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IETF RFC 6294
Survey of Proposed Use Cases for the IPv6 Flow Label
Last modified on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
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Independent Submission Q. Hu
Request for Comments: 6294 B. Carpenter
Category: Informational Univ. of Auckland
ISSN: 2070-1721 June 2011
Survey of Proposed Use Cases for the IPv6 Flow Label
 Abstract
The IPv6 protocol includes a flow label in every packet header, but
this field is not used in practice. This paper describes the flow
label standard and discusses the implementation issues that it
raises. It then describes various published proposals for using the
flow label and shows that most of them are inconsistent with the
standard. Methods to address this problem are briefly reviewed. We
also question whether the standard should be revised.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other
RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at
its discretion and makes no statement about its value for
implementation or deployment. Documents approved for publication by
the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6294.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.
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RFC 6294 Flow Label Use Cases June 2011
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. A Brief History of the Flow Label . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. The Flow Label and Quality of Service . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Flow Label Definition and Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Flow Label Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Dependency Prohibition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. Other Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Documented Proposals for the Flow Label . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Specify the Flow Label as a Pseudo-Random Value . . . . . 7
3.1.1. End-to-End QoS Provisioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1.2. Load-Balancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1.3. Security Nonce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Specify QoS Parameters in the Flow Label . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3. Use Flow Label Hop-by-Hop to Control Switching . . . . . . 9
3.4. Diffserv Use of IPv6 Flow Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5. Other Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1. Introduction
IPv6 is being introduced to overcome the address shortage of the
current IPv4 protocol, but it also offers a new feature, i.e., the
Flow Label field in the IPv6 packet header. The flow label is not
encrypted by IPsec and is present in all fragments. However, it is
used very little in practice, for reasons discussed below and in
[Amante11]. After a short introduction, this document summarizes the
current specification of the IPv6 flow label and some open issues
about its use in Section 2. Section 3 describes and analyzes various
proposals that have been made for its use. Finally, Section 4
discusses the implications and attempts to draw conclusions.
The Flow Label field occupies bits 12 through 31 of the IPv6 packet
header. It provides a potential way to mark a packet, identify a
flow, and look up the corresponding flow state. This field is always
present in an IPv6 header, so a phrase such as "a packet with no flow
label" refers to a packet whose Flow Label field contains 20 zero
bits, i.e., a flow label whose value is zero.
1.1. A Brief History of the Flow Label
The original proposal for a flow label has been attributed to Dave
Clark [Deering93], who proposed that it should contain a pseudo-
random value. A Flow Label field was included in the packet header
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during the preliminary design of IPv6, which followed an intense
period of debate about several competing proposals. The final choice
was made in 1994 [RFC 1752]. In particular, the IETF rejected a
proposal known as the Common Architecture for Next Generation
Internet Protocol (CATNIP) [RFC 1707], which included so-called 'cache
handles' to identify the next hop in high-performance routers. Thus,
CATNIP introduced the notion of a header field that would be shared
by all packets belonging to a flow, to control packet forwarding on a
hop-by-hop basis. We recognize this today as a precursor of the MPLS
label [RFC 3031].
The IETF decided instead to develop a proposal known as the Simple
Internet Protocol plus (SIPP) [RFC 1710] into IP version 6. SIPP
included "labeling of packets belonging to particular traffic 'flows'
for which the sender requests special handling, such as non-default
quality of service or 'real-time' service" [RFC 1710]. In 1994, this
used a 28-bit Flow Label field. In 1995, it was down to 24 bits
[RFC 1883], and it was finally reduced to 20 bits [RFC 2460] to
accommodate the IPv6 Traffic Class, which is fully compatible with
the IPv4 Type of Service byte.
There was considerable debate in the IETF about the very purpose of
the flow label. Was it to be a handle for fast switching, as in
CATNIP, or was it to be meaningful to applications and used to
specify quality of service? Must it be set by the sending host, or
could it be set by routers? Could it be modified en route, or must
it be delivered with no change?
