Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) for the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6)

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.¶

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."¶

This Internet-Draft will expire on 25 April 2027.¶

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

ICMPv6 [RFC4443] is the companion protocol of IPv6. It carries information about the state of the network, which both a SCHC Device and a SCHC Application can benefit from.¶

When applying SCHC compression to IPv6 networks, users expect to perform control operations such as ping to ensure that devices are still active. In the same way, ICMPv6 error messages can be helpful for the Device which may adapt its behavior when the Application becomes unreachable. The Application may also benefit from the ICMPv6 error message produced by the SCHC entity when the compression is not possible.¶

The ICMPv6 messages covered by this document are those defined in ICMPv6 protocol [RFC4443]. The compression described in this document does not cover other ICMPv6 messages, such as an extended format of the same messages [RFC4884] and other messages used by the Neighbor Discovery Protocol [RFC4861].¶

2. Terminology

This draft re-uses the Terminology defined in [RFC8724] and the achitecture document.¶

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.¶

• SCHC Core: SCHC End-Point located at the boundary of a regular IP network and a network that applies SCHC compression and fragmentation¶

• SCHC Device: The other end of the SCHC instance formed with the SCHC core.¶

• Application: entity sending packets to the SCHC Device or receiving packets from the SCHC Device. The Application may be co-located with the SCHC Core, but is usually located on the regular Internet.¶

• Regular Internet: Network location carrying uncompressed IPv6 packets.¶

3. Use cases

In the following sections, we will describe at Section 4 ICMPv6 message compression for all ICMPv6 messages specified in [RFC4443]. We will then extend this basic compression with a specific focus on the following cases:¶

• The Device is the originator of an Echo Request message, and therefore the destination of the Echo Reply message. These messages are compressed/decompressed by the device and the SCHC Core using SCHC rules that match the ICMPv6 fields (see Section 6).¶

• The Device should have sent an ICMP error message, mainly in response to an incorrect incoming IPv6 message. In this case, as much as possible, the SCHC Core should act on behalf of the Device and originate the Unreachable ICMP Destination message, so that the Device and the network are protected from this unwanted traffic (see Section 8).¶

• The Device is the destination of the ICMPv6 message, mainly in response to a packet sent by the device to the network that generates an error. In this case, we want the ICMPv6 message to reach the Device, and this document describes in Section 9.1 what SCHC compression should be applied. Since ICMPv6 error messages contain in the payload the original message which has triggered the error, SCHC can compress it using the rules in the reverse direction (see Section 9).¶

4. ICMPv6 compression

This section defines ICMPv6 fields that can be compressed by SCHC. [RFC4443] defines several formats with respect to the type of the ICMPv6 message.¶

From them, several fields can be extracted (the Field ID identities are specified in the SCHC YANG data model of [I-D.toutain-schc-rfc9363bis]):¶

These fields are present in all the messages:¶

• ICMPv6 Type indicates the fields present in the message.¶

• ICMPv6 Code is related to the ICMPv6 type and does not have an impact on the message format.¶

• ICMPv6 Checksum covers the ICMPv6 message and part of the IPv6 header to protect against errors. It is generally reconstructed with the compute-* CDA and therefore is not transmitted.¶

• ICMPv6 Payload is part of the ICMPv6 protocol and is not directly originated from upper layers protocols, so this field may be compressed by SCHC at the ICMPv6 level. In the ICMPv6 error message, the payload can be compressed by SCHC compression rules, as it contains the IPv6 message header responsible for the error. For Echo Request and Echo Reply it contains a specific pattern to set the message length.¶

The other fields depends of the message type:¶

• ICMPv6 MTU is used by Packet Too Big message (type = 2) to carry the MTU expected by a node rejecting the packet forwarding. This 32-bit field carries an MTU that is at least the minimum IPv6 MTU (1280 bytes), so its upper bits are almost always constant. It can be compressed with the MSB CDA, or with the LSB CDA if the Device is known to send smaller packets, sending e.g. only 11 bits.¶

• ICMPv6 Pointer is used by Parameter Problem message to indicate the position of a detected error in the original message. This 32-bit field is the offset, in bytes from the start of the invoking packet, of the octet where the error was detected. When the error is in the fixed IPv6 header (Code 0, erroneous header field, or Code 1, unrecognized Next Header, which points to octet 6), the value is lower than 40 and 6 bits are enough with the LSB CDA. When the error is in an extension header or an option (Code 2, unrecognized IPv6 option, always, or Codes 0 and 1 beyond octet 39), the value is bounded by the size of the invoking packet, which an ICMPv6 error message limits to the minimum IPv6 MTU, so 11 bits are enough. A rule can use a mapping or the LSB CDA to cover the first case, and a second rule the other one.¶

• ICMPv6 Identifier and ICMPv6 Sequence Number are used by ping echo (type 128) and reply (type 129) messages.¶

