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IETF RFC 2769
Routing Policy System Replication
Last modified on Tuesday, February 8th, 2000
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Network Working Group C. Villamizar
Request for Comments: 2769 Avici Systems
Category: Standards Track C. Alaettinoglu
R. Govindan
ISI
D. Meyer
Cisco
February 2000
Routing Policy System Replication
 Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright © The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
Abstract
The RIPE database specifications and RPSL define languages used as
the basis for representing information in a routing policy system. A
repository for routing policy system information is known as a
routing registry. A routing registry provides a means of exchanging
information needed to address many issues of importance to the
operation of the Internet. The implementation and deployment of a
routing policy system must maintain some degree of integrity to be of
any use. The Routing Policy System Security RFC [3] addresses the
need to assure integrity of the data by proposing an authentication
and authorization model. This document addresses the need to
distribute data over multiple repositories and delegate authority for
data subsets to other repositories without compromising the
authorization model established in Routing Policy System Security
RFC.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
Table of Contents
1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Data Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3 Authentication and Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4 Repository Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5 Additions to RPSL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1 repository object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2 delegated attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.3 integrity attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6 Interactions with a Repository or Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1 Initial Transaction Submission . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2 Redistribution of Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3 Transaction Commit and Confirmation . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7 Data Format Summaries, Transaction Encapsulation and Processing 13
7.1 Transaction Submit and Confirm . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7.2 Redistribution of Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.3 Redistribution Protocol Description . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.3.1 Explicitly Requesting Transactions . . . . . . . . 21
7.3.2 Heartbeat Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7.4 Transaction Commit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
7.5 Database Snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.6 Authenticating Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
A Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
A.1 Initial Object Submission and Redistribution . . . . . . 27
A.2 Transaction Redistribution Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . 29
A.3 Transaction Protocol Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
A.4 Transaction Redistribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
B Technical Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
B.1 Server Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
B.1.1 getting connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
B.1.2 rolling transaction logs forward and back . . . . . 35
B.1.3 committing or disposing of transactions . . . . . . 36
B.1.4 dealing with concurrency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
B.2 Repository Mirroring for Redundancy . . . . . . . . . . . 36
B.3 Trust Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
B.4 A Router as a Minimal Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
B.5 Dealing with Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
C Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
D Privacy of Contact Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 2
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
1 Overview
A routing registry must maintain some degree of integrity to be of
any use. The IRR is increasingly used for purposes that have a
stronger requirement for data integrity and security. There is also
a desire to further decentralize the IRR. This document proposes a
means of decentralizing the routing registry in a way that is
consistent with the usage of the IRR and which avoids compromising
data integrity and security even if the IRR is distributed among less
trusted repositories.
Two methods of authenticating the routing registry information have
been proposed.
authorization and authentication checks on transactions: The
integrity of the routing registry data is insured by repeating
authorization checks as transactions are processed. As
transactions are flooded each remote registry has the option to
repeat the authorization and authentication checks. This scales
with the total number of changes to the registry regardless of how
many registries exist. When querying, the integrity of the
repository must be such that it can be trusted. If an
organization is unwilling to trust any of the available
repositories or mirrors they have the option to run their own
mirror and repeat authorization checks at that mirror site.
Queries can then be directed to a mirror under their own
administration which presumably can be trusted.
signing routing registry objects: An alternate which appears on the
surface to be attractive is signing the objects themselves.
Closer examination reveals that the approach of signing objects by
itself is flawed and when used in addition to signing transactions
and rechecking authorizations as changes are made adds nothing.
In order for an insertion of critical objects such as inetnums and
routes to be valid, authorization checks must be made which allow
the insertion. The objects on which those authorization checks
are made may later change. In order to later repeat the
authorization checks the state of other objects, possibly in other
repositories would have to be known. If the repository were not
trusted then the change history on the object would have to be
traced back to the object's insertion. If the repository were not
trusted, the change history of any object that was depended upon
for authorization would also have to be rechecked. This trace
back would have to go back to the epoch or at least to a point
where only trusted objects were being relied upon for the
authorizations. If the depth of the search is at all limited,
authorization could be falsified simply by exceeding the search
depth with a chain of authorization references back to falsified
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 3
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
objects. This would be grossly inefficient. Simply verifying
that an object is signed provides no assurance that addition of
the object addition was properly authorized.
A minor distinction is made between a repository and a mirror. A
repository has responsibility for the initial authorization and
authentication checks for transactions related to its local objects
which are then flooded to adjacent repositories. A mirror receives
flooded transactions from remote repositories but is not the
authoritative source for any objects. From a protocol standpoint,
repositories and mirrors appear identical in the flooding topology.
Either a repository or a mirror may recheck all or a subset of
transactions that are flooded to it. A repository or mirror may
elect not to recheck authorization and authentication on transactions
received from a trusted adjacency on the grounds that the adjacent
repository is trusted and would not have flooded the information
unless authorization and authentication checks had been made.
If it can be arranged that all adjacencies are trusted for a given
mirror, then there is no need to implement the code to check
authorization and authentication. There is only a need to be able to
check the signatures on the flooded transactions of the adjacent
repository. This is an important special case because it could allow
a router to act as a mirror. Only changes to the registry database
would be received through flooding, which is a very low volume. Only
the signature of the adjacent mirror or repository would have to be
checked.
2 Data Representation
RPSL provides a complete description of the contents of a routing
repository [1]. Many RPSL data objects remain unchanged from the
RIPE, and RPSL references the RIPE-181 specification as recorded in
RFC 1786 [2]. RPSL provides external data representation. Data may
be stored differently internal to a routing registry. The integrity
of the distributed registry data requires the use of the
authorization and authentication additions to RPSL described in [3].
Some additions to RPSL are needed to locate all of the repositories
after having located one of them and to make certain parameters
selectable on a per repository basis readily available. These
additions are described in Section 5.
Some form of encapsulation must be used to exchange data. The de-
facto encapsulation has been that which the RIPE tools accept, a
plain text file or plain text in the body of an RFC 822 formatted
mail message with information needed for authentication derived from
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 4
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
the mail headers. Merit has slightly modified this using the PGP
signed portion of a plain text file or PGP signed portion of the body
of a mail message.
The exchange that occurs during flooding differs from the initial
submission. In order to repeat the authorization checks the state of
all repositories containing objects referenced by the authorization
checks needs to be known. To accomplish this a sequence number is
associated with each transaction in a repository and the flooded
transactions must contain the sequence number of each repository on
which authorization of the transaction depends.
In order to repeat authorization checks it must be possible to
retrieve back revisions of objects. How this is accomplished is a
matter local to the implementation. One method which is quite simple
is to keep the traversal data structures to all current objects even
if the state is deleted, keep the sequence number that the version of
the object became effective and keep back links to prior versions of
the objects. Finding a prior version of an object involves looking
back through the references until the sequence number of the version
of the object is less than or equal to the sequence number being
searched for.
The existing very simple forms of encapsulation are adequate for the
initial submission of a database transaction and should be retained
as long as needed for backward compatibility. A more robust
encapsulation and submission protocol, with optional confirmation is
defined in Section 6.1. An encapsulation suitable for exchange of
transaction between repositories is addressed in Section 6. Query
encapsulation and protocol is outside the scope of this document.
3 Authentication and Authorization
Control must be exercised over who can make changes and what changes
they can make. The distinction of who vs what separates
authentication from authorization.
o Authentication is the means to determine who is attempting to make
a change.
o Authorization is the determination of whether a transaction
passing a specific authentication check is allowed to perform a
given operation.
A submitted transaction contains a claimed identity. Depending on
the type of transaction, the authorization will depend on related
objects.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 5
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
The "mnt-by", "mnt-routes", or "mnt-lower" attributes in those
related objects reference "maintainer" objects. Those maintainer
objects contain "auth" attributes. The auth attributes contain an
authorization method and data which generally contains the claimed
identity and some form of public encryption key used to authenticate
the claim.
