-octet length field followed by a variable-length NLRI
value. The length is expressed in octets.
+-------------------------------+
| length (0xnn or 0xfnnn) |
+-------------------------------+
| NLRI value (variable) |
+-------------------------------+
Figure 1: Flow Specification NLRI for IPv4
Implementations wishing to exchange Flow Specification MUST use BGP's
Capability Advertisement facility to exchange the Multiprotocol
Extension Capability Code (Code 1), as defined in [RFC4760]. The
(AFI, SAFI) pair carried in the Multiprotocol Extension Capability
MUST be (AFI=1, SAFI=133) for IPv4 Flow Specification and (AFI=1,
SAFI=134) for VPNv4 Flow Specification.
4.1. Length Encoding
The length field indicates the length in octets of the variable NLRI
value:
* If the NLRI length is smaller than 240 (0xf0 hex) octets, the
length field can be encoded as a single octet.
* Otherwise, it is encoded as an extended-length 2-octet value in
which the most significant nibble has the hex value 0xf.
In Figure 1 above, values less than 240 are encoded using two hex
digits (0xnn). Values above 239 are encoded using 3 hex digits
(0xfnnn). The highest value that can be represented with this
encoding is 4095. For example, the length value of 239 is encoded as
0xef (single octet), while 240 is encoded as 0xf0f0 (2 octets).
4.2. NLRI Value Encoding
The Flow Specification NLRI value consists of a list of optional
components and is encoded as follows:
Encoding: <[component]+>
A specific packet is considered to match the Flow Specification when
it matches the intersection (AND) of all the components present in
the Flow Specification.
Components MUST follow strict type ordering by increasing numerical
order. A given component type MAY (exactly once) be present in the
Flow Specification. If present, it MUST precede any component of
higher numeric type value.
All combinations of components within a single Flow Specification are
allowed. However, some combinations cannot match any packets (e.g.,
"ICMP Type AND Port" will never match any packets) and thus SHOULD
NOT be propagated by BGP.
An NLRI value not encoded as specified here, including an NLRI that
contains an unknown component type, is considered malformed and error
handling according to Section 10 is performed.
4.2.1. Operators
Most of the components described below make use of comparison
operators. Which of the two operators is used is defined by the
components in Section 4.2.2. The operators are encoded as a single
octet.
4.2.1.1. Numeric Operator (numeric_op)
This operator is encoded as shown in Figure 2.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| e | a | len | 0 |lt |gt |eq |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
Figure 2: Numeric Operator (numeric_op)
e (end-of-list bit): Set in the last {op, value} pair in the list
a (AND bit): If unset, the result of the previous {op, value} pair
is logically ORed with the current one. If set, the operation
is a logical AND. In the first operator octet of a sequence,
it MUST be encoded as unset and MUST be treated as always unset
on decoding. The AND operator has higher priority than OR for
the purposes of evaluating logical expressions.
len (length): The length of the value field for this operator given
as (1 << len). This encodes 1 (len=00), 2 (len=01), 4
(len=10), and 8 (len=11) octets.
0: MUST be set to 0 on NLRI encoding and MUST be ignored during
decoding
lt: less-than comparison between data and value
gt: greater-than comparison between data and value
eq: equality between data and value
The bits lt, gt, and eq can be combined to produce common relational
operators, such as "less or equal", "greater or equal", and "not
equal to", as shown in Table 1.
+====+====+====+==================================+
| lt | gt | eq | Resulting operation |
+====+====+====+==================================+
| 0 | 0 | 0 | false (independent of the value) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
| 0 | 0 | 1 | == (equal) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
| 0 | 1 | 0 | > (greater than) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
| 0 | 1 | 1 | >= (greater than or equal) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
| 1 | 0 | 0 | < (less than) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
| 1 | 0 | 1 | <= (less than or equal) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
| 1 | 1 | 0 | != (not equal value) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
| 1 | 1 | 1 | true (independent of the value) |
+----+----+----+----------------------------------+
Table 1: Comparison Operation Combinations
4.2.1.2. Bitmask Operator (bitmask_op)
This operator is encoded as shown in Figure 3.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| e | a | len | 0 | 0 |not| m |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
Figure 3: Bitmask Operator (bitmask_op)
e, a, len (end-of-list bit, AND bit, and length field): Most
significant nibble; defined in the Numeric Operator format in
Section 4.2.1.1.
not (NOT bit): If set, logical negation of operation.
m (Match bit): If set, this is a bitwise match operation defined as
"(data AND value) == value"; if unset, (data AND value)
evaluates to TRUE if any of the bits in the value mask are set
in the data.
0 (all 0 bits): MUST be set to 0 on NLRI encoding and MUST be
ignored during decoding
4.2.2. Components
The encoding of each of the components begins with a type field (1
octet) followed by a variable length parameter. The following
sections define component types and parameter encodings for the IPv4
IP layer and transport layer headers. IPv6 NLRI component types are
described in [RFC8956].
4.2.2.1. Type 1 - Destination Prefix
Encoding: <type (1 octet), length (1 octet), prefix (variable)>
Defines the destination prefix to match. The length and prefix
fields are encoded as in BGP UPDATE messages [RFC4271].
4.2.2.2. Type 2 - Source Prefix
Encoding: <type (1 octet), length (1 octet), prefix (variable)>
Defines the source prefix to match. The length and prefix fields are
encoded as in BGP UPDATE messages [RFC4271].
4.2.2.3. Type 3 - IP Protocol
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Contains a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs that are used to match
the IP protocol value octet in IP packet header (see Section 3.1 of
[RFC0791]).
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 3 component values SHOULD be encoded as single
octet (numeric_op len=00).
4.2.2.4. Type 4 - Port
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Defines a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs that match source OR
destination TCP/UDP ports (see Section 3.1 of [RFC0793] and the
"Format" section of [RFC0768]). This component matches if either the
destination port OR the source port of an IP packet matches the
value.
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 4 component values SHOULD be encoded as 1- or
2-octet quantities (numeric_op len=00 or len=01).
In case of the presence of the port (destination-port
(Section 4.2.2.5), source-port (Section 4.2.2.6)) component, only TCP
or UDP packets can match the entire Flow Specification. The port
component, if present, never matches when the packet's IP protocol
value is not 6 (TCP) or 17 (UDP), if the packet is fragmented and
this is not the first fragment, or if the system is unable to locate
the transport header. Different implementations may or may not be
able to decode the transport header in the presence of IP options or
Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) NULL [RFC4303] encryption.
4.2.2.5. Type 5 - Destination Port
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Defines a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs used to match the
destination port of a TCP or UDP packet (see also Section 3.1 of
[RFC0793] and the "Format" section of [RFC0768].