Since the fields present in an ICMP message differ from one type to another, it is not possible to use a single rule to compress all ICMP messages. Examples of ICMP message compression Rules are given in Section 5, Section 6 and Section 9.¶

5. Parsing the payload

6. Device does a ping

A Device may send an Echo Request message to check the availability of the network and the host running the Application.¶

If a ping Echo Request is generated by a Device, then SCHC compression applies.¶

The format of an ICMPv6 Echo Request message is described in Figure 3, with Type=128 and Code=0.¶

       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
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |     Type      |     Code      |          Checksum             |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |           Identifier          |        Sequence Number        |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |     Data ...
      +-+-+-+-+-

If we assume that one rule will be devoted to compressing Echo Request messages, then the Type and Code are known in the rule to be 128 and 0 and can therefore be elided with the not-sent CDA.¶

[RFC4443] states that the identifier and sequence number are meant to "help in matching Echo Responses to this Echo Request" and that they "may be zero". Data are "zero or more bytes of arbitrary data".¶

For constrained devices or networks, we recommend that the Identifier be zero, the Sequence Number be a counter on 3 bits, and the Data be zero bytes (absent). Therefore, Identifier is elided with the not-sent CDA, Sequence Number is transmitted on 3 bits with the LSB CDA and no Data is transmitted.¶

The data part is defined in the rule through the ICMPv6 Payload field. The payload can be sent as a residue with a value-sent. It is also possible to elide the data by setting them in the Target Value and use a not-sent CDA.¶

When the destination receives the Echo Request message, it will respond with an Echo Reply message. This message bears the same format as the Echo Request message but with Type = 129 (see Figure 3).¶

[RFC4443] states that the Identifier, Sequence Number, and Data fields of the Echo Reply message shall contain the same values as the invoking Echo Request message. Therefore, a rule shall be used similar to that used for compressing the Echo Request message.¶

7. Device is pinged

If a Device is pinged, a Rule similar to the one described in the previous section can be used, but it may be more efficient to delegate the answer to the SCHC Core.¶

Selecting a compression Rule triggers compression and sends the resulting SCHC Packet to the other end.¶

We introduce a new element called action for the Rule. An Action can change that behavior: the Rule is still selected through its MO results, but the incoming packet is forwarded to a procedure defined in the action. Since the Rule is then used only for the selection, the Compression/Decompression Actions of its entries do not matter and are set to not-sent.¶

The motivating example is an ICMPv6 [RFC4443] Echo Request sent to a Device. The Device receives the compressed message and answers with an Echo Reply, but propagating the Echo Request over the LPWAN costs two messages on a constrained link, and the Identifier and Sequence Number fields compress poorly when the sender is unaware of the compression scheme. The Action action-proxy-ping avoids that traffic: the core SCHC C/D answers the Echo Request on behalf of the Device.¶

The Action takes a parameter, in seconds, giving the interval during which the Device is considered active. During this interval, the proxy echoes the ping requests; after it, they are discarded. The parameter is carried in action-value, a list reusing the Target Value structure, so an Action may take several arguments.¶

Figure 4 shows a compression Rule for pinging a Device, with the identity short names used in the Field and CDA columns. The Action applies to the Rule as a whole, and is therefore shown above its entries.¶

In the data model, the Action is added to the compression Rule itself, as a sibling of its entries, and not to a single entry:¶

• action: an identityref to action-type, defaulting to action-forward. Being optional and defaulted, a Rule that does not carry it behaves exactly as in RFC 8724 [RFC8724].¶

• action-value: the Action's arguments, a list based on the Target Value structure, as for Matching Operator and Compression/Decompression Action arguments.¶

The corresponding new identities are:¶

• action-base-type: base identity for the Action applied to a packet matching a compression Rule.¶

• action-forward: the default, where the packet is handed over to the lower layer, as specified in RFC 8724 [RFC8724].¶

• action-proxy-ping: the packet is processed locally by a ping proxy, which answers the Echo Request on behalf of the Device.¶

8. Device is the source of an ICMPv6 error message

As stated in [RFC4443], a node should generate an ICMPv6 message in response to an IPv6 packet that is malformed or which cannot be processed due to some incorrect field value.¶

The general intent of this document is to spare both the Device and the LPWAN network this un-necessary traffic. The incorrect packets should be caught at the SCHC Core and the ICMPv6 notification should be sent back from there.¶

Figure 5 shows an example of an IPv6 packet trying to reach a Device.¶

Let's assume that no rule matches the incoming packet (i.e. there is no co-compression rule)¶

Instead of sending the packet over the LPWAN and having this packet rejected by the Device, the SCHC Core issues an ICMPv6 error message "Destination Unreachable" (Type 1) with Code 1 ("Port Unreachable") on behalf of the Device.¶