Authentication is done on transactions. Authentication should also
be done between repositories to insure the integrity of the
information exchange. In order to comply with import, export, and
use restrictions throughout the world no encryption capability is
specified. Transactions must not be encrypted because it may be
illegal to use decryption software in some parts of the world.
4 Repository Hierarchy
With multiple repositories, "repository" objects are needed to
propagate the existence of new repositories and provide an automated
means to determine the supported methods of access and other
characteristics of the repository. The repository object is
described in Section 5.
In each repository there should be a special repository object named
ROOT. This should point to the root repository or to a higher level
repository. This is to allow queries to be directed to the local
repository but refer to the full set of registries for resolution of
hierarchically allocated objects.
Each repository may have an "expire" attribute. The expire attribute
is used to determine if a repository must be updated before a local
transaction that depends on it can proceed.
The repository object also contains attributes describing the access
methods and supported authentication methods of the repository. The
"query-address" attribute provides a host name and a port number used
to direct queries. The "response-auth-type" attribute provides the
authentication types that may be used by the repository when
responding to queries. The "submit-address" attribute provides a
host name and a port number used to submit objects to the repository.
The "submit-auth-type" attribute provides the authentication types
that may be used by the repository when responding to submissions.
5 Additions to RPSL
There are very few additions to RPSL defined here. The additions to
RPSL are referred to as RPSL "objects". They reside in the
repository database and can be retrieved with ordinary queries.
Objects consist of "attributes", which are name/value pairs.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 6
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
Attributes may be mandatory or optional. They may be single or
multiple. One or more attributes may be part of a key field. Some
attributes may have the requirement of being unique.
Most of the data formats described in this document are
encapsulations used in transaction exchanges. These are referred to
as "meta-objects". These "meta-objects", unlike RPSL "objects" do
not reside in the database but some must be retained in a transaction
log. A similar format is used to represent "meta-objects". They
also consist of "attributes" which are name/value pairs.
This section contains all of the additions to RPSL described in this
document. This section describes only RPSL objects. Other sections
described only meta-objects.
5.1 repository object
A root repository must be agreed upon. Ideally such a repository
would contain only top level delegations and pointers to other
repositories used in these delegations. It would be wise to allow
only cryptographically strong transactions in the root repository
[3].
The root repository contains references to other repositories. An
object of the following form identifies another repository.
repository: RIPE
query-address: whois://whois.ripe.net
response-auth-type: PGPKEY-23F5CE35 # pointer to key-cert object
response-auth-type: none
remarks: you can request rsa signature on queries
remarks: PGP required on submissions
submit-address: mailto://auto-dbm@ripe.net
submit-address: rps-query://whois.ripe.net:43
submit-auth-type: pgp-key, crypt-pw, mail-from
remarks: these are the authentication types supported
mnt-by: maint-ripe-db
expire: 0000 04:00:00
heartbeat-interval: 0000 01:00:00
...
remarks: admin and technical contact, etc
source: IANA
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 7
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
The attributes of the repository object are listed below.
repository key mandatory single
query-address mandatory multiple
response-auth-type mandatory multiple
submit-address mandatory multiple
submit-auth-type mandatory multiple
repository-cert mandatory multiple
expire mandatory single
heartbeat-interval mandatory single
descr optional multiple
remarks optional multiple
admin-c mandatory multiple
tech-c mandatory multiple
notify optional multiple
mnt-by mandatory multiple
changed mandatory multiple
source mandatory single
In the above object type only a small number of the attribute types
are new. These are:
repository This attribute provides the name of the repository. This
is the key field for the object and is single and must be globally
unique. This is the same name used in the source attribute of all
objects in that repository.
query-address This attribute provides a url for directing queries.
"rps-query" or "whois" can be used as the protocol identifier.
response-auth-type This attribute provides an authentication type
that may be used by the repository when responding to user
queries. Its syntax and semantics is same as the auth attribute
of the maintainer class.
submit-address This attribute provides a url for submitting objects
to the repository.
submit-auth-type This attribute provides the authentication types
that are allowed by the repository for users when submitting
registrations.
repository-cert This attribute provides a reference to a public key
certificate in the form of an RPSL key-cert object. This
attribute can be multiple to allow the repository to use more than
one method of signature.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 8
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
heartbeat-interval Heartbeat meta-objects are sent by this
repository at the rate of one heartbeat meta-object per the
interval indicated. The value of this attribute shall be
expressed in the form "dddd hh:mm:ss", where the "dddd" represents
days, "hh" represents hours, "mm" minutes and "ss" seconds.
expire If no heartbeat or new registrations are received from a
repository for expire period, objects from this repository should
be considered non-authoritative, and cannot be used for
authorization purposes. The value of this attribute shall be
expressed in the form "dddd hh:mm:ss", where the "dddd" represents
days, "hh" represents hours, "mm" minutes and "ss" seconds. This
value should be bigger than heartbeat-interval.
Please note that the "heartbeat" meta-objects mentioned above, like
other meta-objects described in this document are part of the
protocol to exchange information but are not placed in the database
itself. See Section 7.3.2 for a description of the heartbeat meta-
object.
The remaining attributes in the repository object are defined in
RPSL.
5.2 delegated attribute
For many RPSL object types a particular entry should appear only in
one repository. These are the object types for which there is a
natural hierarchy, "as-block", "aut-num", "inetnum", and "route". In
order to facilitate putting an object in another repository, a
"delegated" attribute is added.
delegated The delegated attribute is allowed in any object type with
a hierarchy. This attribute indicates that further searches for
object in the hierarchy must be made in one or more alternate
repositories. The current repository may be listed. The ability
to list more than one repository serves only to accommodate
grandfathered objects (those created prior to using an
authorization model). The value of a delegated attribute is a
list of repository names.
If an object contains a "delegated" attribute, an exact key field
match of the object may also be contained in each repository listed
in the "delegated" attribute. For the purpose of authorizing changes
only the "mnt-by" in the object in the repository being modified is
considered.
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RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
The following is an example of the use of a "delegated" attribute.
inetnum: 193.0.0.0 - 193.0.0.255
delegated: RIPE
...
source: IANA
This inetnum simply delegates the storage of any more specific
inetnum objects overlapping the stated range to the RIPE repository.
An exact match of this inetnum may also exist in the RIPE repository
to provide hooks for the attributes referencing maintainer objects.
In this case, when adding objects to the RIPE repository, the "mnt-
lower", "mnt-routes", and "mnt-by" fields in the IANA inetnum object
will not be considered, instead the values in the RIPE copy will be
used.
5.3 integrity attribute
The "integrity" attribute can be contained in any RPSL object. It is
intended solely as a means to facilitate a transition period during
which some data has been moved from repositories prior to the use of
a strong authorization model and is therefore questionable, or when
some repositories are not properly checking authorization.
The "integrity" attribute may have the values "legacy", "no-auth",
"auth-failed", or "authorized". If absent, the integrity is
considered to be "authorized". The integrity values have the
following meanings:
legacy: This data existed prior to the use of an adequate
authorization model. The data is highly suspect.
no-auth: This data was added to a repository during an initial
transition use of an authorization model but authorization
depended on other objects whose integrity was not "authorized".
Such an addition is being allowed during the transition but would
be disallowed later.
auth-failed: The authoritative repository is not checking
authorization. Had it been doing so, authorization would have
failed. This attribute may be added by a repository that is
mirroring before placing the object in its local storage, or can
add this attribute to an encapsulating meta-object used to further
propagate the transaction. If the failure to enforce
authorization is intentional and part of a transition (for
example, issuing warnings only), then the authoritative repository
may add this attribute to the encapsulating meta-object used to
further propagate the transaction.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 10
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
authorized: Authorization checks were passed. The maintainer
contained a "referral-by" attribute, a form of authentication
deemed adequate by the repository was used, and all objects that
were needed for authorization were objects whose integrity was
"authorized".