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 5 component values SHOULD be encoded as 1- or
2-octet quantities (numeric_op len=00 or len=01).
The last paragraph of Section 4.2.2.4 also applies to this component.
4.2.2.6. Type 6 - Source Port
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Defines a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs used to match the source
port of a TCP or UDP packet (see also Section 3.1 of [RFC0793] and
the "Format" section of [RFC0768].
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 6 component values SHOULD be encoded as 1- or
2-octet quantities (numeric_op len=00 or len=01).
The last paragraph of Section 4.2.2.4 also applies to this component.
4.2.2.7. Type 7 - ICMP Type
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Defines a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs used to match the type
field of an ICMP packet (see also the "Message Formats" section of
[RFC0792]).
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 7 component values SHOULD be encoded as single
octet (numeric_op len=00).
In case of the presence of the ICMP type component, only ICMP packets
can match the entire Flow Specification. The ICMP type component, if
present, never matches when the packet's IP protocol value is not 1
(ICMP), if the packet is fragmented and this is not the first
fragment, or if the system is unable to locate the transport header.
Different implementations may or may not be able to decode the
transport header in the presence of IP options or Encapsulating
Security Payload (ESP) NULL [RFC4303] encryption.
4.2.2.8. Type 8 - ICMP Code
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Defines a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs used to match the code
field of an ICMP packet (see also the "Message Formats" section of
[RFC0792]).
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 8 component values SHOULD be encoded as single
octet (numeric_op len=00).
In case of the presence of the ICMP code component, only ICMP packets
can match the entire Flow Specification. The ICMP code component, if
present, never matches when the packet's IP protocol value is not 1
(ICMP), if the packet is fragmented and this is not the first
fragment, or if the system is unable to locate the transport header.
Different implementations may or may not be able to decode the
transport header in the presence of IP options or Encapsulating
Security Payload (ESP) NULL [RFC4303] encryption.
4.2.2.9. Type 9 - TCP Flags
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [bitmask_op, bitmask]+>
Defines a list of {bitmask_op, bitmask} pairs used to match TCP
control bits (see also Section 3.1 of [RFC0793]).
This component uses the Bitmask Operator (bitmask_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.2. Type 9 component bitmasks MUST be encoded as 1- or
2-octet bitmask (bitmask_op len=00 or len=01).
When a single octet (bitmask_op len=00) is specified, it matches
octet 14 of the TCP header (see also Section 3.1 of [RFC0793]), which
contains the TCP control bits. When a 2-octet (bitmask_op len=01)
encoding is used, it matches octets 13 and 14 of the TCP header with
the data offset (leftmost 4 bits) always treated as 0.
In case of the presence of the TCP flags component, only TCP packets
can match the entire Flow Specification. The TCP flags component, if
present, never matches when the packet's IP protocol value is not 6
(TCP), if the packet is fragmented and this is not the first
fragment, or if the system is unable to locate the transport header.
Different implementations may or may not be able to decode the
transport header in the presence of IP options or Encapsulating
Security Payload (ESP) NULL [RFC4303] encryption.
4.2.2.10. Type 10 - Packet Length
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Defines a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs used to match on the
total IP packet length (excluding Layer 2 but including IP header).
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 10 component values SHOULD be encoded as 1- or
2-octet quantities (numeric_op len=00 or len=01).
4.2.2.11. Type 11 - DSCP (Diffserv Code Point)
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [numeric_op, value]+>
Defines a list of {numeric_op, value} pairs used to match the 6-bit
DSCP field (see also [RFC2474]).
This component uses the Numeric Operator (numeric_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.1. Type 11 component values MUST be encoded as single
octet (numeric_op len=00).
The six least significant bits contain the DSCP value. All other
bits SHOULD be treated as 0.
4.2.2.12. Type 12 - Fragment
Encoding: <type (1 octet), [bitmask_op, bitmask]+>
Defines a list of {bitmask_op, bitmask} pairs used to match specific
IP fragments.
This component uses the Bitmask Operator (bitmask_op) described in
Section 4.2.1.2. The Type 12 component bitmask MUST be encoded as
single octet bitmask (bitmask_op len=00).
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |LF |FF |IsF|DF |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
Figure 4: Fragment Bitmask Operand
Bitmask values:
DF (Don't Fragment): match if IP Header Flags Bit-1 (DF) [RFC0791]
is 1
IsF (Is a fragment other than the first): match if the [RFC0791] IP
Header Fragment Offset is not 0
FF (First Fragment): match if the [RFC0791] IP Header Fragment
Offset is 0 AND Flags Bit-2 (MF) is 1
LF (Last Fragment): match if the [RFC0791] IP Header Fragment Offset
is not 0 AND Flags Bit-2 (MF) is 0
0: MUST be set to 0 on NLRI encoding and MUST be ignored during
decoding
4.3. Examples of Encodings
4.3.1. Example 1
An example of a Flow Specification NLRI encoding for: "all packets to
192.0.2.0/24 and TCP port 25".
+========+================+==========+==========+
| length | destination | protocol | port |
+========+================+==========+==========+
| 0x0b | 01 18 c0 00 02 | 03 81 06 | 04 81 19 |
+--------+----------------+----------+----------+
Table 2
Decoded:
+=======+==============================================+
| Value | |
+=======+============+=================================+
| 0x0b | length | 11 octets (if len<240, 1 octet) |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x01 | type | Type 1 - Destination Prefix |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x18 | length | 24 bit |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0xc0 | prefix | 192 |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x00 | prefix | 0 |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x02 | prefix | 2 |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x03 | type | Type 3 - IP Protocol |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x81 | numeric_op | end-of-list, value size=1, == |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x06 | value | 6 (TCP) |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x04 | type | Type 4 - Port |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x81 | numeric_op | end-of-list, value size=1, == |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x19 | value | 25 |
+-------+------------+---------------------------------+
Table 3
This constitutes an NLRI with an NLRI length of 11 octets.
4.3.2. Example 2
An example of a Flow Specification NLRI encoding for: "all packets to
192.0.2.0/24 from 203.0.113.0/24 and port {range [137, 139] or
8080}".
+========+================+================+=============+
| length | destination | source | port |
+========+================+================+=============+
| 0x12 | 01 18 c0 00 02 | 02 18 cb 00 71 | 04 03 89 45 |
| | | | 8b 91 1f 90 |
+--------+----------------+----------------+-------------+
Table 4
Decoded:
+========+==============================================+
| Value | |
+========+============+=================================+
| 0x12 | length | 18 octets (if len<240, 1 octet) |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x01 | type | Type 1 - Destination Prefix |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x18 | length | 24 bit |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0xc0 | prefix | 192 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x00 | prefix | 0 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x02 | prefix | 2 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x02 | type | Type 2 - Source Prefix |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x18 | length | 24 bit |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0xcb | prefix | 203 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x00 | prefix | 0 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x71 | prefix | 113 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x04 | type | Type 4 - Port |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x03 | numeric_op | value size=1, >= |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x89 | value | 137 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x45 | numeric_op | "AND", value size=1, <= |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x8b | value | 139 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x91 | numeric_op | end-of-list, value size=2, == |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
| 0x1f90 | value | 8080 |
+--------+------------+---------------------------------+
Table 5
This constitutes an NLRI with an NLRI length of 18 octets.