Because of these uncertainties, and more urgent work, the flow label
was consistently ignored by implementors, and today is set to zero in
almost every IPv6 packet. In fact, [RFC 2460] defined it as
"experimental and subject to change". There was considerable
preliminary work, such as [Metzler00], [Conta01a], [Conta01b], and
[Hagino01]. The ensuing proposed standard "IPv6 Flow Label
Specification" (RFC 3697) [RFC 3697] intended to clarify this
situation by providing precise boundary conditions for use of the
flow label. However, this has not proved successful in promoting use
of the flow label in practice, as a result of which 20 bits are
unused in every IPv6 packet header.
1.2. The Flow Label and Quality of Service
Developments in high-speed switch design, and the success of MPLS,
have largely obviated consideration of the flow label for high-speed
switching. Thus, although various use cases for the flow label have
been proposed, most of them assume that it should be used principally
to support the provision of quality of service (QoS). For many
years, it has been recognized that real-time Internet traffic
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requires a different QoS from general data traffic, and this remains
true in the era of network neutrality. Thus, an alternative to
uniform best-effort service is needed, requiring packets to be
classified as belonging to a particular class of service or flow.
Currently, this leads to a layer violation problem, since a 5-tuple
is often used to classify each packet. The 5-tuple includes source
and destination addresses, port numbers, and the transport protocol
type, so when we want to forward or process packets, we need to
extract information from the layer above IP. This may be impossible
when packets are encrypted such that port numbers are hidden, or when
packets are fragmented, so the layer violation is not an academic
concern. The flow label, being exempt from IPsec encryption and
being replicated in packet fragments, avoids this difficulty. It has
therefore attracted attention from the designers of new approaches to
QoS.
2. Flow Label Definition and Issues
2.1. Flow Label Properties
RFC 3697 [RFC 3697] standardizes properties of the flow label,
including the following:
o If the packets are not part of any flow, the flow label value is
zero.
o The 3-tuple {source address, destination address, flow label}
uniquely identifies which packets belong to which particular flow.
o Packets can receive flow-specific treatment if the node has been
set up with flow-specific state.
o The flow label set by the source node must be delivered to the
destination node; i.e., it is an end-to-end label.
o The same pair of source and destination addresses must not use the
same flow label value again within a timeout of at least
120 seconds.
One effect of the second of these rules is to avoid the layer
violation problem mentioned in Section 1. By using the 3-tuple, we
only use the IP layer to classify packets, without needing any
transport-layer information. This may reduce the lookup time if
flow-based treatment is required and will work even with IPsec
encryption and fragmentation. Therefore, for traffic needing other
than best-effort service, such as real-time applications, the flow
label can be set to different values to represent different flows,
and each node forwarding or receiving the packets may provide
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different flow-specific treatments by looking at the flow label
value. This is more fine-grained than differentiated services
(Diffserv) [Carpenter02] [RFC 2474] but need not be less efficient.
2.2. Dependency Prohibition
An additional important rule in the standard [RFC 3697] effectively
forbids any encoding of meaning in the bits of the flow label. To be
exact, the standard states that "IPv6 nodes MUST NOT assume any
mathematical or other properties of the flow label values assigned by
source nodes". This rule is aimed at the case where a packet from a
source using a particular encoding scheme for the flow label reaches
a node that is using a different scheme. If, by chance, the bit
pattern in the flow label is meaningful in both schemes, the receiver
would misinterpret the flow label. Therefore, in the absence of
other information, the receiver must not assume anything about the
meaning of the value of the flow label.
The standard [RFC 3697] also states that "Router performance SHOULD
NOT be dependent on the distribution of the flow label values.
Especially, the flow label bits alone make poor material for a hash
key". The problem this rule is intended to avoid is that if a source
uses one method of choosing flow labels (e.g., counting up from 1),
any router that assumes another method (e.g., pseudo-randomness) may
not perform as intended.
Note that there is no easy escape from the combination of these two
prohibitions, which we will call the dependency prohibition. Unlike
Diffserv code points, flow labels are not locally significant within
a single administrative domain; they must be preserved end-to-end.
In general, a router cannot know whether a particular packet
originated in a host supporting a specific usage of the flow label.
Therefore, any method that breaks one or both of these rules will
only work if there is some way for a router to determine which
sources use the same scheme as itself.
The interpretation of the dependency rule can be subtle and is not
spelled out in [RFC 3697]. A node must not assume properties of the
flow label -- but it may know them by construction or by signaling.