Normally once an object is added to a repository another object
cannot overwrite it unless authorized to do so by the maintainers
referenced by the "mnt-by" attributes in the object itself. If the
integrity attribute is anything but "authorized", an object can be
overwritten or deleted by any transaction that would have been a
properly authorized addition had the object of lesser integrity not
existed.
During such a transition grandfathered data and data added without
proper authorization becomes advisory until a properly authorized
addition occurs. After transition additions of this type would no
longer be accepted. Those objects already added without proper
authorization would remain but would be marked as candidates for
replacement.
6 Interactions with a Repository or Mirror
This section presents an overview of the transaction distribution
mechanisms. The detailed format of the meta-objects for
encapsulating and distributing transactions, and the rules for
processing meta-objects are described in Section 7. There are a few
different types of interactions between routing repositories or
mirrors.
Initial submission of transactions: Transactions may include
additions, changes, and deletions. A transaction may operate on
more than one object and must be treated as an atomic operation.
By definition initial submission of transactions is not applicable
to a mirror. Initial submission of transactions is described in
Section 6.1.
Redistribution of Transactions: The primary purpose of the
interactions between registries is the redistribution of
transactions. There are a number of ways to redistribute
transactions. This is discussed in Section 6.2.
Queries: Query interactions are outside the scope of this document.
Transaction Commit and Confirmation: Repositories may optionally
implement a commit protocol and a completion indication that gives
the submitter of a transaction a response that indicates that a
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 11
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
transaction has been successful and will not be lost by a crash of
the local repository. A submitter may optionally request such a
confirmation. This is discussed in Section 6.3.
6.1 Initial Transaction Submission
The simplest form of transaction submission is an object or set of
objects submitted with RFC 822 email encapsulation. This form is
still supported for backwards compatibility. A preferred form allows
some meta-information to be included in the submission, such as a
preferred form of confirmation. Where either encapsulation is used,
the submitter will connect to a host and port specified in the
repository object. This allows immediate confirmation. If an email
interface similar to the interface provided by the existing RIPE code
is desired, then an external program can provide the email interface.
The encapsulation of a transaction submission and response is
described in detail in Section 7.
6.2 Redistribution of Transactions
Redistribution of transactions can be accomplished using one of:
1. A repository snapshot is a request for the complete contents of a
given repository. This is usually done when starting up a new
repository or mirror or when recovering from a disaster, such as a
disk crash.
2. A transaction sequence exchange is a request for a specific set of
transactions. Often the request is for the most recent sequence
number known to a mirror to the last transactions. This is used
in polling.
3. Transaction flooding is accomplished through a unicast adjacency.
This section describes the operations somewhat qualitatively. Data
formats and state diagrams are provided in Section 7.
6.3 Transaction Commit and Confirmation
If a submission requires a strong confirmation of completion, or if a
higher degree of protection against false positive confirmation is
desired as a matter of repository policy, a commit may be performed.
A commit request is a request from the repository processing an
initial transaction submission to another repository to confirm that
they have been able to advance the transaction sequence up to the
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 12
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
sequence number immediately below the transaction in the request and
are willing to accept the transaction in the request as a further
advance in the sequence. This indicates that either the
authorization was rechecked by the responding repository and passed
or that the responding repository trusts the requesting repository
and has accepted the transaction.
A commit request can be sent to more than one alternate repository.
One commit completion response is sufficient to respond to the
submitter with a positive confirmation that the transaction has been
completed. However, the repository or submitter may optionally
require more than one.
7 Data Format Summaries, Transaction Encapsulation and Processing
RIPE-181 [2] and RPSL [1] data is represented externally as ASCII
text. Objects consist of a set of attributes. Attributes are
name/value pairs. A single attribute is represented as a single line
with the name followed by a colon followed by whitespace characters
(space, tab, or line continuation) and followed by the value. Within
a value all consecutive whitespace characters is equivalent to a
single space. Line continuation is supported by putting a white
space or '+' character to the beginning of the continuation lines.
An object is externally represented as a sequence of attributes.
Objects are separated by blank lines.
Protocol interactions between registries are activated by passing
"meta objects". Meta objects are not part of RPSL but conform to
RPSL object representation. They serve mostly as delimiters to the
protocol messages or to carry the request for an operation.
7.1 Transaction Submit and Confirm
The de-facto method for submitting database changes has been via
email. This method should be supported by an external application.
Merit has added the pgp-from authentication method to the RADB
(replaced by "pgpkey" in [4]), where the mail headers are essentially
ignored and the body of the mail message must be PGP signed.
This specification defines a different encapsulation for transaction
submission. When submitting a group of objects to a repository, a
user MUST append to that group of objects, exactly one "timestamp"
and one or more "signature" meta-objects, in that order.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 13
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The "timestamp" meta-object contains a single attribute:
timestamp This attribute is mandatory and single-valued. This
attribute specifies the time at which the user submits the
transaction to the repository. The format of this attribute is
"YYYYMMDD hh:mm:ss [+/-]xx:yy", where "YYYY" specifies the four
digit year, "MM" represents the month, "DD" the date, "hh" the
hour, "mm" the minutes, "ss" the seconds of the timestamp, and
"xx" and "yy" represents the hours and minutes respectively that
that timestamp is ahead or behind UTC.
A repository may reject a transaction which does not include the
"timestamp" meta-object. The timestamp object is used to prevent
replaying registrations. How this is actually used is a local
matter. For example, a repository can accept a transaction only if
the value of the timestamp attribute is greater than the timestamp
attribute in the previous registration received from this user
(maintainer), or the repository may only accept transactions with
timestamps within its expire window.
Each "signature" meta-object contains a single attribute:
signature This attribute is mandatory and single-valued. This
attribute, a block of free text, contains the signature
corresponding to the authentication method used for the
transaction. When the authentication method is a cryptographic
hash (as in PGP-based authentication), the signature must include
all text up to (but not including) the last blank line before the
first "signature" meta-object.
A repository must reject a transaction that does not include any
"signature" meta-object.
The group of objects submitted by the user, together with the
"timestamp" and "signature" meta-objects, constitute the "submitted
text" of the transaction.
The protocol used for submitting a transaction, and for receiving
confirmation of locally committed transactions, is not specified in
this document. This protocol may define additional encapsulations
around the submitted text. The rest of this section gives an example
of one such protocol. Implementations are free to choose another
encapsulation.
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RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
The meta-objects "transaction-submit-begin" and "transaction-submit-
end" delimit a transaction. A transaction is handled as an atomic
operation. If any part of the transaction fails none of the changes
take effect. For this reason a transaction can only operate on a
single database.
A socket connection is used to request queries or submit
transactions. An email interface may be provided by an external
program that connects to the socket. A socket connection must use
the "transaction-submit-begin" and "transaction-submit-end"
delimiters but can request a legacy style confirmation. Multiple
transactions may be sent prior to the response for any single
transaction. Transactions may not complete in the order sent.
The "transaction-submit-begin" meta-object may contain the following
attributes.
transaction-submit-begin This attribute is mandatory and single.
The value of the attribute contains name of the database and an
identifier that must be unique over the course of the socket
connection.
response-auth-type This attribute is optional and multiple. The
remainder of the line specifies an authentication type that would
be acceptable in the response. This is used to request a response
cryptographically signed by the repository.
transaction-confirm-type This attribute is optional and single. A
confirmation type keyword must be provided. Keywords are "none",
"legacy", "normal", "commit". The confirmation type can be
followed by the option "verbose".
The "transaction-submit-end meta-object consists of a single
attribute by the same name. It must contain the same database name
and identifier as the corresponding "transaction-submit-begin"
attribute.
Unless the confirmation type is "none" a confirmation is sent. If
the confirmation type is "legacy", then an email message of the form
currently sent by the RIPE database code will be returned on the
socket (suitable for submission to the sendmail program).