4.3.3. Example 3
An example of a Flow Specification NLRI encoding for: "all packets to
192.0.2.1/32 and fragment { DF or FF } (matching packet with DF bit
set or First Fragments)
+========+===================+==========+
| length | destination | fragment |
+========+===================+==========+
| 0x09 | 01 20 c0 00 02 01 | 0c 80 05 |
+--------+-------------------+----------+
Table 6
Decoded:
+=======+=============================================+
| Value | |
+=======+============+================================+
| 0x09 | length | 9 octets (if len<240, 1 octet) |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x01 | type | Type 1 - Destination Prefix |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x20 | length | 32 bit |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0xc0 | prefix | 192 |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x00 | prefix | 0 |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x02 | prefix | 2 |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x01 | prefix | 1 |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x0c | type | Type 12 - Fragment |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x80 | bitmask_op | end-of-list, value size=1 |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
| 0x05 | bitmask | DF=1, FF=1 |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------+
Table 7
This constitutes an NLRI with an NLRI length of 9 octets.
5. Traffic Filtering
Traffic filtering policies have been traditionally considered to be
relatively static. Limitations of these static mechanisms caused
this new dynamic mechanism to be designed for the three new
applications of traffic filtering:
* Prevention of traffic-based, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks
* Traffic filtering in the context of BGP/MPLS VPN service
* Centralized traffic control for SDN/NFV networks
These applications require coordination among service providers and/
or coordination among the AS within a service provider.
The Flow Specification NLRI defined in Section 4 conveys information
about traffic filtering rules for traffic that should be discarded or
handled in a manner specified by a set of predefined actions (which
are defined in BGP Extended Communities). This mechanism is
primarily designed to allow an upstream autonomous system to perform
inbound filtering in their ingress routers of traffic that a given
downstream AS wishes to drop.
In order to achieve this goal, this document specifies two
application-specific NLRI identifiers that provide traffic filters
and a set of actions encoding in BGP Extended Communities. The two
application-specific NLRI identifiers are:
* IPv4 Flow Specification identifier (AFI=1, SAFI=133) along with
specific semantic rules for IPv4 routes and
* VPNv4 Flow Specification identifier (AFI=1, SAFI=134) value, which
can be used to propagate traffic filtering information in a BGP/
MPLS VPN environment.
Encoding of the NLRI is described in Section 4 for IPv4 Flow
Specification and in Section 8 for VPNv4 Flow Specification. The
filtering actions are described in Section 7.
5.1. Ordering of Flow Specifications
More than one Flow Specification may match a particular traffic flow.
Thus, it is necessary to define the order in which Flow
Specifications get matched and actions being applied to a particular
traffic flow. This ordering function is such that it does not depend
on the arrival order of the Flow Specification via BGP and thus is
consistent in the network.
The relative order of two Flow Specifications is determined by
comparing their respective components. The algorithm starts by
comparing the left-most components (lowest component type value) of
the Flow Specifications. If the types differ, the Flow Specification
with lowest numeric type value has higher precedence (and thus will
match before) than the Flow Specification that doesn't contain that
component type. If the component types are the same, then a type-
specific comparison is performed (see below). If the types are
equal, the algorithm continues with the next component.
For IP prefix values (IP destination or source prefix), if one of the
two prefixes to compare is a more specific prefix of the other, the
more specific prefix has higher precedence. Otherwise, the one with
the lowest IP value has higher precedence.
For all other component types, unless otherwise specified, the
comparison is performed by comparing the component data as a binary
string using the memcmp() function as defined by [ISO_IEC_9899]. For
strings with equal lengths, the lowest string (memcmp) has higher
precedence. For strings of different lengths, the common prefix is
compared. If the common prefix is not equal, the string with the
lowest prefix has higher precedence. If the common prefix is equal,
the longest string is considered to have higher precedence than the
shorter one.
The code in Appendix A shows a Python3 implementation of the
comparison algorithm. The full code was tested with Python 3.6.3 and
can be obtained at
<https://github.com/stoffi92/rfc5575bis/tree/master/flowspec-cmp>.
6. Validation Procedure
Flow Specifications received from a BGP peer that are accepted in the
respective Adj-RIB-In are used as input to the route selection
process. Although the forwarding attributes of two routes for the
same Flow Specification prefix may be the same, BGP is still required
to perform its path selection algorithm in order to select the
correct set of attributes to advertise.
The first step of the BGP Route Selection procedure (Section 9.1.2 of
[RFC4271]) is to exclude from the selection procedure routes that are
considered unfeasible. In the context of IP routing information,
this step is used to validate that the NEXT_HOP attribute of a given
route is resolvable.
The concept can be extended, in the case of the Flow Specification
NLRI, to allow other validation procedures.
The validation process described below validates Flow Specifications
against unicast routes received over the same AFI but the associated
unicast routing information SAFI:
* Flow Specification received over SAFI=133 will be validated
against routes received over SAFI=1.
* Flow Specification received over SAFI=134 will be validated
against routes received over SAFI=128.
In the absence of explicit configuration, a Flow Specification NLRI
MUST be validated such that it is considered feasible if and only if
all of the conditions below are true:
a) A destination prefix component is embedded in the Flow
Specification.
b) The originator of the Flow Specification matches the originator
of the best-match unicast route for the destination prefix
embedded in the Flow Specification (this is the unicast route
with the longest possible prefix length covering the destination
prefix embedded in the Flow Specification).
c) There are no "more-specific" unicast routes, when compared with
the flow destination prefix, that have been received from a
different neighboring AS than the best-match unicast route, which
has been determined in rule b.
However, rule a MAY be relaxed by explicit configuration, permitting
Flow Specifications that include no destination prefix component. If
such is the case, rules b and c are moot and MUST be disregarded.
By "originator" of a BGP route, we mean either the address of the
originator in the ORIGINATOR_ID Attribute [RFC4456] or the source IP
address of the BGP peer, if this path attribute is not present.
BGP implementations MUST also enforce that the AS_PATH attribute of a
route received via the External Border Gateway Protocol (eBGP)
contains the neighboring AS in the left-most position of the AS_PATH
attribute. While this rule is optional in the BGP specification, it
becomes necessary to enforce it here for security reasons.