The bits of the flow label alone are poor material for a hash key --
but they may be combined with bits from other sources, to provide
uniformly distributed hash outputs.
2.3. Other Issues
[RFC 3697] does not discuss how to use the flow label most
effectively. This remains the major open issue, but some authors
propose that the label should be used with reserved bandwidth to
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achieve customized QoS provision. Coupled with admission control at
the edge router, this could limit congestion. However, as we will
see below, this is not the only proposed use.
We now introduce some other open issues.
o Unknown flow labels: [RFC 1809] proposed that when a router
receives a datagram with an unknown flow label, it should treat it
as zero. However, the standard [RFC 3697] is silent on this issue.
Indeed, some methods of flow state establishment might choose to
use an unknown label as the trigger for creating flow state.
o Deleting old flow labels: When a flow finishes, how does the
router know the flow label has expired? Should this be based on a
timeout, on observation of the transport layer, or on explicit
signaling? [RFC 3697] defines a timeout (120 seconds) that
effectively imposes a maximum lifetime on flow label state in a
router. This implies that flow labeling is inappropriate for very
intermittent flows, unless there is some mechanism to refresh
router state. In contrast, [Banerjee02] suggested that a router
should send an ICMP message to the source prior to deleting a
particular label. The source node may then send a KEEPALIVE
message to the router; if it does not, the router will release
that label.
o Choosing when to set the flow label: For what kinds of
applications should we set up non-zero flow labels? [RFC 1809]
suggested not setting it for short flows containing few bytes but
using it for long TCP connections and some real-time applications.
o Can we modify the flow label? [RFC 3697] states that the flow
label must be delivered unchanged. There are several advantages
of immutable flow labels, apart from respecting the standard: the
rule is easy to understand, does not require extra processing in
routers or a signaling protocol, and allows for very simple host
implementations. Also, it is straightforward for hosts and
routers to simply ignore the flow label. However, this rule does
appear to exclude any MPLS-like or CATNIP-like use for optimized
packet switching. Some of the proposed mechanisms described below
contradict this by suggesting that switches should change the flow
label for routing purposes.
3. Documented Proposals for the Flow Label
In the following, we do not intend to recommend or criticize various
proposals. This section shows the variety of proposals that have
been published, and whether they are compatible with the existing
standard. These proposals almost all assume that the flow label's
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main purpose is to support QoS, and their flow label mechanisms are
entangled with QoS mechanisms. We describe the proposals in five
broad, and somewhat overlapping, categories, i.e.,
1. using pseudo-random flow label values for various purposes (for
example, to improve routing performance when retrieving cached
routing state);
2. defining specific QoS requirements as parameters embedded in the
flow label field;
3. using the flow label to control packet switching;
4. using the flow label specifically to extend the existing
differentiated services QoS architecture;
5. other uses.
Among the proposals described in the following five sections, various
methods are proposed to set up the flow label value. It should be
noted that some of these proposals embody novel and perhaps
controversial approaches to QoS provision, and these cannot readily
be separated from their use of the flow label. We give a reasonable
amount of technical detail for some of the proposals, to show the
extent to which they propose detailed semantics for the flow label
value.
3.1. Specify the Flow Label as a Pseudo-Random Value
3.1.1. End-to-End QoS Provisioning
As our first example, [Lin06] specifies a 17-bit pseudo-random value.
The figure below shows the proposed flow label structure.
o The Label Flag (LF) bit: 1 means this type of flow label is
present. We note that this encoding is incompatible with the
dependency prohibition in [RFC 3697], since a source that does not
use this method may also set the LF bit.
o The Label Type (LT): 2 bits; describes the type of packet.
o The Label Number (LN): randomly generated by the source node.
[Lin06] also describes a signaling process between source, routing,
and destination nodes based on this label structure and on the IPv6
Traffic Class byte, in order to reserve and release router resources
for a given flow within a given class of traffic. The pseudo-random
LN value is used to uniquely identify a given flow.