A "normal" confirmation does not require completion of the commit
protocol. A "commit" confirmation does. A "verbose" confirmation
may contain additional detail.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 15
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
A transaction confirmation is returned as a "transaction-confirm"
meta-object. The "transaction-confirm" meta-object may have the
following attributes.
transaction-confirm This attribute is mandatory and single. It
contains the database name and identifier associated with the
transaction.
confirmed-operation This attribute is optional and multiple. It
contains one of the keywords "add", "delete" or "modify" followed
by the object type and key fields of the object operated on.
commit-status This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains
one of the keywords "succeeded, "error", or "held". The "error"
keyword may be followed by an optional text string. The "held"
keyword is returned when a repository containing a dependent
object for authorization has expired.
7.2 Redistribution of Transactions
In order to redistribute transactions, each repository maintains a
TCP connection with one or more other repositories. After locally
committing a submitted transaction, a repository assigns a sequence
number to the transaction, signs and encapsulates the transaction,
and then sends one copy to each neighboring (or "peer") repository.
In turn, each repository authenticates the transaction (as described
in Section 7.6), may re-sign the transaction and redistributes the
transaction to its neighbors. We use the term "originating
repository" to distinguish the repository that redistributes a
locally submitted transaction.
This document also specifies two other methods for redistributing
transactions to other repositories: a database snapshot format used
for initializing a new registry, and a polling technique used by
mirrors.
In this section, we first describe how a repository may encapsulate
the submitted text of a transaction. We then describe the protocol
for flooding transactions or polling for transactions, and the
database snapshot contents and format.
7.3 Redistribution Protocol Description
The originating repository must first authenticate a submitted
transaction using methods described in [3].
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 16
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
Before redistributing a transaction, the originating repository must
encapsulate the submitted text of the transaction with several meta-
objects, which are described below.
The originating repository must prepend the submitted text with
exactly one "transaction-label" meta-object. This meta-object
contains the following attributes:
transaction-label This attribute is mandatory and single. The value
of this attribute conforms to the syntax of an RPSL word, and
represents a globally unique identifier for the database to which
this transaction is added.
sequence This attribute is mandatory and single. The value of this
attribute is an RPSL integer specifying the sequence number
assigned by the originating repository to the transaction.
Successive transactions distributed by the same originating
repository have successive sequence numbers. The first
transaction originated by a registry is assigned a sequence number
1. Each repository must use sequence numbers drawn from a range
at least as large as 64 bit unsigned integers.
timestamp This attribute is mandatory and single-valued. This
attribute specifies the time at which the originating repository
encapsulates the submitted text. The format of this attribute is
"YYYYMMDD hh:mm:ss [+/-]xx:yy", where "YYYY" specifies the four
digit year, "MM" represents the month, "DD" the date, "hh" the
hour, "mm" the minutes, "ss" the seconds of the timestamp, and
"xx" and "yy" represents the hours and minutes respectively that
that timestamp is ahead or behind UTC.
integrity This attribute is optional and single-valued. It may have
the values "legacy", "no-auth", "auth-failed", or "authorized".
If absent, the integrity is considered to be "authorized".
The originating repository may append to the submitted text one or
more "auth-dependency" meta-objects. These meta-objects are used to
indicate which other repositories' objects were used by the
originating registry to authenticate the submitted text. The "auth-
dependency" meta-objects should be ordered from the most preferred
repository to the least preferred repository. This order is used by
a remote repository to tie break between the multiple registrations
of an object with the same level of integrity. The "auth-dependency"
meta-object contains the following attributes:
auth-dependency This attribute mandatory and single-valued. It
equals a repository name from which an object is used to
authorize/authenticate this transaction.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 17
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
sequence This attribute mandatory and single-valued. It equals the
transaction sequence number of the dependent repository known at
the originating repository at the time of processing this
transaction.
timestamp This attribute mandatory and single-valued. It equals the
timestamp of the dependent repository known at the originating
repository at the time of processing this transaction.
If the originating repository needs to modify submitted objects in a
way that the remote repositories can not re-create, it can append an
"override-objects" meta-object followed by the modified versions of
these objects. An example modification can be auto assignment of NIC
handles. The "override-objects" meta-object contains the following
attributes:
override-objects A free text remark.
Other repositories may or may not honor override requests, or limit
the kinds of overrides they allow.
Following this, the originating repository must append exactly one
"repository-signature" meta-object. The "repository-signature"
meta-object contains the following attributes:
repository-signature This attribute is mandatory and single-valued.
It contains the name of the repository.
integrity This attribute is optional and single-valued. It may have
the values "legacy", "no-auth", "auth-failed", or "authorized".
If absent, the value is same as the value in the transaction-
label. If a different value is used, the value here takes
precedence.
signature This attribute is optional and single-valued. This
attribute, a block of free text, contains the repository's
signature using the key in the repository-cert attribute of the
repository object. When the authentication method is a
cryptographic hash (as in PGP-based authentication), the signature
must include all text upto (but not including) this attribute.
That is, the "repository-signature" and "integrity" attributes of
this object are included. This attribute is optional since
cryptographic authentication may not be available everywhere.
However, its use where it is available is highly recommended.
A repository must reject a redistributed transaction that does not
include any "repository-signature" meta-object.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 18
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
The transaction-label, the submitted text, the dependency objects,
the override-objects, the overridden objects, and the repository's
signature together constitute what we call the "redistributed text".
In preparation for redistributing the transaction to other
repositories, the originating repository must perform the following
protocol encapsulation. This protocol encapsulation may involve
transforming the redistributed text according to one of the
"transfer-method"s described below.
The transformed redistributed text is first prepended with exactly
one "transaction-begin" meta-object. One newline character separates
this meta-object from the redistributed text. This meta-object has
the following attributes:
transaction-begin This attribute is mandatory and single. The value
of this attribute is the length, in bytes, of the transformed
redistributed text.
transfer-method This attribute is optional and single-valued. Its
value is either "gzip", or "plain". The value of the attribute
describes the kind of text encoding that the repository has
performed on the redistributed text. If this attribute is not
specified, its value is assumed to be "plain". An implementation
must be capable of encoding and decoding both of these types.
The "transaction-begin" meta-object and the transformed redistributed
text constitute what we call the "transmitted text". The originating
repository may distribute the transmitted text to one or more peer
repositories.
When a repository receives the transmitted text of a transaction, it
must perform the following steps. After performing the following
steps, a transaction may be marked successful or failed.
1. It must decapsulate the "transaction-begin" meta-object, then
decode the original redistributed text according to the value of
the transfer-method attribute specified in the "transaction-begin"
meta-object.
2. It should then extract the "transaction-label" meta-object from
the transmitted text. If this transaction has already been
processed, or is currently being held, the repository must
silently discard this incarnation of the same transaction.
3. It should verify that the signature of the originating repository
matches the first "repository-signature" meta-object in the
redistributed text following the "auth-dependency" meta-objects.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 19
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
4. If not all previous (i.e., those with a lower sequence number)
transactions from the same repository have been received or
completely processed, the repository must "hold" this transaction.
5. It may check whether any subsequent "repository-signature" meta-
objects were appended by a trusted repository. If so, this
indicates that the trusted repository verified the transaction's
integrity and marked its conclusion in the integrity attribute of
this object. The repository may verify the trusted repositories
signature and also mark the transaction with the same integrity,
and skip the remaining steps.
6. It should verify the syntactic correctness of the transaction. An
implementation may allow configurable levels of syntactic
conformance with RPSL [1]. This enables RPSL extensions to be
incrementally deployed in the distributed registry scheme.