The best-match unicast route may change over the time independently
of the Flow Specification NLRI. Therefore, a revalidation of the
Flow Specification NLRI MUST be performed whenever unicast routes
change. Revalidation is defined as retesting rules a to c as
described above.
Explanation:
The underlying concept is that the neighboring AS that advertises the
best unicast route for a destination is allowed to advertise Flow
Specification information that conveys a destination prefix that is
more or equally specific. Thus, as long as there are no "more-
specific" unicast routes received from a different neighboring AS,
which would be affected by that Flow Specification, the Flow
Specification is validated successfully.
The neighboring AS is the immediate destination of the traffic
described by the Flow Specification. If it requests these flows to
be dropped, that request can be honored without concern that it
represents a denial of service in itself. The reasoning is that this
is as if the traffic is being dropped by the downstream autonomous
system, and there is no added value in carrying the traffic to it.
7. Traffic Filtering Actions
This document defines a minimum set of Traffic Filtering Actions that
it standardizes as BGP Extended Communities [RFC4360]. This is not
meant to be an inclusive list of all the possible actions but only a
subset that can be interpreted consistently across the network.
Additional actions can be defined as either requiring standards or as
vendor specific.
The default action for a matching Flow Specification is to accept the
packet (treat the packet according to the normal forwarding behavior
of the system).
This document defines the following Extended Communities values shown
in Table 8 in the form 0xttss, where tt indicates the type and ss
indicates the sub-type of the Extended Community. Encodings for
these Extended Communities are described below.
+==================+======================+=======================+
| community 0xttss | action | encoding |
+==================+======================+=======================+
| 0x8006 | traffic-rate-bytes | 2-octet AS, 4-octet |
| | (Section 7.1) | float |
+------------------+----------------------+-----------------------+
| 0x800c | traffic-rate-packets | 2-octet AS, 4-octet |
| | (Section 7.2) | float |
+------------------+----------------------+-----------------------+
| 0x8007 | traffic-action | bitmask |
| | (Section 7.3) | |
+------------------+----------------------+-----------------------+
| 0x8008 | rt-redirect AS- | 2-octet AS, 4-octet |
| | 2octet (Section 7.4) | value |
+------------------+----------------------+-----------------------+
| 0x8108 | rt-redirect IPv4 | 4-octet IPv4 address, |
| | (Section 7.4) | 2-octet value |
+------------------+----------------------+-----------------------+
| 0x8208 | rt-redirect AS- | 4-octet AS, 2-octet |
| | 4octet (Section 7.4) | value |
+------------------+----------------------+-----------------------+
| 0x8009 | traffic-marking | DSCP value |
| | (Section 7.5) | |
+------------------+----------------------+-----------------------+
Table 8: Traffic Filtering Action Extended Communities
Multiple Traffic Filtering Actions defined in this document may be
present for a single Flow Specification and SHOULD be applied to the
traffic flow (for example, traffic-rate-bytes and rt-redirect can be
applied to packets at the same time). If not all of the Traffic
Filtering Actions can be applied to a traffic flow, they should be
treated as interfering Traffic Filtering Actions (see below).
Some Traffic Filtering Actions may interfere with each other or even
contradict. Section 7.7 of this document provides general
considerations on such Traffic Filtering Action interference. Any
additional definition of Traffic Filtering Actions SHOULD specify the
action to take if those Traffic Filtering Actions interfere (also
with existing Traffic Filtering Actions).
All Traffic Filtering Actions are specified as transitive BGP
Extended Communities.
7.1. Traffic Rate in Bytes (traffic-rate-bytes) Sub-Type 0x06
The traffic-rate-bytes Extended Community uses the following Extended
Community encoding:
The first two octets carry the 2-octet id, which can be assigned from
a 2-octet AS number. When a 4-octet AS number is locally present,
the 2 least significant octets of such an AS number can be used.
This value is purely informational and SHOULD NOT be interpreted by
the implementation.
The remaining 4 octets carry the maximum rate information in IEEE
floating point [IEEE.754.1985] format, units being bytes per second.
A traffic-rate of 0 should result on all traffic for the particular
flow to be discarded. On encoding, the traffic-rate MUST NOT be
negative. On decoding, negative values MUST be treated as zero
(discard all traffic).
Interferes with: May interfere with the traffic-rate-packets (see
Section 7.2). A policy may allow both filtering by traffic-rate-
packets and traffic-rate-bytes. If the policy does not allow this,
these two actions will conflict.
7.2. Traffic Rate in Packets (traffic-rate-packets) Sub-Type 0x0c
The traffic-rate-packets Extended Community uses the same encoding as
the traffic-rate-bytes Extended Community. The floating point value
carries the maximum packet rate in packets per second. A traffic-
rate-packets of 0 should result in all traffic for the particular
flow to be discarded. On encoding, the traffic-rate-packets MUST NOT
be negative. On decoding, negative values MUST be treated as zero
(discard all traffic).
Interferes with: May interfere with the traffic-rate-bytes (see
Section 7.1). A policy may allow both filtering by traffic-rate-
packets and traffic-rate-bytes. If the policy does not allow this,
these two actions will conflict.
7.3. Traffic-Action (traffic-action) Sub-Type 0x07
The traffic-action Extended Community consists of 6 octets of which
only the 2 least significant bits of the 6th octet (from left to
right) are defined by this document, as shown in Figure 5.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Traffic Action Field |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Tr. Action Field (cont.) |S|T|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 5: Traffic-Action Extended Community Encoding
S and T are defined as:
T Terminal Action (bit 47): When this bit is set, the traffic
filtering engine will evaluate any subsequent Flow
Specifications (as defined by the ordering procedure
Section 5.1). If not set, the evaluation of the traffic
filters stops when this Flow Specification is evaluated.
S Sample (bit 46): Enables traffic sampling and logging for this
Flow Specification (only effective when set).
Traffic Action Field: Other Traffic Action Field (see Section 11)
bits unused in this specification. These bits MUST be set to 0
on encoding and MUST be ignored during decoding.
The use of the Terminal Action (bit 47) may result in more than one
Flow Specification matching a particular traffic flow. All the
Traffic Filtering Actions from these Flow Specifications shall be
collected and applied. In case of interfering Traffic Filtering
Actions, it is an implementation decision which Traffic Filtering
Actions are selected. See also Section 7.7.
Interferes with: No other BGP Flow Specification Traffic Filtering
Action in this document.
7.4. RT Redirect (rt-redirect) Sub-Type 0x08
The redirect Extended Community allows the traffic to be redirected
to a VRF routing instance that lists the specified route-target in
its import policy. If several local instances match this criteria,
the choice between them is a local matter (for example, the instance
with the lowest Route Distinguisher value can be elected).
