| Network Working Group | J. Scudder, Ed. |
| Internet-Draft | Juniper Networks |
| Intended status: Standards Track | R. Fernando |
| Expires: January 21, 2016 | Cisco Systems |
| S. Stuart | |
| July 20, 2015 |
BGP Monitoring Protocol
draft-ietf-grow-bmp-11
This document defines a protocol, BMP, that can be used to monitor BGP sessions. BMP is intended to provide a more convenient interface for obtaining route views for research purpose than the screen-scraping approach in common use today. The design goals are to keep BMP simple, useful, easily implemented, and minimally service-affecting. BMP is not suitable for use as a routing protocol.
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 21, 2016.
Copyright (c) 2015 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 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions published or made publicly available before November 10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process. Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other than English.
Many researchers wish to have access to the contents of routers' BGP RIBs as well as a view of protocol updates the router is receiving. This monitoring task cannot be realized by standard protocol mechanisms. Prior to introduction of BMP, this data could only be obtained through screen-scraping.
The BMP protocol provides access to the Adj-RIB-In of a peer on an ongoing basis and a periodic dump of certain statistics the monitoring station can use for further analysis. From a high level, BMP can be thought of as the result of multiplexing together the messages received on the various monitored BGP sessions.
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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
The following are the messages provided by BMP.
BMP operates over TCP. All options are controlled by configuration on the monitored router. No message is ever sent from the monitoring station to the monitored router. The monitored router MAY take steps to prevent the monitoring station from sending data (for example by half-closing the TCP session or setting its window size to zero) or it MAY silently discard any data sent by the monitoring station.
The router may be monitored by one or more monitoring stations. With respect to each (router, monitoring station) pair, one party is active with respect to TCP session establishment, and the other party is passive. Which party is active and which is passive is controlled by configuration.
The passive party is configured to listen on a particular TCP port and the active party is configured to establish a connection to that port. If the active party is unable to connect to the passive party, it periodically retries the connection. Retries MUST be subject to some variety of backoff. Exponential backoff with a default initial backoff of 30 seconds and a maximum of 720 seconds is suggested.
The router MAY restrict the set of IP addresses from which it will accept connections. It SHOULD restrict the number of simultaneous connections it will permit from a given IP address. The default value for this restriction SHOULD be 1, though an implementation MAY permit this restriction to be disabled in configuration. The router MUST also restrict the rate at which sessions may be established. A suggested default is an establishment rate of 2 sessions per minute.
A router (or management station) MAY implement logic to detect redundant connections, as might occur if both parties are configured to be active, and MAY elect to terminate redundant connections. A Termination reason code is defined for this purpose.
Once a connection is established, the router sends messages over it. There is no initialization or handshaking phase, messages are simply sent as soon as the connection is established.
If the monitoring station intends to end or restart BMP processing, it simply drops the connection, optionally with a Termination message.
A router is configured to speak BMP to one or more monitoring stations. It MAY be configured to send monitoring information for only a subset of its BGP peers. Otherwise, all BGP peers are assumed to be monitored.
A BMP session begins when the active party (either router or management station, as determined by configuration) successfully opens a TCP session (the "BMP session"). Once the session is up, the router begins to send BMP messages. It MUST begin by sending an Initiation message. It subsequently sends a Peer Up message over the BMP session for each of its monitored BGP peers that is in Established state. It follows by sending the contents of its Adj-RIBs-In (pre-policy, post-policy or both, see Section 5) encapsulated in Route Monitoring messages. Once it has sent all the routes for a given peer, it MUST send a End-of-RIB message for that peer; when End-of-RIB has been sent for each monitored peer, the initial table dump has completed. (A monitoring station that wishes only to gather a table dump could close the connection once it has gathered an End-of-RIB or Peer Down message corresponding to each Peer Up message.)
Following the initial table dump, the router sends incremental updates encapsulated in Route Monitoring messages. It MAY periodically send Stats Reports or even new Initiation messages, according to configuration. If any new monitored BGP peer becomes Established, a corresponding Peer Up message is sent. If any BGP peers for which Peer Up messages were sent transition out of the Established state, corresponding Peer Down messages are sent.
A BMP session ends when the TCP session that carries it is closed for any reason. The router MAY send a Termination message prior to closing the session.
