isis B. Liu
Internet-Draft Huawei Technologies
Intended status: Standards Track B. Decraene
Expires: December 1, 2015 Orange
I. Farrer
Deutsche Telekom AG
M. Abrahamsson
T-Systems
May 30, 2015

ISIS Auto-Configuration
draft-liu-isis-auto-conf-04

Abstract

This document specifies an IS-IS auto-configuration technology. The key mechanisms of this technology are IS-IS NET (Network Entity Title) self-generation, duplication detection and duplication resolution. This technology fits the environment where plug-and-play is expected, e.g., home networks and small or medium size enterprise networks.

Status of This Memo

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This Internet-Draft will expire on December 1, 2015.

Copyright Notice

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

This document describes mechanisms for IS-IS [RFC1195] [RFC5308] to be auto-configuring. Such mechanisms could reduce the management burden to configure a network. Home networks and small or medium size enterprise networks where plug-n-play is expected can benefit from these mechanisms.

In addition, this document defines how such un-configured routers should behave, in order to limit the risk on existing network using IS-IS (please refer to Section 3.4.1 andSection 3.5).

IS-IS auto-configuration contains the following aspects:

  1. IS-IS default configurations
  2. IS-IS NET (Network Entity Title) self-generation
  3. NET duplication detection and resolution
  4. ISIS TLVs utilization such as Authentication TLV, Wide Metric TLV etc.

2. Scope

The auto-configuring mechanisms does not specifically distinguish IPv4 or IPv6.

This auto-configuration mechanism aims at simple case. The following advanced features are out of scope:

o
Multiple IS-IS instances
o
Multi-area and level-2 routers
o
Interworking with other routing protocols

3. Protocol Specification

3.1. IS-IS Default Configuration

o
IS-IS SHOULD be enabled as default on all interfaces in a router that requires the IS-IS auto-configuration. For some specific situations, interface MAY be excluded if it is a clear that running IS-IS auto-configuration on the interface is not required.
o
IS-IS interfaces MUST be auto-configured to an interface type corresponding to their layer-2 capability. For example, Ethernet interfaces will be auto-configured as broadcast networks and Point- to-Point Protocol (PPP) interfaces will be auto-configured as Point- to-Point interfaces.
o
IS-IS auto-configuration interfaces MUST be configured with level-1.

3.2. IS-IS NET Generation

In IS-IS, a router (known as an Intermediate System) is identified by an NET which is the address of a Network Service Access Point (NSAP) and represented with an IS-IS specific address format. The NSAP is a logical entity which represents an instance of the IS- IS protocol running on an IS.

The NET consists of three parts. The auto-generation mechanisms of each part are described as the following:

o
Area address
o
System ID
o
NSEL

3.3. IS-IS NET Duplication Detection and Resolution

NET addresses need to be distinct within one IS-IS area. As described in Section 3.3.3, the NET address is generated based on entropies such as MAC address which are supposed to be unique, but in theory there is still possibility of duplication. This section defines how IS-IS detects and corrects NET duplication.

3.3.1. Router-Fingerprint TLV

The Router-Fingerprint TLV re-uses the design of Router-Hardware-Fingerprint TLV defined in [RFC7503].

   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      |    Length     |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                 Router Fingerprint (Variable)                 |
   .                                                               .
   .                                                               .
   .                                                               .
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

The length of the Router-Fingerprint is variable but must be 32 octets or greater; and the content is also supposed to be unique among all the routers.

More specific considerations for Router-Fingerprint is described in Section 3.3.3 .

3.3.2. NET Duplication Detection and Resolution Procedures

1) Flood the Router-Distinguisher TLVs

2) Compare the received Router-Fingerprint TLVs

3) Duplication resolution

4) Re-join the network with the new NET

3.3.3. SysID and Router-Fingerprint Generation Considerations

As specified in this document, there are two distinguisher need to be self-generated, which is SysID and Router-Fingerprint. In a network device, normally there are resources which provide an extremely high probability of uniqueness thus could be used as seeds to derive distinguisher (e.g. hashing or generating pseudo-random numbers), such as:

This document does not specify a certain method to generate the SysID and Router-Fingerprint. However, the generation of SysID and Router-Fingerprint MUST be based on different seeds so that the two distinguisher would not collide.

There is an important concern that the seeds listed above (except MAC address) might not be available in some small devices such as home routers. This is because of the hardware/software limitation and the lack of sufficient communication packets at the initial stage in the home routers when doing ISIS-autoconfiguration. In this case, this document suggests to use MAC address as SysID and generate a pseudo-random number based on another seed (such as the memory address of a certain variable in the program) as Router-Fingerprint. The pseudo-random number might not have a very high quality in this solution, but should be sufficient in home networks scenarios.

Note that, the Router-Fingerprint SHOULD also remain the same after it is firstly generated. It SHOULD not be changed due to device status change (such as interface enable/disable, interface plug in/off, device reboot, firmware update .etc) or configuration change (such as changing system configurations or IS-IS configurations .etc); but it MUST allow be changed by double-duplication resolution Section 3.3.4 and SHOULD allow be cleared by user enforced system reset.

3.3.4. Double-Duplication of both NET and Router-Fingerprint

As described above, the resources for generating the distinguisher might be very constrained at the initial stage. Hence, the double-duplication of both NET and Router-Fingerprint needs to be considered.

ISIS-autoconfiguring routers SHOULD support detecting NET duplication by LSP war. LSP war is a phenomenon that if a router receives a LSP originated with it's NET, but it doesn't find it in the database, or it does not match the one the router has (e.g. It advertises IP prefixes that the router doesn't own, or IS neighbors that the router doesn't see), then Per ISIS specification, the router must re-originate its LSP with an increased sequence number. If double-duplication happens, the duplicated two routers will both continuously have the above behavior. After multiples iterations, the program should be able to deduce that double-duplication happens.