This Extended Community allows 3 different encodings formats for the
route-target (type 0x80, 0x81, 0x82). It uses the same encoding as
the Route Target Extended Community in Sections 3.1 (type 0x80:
2-octet AS, 4-octet value), 3.2 (type 0x81: 4-octet IPv4 address,
2-octet value), and 4 of [RFC4360] and Section 2 of [RFC5668] (type
0x82: 4-octet AS, 2-octet value) with the high-order octet of the
Type field 0x80, 0x81, 0x82 respectively and the low-order octet of
the Type field (Sub-Type) always 0x08.
Interferes with: No other BGP Flow Specification Traffic Filtering
Action in this document.
7.5. Traffic Marking (traffic-marking) Sub-Type 0x09
The traffic marking Extended Community instructs a system to modify
the DSCP bits in the IP header (Section 3 of [RFC2474]) of a
transiting IP packet to the corresponding value encoded in the 6
least significant bits of the Extended Community value, as shown in
Figure 6.
The Extended Community is encoded as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| reserved | r.| DSCP |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 6: Traffic Marking Extended Community Encoding
DSCP: new DSCP value for the transiting IP packet
reserved (r): MUST be set to 0 on encoding and MUST be ignored
during decoding
Interferes with: No other BGP Flow Specification Traffic Filtering
Action in this document.
7.6. Interaction with Other Filtering Mechanisms in Routers
Implementations should provide mechanisms that map an arbitrary BGP
community value (normal or extended) to Traffic Filtering Actions
that require different mappings on different systems in the network.
For instance, providing packets with a worse-than-best-effort per-hop
behavior is a functionality that is likely to be implemented
differently in different systems and for which no standard behavior
is currently known. Rather than attempting to define it here, this
can be accomplished by mapping a user-defined community value to
platform-/network-specific behavior via user configuration.
7.7. Considerations on Traffic Filtering Action Interference
Since Traffic Filtering Actions are represented as BGP extended
community values, Traffic Filtering Actions may interfere with each
other (e.g., there may be more than one conflicting traffic-rate-
bytes Traffic Filtering Action associated with a single Flow
Specification). Traffic Filtering Action interference has no impact
on BGP propagation of Flow Specifications (all communities are
propagated according to policies).
If a Flow Specification associated with interfering Traffic Filtering
Actions is selected for packet forwarding, it is an implementation
decision which of the interfering Traffic Filtering Actions are
selected. Implementors of this specification SHOULD document the
behavior of their implementation in such cases.
Operators are encouraged to make use of the BGP policy framework
supported by their implementation in order to achieve a predictable
behavior. See also Section 12.
8. Dissemination of Traffic Filtering in BGP/MPLS VPN Networks
Provider-based Layer 3 VPN networks, such as the ones using a BGP/
MPLS IP VPN [RFC4364] control plane, may have different traffic
filtering requirements than Internet service providers. But also
Internet service providers may use those VPNs for scenarios like
having the Internet routing table in a VRF, resulting in the same
traffic filtering requirements as defined for the global routing
table environment within this document. This document defines an
additional BGP NLRI type (AFI=1, SAFI=134) value, which can be used
to propagate Flow Specification in a BGP/MPLS VPN environment.
The NLRI format for this address family consists of a fixed-length
Route Distinguisher field (8 octets) followed by the Flow
Specification NLRI value (Section 4.2). The NLRI length field shall
include both the 8 octets of the Route Distinguisher as well as the
subsequent Flow Specification NLRI value. The resulting encoding is
shown in Figure 7.
+--------------------------------+
| length (0xnn or 0xfnnn) |
+--------------------------------+
| Route Distinguisher (8 octets) |
+--------------------------------+
| NLRI value (variable) |
+--------------------------------+
Figure 7: Flow Specification NLRI for MPLS
Propagation of this NLRI is controlled by matching Route Target
extended communities associated with the BGP path advertisement with
the VRF import policy, using the same mechanism as described in BGP/
MPLS IP VPNs [RFC4364].
Flow Specifications received via this NLRI apply only to traffic that
belongs to the VRF(s) in which it is imported. By default, traffic
received from a remote PE is switched via an MPLS forwarding decision
and is not subject to filtering.
Contrary to the behavior specified for the non-VPN NLRI, Flow
Specifications are accepted by default, when received from remote PE
routers.
The validation procedure (Section 6) and Traffic Filtering Actions
(Section 7) are the same as for IPv4.
9. Traffic Monitoring
Traffic filtering applications require monitoring and traffic
statistics facilities. While this is an implementation specific
choice, implementations SHOULD provide:
* A mechanism to log the packet header of filtered traffic.
* A mechanism to count the number of matches for a given Flow
Specification rule.
10. Error Handling
Error handling according to [RFC7606] and [RFC4760] applies to this
specification.
This document introduces Traffic Filtering Action Extended
Communities. Malformed Traffic Filtering Action Extended Communities
in the sense of Section 7.14 of [RFC7606] are Extended Community
values that cannot be decoded according to Section 7 of this
document.
11. IANA Considerations
This section complies with [RFC7153].
11.1. AFI/SAFI Definitions
IANA maintains a registry entitled "SAFI Values". For the purpose of
this work, IANA has updated the following SAFIs as shown in the table
below. (Note: This document obsoletes both [RFC7674] and [RFC5575],
and all references to those documents have been deleted from the
registry.)
+=======+===========================================+===========+
| Value | Name | Reference |
+=======+===========================================+===========+
| 133 | Dissemination of Flow Specification rules | RFC 8955 |
+-------+-------------------------------------------+-----------+
| 134 | L3VPN Dissemination of Flow Specification | RFC 8955 |
| | rules | |
+-------+-------------------------------------------+-----------+
Table 9: Registry: SAFI Values
The above textual changes generalize the definition of the SAFIs
rather than change its underlying meaning. Therefore, based on "The
YANG 1.1 Data Modeling Language" [RFC7950], the above text means that
the following YANG enums from "Common YANG Data Types for the Routing
Area" [RFC8294] have had their names and descriptions at
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-routing-types> changed to:
<CODE BEGINS>
enum flow-spec-safi {
value 133;
description
"Dissemination of Flow Specification rules SAFI.";
}
enum l3vpn-flow-spec-safi {
value 134;
description
"L3VPN Dissemination of Flow Specification rules SAFI.";
}
<CODE ENDS>
A new revision statement has been added to the module as follows:
<CODE BEGINS>
revision 2020-12-31 {
description "Non-backwards-compatible change of SAFI names
(SAFI values 133, 134).";
reference
"RFC 8955: Dissemination of Flow Specification Rules.";
}
<CODE ENDS>
11.2. Flow Component Definitions
A Flow Specification consists of a sequence of flow components, which
are identified by an 8-bit component type. IANA has created and
maintains a registry entitled "Flow Spec Component Types". IANA has
updated the reference for this registry to RFC 8955. Furthermore,
the references to the values have been updated according to the table
below (Note: This document obsoletes both [RFC7674] and [RFC5575],
and all references to those documents have been deleted from the
registry.)