In that case the SCHC C/D MAY act as a router (i.e. it MUST have a routable IPv6 address to generate an ICMPv6 message). When compressing a packet containing an IPv6 header, no compression rules are found and:¶

• if the incoming packet contains some extension headers and no SCHC Rule covers this case, a parameter problem may be generated (type 4),¶

• no rule contains the IPv6 device address found in the incoming packet, a no route to destination ICMPv6 message (type 0, code 3) may be generated,¶

• a device IPv6 address is found, but no port matches, a port unreachable ICMPv6 message (type 0, code 4) may be generated,¶

• if the incoming packet is too large for any of the fragmentation rules, an ICMPv6 Message Too big MAY be generated with the largest size allowed by the fragmentation rules.¶

9. Device is the destination of an ICMPv6 error message

In this situation, a Device has been configured to send information to a server on the Internet. If this server becomes no longer accessible, an ICMPv6 message will be generated back towards the Device by either an intermediate router or the destination. This information can be useful to the Device, for example, for reducing the reporting rate in case of periodic reporting of data.¶

Therefore, the ICMPv6 error message should reach the Device. The data inside this error message includes the packet at the origin of the error. It should be compressed by the SCHC Core, but in the reverse direction. The MOs and CDAs defined in Section 5.2 perform this operation.¶

Figure 6 illustrates this behavior. The ICMPv6 error message is compressed as described in Section 9.1 and forwarded over the LPWAN to the Device.¶

The SCHC returning message contains the SCHC residue of the ICMPv6 message and MAY contain the compressed original message contained in the ICMP message. The compression can be done by the SCHC Core by reversing the direction as if this message was issued by the device.¶

       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
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |     Type      |     Code      |          Checksum             |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |                           Value/Unused                        |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |                    As much of invoking packet                 |
      +                as possible without the ICMPv6 packet          +
      |                exceeding the minimum IPv6 MTU                 |

10. YANG Data Model Extensions

This document extends the SCHC YANG Data Model of [RFC9363]. The complete YANG module, including all the identities and the leaves listed below, is found in [I-D.toutain-schc-rfc9363bis]. This section only lists the elements related to this document.¶

The new Field IDs, all based on fid-icmpv6-base-type for the ICMPv6 ones (Section 4.1):¶

• fid-icmpv6-type, fid-icmpv6-code, fid-icmpv6-checksum, fid-icmpv6-mtu, fid-icmpv6-pointer, fid-icmpv6-identifier, fid-icmpv6-sequence: the fields of the ICMPv6 header.¶

• fid-icmpv6-payload: the ICMPv6 payload, parsed as a specific field.¶

• fid-unused: skips an unused part of a header.¶

• fid-payload: the trailing payload of the packet, which uses the fl-remaining Field Length function of [I-D.ietf-schc-universal-option].¶

The new Matching Operators (Section 5.2):¶

• mo-rev-rule-match: the value contained in the Field Value matches a Rule. The direction used for matching is the opposite of the incoming message: UP becomes DOWN and DOWN becomes UP. This MO can be used to test if the Payload contained in the ICMPv6 message matches a Rule. This means that the original packet, at the origin of the ICMPv6 message, may have been generated from the SCHC decompression.¶

• mo-rule-match: the value contained in the Target Value matches a Rule. The direction is the one of the incoming message. This MO is not used for ICMPv6 messages, but since it can be used in other situations, it has been included in the Data Model.¶

The new Compression/Decompression Actions (Section 5.2). The Field Value may be compressed by a Rule. The result SHOULD be included in the SCHC message as a variable length residue. It contains the Rule ID used by the compression, the residue, the payload and some padding bits, since the variable length in it is in bytes.¶

• cda-rev-compress-sent: the direction used for compression is the opposite of the incoming message: UP becomes DOWN and DOWN becomes UP.¶

• cda-compress-sent: the direction used for compression is the same as for the incoming message.¶

The new elements of the Rule and the Action identities (Section 7):¶

• action and action-value: leaves of the compression Rule, as siblings of its entries, giving the Action and its arguments.¶

• action-base-type, action-forward, action-proxy-ping: the identities of the Actions.¶

11. Security considerations

flood the return path with ICMP error messages.¶

When the invoking packet is described in the same Rule (Section 5), the IPv6 fields of the invoking header are not sent, but are used to check that the ICMPv6 packet is not rogue: an error message whose invoking header does not match the Rule is not decompressed.¶

12. IANA Considerations

TODO¶

13. Contributors

The following people have been co-authors of precursor versions of this draft. Their contribution is deeply appreciated and acknowledged.¶