7. The repository must authorize and authenticate this transaction.
To do this, it may need to reference objects and transactions from
other repositories. If these objects are not available, the
repository must "hold" this transaction as described in Section
7.6, until it can be authorized and authenticated later. In order
to verify authorization/authentication of this transaction, the
repository must not use an object from a repository not mentioned
in an "auth-dependency" meta-object. The repository should also
only use the latest objects (by rolling back to earlier versions
if necessary) which are within the transaction sequence numbers of
the "auth-dependency" meta-objects.
A non-originating repository must redistribute a failed transaction
in order not to cause a gap in the sequence. (If the transaction was
to fail at the originating registry, it would simply not be assigned
a sequence number).
To the redistributed text of a transaction, a repository may append
another "repository-signature" meta-object. This indicates that the
repository has verified the transaction's integrity and marked it in
the "integrity" attribute of this object. The signature covers the
new redistributed text from (and including) the transaction-label
object to this object's signature attribute (including the
"repository-signature" and "integrity" attributes of this object, but
excluding the "signature" attribute). The original redistributed
text, together with the new "repository-signature" meta-object
constitutes the modified redistributed text.
To redistribute a successful or failed transaction, the repository
must encapsulate the (original or modified) redistributed text with a
"transaction-begin" object. This step is essentially the same as
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 20
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
that performed by the originating repository (except that the
repository is free to use a different "transfer-method" from the one
that was in the received transaction.
7.3.1 Explicitly Requesting Transactions
A repository may also explicitly request one or more transactions
belonging to a specified originating repository. This is useful for
catching up after a repository has been off-line for a period of
time. It is also useful for mirrors which intermittently poll a
repository for recently received transactions.
To request a range of transactions from a peer, a repository must
send a "transaction-request" meta-object to the peer. A
"transaction-request" meta-object may contain the following
attributes:
transaction-request This attribute is mandatory and single. It
contains the name of the database whose transactions are being
requested.
sequence-begin This attribute is optional and single. It contains
the sequence number of the first transaction being requested.
sequence-end This attribute is optional and single. It contains the
sequence number of the last transaction being requested.
Upon receiving a "transaction-request" object, a repository performs
the following actions. If the "sequence-begin" attribute is not
specified, the repository assumes the request first sequence number
to be 1. The last sequence number is the lesser of the value of the
"sequence-end" attributed and the highest completed transaction in
the corresponding database. The repository then, in order, transmits
the requested range of transactions. Each transaction is prepared
exactly according to the rules for redistribution specified in
Section 7.3.
After transmitting all the transactions, the peer repository must
send a "transaction-response" meta-object. This meta-object has the
following attributes:
transaction-response This attribute is mandatory and single. It
contains the name of the database whose transactions are were
requested.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 21
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
sequence-begin This attribute is optional and mandatory. It
contains the value of the "sequence-begin" attribute in the
original request. It is omitted if the corresponding attribute
was not specified in the original request.
sequence-end This attribute is optional and mandatory. It contains
the value of the "sequence-end" attribute in the original request.
It is omitted if the corresponding attribute was not specified in
the original request.
After receiving a "transaction-response" meta-object, a repository
may tear down the TCP connection to its peer. This is useful for
mirrors that intermittently resynchronize transactions with a
repository. If the TCP connection stays open, repositories exchange
subsequent transactions according to the redistribution mechanism
specified in Section 7.3. While a repository is responding to a
transaction-request, it MAY forward heartbeats and other transactions
from the requested repository towards the requestor.
7.3.2 Heartbeat Processing
Each repository that has originated at least one transaction must
periodically send a "heartbeat" meta-object. The interval between
two successive transmissions of this meta-object is configurable but
must be less than 1 day. This meta-object serves to indicate the
liveness of a particular repository. The repository liveness
determines how long transactions are held (See Section 7.6).
The "heartbeat" meta-object contains the following attributes:
heartbeat This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains the
name of the repository which originates this meta-object.
sequence This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains the
highest transaction sequence number that has been assigned by the
repository.
timestamp This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains the
time at which this meta-object was generated. The format of this
attribute is "YYYYMMDD hh:mm:ss [+/-]xx:yy", where "YYYY"
specifies the four digit year, "MM" represents the month, "DD" the
date, "hh" the hour, "mm" the minutes, "ss" the seconds of the
timestamp, and "xx" and "yy" represents the hours and minutes
respectively that that timestamp is ahead or behind UTC.
Upon receiving a heartbeat meta-object, a repository must first check
the timestamp of the latest previously received heartbeat message.
If that timestamp exceeds the timestamp in the received heartbeat
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 22
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
message, the repository must silently discard the heartbeat message.
Otherwise, it must record the timestamp and sequence number in the
heartbeat message, and redistribute the heartbeat message, without
modification, to each of its peer repositories.
If the heartbeat message is from a repository previously unknown to
the recipient, the recipient may send a "transaction-request" to one
or more of its peers to obtain all transactions belonging to the
corresponding database. If the heartbeat message contains a sequence
number higher than the highest sequence number processed by the
recipient, the recipient may send a "transaction-request" to one or
more of its peers to obtain all transactions belonging to the
corresponding database.
7.4 Transaction Commit
Submitters may require stronger confirmation of commit for their
transactions (Section 6.3). This section describes a simple
request-response protocol by which a repository may provide this
stronger confirmation, by verifying if one or more other repositories
have committed the transaction. Implementation of this request-
response protocol is optional.
After it has redistributed a transaction, the originating repository
may request a commit confirmation from one or more peer repositories
by sending to them a "commit-request" meta-object. The "commit-
request" contains two attributes:
commit-request This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains
the name of the database for whom a commit confirmation is being
requested.
sequence This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains the
transaction sequence number for which a commit confirmation is
being requested.
A repository that receives a "commit-request" must not redistribute
the request. It must delay the response until the corresponding
transaction has been processed. For this reason, the repository must
keep state about pending commit requests. It should discard this
state if the connection to the requester is lost before the response
is sent. In that event, it is the responsibility of the requester to
resend the request.
Once a transaction has been processed (Section 7.3), a repository
must check to see if there exists any pending commit request for the
transaction. If so, it must send a "commit-response" meta-object to
the requester. This meta-object has three attributes:
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 23
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
commit-response This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains
the name of the database for whom a commit response is being sent.
sequence This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains the
transaction sequence number for which a commit response is being
sent.
commit-status This attribute is mandatory and single. It contains
one of the keywords "held", "error", or "succeeded". The "error"
keyword may be followed by an optional text string. The "held"
keyword is returned when a repository containing a dependent
object for authorization has expired.
7.5 Database Snapshot
A database snapshot provides a complete copy of a database. It is
intended only for repository initialization or disaster recovery. A
database snapshot is an out of band mechanism. A set of files are
created periodically at the source repository. These files are then
transferred to the requestor out of band (e.g. ftp transfer). The
objects in these files are then registered locally.
A snapshot of repository X contains the following set of files:
X.db This file contains the RPSL objects of repository X, separated
by blank lines. In addition to the RPSL objects and blank lines,
comment lines can be present. Comment lines start with the
character '#'. The comment lines are ignored. The file X.db ends
in a special comment line "# eof".
X.<class>.db This optional file if present contains the RPSL objects
in X.db that are of class <class>. The format of the file is same
as that of X.db.
X.transaction-label This file contains a transaction-label object
that records the timestamp and the latest sequence number of the
repository at the time of the snapshot.
Each of these files can be optionally compressed uzing gzip. This is
signified by appending the suffix .gz to the file name. Each of
these files can optionally be PGP signed. In this case, the detached
signature with ASCII armoring and platform-independent text mode is
stored in a file whose name is constructed by appending .sig to the
file name of the file being signed.
In order to construct a repository's contents from a snapshot, a
repository downloads these files. After uncompressing and checking
signatures, the repository records these objects in its database. No
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 24
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
RPS authorization/authentication is done on these objects. The
transaction-label object provides the seed for the replication
protocol to receive the follow on transactions from this repository.
Hence, it is not crucial to download an up to the minute snapshot.