+=======+====================+===========+
| Value | Name | Reference |
+=======+====================+===========+
| 1 | Destination Prefix | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 2 | Source Prefix | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 3 | IP Protocol | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 4 | Port | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 5 | Destination port | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 6 | Source port | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 7 | ICMP type | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 8 | ICMP code | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 9 | TCP flags | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 10 | Packet length | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 11 | DSCP | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
| 12 | Fragment | RFC 8955 |
+-------+--------------------+-----------+
Table 10: Registry: Flow Spec
Component Types
In order to manage the limited number space and accommodate several
usages, the following policies defined by [RFC8126] are used:
+==============+========================+
| Type Values | Policy |
+==============+========================+
| 0 | Reserved |
+--------------+------------------------+
| [1 .. 127] | Specification Required |
+--------------+------------------------+
| [128 .. 254] | Expert Review |
+--------------+------------------------+
| 255 | Reserved |
+--------------+------------------------+
Table 11: Flow Spec Component Types
Policies
Guidance for Experts:
The registration policy for the range 128-254 is Expert Review.
The experts are expected to check the clarity of purpose and use
of the requested code points. The experts must also verify that
any specification produced in the IETF that requests one of these
code points has been made available for review by the IDR Working
Group and that any specification produced outside the IETF does
not conflict with work that is active or already published within
the IETF. It must be pointed out that introducing new component
types may break interoperability with existing implementations of
this protocol.
11.3. Extended Community Flow Specification Actions
The Extended Community Flow Specification Action types defined in
this document consist of two parts:
* Type (BGP Transitive Extended Community Type)
* Sub-Type
For the type part, IANA maintains a registry entitled "BGP Transitive
Extended Community Types". For the purpose of this work (Section 7),
IANA has updated the references as shown in the table below. (Note:
This document obsoletes both [RFC7674] and [RFC5575], and all
references to those documents have been deleted in the registry.)
+=======+=======================================+===========+
| Type | Name | Reference |
| Value | | |
+=======+=======================================+===========+
| 0x81 | Generic Transitive Experimental Use | RFC 8955 |
| | Extended Community Part 2 (Sub-Types | |
| | are defined in the "Generic | |
| | Transitive Experimental Use Extended | |
| | Community Part 2 Sub-Types" Registry) | |
+-------+---------------------------------------+-----------+
| 0x82 | Generic Transitive Experimental Use | RFC 8955 |
| | Extended Community Part 3 (Sub-Types | |
| | are defined in the "Generic | |
| | Transitive Experimental Use Extended | |
| | Community Part 3 Sub-Types" Registry) | |
+-------+---------------------------------------+-----------+
Table 12: Registry: BGP Transitive Extended Community Types
For the sub-type part of the Extended Community Traffic Filtering
Actions, IANA maintains the following registries. IANA has updated
all names and references according to the tables below and assign a
new value for the "Flow spec traffic-rate-packets" Sub-Type. (Note:
This document obsoletes both [RFC7674] and [RFC5575], and all
references to those documents have been deleted from the registries
below.)
+==========+=====================================+===========+
| Sub-Type | Name | Reference |
| Value | | |
+==========+=====================================+===========+
| 0x06 | Flow spec traffic-rate-bytes | RFC 8955 |
+----------+-------------------------------------+-----------+
| 0x0c | Flow spec traffic-rate-packets | RFC 8955 |
+----------+-------------------------------------+-----------+
| 0x07 | Flow spec traffic-action (Use of | RFC 8955 |
| | the "Value" field is defined in the | |
| | "Traffic Action Fields" registry) | |
+----------+-------------------------------------+-----------+
| 0x08 | Flow spec rt-redirect AS-2octet | RFC 8955 |
| | format | |
+----------+-------------------------------------+-----------+
| 0x09 | Flow spec traffic-remarking | RFC 8955 |
+----------+-------------------------------------+-----------+
Table 13: Registry: Generic Transitive Experimental Use
Extended Community Sub- Types
+================+===================================+===========+
| Sub-Type Value | Name | Reference |
+================+===================================+===========+
| 0x08 | Flow spec rt-redirect IPv4 format | RFC 8955 |
+----------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+
Table 14: Registry: Generic Transitive Experimental Use
Extended Community Part 2 Sub-Types
+================+=======================+===========+
| Sub-Type Value | Name | Reference |
+================+=======================+===========+
| 0x08 | Flow spec rt-redirect | RFC 8955 |
| | AS-4octet format | |
+----------------+-----------------------+-----------+
Table 15: Registry: Generic Transitive
Experimental Use Extended Community Part 3 Sub-
Types
Furthermore, IANA has updated the reference for the registries
"Generic Transitive Experimental Use Extended Community Part 2 Sub-
Types" and "Generic Transitive Experimental Use Extended Community
Part 3 Sub-Types" to RFC 8955.
The "traffic-action" Extended Community (Section 7.3) defined in this
document has 46 unused bits, which can be used to convey additional
meaning. IANA created and maintains a registry entitled "Traffic
Action Fields". IANA has updated the reference for this registry to
RFC 8955. Furthermore, IANA has updated the references according to
the table below. These values should be assigned via IETF Review
rules only. (Note: This document obsoletes both [RFC7674] and
[RFC5575], and all references to those documents have been deleted
from the registry.)
+=====+=================+===========+
| Bit | Name | Reference |
+=====+=================+===========+
| 47 | Terminal Action | RFC 8955 |
+-----+-----------------+-----------+
| 46 | Sample | RFC 8955 |
+-----+-----------------+-----------+
Table 16: Registry: Traffic
Action Fields
12. Security Considerations
As long as Flow Specifications are restricted to match the
corresponding unicast routing paths for the relevant prefixes
(Section 6), the security characteristics of this proposal are
equivalent to the existing security properties of BGP unicast
routing. Any relaxation of the validation procedure described in
Section 6 may allow unwanted Flow Specifications to be propagated,
and thus unwanted Traffic Filtering Actions may be applied to flows.
Where the above mechanisms are not in place, this could open the door
to further denial-of-service attacks, such as unwanted traffic
filtering, remarking, or redirection.
Deployment of specific relaxations of the validation within an
administrative boundary of a network are useful in some networks for
quickly distributing filters to prevent denial-of-service attacks.
For a network to utilize this relaxation, the BGP policies must
support additional filtering since the origin AS field is empty.
Specifications relaxing the validation restrictions MUST contain
security considerations that provide details on the required
additional filtering. For example, the use of origin validation can
provide enhanced filtering within an AS confederation.
