Subject: [ipfix-protocol] draft-leinen-ipfix-tcp-00.txt

From: Simon Leinen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:56:53 +0200

IP Flow Information Export Working                             S. Leinen
Group                                                             SWITCH
Internet-Draft                                             July 12, 2004
Expires: January 10, 2005

              IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Over TCP
                       draft-leinen-ipfix-tcp-00

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This documents describes how the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)
   protocol should be mapped to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

1.  Introduction

   IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) [1] is a protocol to convey
   accounting information from an exporter to a collector.  It has been
   proposed that the protocol operate over the Stream Control
   Transmission Protocol [7] with the Partial Reliability extension

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   (SCTP-PR) [8].

   In this document, we specify an alternate mapping of IPFIX to TCP
   [2], which can be used when SCTP-PR isn't available, and reliable
   transmission and/or congestion handling are required.

2.  OPEN ISSUES

2.1  Handshake

   Should we introduce a handshake sequence at the start of the
   connection? A simple ASCII-based handshake could be used to request
   TLS.

2.2  TLS

   It would make sense to add TLS support even in the absence of a
   handshake.  It would be the responsibility of the collector
   (connection initiator) to know whether TLS setup is required.

2.3  Directionality

   The fact that the connection is initiated by the collector is a
   departure from the way it is done in the SCTP mapping.  Personally I
   find it more natural this way.  There are not very many practical
   differences anyway.  Collector-initiated connections are easier to
   handle when the collector is behind a NAT or typical firewall, while
   exporter-initiated connections are easier when the exporter is behind
   a NAT or firewall.  Collector-initiated connections are faster to
   restart when a collector terminates, exporter-initated connections
   are faster to restart when an exporter restarts.

   One difference is that in the case of multiple observation domains,
   one may want to establish parallel IPFIX export connections.  The
   current definition makes this difficult.  Perhaps the most natural
   way to do this would be to have the exporter initiate the connection,
   require the collector to handle multiple connections, and allow the
   exporter to establish one connection per observation domain.

3.  Operation

   The following sections describe how an IPFIX-over-TCP connection is
   created, how IPFIX data is transferred over it, and how a connection
   is to be terminated.  In the following, the term "exporter" refers to
   an IPFIX exporting process, while a "collector" refers to an IPFIX
   collecting process.

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3.1  Connection Establishment

   The IPFIX collector initiates a TCP connection to the exporter.  By
   default, the exporter listens for connections on TCP port XXXX (to be
   assigned by IANA).  It MUST be possible to configure the exporter to
   listen on a different TCP port.

   An exporter MAY support more than one active connection to different
   collectors (including the case of different collecting processes on
   the same host).

   It MUST be possible to configure, on an exporter, which collector(s)
   are allowed to establish a connection.  It SHOULD be possible to
   configure this in terms of strong identities such as IKE [6]
   public-key certificates or pre-shared keys.  An exporter SHOULD
   detect and log unauthorized connection attempts.

3.2  Data Transmission

   Once a TCP connection is established, the exporter starts sending
   IPFIX messages to the collector.

3.2.1  IPFIX Message Encoding

   IPFIX Messages are sent over the TCP connection without any special
   encoding.  The LENGTH field in the message header defines the end of
   each message and thus the start of the next message.  This means that
   IPFIX messages cannot be interleaved.

   The 16-bit LENGTH field limits the length of a message to 65536
   octets including the header.  A collector MUST be able to handle
   message lengths of up to 65536 octets.

   If an exporter exports data from multiple observation domain, it
   should be careful to choose message lengths appropriately to avoid
   head-of-line blocking between different observation domains.

3.2.2  Templates

   For each template, the exporter SHOULD send the Template Record
   before exporting Data Records that refer to this template.

   A collector MUST record all Template and Option Template Records for
   the duration of the connection, as an exporter is not required to
   re-export templates.