After successfully playing a snapshot, it is possible that a
repository may receive a transaction from a third repository that has
a dependency on an earlier version of one of the objects in the
snapshot. This can only happen within the expire period of the
repository being downloaded, plus any possible network partition
period. This dependency is only important if the repository wants to
re-verify RPS authorization/authentication. There are three allowed
alternatives in this case. The simplest alternative is for the
repository to accept the transaction and mark it with integrity "no-
auth". The second choice is to only peer with trusted repositories
during this time period, and accept the transaction with the same
integrity as the trusted repository (possibly as "authorized"). The
most preferred alternative is not to download an up to the minute
snapshot, but to download an older snapshot, at minimum twice the
repositories expire time, in practice few days older. Upon replaying
an older snapshot, the replication protocol will fetch the more
current transactions from this repository. Together they provide the
necessary versions of objects to re-verify rps
authorization/authentication.
7.6 Authenticating Operations
The "signature" and "repository-signature" meta-objects represent
signatures. Where multiple of these objects are present, the
signatures should be over the original contents, not over other
signatures. This allows signatures to be checked in any order.
A maintainer can also sign a transaction using several authentication
methods (some of which may be available in some repositories only).
In the case of PGP, implementations should allow the signatures of
the "signature" and "repository-signature" meta-objects to be either
the detached signatures produced by PGP or regular signatures
produced by PGP. In either case, ASCII armoring and platform-
independent text mode should be used.
Note that the RPSL objects themselves are not signed but the entire
transaction body is signed. When exchanging transactions among
registries, the meta-objects (e.g. "auth-dependency") prior to the
first "repository-signature" meta object in the redistributed text
are also signed over.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 25
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
Transactions must remain intact, including the signatures, even if an
authentication method provided by the submitter is not used by a
repository handling the message. An originating repository may chose
to remove clear text passwords signatures from a transaction, and
replace it with the keyword "clear-text-passwd" followed by the
maintainer's id.
signature: clear-text-passwd <maintainer-name>
Note that this does not make the system less secure since clear text
password is an indication of total trust to the originating
repository by the maintainer.
A repository may sign a transaction that it verified. If at any
point the signature of a trusted repository is encountered, no
further authorization or authentication is needed.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 26
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
A Examples
RPSL provides an external representation of RPSL objects and
attributes. An attribute is a name/value pair. RPSL is line
oriented. Line continuation is supported, however most attributes
fit on a single line. The attribute name is followed by a colon,
then any amount of whitespace, then the attribute value. An example
of the ASCII representation of an RPSL attribute is the following:
route: 140.222.0.0/16
An RPSL object is a set of attributes. Objects are separated from
each other by one or more blank lines. An example of a complete RPSL
object follows:
route: 140.222.0.0/16
descr: ANS Communications
origin: AS1673
member-of: RS-ANSOSPFAGGREGATE
mnt-by: ANS
changed: tck@ans.net 19980115
source: ANS
A.1 Initial Object Submission and Redistribution
Figure 1 outlines the steps involved in submitting an object and the
initial redistribution from the authoritative registry to its flooding
peers.
If the authorization check requires objects from other repositories,
then the sequence numbers of the local copies of those databases is
required for mirrors to recheck the authorization.
To simply resubmit the object from the prior example, the submitter or
a client application program acting on the submitter's behalf must
submit a transaction. The legacy method was to send PGP signed email.
The preferred method is for an interactive program to encapsulate a
request between "transaction-submit-begin" and
"transaction-submit-end" meta-objects and encapsulate that as a
signed block as in the following example:
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 27
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
+--------------+
| Transaction |
| signed by |
| submitter |
+--------------+
|
| 1
v
+---------------------+ 2
| Primary repository |---->+----------+
| identified by | | database |
| RPSL source |<----+----------+
+---------------------+ 3
|
| 4
v
+----------------+
| Redistributed |
| transaction |
+----------------+
1. submit object
2. authorization check
3. sequence needed for authorization
4. redistribute
Figure 1: Initial Object Submission and Redistribution
transaction-submit-begin: ANS 1
response-auth-type: PGP
transaction-confirm-type: normal
route: 140.222.0.0/16
descr: ANS Communications
origin: AS1673
member-of: RS-ANSOSPFAGGREGATE
mnt-by: ANS
changed: curtis@ans.net 19990401
source: ANS
timestamp: 19990401 10:30:00 +08:00
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 28
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
signature:
+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
+ Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0
+ MessageID: UZi4b7kjlzP7rb72pATPywPxYfQj4gXI
+
+ iQCVAwUANsrwkP/OhQ1cphB9AQFOvwP/Ts8qn3FRRLQQHKmQGzy2IxOTiF0QXB4U
+ Xzb3gEvfeg8NWhAI32zBw/D6FjkEw7P6wDFDeok52A1SA/xdP5wYE8heWQmMJQLX
+ Avf8W49d3CF3qzh59UC0ALtA5BjI3r37ubzTf3mgtw+ONqVJ5+lB5upWbqKN9zqv
+ PGBIEN3/NlM=
+ =c93c
+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
transaction-submit-end: ANS 1
The signature covers the everything after the first blank line after
the "transaction-submit-begin" object to the last blank line before
the "signature" meta-object. If multiple signatures are needed, it
would be quite easy to email this block and ask the other party to
add a signature-block and return or submit the transaction. Because
of delay in obtaining multiple signatures the accuracy of the
"timestamp" cannot be strictly enforced. Enforcing accuracy to
within the "expire" time of the database might be a reasonable
compromise. The tradeoff is between convenience, allowing a longer
time to obtain multiple signatures, and increased time of exposure to
replay attack.
The ANS repository would look at its local database and make
authorization checks. If the authorization passes, then the sequence
number of any other database needed for the authorization is
obtained.
If this operation was successful, then a confirmation would be
returned. The confirmation would be of the form:
transaction-confirm: ANS 1
confirmed-operation: change route 140.222.0.0/16 AS1673
commit-status: commit
timestamp: 19990401 10:30:10 +05:00
A.2 Transaction Redistribution Encoding
Having passed the authorization check the transaction is given a
sequence number and stored in the local transaction log and is then
flooded. The meta-object flooded to another database would be signed
by the repository and would be of the following form:
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 29
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
transaction-label: ANS
sequence: 6666
timestamp: 19990401 13:30:10 +05:00
integrity: authorized
route: 140.222.0.0/16
descr: ANS Communications
origin: AS1673
member-of: RS-ANSOSPFAGGREGATE
mnt-by: ANS
changed: curtis@ans.net 19990401
source: ANS
timestamp: 19990401 10:30:00 +08:00
signature:
+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
+ Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0
+ MessageID: UZi4b7kjlzP7rb72pATPywPxYfQj4gXI
+
+ iQCVAwUANsrwkP/OhQ1cphB9AQFOvwP/Ts8qn3FRRLQQHKmQGzy2IxOTiF0QXB4U
+ Xzb3gEvfeg8NWhAI32zBw/D6FjkEw7P6wDFDeok52A1SA/xdP5wYE8heWQmMJQLX
+ Avf8W49d3CF3qzh59UC0ALtA5BjI3r37ubzTf3mgtw+ONqVJ5+lB5upWbqKN9zqv
+ PGBIEN3/NlM=
+ =c93c
+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
auth-dependency: ARIN
sequence: 555
timestamp: 19990401 13:30:08 +05:00
auth-dependency: RADB
sequence: 4567
timestamp: 19990401 13:27:54 +05:00
repository-signature: ANS
signature:
+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
+ Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0
+ MessageID: UZi4b7kjlzP7rb72pATPywPxYfQj4gXI
+
+ iQCVAwUANsrwkP/OhQ1cphB9AQFOvwP/Ts8qn3FRRLQQHKmQGzy2IxOTiF0QXB4U
+ Xzb3gEvfeg8NWhAI32zBw/D6FjkEw7P6wDFDeok52A1SA/xdP5wYE8heWQmMJQLX
+ Avf8W49d3CF3qzh59UC0ALtA5BjI3r37ubzTf3mgtw+ONqVJ5+lB5upWbqKN9zqv
+ PGBIEN3/NlM=
+ =c93c
+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 30
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
Note that the repository-signature above is a detached signature for
another file and is illustrative only. The repository-signature
covers from the "transaction-label" meta-object (including) to the
last blank line before the first "repository-signature" meta-object
(excluding the last blank line and the "repository-signature"
object).