The following common header appears in all BMP messages. The rest of the data in a BMP message is dependent on the "Message Type" field in the common header.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Version | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Message Length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Msg. Type | +---------------+
The per-peer header follows the common header for most BMP messages. The rest of the data in a BMP message is dependent on the "Message Type" field in the common header.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Peer Type | Peer Flags |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Peer Distinguisher (present based on peer type) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Peer Address (16 bytes) |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Peer AS |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Peer BGP ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp (seconds) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp (microseconds) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|V|L|A| Reserved|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
The initiation message provides a means for the monitored router to inform the monitoring station of its vendor, software version, and so on. An initiation message MUST be sent as the first message after the TCP session comes up. An initiation message MAY be sent at any point thereafter, if warranted by a change on the monitored router.
The initiation message consists of the common BMP header followed by two or more Information TLVs [info_tlv] containing information about the monitored router. The sysDescr and sysName Information TLVs MUST be sent, any others are optional. The string TLV MAY be included multiple times.
The Information TLV is used by the Initiation [initiation] and Peer Up [peer_up_notification] messages.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Information Type | Information Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Information (variable) |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
The termination message provides a way for a monitored router to indicate why it is terminating a session. Although use of this message is RECOMMENDED, a monitoring station must always be prepared for the session to terminate with no message. Once the router has sent a termination message, it MUST close the TCP session without sending any further messages. Likewise, the monitoring station MUST close the TCP session after receiving a termination message.
The termination message consists of the common BMP header followed by one or more TLVs containing information about the reason for the termination, as follows:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Information Type | Information Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Information (variable) |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Route Monitoring messages are used for initial synchronization of ADJ-RIBs-In. They are also used for ongoing monitoring of ADJ-RIB-In state. Route monitoring messages are state-compressed. This is all discussed in more detail in Section 5.
Following the common BMP header and per-peer header is a BGP Update PDU.
Route Mirroring messages are used for verbatim duplication of messages as received. A possible use for mirroring is exact mirroring of one or more monitored BGP sessions, without state compression. Another possible use is mirroring of messages that have been treated-as-withdraw [I-D.ietf-idr-error-handling], for debugging purposes. Mirrored messages may be sampled, or may be lossless. The Messages Lost Information code is provided to allow losses to be indicated. Section 6 provides more detail.
Following the common BMP header and per-peer header is a set of TLVs that contain information about a message or set of messages. Each TLV comprises a two-byte type code, a two-byte length field, and a variable-length value. Inclusion of any given TLV is OPTIONAL, however at least one TLV SHOULD be included, otherwise what's the point of sending the message? Defined TLVs are as follows:
These messages contain information that could be used by the monitoring station to observe interesting events that occur on the router.
Transmission of SR messages could be timer triggered or event driven (for example, when a significant event occurs or a threshold is reached). This specification does not impose any timing restrictions on when and on what event these reports have to be transmitted. It is left to the implementation to determine transmission timings -- however, configuration control should be provided of the timer and/or threshold values. This document only specifies the form and content of SR messages.
Following the common BMP header and per-peer header is a 4-byte field that indicates the number of counters in the stats message where each counter is encoded as a TLV.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Stats Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Each counter is encoded as follows,
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Stat Type | Stat Len |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Stat Data |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
This specification defines the following statistics. A BMP implementation MUST ignore unrecognized stat types on receipt, and likewise MUST ignore unexpected data in the Stat Data field.
Stats are either counters or gauges, defined as follows after the examples of [RFC1155] Section 3.2.3.3 and [RFC2856] Section 4 respectively:
32-bit Counter: A non-negative integer which monotonically increases until it reaches a maximum value, when it wraps around and starts increasing again from zero. It has a maximum value of 2^32-1 (4294967295 decimal).
64-bit Gauge: non-negative integer, which may increase or decrease, but shall never exceed a maximum value, nor fall below a minimum value. The maximum value can not be greater than 2^64-1 (18446744073709551615 decimal), and the minimum value can not be smaller than 0. The value has its maximum value whenever the information being modeled is greater than or equal to its maximum value, and has its minimum value whenever the information being modeled is smaller than or equal to its minimum value. If the information being modeled subsequently decreases below (increases above) the maximum (minimum) value, the 64-bit Gauge also decreases (increases).
Although the current specification only specifies 4-byte counters and 8-byte gauges as "Stat Data", this does not preclude future versions from incorporating more complex TLV-type "Stat Data" (for example, one that can carry prefix specific data). SR messages are optional. However if an SR message is transmitted, at least one statistic MUST be carried in it.
This message is used to indicate a peering session was terminated.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Reason | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Data (present if Reason = 1, 2 or 3) |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Reason indicates why the session was closed. Defined values are:
A Peer Down message implicitly withdraws all routes that had been associated with the peer in question. A BMP implementation MAY omit sending explicit withdraws for such routes.
