Subject: [AAA-WG]: Issue 68: Address name and 20 byte IPv6 length

From: Pat Calhoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 15:57:52 -0700

All,

This issue really has two separate issues, so let's deal with them separately.

First, there was a request to change the AVP Type Address to IPAddress, since
it is much more descriptive. The group today agreed this was the proper approach,
and the following is the proposed text (note, the change is Address->IPAddress):

      IPAddress
         The IPAddress format is derived from the OctetString AVP Base
         Format. It represents 32 bit (IPv4) [17] or 128 bit (IPv6) [16]
         address, most significant octet first. The format of the
         address (IPv4 or IPv6) is determined by the length. If the
         attribute value is an IPv4 address, the AVP Length field MUST
         be 12 (16 if 'V' bit is enabled), otherwise the AVP Length
         field MUST be set to 24 (28 if the 'V' bit is enabled) for IPv6
         addresses.

The second issue was how to deal with IPv6 addresses that would include
IPv6 Interface Ids. Well, the RADIUS IPv6 extensions defines a separate
AVP to include the interface Id, and the group felt that this was a much
cleaner approach, than to require that an IPAddress have 3 different lengths.
So, we decided to reject this particular proposal.

Any comments?

PatC

---

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 12:15:33 +0200

>>>>> Pat Calhoun writes:

Pat> First, there was a request to change the AVP Type Address to
Pat> IPAddress, since it is much more descriptive. The group today
Pat> agreed this was the proper approach, and the following is the
Pat> proposed text (note, the change is Address->IPAddress):

[...]

OK

Pat> The second issue was how to deal with IPv6 addresses that would
Pat> include IPv6 Interface Ids. Well, the RADIUS IPv6 extensions
Pat> defines a separate AVP to include the interface Id, and the group
Pat> felt that this was a much cleaner approach, than to require that
Pat> an IPAddress have 3 different lengths.  So, we decided to reject
Pat> this particular proposal.

So you leave it to the sender/receiver of the message to do the right
thing. It might get tricky in cases where you have multiple IPAddress
AVPs in a single message and/or the ABNF grammar did not provide for a
scope identifier when it was written.

Anyway, I think it is OK to see whether this turns out to be a real
problem in practice and so I can live with this decision.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder      Technical University Braunschweig
<[email-masked]>  Dept. Operating Systems & Computer Networks
Phone: +49 531 391 3289    Bueltenweg 74/75, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany
Fax:   +49 531 391 5936    <URL:http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/~schoenw/>