A.3 Transaction Protocol Encoding
transaction-begin: 1276
transfer-method: plain
transaction-label: ANS
sequence: 6666
timestamp: 19990401 13:30:10 +05:00
integrity: authorized
route: 140.222.0.0/16
descr: ANS Communications
origin: AS1673
member-of: RS-ANSOSPFAGGREGATE
mnt-by: ANS
changed: curtis@ans.net 19990401
source: ANS
timestamp: 19990401 10:30:00 +08:00
signature:
+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
+ Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0
+ MessageID: UZi4b7kjlzP7rb72pATPywPxYfQj4gXI
+
+ iQCVAwUANsrwkP/OhQ1cphB9AQFOvwP/Ts8qn3FRRLQQHKmQGzy2IxOTiF0QXB4U
+ Xzb3gEvfeg8NWhAI32zBw/D6FjkEw7P6wDFDeok52A1SA/xdP5wYE8heWQmMJQLX
+ Avf8W49d3CF3qzh59UC0ALtA5BjI3r37ubzTf3mgtw+ONqVJ5+lB5upWbqKN9zqv
+ PGBIEN3/NlM=
+ =c93c
+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
auth-dependency: ARIN
sequence: 555
timestamp: 19990401 13:30:08 +05:00
auth-dependency: RADB
sequence: 4567
timestamp: 19990401 13:27:54 +05:00
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 31
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
repository-signature: ANS
signature:
+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
+ Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0
+ MessageID: UZi4b7kjlzP7rb72pATPywPxYfQj4gXI
+
+ iQCVAwUANsrwkP/OhQ1cphB9AQFOvwP/Ts8qn3FRRLQQHKmQGzy2IxOTiF0QXB4U
+ Xzb3gEvfeg8NWhAI32zBw/D6FjkEw7P6wDFDeok52A1SA/xdP5wYE8heWQmMJQLX
+ Avf8W49d3CF3qzh59UC0ALtA5BjI3r37ubzTf3mgtw+ONqVJ5+lB5upWbqKN9zqv
+ PGBIEN3/NlM=
+ =c93c
+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Before the transaction is sent to a peer, the repository prepends a
"transaction-begin" meta-object. The value of the "transaction-
begin" attribute is the number of octets in the transaction, not
counting the "transaction-begin" meta-object and the first blank line
after it.
Separating transaction-begin and transaction-label objects enables
different encodings at different flooding peerings.
A.4 Transaction Redistribution
The last step in Figure 1 was redistributing the submitter's
transaction through flooding (or later through polling). Figure 2
illustrates the further redistribution of the transaction.
If the authorization check was repeated, the mirror may optionally
add a repository-signature before passing the transaction any
further. A "signature" can be added within that block. The previous
signatures should not be signed.
Figure 3 illustrates the special case referred to as a "lightweight
mirror". This is specifically intended for routers.
The lightweight mirror must trust the mirror from which it gets a
feed. This is a safe assumption if the two are under the same
administration (the mirror providing the feed is a host owned by the
same ISP who owns the routers). The lightweight mirror simply checks
the signature of the adjacent repository to insure data integrity.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 32
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
+----------------+
| Redistributed |
| transaction |
+----------------+
|
| 1
v
+--------------------+ 2
| |---->+----------+
| Mirror repository | | database |
| |<----+----------+
+--------------------+ 3
|
| 4
v
+------------------+
|+----------------+|
|| Redistributed ||
|| transaction ||
|+----------------+|
| Optional |
| signature |
+------------------+
1. redistribute transaction
2. recheck authorization against full DB at the
time of the transaction using sequence numbers
3. authorization pass/fail
4. optionally sign then redistribute
Figure 2: Further Transaction Redistribution
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 33
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
+----------------+
| Redistributed |
| transaction |
+----------------+
| 1
v
+--------------------+ 2
| |---->+----------+
| Mirror repository | | database |
| |<----+----------+
+--------------------+ 3
| 4
v
+----------------+
| Redistributed |
| transaction |
+----------------+
| 5
v
+--------------------+
| Lightweight | 6 +----------+
| Mirror repository |---->| database |
| (router?) | +----------+
+--------------------+
1. redistribute transaction
2. recheck authorization against full DB at the
time of the transaction using sequence numbers
3. authorization pass/fail
4. sign and redistribute
5. just check mirror signature
6. apply change with no authorization check
Figure 3: Redistribution to Lightweight Mirrors
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 34
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
B Technical Discussion
B.1 Server Processing
This document does not mandate any particular software design,
programming language choice, or underlying database or underlying
operating system. Examples are given solely for illustrative
purposes.
B.1.1 getting connected
There are two primary methods of communicating with a repository
server. E-mail can be sent to the server. This method may be
deprecated but at least needs to be supported during transition. The
second method is preferred, connect directly to a TCP socket.
Traditionally the whois service is supported for simple queries. It
might be wise to retain the whois port connection solely for simple
queries and use a second port not in the reserved number space for
all other operations including queries except those queries using the
whois unstructured single line query format.
There are two styles of handling connection initiation is the
dedicated daemon, in the style of BSD sendmail, or launching through
a general purpose daemon such as BSD inetd. E-mail is normally
handled sequentially and can be handled by a front end program which
will make the connection to a socket in the process as acting as a
mail delivery agent.
B.1.2 rolling transaction logs forward and back
There is a need to be able to easily look back at previous states of
any database in order to repeat authorization checks at the time of a
transaction. This is difficult to do with the RIPE database
implementation, which uses a sequentially written ASCII file and a
set of Berkeley DB maintained index files for traversal. At the very
minimum, the way in which deletes or replacements are implemented
would need to be altered.
In order to easily support a view back at prior versions of objects,
the sequence number of the transaction at which each object was
entered would need to be kept with the object. A pointer would be
needed back to the previous state of the object. A deletion would
need to be implemented as a new object with a deleted attribute,
replacing the previous version of the object but retaining a pointer
back to it.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 35
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
A separate transaction log needs to be maintained. Beyond some age,
the older versions of objects and the the older transaction log
entries can be removed although it is probably wise to archive them.
B.1.3 committing or disposing of transactions
The ability to commit large transaction, or reject them as a whole
poses problems for simplistic database designs. This form of commit
operation can be supported quite easily using memory mapped files.
The changes can be made in virtual memory only and then either
committed or disposed of.
B.1.4 dealing with concurrency
Multiple connections may be active. In addition, a single connection
may have multiple outstanding operations. It makes sense to have a
single process or thread coordinate the responses for a given
connection and have multiple processes or threads each tending to a
single operation. The operations may complete in random order.
Locking on reads is not essential. Locking before write access is
essential. The simplest approach to locking is to lock at the
database granularity or at the database and object type granularity.
Finer locking granularity can also be implemented. Because there are
multiple databases, deadlock avoidance must be considered. The usual
deadlock avoidance mechanism is to acquire all necessary locks in a
single operation or acquire locks in a prescribed order.
B.2 Repository Mirroring for Redundancy
There are numerous reasons why the operator of a repository might
mirror their own repository. Possibly the most obvious are
redundancy and the relative ease of disaster recovery. Another
reason might be the widespread use of a small number of
implementations (but more than one) and the desire to insure that the
major repository software releases will accept a transaction before
fully committing to the transaction.