Inter-provider routing is based on a web of trust. Neighboring
autonomous systems are trusted to advertise valid reachability
information. If this trust model is violated, a neighboring
autonomous system may cause a denial-of-service attack by advertising
reachability information for a given prefix for which it does not
provide service (unfiltered address space hijack). Since validation
of the Flow Specification is tied to the announcement of the best
unicast route, the failure in the validation of best path route may
prevent the Flow Specification from being used by a local router.
Possible mitigations are [RFC6811] and [RFC8205].
On Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), routes are often exchanged via
route servers that do not extend the AS_PATH. In such cases, it is
not possible to enforce the left-most AS in the AS_PATH to be the
neighbor AS (the AS of the route server). Since the validation of
Flow Specification (Section 6) depends on this, additional care must
be taken. It is advised to use a strict inbound route policy in such
scenarios.
Enabling firewall-like capabilities in routers without centralized
management could make certain failures harder to diagnose. For
example, it is possible to allow TCP packets to pass between a pair
of addresses but not ICMP packets. It is also possible to permit
packets smaller than 900 or greater than 1000 octets to pass between
a pair of addresses but not packets whose length is in the range
900-1000. Such behavior may be confusing, and these capabilities
should be used with care whether manually configured or coordinated
through the protocol extensions described in this document.
Flow Specification BGP speakers (e.g., automated DDoS controllers)
not properly programmed, algorithms that are not performing as
expected, or simply rogue systems may announce unintended Flow
Specifications, send updates at a high rate, or generate a high
number of Flow Specifications. This may stress the receiving
systems, exceed their capacity, or lead to unwanted Traffic Filtering
Actions being applied to flows.
Systems may not be able to locate all header values required to
identify a packet. This can be especially problematic in the case of
fragmented packets that are not the first fragment and thus lack
upper-layer protocol headers or Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
NULL [RFC4303] encryption.
While the general verification of the Flow Specification NLRI is
specified in this document (Section 6), the Traffic Filtering Actions
received by a third party may need custom verification or filtering.
In particular, all non-traffic-rate actions may allow a third party
to modify packet forwarding properties and potentially gain access to
other routing-tables/VPNs or undesired queues. This can be avoided
by proper filtering/screening of the Traffic Filtering Action
communities at network borders and only exposing a predefined subset
of Traffic Filtering Actions (see Section 7) to third parties. One
way to achieve this is by mapping user-defined communities, which can
be set by the third party, to Traffic Filtering Actions and not
accepting Traffic Filtering Action extended communities from third
parties.
This extension adds additional information to Internet routers.
These are limited in terms of the maximum number of data elements
they can hold as well as the number of events they are able to
process in a given unit of time. Service providers need to consider
the maximum capacity of their devices and may need to limit the
number of Flow Specifications accepted and processed.
13. References
13.1. Normative References
[IEEE.754.1985]
IEEE, "Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic",
IEEE 754-1985, DOI 10.1109/IEEESTD.2019.8766229, August
1985, <https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEESTD.2019.8766229>.
[ISO_IEC_9899]
ISO, "Information technology -- Programming languages --
C", ISO/IEC 9899:2018, June 2018.
[RFC0768] Postel, J., "User Datagram Protocol", STD 6, RFC 768,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0768, August 1980,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc768>.
[RFC0791] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0791, September 1981,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc791>.
[RFC0792] Postel, J., "Internet Control Message Protocol", STD 5,
RFC 792, DOI 10.17487/RFC0792, September 1981,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc792>.
[RFC0793] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc793>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC2474] Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black,
"Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2474, December 1998,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2474>.
[RFC4271] Rekhter, Y., Ed., Li, T., Ed., and S. Hares, Ed., "A
Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4271, January 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4271>.
[RFC4360] Sangli, S., Tappan, D., and Y. Rekhter, "BGP Extended
Communities Attribute", RFC 4360, DOI 10.17487/RFC4360,
February 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4360>.
[RFC4364] Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private
Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4364, DOI 10.17487/RFC4364, February
2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4364>.
[RFC4456] Bates, T., Chen, E., and R. Chandra, "BGP Route
Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
(IBGP)", RFC 4456, DOI 10.17487/RFC4456, April 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4456>.
[RFC4760] Bates, T., Chandra, R., Katz, D., and Y. Rekhter,
"Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4", RFC 4760,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4760, January 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4760>.
[RFC5668] Rekhter, Y., Sangli, S., and D. Tappan, "4-Octet AS
Specific BGP Extended Community", RFC 5668,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5668, October 2009,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5668>.
[RFC7153] Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "IANA Registries for BGP
Extended Communities", RFC 7153, DOI 10.17487/RFC7153,
March 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7153>.
[RFC7606] Chen, E., Ed., Scudder, J., Ed., Mohapatra, P., and K.
Patel, "Revised Error Handling for BGP UPDATE Messages",
RFC 7606, DOI 10.17487/RFC7606, August 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7606>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
13.2. Informative References
[RFC4303] Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
RFC 4303, DOI 10.17487/RFC4303, December 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4303>.
[RFC5575] Marques, P., Sheth, N., Raszuk, R., Greene, B., Mauch, J.,
and D. McPherson, "Dissemination of Flow Specification
Rules", RFC 5575, DOI 10.17487/RFC5575, August 2009,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5575>.
[RFC6811] Mohapatra, P., Scudder, J., Ward, D., Bush, R., and R.
Austein, "BGP Prefix Origin Validation", RFC 6811,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6811, January 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6811>.
[RFC7674] Haas, J., Ed., "Clarification of the Flowspec Redirect
Extended Community", RFC 7674, DOI 10.17487/RFC7674,
October 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7674>.
[RFC7950] Bjorklund, M., Ed., "The YANG 1.1 Data Modeling Language",
RFC 7950, DOI 10.17487/RFC7950, August 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7950>.
[RFC8205] Lepinski, M., Ed. and K. Sriram, Ed., "BGPsec Protocol
Specification", RFC 8205, DOI 10.17487/RFC8205, September
2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8205>.
[RFC8294] Liu, X., Qu, Y., Lindem, A., Hopps, C., and L. Berger,
"Common YANG Data Types for the Routing Area", RFC 8294,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8294, December 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8294>.
[RFC8956] Loibl, C., Ed., Raszuk, R., Ed., and S. Hares, Ed.,
"Dissemination of Flow Specification Rules for IPv6",
RFC 8956, DOI 10.17487/RFC8956, December 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8956>.
Appendix A. Example Python code: flow_rule_cmp
<CODE BEGINS>
"""
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as
authors of the code. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, is permitted pursuant to, and subject to the license
terms contained in, the Simplified BSD License set forth in Section
4.c of the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).