• Arunprabhu Kandasamy (Acklio)¶

• Diego Dujovne (Universidad Diego Portales)¶

• Juan Carlos Zuniga (Cisco)¶

14. Changes

• ICMPv6 MTU (Section 4): added a remark on compressing the MTU with the MSB/LSB CDA (the LSB example of the Packet Too Big Value field had disappeared from Section 9).¶

• Section 9: the sentence on sending the Value field on 11 bits was replaced by a reference to Section 4.¶

• Section 5: the subsection describing the invoking packet in the same Rule now comes before the new MOs and CDAs. The subsection title was changed from "Describing the Invoking Packet in the Same Rule" to "Invoking Packet Description in the Same Rule".¶

• Section 5: added a note after Table 1 stating that the invoking IPv6 fields are not sent but are used to detect rogue ICMPv6 packets.¶

• Throughout: YANG identifiers in the text are now typeset as code (backticks), so they appear in a monospaced font in the PDF/HTML versions, instead of being written between double quotes. The typo "rev-rule match" is corrected to rev-rule-match.¶

• ICMPv6 Pointer (Section 4): added a remark on compressing the Pointer: 6 bits with the LSB CDA for errors in the fixed IPv6 header (value lower than 40), up to 11 bits for errors in extension headers or options.¶

• Section 11: added the same note on the invoking IPv6 fields used to detect rogue ICMPv6 packets.¶

• Section 5: the sentence stating that the in-place description of the invoking packet requires a Rule for each original packet format was moved from the end of the subsection to its introduction.¶

• Section 5: rewrote the paragraph following Table 1 (it said the result "should be better", which no longer follows the other solution) and added objective arguments comparing the two solutions.¶

• Section 5: the note on the unused entry was moved from the second example (Table 2) to the first one (Table 1).¶

• Section 5.2: the list of the new MOs and CDAs was merged with their descriptions, with one item per identifier.¶

• Section 4, Section 6: the remark that the Checksum is reconstructed with the compute-* CDA was moved from the ping section to the description of the ICMPv6 Checksum field.¶

• Section 8: the Parameter Problem case now states that the incoming packet contains extension headers that no SCHC Rule covers.¶

• Section 9: removed the duplicate explanation of rev-rule-match and the second and third rule examples (Fig-icmp-error2, Fig-icmp-error3), now covered by Section 5.2 and Table 2, which are referenced instead.¶

• Section 7 ("Device is pinged"): new section copied from [I-D.toutain-schc-rfc9363bis], describing the Action of a Rule (action, action-value, action-forward, action-proxy-ping) with the ping proxy example; the reference to the entry-index column and short names of the other draft was reworded, and the reference to the draft-barthel-lpwan-oam-schc draft was removed.¶

• Section 7: the section now starts by stating that a Rule similar to the one of Section 6 can be used, but that it may be more efficient to delegate the answer to the SCHC Core.¶

• Section 7: added the sentence introducing the new action element of the Rule.¶

• Section 7: in Figure 4, the Echo Request Type is written 128 (it was 80, its hexadecimal value) and the Code and Sequence Number target values 0, like the other tables; the paragraph layout was cleaned up.¶

• Section 10: the section was renamed "YANG Data Model Extensions" and now lists every YANG element related to this document (Field IDs, MOs, CDAs, Action), stating that the complete module is in [I-D.toutain-schc-rfc9363bis].¶

• Authors: added Marion Dumay as the last co-author.¶

15. Normative References

[I-D.ietf-schc-universal-option]

Lampin, Q., Minaburo, A., Tiloca, M., Toutain, L., and S. Sirohi, "Options representation in SCHC YANG Data Models", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-schc-universal-option-02, 22 October 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-schc-universal-option-02>.

[I-D.toutain-schc-rfc9363bis]

"*** BROKEN REFERENCE ***".

[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/rfc/rfc2119>.

[RFC4443]

Conta, A., Deering, S., and M. Gupta, Ed., "Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6) for the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Specification", STD 89, RFC 4443, DOI 10.17487/RFC4443, March 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4443>.

[RFC4861]

Narten, T., Nordmark, E., Simpson, W., and H. Soliman, "Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 4861, DOI 10.17487/RFC4861, September 2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4861>.

[RFC4884]

Bonica, R., Gan, D., Tappan, D., and C. Pignataro, "Extended ICMP to Support Multi-Part Messages", RFC 4884, DOI 10.17487/RFC4884, April 2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4884>.

[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/rfc/rfc8174>.

[RFC8724]

Minaburo, A., Toutain, L., Gomez, C., Barthel, D., and JC. Zuniga, "SCHC: Generic Framework for Static Context Header Compression and Fragmentation", RFC 8724, DOI 10.17487/RFC8724, April 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8724>.

[RFC9363]

Minaburo, A. and L. Toutain, "A YANG Data Model for Static Context Header Compression (SCHC)", RFC 9363, DOI 10.17487/RFC9363, March 2023, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9363>.

Authors' Addresses