At the point when double-duplication happens, routers should have much more entropies available. Thus, the router is to extend or re-generate its Router-Fingerprint (one simple way is just adding the LSP sequence number of the next LSP it will send to the Router-Fingerprint).

3.4. IS-IS TLVs Usage

3.4.1. Authentication TLV

Every IS-IS auto-configuration message MUST include an authentication TLV (TLV 10, [RFC5304]) with the Type 1 authentication mode ("Cleartext Password") in order to avoid the auto-conf router to accidentally join an existing IS-IS network which is not intended to be auto-configured.

This feature is necessary since it might seriously break an existing IS-IS network or cause unnecessary management confusion if a low end CPE (which might be the normal form of ISIS-autoconf routers) occasionally joins the network.

The cleartext password is specified as "isis-autoconf". Routers that implement IS-IS auto-configuration MUST use this password as default, so that different routers could authenticate each other with no human intervene as default. And routers MUST be able to set manual password by the users.

3.4.2. Wide Metric TLV

IS-IS auto-configuration routers SHOULD support wide metric (TLV 22, [RFC5305]). It is recommended that IS-IS auto-configuration routers use a high metric value (e.g. 1000000) as default in order to typically prefer the manually configured adjacencies rather than the auto-conf ones.

3.4.3. Dynamic Host Name TLV

IS-IS auto-configuration routers SHOULD advertise their Dynamic Host Names TVL (TLV 137, [RFC5301]). The host names could be provisioned by an IT system, or just use the name of vendor, device type or serial number etc.

3.4.4. Purge Originator Identification TLV

For troubleshooting purpose, the Purge Originator Identification TLV (TLV 13, [RFC6232]) MAY be used to determine the origin of the purge. Please refer to [RFC6232] for details.

3.5. Routing Behavior Considerations

3.5.1. Adjacency Formation

Since ISIS does not require strict hold timers matching to form adjacency, this document does not specify specific hold timers. However, the timers should be within a reasonable range based on current practise in the industry. (For example, 30 seconds for holdtime and 20 minutes for LSP lifetime.)

3.5.2. Co-existing with Other IGP Auto-configuration

If a router supports multiple IGP auto-configuration mechanisms (e.g. Both IS-IS auto-configuration and OSPF auto-configuration), then in practice it is a problem that there should be a mechanism to decide which IGP to be used, or even both.

However, the behavior of multiple IGP protocols interaction should be done in the router level rather than in any IGP protocols. For example, with the Home Network Control Protocol ([I-D.ietf-homenet-hncp]), the routers could achieve a consensus on what IGP to use.

4. Security Considerations

In general, auto-configuration is mutually incompatible with authentication. So we can't have both. This is not really specific to IS-IS.

Unwanted routers could easily join in an existing IS-IS auto-configuration network by setting the authentication password as "isis-autoconf" default value or sniff the cleartext password online. However, this is a common security risk shared by other IS-IS networks that don't set proper authentication mechanisms. For wired deployment, the wired line itself could be considered as an implicit authentication that normally unwanted routers are not able to connect to the wire line; for wireless deployment, the authentication could be achieve at the lower wireless link layer.

Malicious router could modify the SysID field to cause NET duplication detection and resolution vibrate thus cause the routing system vibrate.

5. IANA Considerations

The Router Hardware Fingerprint TLV type code needs an assignment by IANA.

6. Acknowledgements

This document was heavily inspired by [RFC7503].

Martin Winter, Christian Franke and David Lamparter gave essential feedback to improve the technical design based on their implementation experience. Many useful comments and contributions were made by Sheng Jiang, Qin Wu, Hannes Gredler, Peter Lothberg, Uma Chundury, Nan Wu, Acee Lindem, Les Ginsberg and some other people in ISIS working group.

This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool [RFC2629]. (initially prepared using 2-Word-v2.0.template.dot. )

7. References

7.1. Normative References

[RFC1195] Callon, R., "Use of OSI IS-IS for routing in TCP/IP and dual environments", RFC 1195, December 1990.
[RFC2629] Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629, June 1999.
[RFC5301] McPherson, D. and N. Shen, "Dynamic Hostname Exchange Mechanism for IS-IS", RFC 5301, October 2008.
[RFC5304] Li, T. and R. Atkinson, "IS-IS Cryptographic Authentication", RFC 5304, October 2008.
[RFC5305] Li, T. and H. Smit, "IS-IS Extensions for Traffic Engineering", RFC 5305, October 2008.
[RFC5308] Hopps, C., "Routing IPv6 with IS-IS", RFC 5308, October 2008.
[RFC6232] Wei, F., Qin, Y., Li, Z., Li, T. and J. Dong, "Purge Originator Identification TLV for IS-IS", RFC 6232, May 2011.

7.2. Informative References

[I-D.ietf-homenet-hncp] Stenberg, M., Barth, S. and P. Pfister, "Home Networking Control Protocol", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-homenet-hncp-04, March 2015.
[RFC7503] Lindem, A. and J. Arkko, "OSPFv3 Autoconfiguration", RFC 7503, April 2015.

Authors' Addresses

Bing Liu Huawei Technologies Q14, Huawei Campus, No.156 Beiqing Road Hai-Dian District, Beijing, 100095, P.R. China EMail: leo.liubing@huawei.com
Bruno Decraene Orange Issy-les-Moulineaux FR, FR EMail: bruno.decraene@orange.com
Ian Farrer Deutsche Telekom AG Bonn, Germany EMail: ian.farrer@telekom.de
Mikael Abrahamsson T-Systems Stockholm, Sweden EMail: mikael.abrahamsson@t-systems.se