The operation of a repository mirror used for redundancy is quite
straightforward. The transactions of the primary repository host can
be immediately fed to the redundant repository host. For tighter
assurances that false positive confirmations will be sent, as a
matter of policy the primary repository host can require commit
confirmation before making a transaction sequence publicly available.
There are many ways in which the integrity of local data can be
assured regardless of a local crash in the midst of transaction disk
writes. For example, transactions can be implemented as memory
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 36
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
mapped file operations, with disk synchronization used as the local
commit mechanism, and disposal of memory copies of pages used to
handle commit failures. The old pages can be written to a separate
file, the new pages written into the database. The transaction can
be logged and old pages file can then be removed. In the event of a
crash, the existence of a old pages file and the lack of a record of
the transaction completing would trigger a transaction roll back by
writing the old pages back to the database file.
The primary repository host can still sustain severe damage such as a
disk crash. If the primary repository host becomes corrupted, the
use of a mirror repository host provides a backup and can provide a
rapid recovery from disaster by simply reversing roles.
If a mirror is set up using a different software implementation with
commit mirror confirmation required, any transaction which fails due
a software bug will be deferred indefinitely allowing other
transactions to proceed rather than halting the remote processing of
all transactions until the bug is fixed everywhere.
B.3 Trust Relationships
If all repositories trust each other then there is never a need to
repeat authorization checks. This enables a convenient interim step
for deployment prior to the completion of software supporting that
capability. The opposite case is where no repository trusts any
other repository. In this case, all repositories must roll forward
transactions gradually, checking the authorization of each remote
transaction.
It is likely that repositories will trust a subset of other
repositories. This trust can reduce the amount of processing a
repository required to maintain mirror images of the full set of
data. For example, a subset of repositories might be trustworthy in
that they take reasonable security measures, the organizations
themselves have the integrity not to alter data, and these
repositories trust only a limited set of similar repositories. If
any one of these repositories receives a transaction sequence and
repeats the authorization checks, other major repositories which
trusts that repository need not repeat the checks. In addition,
trust need not be mutual to reap some benefit in reduced processing.
As a transaction sequence is passed from repository to repository
each repository signs the transaction sequence before forwarding it.
If a receiving repository finds that any trusted repository has
signed the transaction sequence it can be considered authorized since
the trusted repository either trusted a preceding repository or
repeated the authorization checks.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 37
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
B.4 A Router as a Minimal Mirror
A router could serve as a minimal repository mirror. The following
simplifications can be made.
1. No support for repeating authorization checks or transaction
authentication checks need be coded in the router.
2. The router must be adjacent only to trusted mirrors, generally
operated by the same organization.
3. The router would only check the authentication of the adjacent
repository mirrors.
4. No support for transaction submission or query need be coded in
the router. No commit support is needed.
5. The router can dispose of any object types or attributes not
needed for configuration of route filters.
The need to update router configurations could be significantly
reduced if the router were capable of acting as a limited repository
mirror.
A significant amount of non-volatile storage would be needed. There
are currently an estimated 100 transactions per day. If storage were
flash memory with a limited number of writes, or if there were some
other reason to avoid writing to flash, the router could only update
the non-volatile copy every few days. A transaction sequence request
can be made to get an update in the event of a crash, returning only
a few hundred updates after losing a few days of deferred writes.
The routers can still take a frequent or continuous feed of
transactions.
Alternately, router filters can be reconfigured periodically as they
are today.
B.5 Dealing with Errors
If verification of an authorization check fails, the entire
transaction must be rejected and no further advancement of the
repository can occur until the originating repository corrects the
problem. If the problem is due to a software bug, the offending
transaction can be removed manually once the problem is corrected.
If a software bug exists in the receiving software, then the
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 38
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
transaction sequence is stalled until the bug is corrected. It is
better for software to error on the side of denying a transaction
than acceptance, since an error on the side of acceptance will
require later removal of the effects of the transaction.
C Deployment Considerations
This section described deployment considerations. The intention is
to raise issues rather than to provide a deployment plan.
This document calls for a transaction exchange mechanism similar to
but not identical to the existing "near real time mirroring"
supported by the code base widely used by the routing registries. As
an initial step, the transaction exchange can be implemented without
the commit protocol or the ability to recheck transaction
authorization. This is a fairly minimal step from the existing
capabilities.
The transition can be staged as follows:
1. Modify the format of "near real time mirroring" transaction
exchange to conform to the specifications of this document.
2. Implement commit protocol and confirmation support.
3. Implement remote recheck of authorization. Prior to this step all
repositories must be trusted.
4. Allow further decentralization of the repositories.
D Privacy of Contact Information
The routing registries have contained contact information. The
redistribution of this contact information has been a delicate issue
and in some countries has legal implications.
The person and role objects contain contact information. These
objects are referenced by NIC-handles. There are some attributes
such as the "changed" and "notify" attributes that require an email
address. All of the fields that currently require an email address
must also accept a NIC-handle.
The person and role objects should not be redistributed by default.
If a submission contains an email address in a field such as a
changed field rather than a NIC-handle the submitter should be aware
that they are allowing that email address to be redistributed and
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 39
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
forfeiting any privacy. Repositories which do not feel that prior
warnings of this forfeiture are sufficient legal protection should
reject the submission requesting that a NIC-handle be used.
Queries to role and person objects arriving at a mirror must be
referred to the authoritative repository where whatever
authentication, restrictions, or limitations deemed appropriate by
that repository can be enforced directly.
Software should make it possible to restrict the redistribution of
other entire object types as long as those object types are not
required for the authorization of additions of other object types.
It is not possible to redistribute objects with attributes removed or
altered since this would invalidate the submitter's signature and
make subsequent authentication checks impossible. Repositories
should not redistribute a subset of the objects of a given type.
Software should also not let a transaction contain both
redistributable (e.g. policy objects) and non-redustributable
objects (e.g. person) since there is no way to verify the signature
of these transactions without the non-redustributable objects.
When redistributing legacy data, contact information in attributes
such as "changed" and "notify" should be stripped to maintain
privacy. The "integrity" attribute on these objects should already
be set to "legacy" indicating that their origin is questionable, so
the issue of not being able to recheck signatures is not as
significant.
References
[1] Alaettinoglu, C., Villamizar, C., Gerich, E., Kessens, D.,
Meyer, D., Bates, T., Karrenberg, D. and M. Terpstra, "Routing
Policy Specification Language", RFC 2622, June 1999.
[2] Bates, T., Gerich, E., Joncheray, L., Jouanigot, J-M.,
Karrenberg, D., Terpstra, M. and J. Yu, "Representation of IP
Routing Policies in a Routing Registry (ripe-81++)", RFC 1786,
March 1995.
[3] Villamizar, C., Alaettinoglu, C., Meyer, D. and S. Murphy,
"Routing Policy System Security", RFC 2725, June 1999.
[4] Zsako, J., "PGP Authentication for RIPE Database Updates", RFC
2726, December 1999.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 40
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
Security Considerations
An authentication and authorization model for routing policy object
submission is provided by [3]. Cryptographic authentication is
addressed by [4]. This document provides a protocol for the exchange
of information among distributed routing registries such that the
authorization model provided by [3] can be adhered to by all
registries and any deviation (hopefully accidental) from those rules
on the part of a registry can be identified by other registries or
mirrors.
Authors' Addresses
Curtis Villamizar
Avici Systems
EMail: curtis@avici.com
Cengiz Alaettinoglu
ISI
EMail: cengiz@ISI.EDU
Ramesh Govindan
ISI
EMail: govindan@ISI.EDU
David M. Meyer
Cisco
EMail: dmm@cisco.com
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 41
RFC 2769 Routing Policy System Replication February 2000
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright © The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
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the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
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followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Villamizar, et al. Standards Track PAGE 42
Routing Policy System Replication
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 95255 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Tuesday, February 8th, 2000
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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