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3.2.3  Congestion Handling

   TCP will detect congestion anywhere in the end-to-end path between
   the exporter and the collector, and limit the transfer rate
   accordingly.  Every time an IPFIX exporter has flow data to export,
   but notices that transmission to TCP is temporarily impossible
   ("would block"), it basically has two possibilities: Either it can
   wait until sending is possible again, or it can decide to drop the
   flow export data.  In the latter case, the dropped export data MUST
   be accounted for, so that the amount of dropped export data can later
   be exported in an option data record.

   When an exporter finds that the rate at which flow records should be
   exported is consistently higher than the rate at which TCP permits to
   send, it SHOULD adapt the metering process so that it generates a
   lower amount of data, for example by increasing the sampling
   interval, or by increasing the amount of aggregation.  If it does
   this, the exporter SHOULD periodically attempt to switch back to the
   original metering configuration when congestion subsides.

3.3  Connection Release

   When an exporter has no more data to send, it SHOULD close the TCP
   connection normally.

   When a collector no longer wants to receive IPFIX messages, it SHOULD
   close its end of the connection.  The collector SHOULD continue to
   read IPFIX messages until the exporter has closed its end.

   When an exporter detects that the TCP connection to the collector is
   broken, it MUST continue to listen for a new connection.

   When a collector detects that the TCP connection to the exporter is
   broken, it SHOULD try to re-establish the connection.  Connection
   timeouts and retry schedules SHOULD be configurable.  In the default
   configuration, a collector MUST NOT attempt to establish a connection
   more frequently than once per minute.

4.  Security Considerations

   In the current proposal, there is no handshake protocol once a TCP
   connection is established, so negotiation-based transport-layer
   security protocols such as TLS [9] cannot be used in a
   straightforward manner to ensure authenticity and confidentiality.

   Exporters and collectors MUST implement IPSEC [3] with the
   Authentication Header (AH) [4] to ensure authenticity of the exporter
   and the collector.  Exporters SHOULD implement IPSEC Encapsulating

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   Security Payload (ESP) [5] to ensure confidentiality of the exported
   data.  The use of AH and ESP MUST be configurable for each exporter/
   collector pair.

   Exporters and collectors MUST implement the Internet Key Exchange
   (IKE) [6] protocol with pre-shared keys and public-key certificates.
   The use of these identities is described in Section 3.1.

5.  IANA Considerations

   No new registry is required for this specific protocol mapping.

   IANA should assign a well-known TCP port number for IPFIX over TCP.
   It is recommended that the same well-known port number is used as a
   default for the IPFIX over SCTP [1] and IPFIX over UDP mappings.

6.  References

6.1  Normative References

   [1]  Claise, B., "IPFIX Protocol Specifications",
        draft-ietf-ipfix-protocol-03 (work in progress), February 2004.

   [2]  Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC 793,
        September 1981.

   [3]  Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for the
        Internet Protocol", RFC 2401, November 1998.

   [4]  Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "IP Authentication Header", RFC 2402,
        November 1998.

   [5]  Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "IP Encapsulating Security Payload
        (ESP)", RFC 2406, November 1998.

   [6]  Harkins, D. and D. Carrel, "The Internet Key Exchange (IKE)",
        RFC 2409, November 1998.

6.2  Informative References

   [7]  Stewart, R., Xie, Q., Morneault, K., Sharp, C., Schwarzbauer,
        H., Taylor, T., Rytina, I., Kalla, M., Zhang, L. and V. Paxson,
        "Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC 2960, October 2000.

   [8]  Stewart, R., Ramalho, M., Xie, Q., Tuexen, M. and P. Conrad,
        "Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Partial Reliability
        Extension", RFC 3758, May 2004.

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   [9]  Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0", RFC
        2246, January 1999.

Author's Address

   Simon Leinen
   SWITCH
   Limmatquai 138
   P.O. Box
   CH-8021 Zurich
   Switzerland

   Phone: +41 1 268 1536
   EMail: [email-masked]

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---

From: Simon Leinen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 15:08:04 +0200

I just posted a first cut at an IPFIX-over-TCP draft, hopefully in
time before the cutoff.  It's short, please have a look at it.
Section 2 is a list of open issues that I came up with. Feel free to
discuss these and other issues here!
-- 
Simon.