"""
import itertools
import collections
import ipaddress
EQUAL = 0
A_HAS_PRECEDENCE = 1
B_HAS_PRECEDENCE = 2
IP_DESTINATION = 1
IP_SOURCE = 2
FS_component = collections.namedtuple('FS_component',
'component_type op_value')
class FS_nlri(object):
"""
FS_nlri class implementation that allows sorting.
By calling .sort() on an array of FS_nlri objects these will be
sorted according to the flow_rule_cmp algorithm.
Example:
nlri = [ FS_nlri(components=[
FS_component(component_type=IP_DESTINATION,
op_value=ipaddress.ip_network('10.1.0.0/16') ),
FS_component(component_type=4,
op_value=bytearray([0,1,2,3,4,5,6])),
]),
FS_nlri(components=[
FS_component(component_type=5,
op_value=bytearray([0,1,2,3,4,5,6])),
FS_component(component_type=6,
op_value=bytearray([0,1,2,3,4,5,6])),
]),
]
nlri.sort() # sorts the array according to the algorithm
"""
def __init__(self, components = None):
"""
components: list of type FS_component
"""
self.components = components
def __lt__(self, other):
# use the below algorithm for sorting
result = flow_rule_cmp(self, other)
if result == B_HAS_PRECEDENCE:
return True
else:
return False
def flow_rule_cmp(a, b):
"""
Example of the flowspec comparison algorithm.
"""
for comp_a, comp_b in itertools.zip_longest(a.components,
b.components):
# If a component type does not exist in one rule
# this rule has lower precedence
if not comp_a:
return B_HAS_PRECEDENCE
if not comp_b:
return A_HAS_PRECEDENCE
# Higher precedence for lower component type
if comp_a.component_type < comp_b.component_type:
return A_HAS_PRECEDENCE
if comp_a.component_type > comp_b.component_type:
return B_HAS_PRECEDENCE
# component types are equal -> type specific comparison
if comp_a.component_type in (IP_DESTINATION, IP_SOURCE):
# assuming comp_a.op_value, comp_b.op_value of
# type ipaddress.IPv4Network
if comp_a.op_value.overlaps(comp_b.op_value):
# longest prefixlen has precedence
if comp_a.op_value.prefixlen > \
comp_b.op_value.prefixlen:
return A_HAS_PRECEDENCE
if comp_a.op_value.prefixlen < \
comp_b.op_value.prefixlen:
return B_HAS_PRECEDENCE
# components equal -> continue with next component
elif comp_a.op_value > comp_b.op_value:
return B_HAS_PRECEDENCE
elif comp_a.op_value < comp_b.op_value:
return A_HAS_PRECEDENCE
else:
# assuming comp_a.op_value, comp_b.op_value of type
# bytearray
if len(comp_a.op_value) == len(comp_b.op_value):
if comp_a.op_value > comp_b.op_value:
return B_HAS_PRECEDENCE
if comp_a.op_value < comp_b.op_value:
return A_HAS_PRECEDENCE
# components equal -> continue with next component
else:
common = min(len(comp_a.op_value),
len(comp_b.op_value))
if comp_a.op_value[:common] > \
comp_b.op_value[:common]:
return B_HAS_PRECEDENCE
elif comp_a.op_value[:common] < \
comp_b.op_value[:common]:
return A_HAS_PRECEDENCE
# the first common bytes match
elif len(comp_a.op_value) > len(comp_b.op_value):
return A_HAS_PRECEDENCE
else:
return B_HAS_PRECEDENCE
return EQUAL
<CODE ENDS>
Appendix B. Comparison with RFC 5575
This document includes numerous editorial changes to [RFC5575]. It
also completely incorporates the redirect action clarification
document [RFC7674]. It is recommended to read the entire document.
The authors, however, want to point out the following technical
changes to [RFC5575]:
* Section 1 introduces the Flow Specification NLRI. In [RFC5575],
BGP treats this NLRI as an opaque key to an entry in its
databases. This specification has removed all references to an
opaque key property. BGP implementations are able to understand
the NLRI encoding.
* Section 4.2.1.1 defines a numeric operator and comparison bit
combinations. In [RFC5575], the meaning of those bit combination
was not explicitly defined and left open to the reader.
* Sections 4.2.2.3 - 4.2.2.8, 4.2.2.10, and 4.2.2.11 make use of the
above numeric operator. The allowed length of the comparison
value was not consistently defined in [RFC5575].
* Section 7 defines all Traffic Filtering Action Extended
Communities as transitive Extended Communities. [RFC5575] defined
the traffic-rate action to be non-transitive and did not define
the transitivity of the other Traffic Filtering Action communities
at all.
* Section 7.2 introduces a new Traffic Filtering Action (traffic-
rate-packets). This action did not exist in [RFC5575].
* Section 7.4 contains the same redirect actions already defined in
[RFC5575], however, these actions have been renamed to "rt-
redirect" to make it clearer that the redirection is based on
route-target. This section also completely incorporates the
[RFC7674] clarifications of the Flowspec Redirect Extended
Community.
* Section 7.7 contains general considerations on interfering traffic
actions. Section 7.3 also cross-references Section 7.7.
[RFC5575] did not mention this.
* Section 10 contains new error handling.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Yakov Rekhter, Dennis Ferguson, Chris
Morrow, Charlie Kaufman, and David Smith for their comments on the
original [RFC5575]. Chaitanya Kodeboyina helped design the flow
validation procedure, and Steven Lin and Jim Washburn ironed out all
the details necessary to produce a working implementation in the
original [RFC5575].
A packet rate Traffic Filtering Action was also described in a Flow
Specification extension draft and the authors would like to thank
Wesley Eddy, Justin Dailey, and Gilbert Clark for their work.
Additionally, the authors would like to thank Alexander Mayrhofer,
Nicolas Fevrier, Job Snijders, Jeffrey Haas, and Adam Chappell for
their comments and review.
Contributors
Barry Greene, Pedro Marques, Jared Mauch, and Nischal Sheth were
authors on [RFC5575] and, therefore, are contributing authors on this
document.
Authors' Addresses
Christoph Loibl
next layer Telekom GmbH
Mariahilfer Guertel 37/7
1150 Vienna
Austria
Phone: +43 664 1176414
Email: cl@tix.at
Susan Hares
Huawei
7453 Hickory Hill
Saline, MI 48176
United States of America
Email: shares@ndzh.com
Robert Raszuk
NTT Network Innovations
940 Stewart Dr
Sunnyvale, CA 94085
United States of America
Email: robert@raszuk.net
Danny McPherson
Verisign
United States of America
Email: dmcpherson@verisign.com
Martin Bacher
T-Mobile Austria
Rennweg 97-99
1030 Vienna
Austria