The Peer Up message is used to indicate a peering session has come up (i.e., has transitioned into ESTABLISHED state). Following the common BMP header and per-peer header is the following:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Local Address (16 bytes) |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Local Port | Remote Port |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Sent OPEN Message |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Received OPEN Message |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Information (variable) |
~ ~
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
In BMP's normal operating mode, after the BMP session is up, Route Monitoring messages are used to provide a snapshot of the Adj-RIB-In of each monitored peer. This is done by sending all routes stored in the Adj-RIB-In of those peers using standard BGP Update messages, encapsulated in Route Monitoring messages. There is no requirement on the ordering of messages in the peer dumps. When the initial dump is completed for a given peer, this MUST be indicated by sending an End-of-RIB marker for that peer (as specified in Section 2 of [RFC4724], plus the BMP encapsulation header). See also Section 9.
A BMP speaker may send pre-policy routes, post-policy routes, or both. The selection may be due to implementation constraints (it is possible a BGP implementation may not store, for example, routes that have been filtered out by policy). Pre-policy routes MUST have their L flag clear in the BMP header (see Section 4), post-policy routes MUST have their L flag set. When an implementation chooses to send both pre- and post-policy routes, it is effectively multiplexing two update streams onto the BMP session. The streams are distinguished by their L flags.
If the implementation is able to provide information about when routes were received, it MAY provide such information in the BMP timestamp field. Otherwise, the BMP timestamp field MUST be set to zero, indicating time is not available.
Ongoing monitoring is accomplished by propagating route changes in BGP Update PDUs and forwarding those PDUs to the monitoring station, again using RM messages. When a change occurs to a route, such as an attribute change, the router must update the monitoring station with the new attribute. As discussed above, it MAY generate either an update with the L flag clear, with it set, or two updates, one with the L flag clear and the other with the L flag set. When a route is withdrawn by a peer, a corresponding withdraw is sent to the monitoring station. The withdraw MUST have its L flag set to correspond to that of any previous announcement; if the route in question was previously announced with L flag both clear and set, the withdraw MUST similarly be sent twice, with L flag clear and set. Multiple changed routes MAY be grouped into a single BGP UPDATE PDU when feasible, exactly as in the standard BGP protocol.
It's important to note RM messages are not replicated messages received from a peer. (Route mirroring [route_mirroring] is provided if this is required.) While the router should attempt to generate updates promptly there is a finite time that could elapse between reception of an update, the generation an RM message, and its transmission to the monitoring station. If there are state changes in the interim for that prefix, it is acceptable that the router generate the final state of that prefix to the monitoring station. This is sometimes known as "state compression". The actual PDU generated and transmitted to the station might also differ from the exact PDU received from the peer, for example due to differences between how different implementations format path attributes.
Route Mirroring messages are provided for two primary reasons: First, to enable an implementation to operate in a mode where it provides a full-fidelity view of all messages received from its peers, without state compression. As we note in Section 5, BMP's normal operational mode cannot provide this. Implementors are strongly cautioned that without state compression, an implementation could require unbounded storage to buffer messages queued to be mirrored. Route Mirroring is unlikely to be suitable for implementation in conventional routers, and its use is NOT RECOMMENDED except in cases where implementors have carefully considered the tradeoffs. These tradeoffs include: router resource exhaustion, the potential to flow-block BGP peers, and the slowing of routing convergence.
The second application for Route Mirroring is for error reporting and diagnosis. When [I-D.ietf-idr-error-handling] is in use, a router can process BGP messages that are determined to contain errors, without resetting the BGP session. Such messages MAY be mirrored. The buffering used for such mirroring SHOULD be limited. If an errored message is unable to be mirrored due to buffer exhaustion, a message with the "Messages Lost" code SHOULD be sent to indicate this. (This implies a buffer should be reserved for this use.)
As outlined above, SR messages are used to monitor specific events and counters on the monitored router. One type of monitoring could be to find out if there are an undue number of route advertisements and withdraws happening (churn) on the monitored router. Another metric is to evaluate the number of looped AS-Paths on the router.
While this document proposes a small set of counters to begin with, the authors envision this list may grow in the future with new applications that require BMP-style monitoring.
Some routers may support multiple instances of the BGP protocol, for example as "logical routers" or through some other facility. The BMP protocol relates to a single instance of BGP; thus, if a router supports multiple BGP instances it should also support multiple BMP instances (one per BGP instance).
Some consideration is required for routes originated into BGP by the local router, whether as a result of redistribution from a another protocol or for some other reason.
Such routes can be modeled as having been sent by the router to itself, placing the router's own address in the Peer Address field of the header. It is RECOMMENDED that when doing so the router should use the same address it has used as its local address for the BMP session. Since in this case no transport session actually exists the Local and Remote Port fields of the Peer Up message MUST be set to zero. Clearly the OPEN Message fields of the Peer Up message will equally not have been physically transmitted, but should represent the relevant capabilities of the local router.
Also recall the L flag is used to indicate locally-sourced routes, see Section 4.2.
Once the BMP session is established route monitoring starts dumping the current snapshot as well as incremental changes simultaneously.
It is fine to have these operations occur concurrently. If the initial dump visits a route and subsequently a withdraw is received, this will be forwarded to the monitoring station that would have to correlate and reflect the deletion of that route in its internal state. This is an operation a monitoring station would need to support regardless.
If the router receives a withdraw for a prefix even before the peer dump procedure visits that prefix, then the router would clean up that route from its internal state and will not forward it to the monitoring station. In this case, the monitoring station may receive a bogus withdraw it can safely ignore.
IANA is requested to create the registries for the following BMP parameters.
This document defines seven message types for transferring BGP messages between cooperating systems (Section 4):
Type values 0 through 128 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 129 through 250 using the "Specification Required" policy defined in [RFC5226]. Values 251 through 254 are "Experimental" and value 255 is reserved.
This document defines fourteen statistics types for statistics reporting (Section 4.8):
Stat Type values 0 through 32767 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 32768 through 65530 using the "Specification Required" policy, defined in [RFC5226]. Values 65531 through 65534 are "Experimental" and value 65535 is reserved.
This document defines three types for information carried in the Initiation message (Section 4.3):
Information type values 0 through 32767 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 32768 through 65530 using the "Specification Required" policy, defined in [RFC5226]. Values 65531 through 65534 are "Experimental" and value 65535 is reserved.
This document defines two types for information carried in the Termination message (Section 4.5):
Information type values 0 through 32767 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 32768 through 65530 using the "Specification Required" policy, defined in [RFC5226]. Values 65531 through 65534 are "Experimental" and value 65535 is reserved.
This document defines five types for information carried in the Termination message (Section 4.5) Reason code,:
Information type values 0 through 32767 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 32768 through 65530 using the "Specification Required" policy, defined in [RFC5226]. Values 65531 through 65534 are "Experimental" and value 65535 is reserved.
This document defines five types for information carried in the Peer Down Notification (Section 4.9) Reason code (and reserves one further type):
Information type values 0 through 32767 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 32768 through 65530 using the "Specification Required" policy, defined in [RFC5226]. Values 65531 through 65534 are "Experimental" and values 0 and 65535 are reserved.
This document defines two types for information carried in the Route Mirroring message (Section 4.7):
Information type values 0 through 32767 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 32768 through 65530 using the "Specification Required" policy, defined in [RFC5226]. Values 65531 through 65534 are "Experimental" and value 65535 is reserved.
This document defines two types for information carried in the Route Mirroring Information (Section 4.7) code:
Information type values 0 through 32767 MUST be assigned using the "Standards Action" policy, and values 32768 through 65530 using the "Specification Required" policy, defined in [RFC5226]. Values 65531 through 65534 are "Experimental" and value 65535 is reserved.
This document defines a mechanism to obtain a full dump or provide continuous monitoring of a BGP speaker's local BGP table, including received BGP messages. This capability could allow an outside party to obtain information not otherwise obtainable.
Implementations of this protocol MUST require manual configuration of the monitored and monitoring devices.
Users of this protocol MAY use some type of secure transport mechanism, such as IPSec [RFC4303] or TCP-AO [RFC5925], in order to provide mutual authentication, data integrity and transport protection.
Unless a transport that provides mutual authentication is used, an attacker could masquerade as the monitored router and trick a monitoring station into accepting false information.
Thanks to Michael Axelrod, Tim Evens, Pierre Francois, John ji Ioannidis, John Kemp, Mack McBride, Danny McPherson, David Meyer, Dimitri Papadimitriou, Tom Petch, Robert Raszuk, Erik Romijn, and the members of the GROW working group for their comments.
| [RFC1155] | Rose, M. and K. McCloghrie, "Structure and identification of management information for TCP/IP-based internets", STD 16, RFC 1155, DOI 10.17487/RFC1155, May 1990. |
| [RFC2856] | Bierman, A., McCloghrie, K. and R. Presuhn, "Textual Conventions for Additional High Capacity Data Types", RFC 2856, DOI 10.17487/RFC2856, June 2000. |
| [RFC4303] | Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)", RFC 4303, DOI 10.17487/RFC4303, December 2005. |
| [RFC5925] | Touch, J., Mankin, A. and R. Bonica, "The TCP Authentication Option", RFC 5925, DOI 10.17487/RFC5925, June 2010. |