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Flow Label Specification (figure simplified from [Lin06])
+--+----+-----------------------------+
| 1| 2 | 17 bits |
+--+----+-----------------------------+
|LF| LT | LN |
+--+----+-----------------------------+
LF 0 Disable
1 Enable
LT 00 Flow label requested by source
01 Flow label returned by destination
10 Flow label for data delivery
11 Flow label terminates connection
LN Random number created by source
3.1.2. Load-Balancing
There have been numerous informal discussions of using pseudo-random
flow labels to allow load-balancing or at least load-sharing. This
would be achieved by including the flow label value among the fields
in each packet header used as input to a modulo(N) hash used to
select among N alternative paths. However, concerns about the
interpretation of the dependency prohibition have generally prevented
such proposals from being written up until recently [Carpenter11].
3.1.3. Security Nonce
Another proposal for a pseudo-random flow label value is [Blake09].
This states that off-path spoofing attacks have become a big issue
for TCP and other transport-layer applications, and proposes that in
IPv6 we should set a random value in the flow label to make the
packet header more complex and less easy for the attacker to guess.
The two ends of the session will agree on flow label values during
the SYN/ACK exchange, but off-path attackers will be unlikely to
guess the agreed value. Naturally, on-path attackers who can observe
the flow labels in use can trivially defeat this protection. This
proposal does not involve using the flow label value to retrieve
routing state.
3.2. Specify QoS Parameters in the Flow Label
[Prakash04] proposes to utilize the flow label to indicate required
QoS parameters in detail. It uses the first few bits of the Flow
Label field as codes to support different approaches, as summarized
in the following table. Again, this is incompatible with the
dependency prohibition in [RFC 3697], since a source that does not use
this method may also set the first two bits to non-zero.
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Classification for various approaches (from [Prakash04])
Bit Pattern Approach
------------------------------------------------------------------
00 No QoS requirement (Default QoS value)
01 Pseudo-Random value used for the value of Flow-Label
10 Support for Direct Parametric Representation
1100 Support for the DiffServ Model
1101 Reserved for future use
111 Reserved for future use
This method allows a pseudo-random option but also adds options for a
direct QoS request and for Diffserv. In the direct QoS parameters
approach, 18 bits are used to encode requirements for one-way delay,
IP delay variation, bandwidth, and one-way packet loss. The proposal
appears to assume that the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP)
[RFC 2205] mechanisms are used to actually implement these QoS
parameters.
This proposal allows the use of the flow label for various important
QoS models, so the end user and service provider can choose the most
suitable model for their situation; [Prakash04] claims that "The
proposed approach results in a simple, scalable, modular and generic
implementation to provide for QoS using the IPv6 flow label field".
Similarly, [Lee04] defines the Flow Label field in five parts, with
the first 3 bits used as an approach type. The authors define two
approaches: a "random" scheme and a "hybrid" scheme. If the first 3
bits equal "001", the flow label will be used as the random
identifier of the flow, but if they equal "101", the remaining bits
will include a hybrid QoS requirement for this packet, subdivided
into traffic type (stringent or best-effort), bandwidth, buffer, and
delay requirements. Once again, the dependency prohibition in
[RFC 3697] is broken. This proposal also includes throughput
monitoring and dynamic capacity allocation. Effectively, this
proposal uses the flow label both to signal Intserv-like QoS
requirements and to classify traffic into Diffserv-like virtual
label-switched paths. Packets with a "random" flow label are mapped
into a generic (best-effort) virtual path.
3.3. Use Flow Label Hop-by-Hop to Control Switching
[Chakravorty08b] and [Chakravorty08a] describe an architectural
framework called "IPv6 Label Switching Architecture" (6LSA). In
6LSA, network components identify a flow by looking at the Flow Label
field in the IPv6 packet header; all packets with the same flow label
must receive the same treatment and be sent to the same next hop.
However, 6LSA resembles MPLS by considering that a label only has
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meaning between 6LSA routers and setting the flow label at each hop.
If the original source sets a non-zero flow label, there is no
mechanism to restore it before delivery: a fundamental breach of
[RFC 3697]. The authors of [Chakravorty08b] did at one stage discuss
using an IPv6 hop-by-hop option to correct this problem, but this has
not been documented. This is a more serious incompatibility than
simply breaking the dependency prohibition.
Unlike traditional routing algorithms, but like MPLS, 6LSA packets
are classified into a Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC), and routers
forward packets on different paths by looking at the FEC. Like
previous solutions, this solution divides the Flow Label field into
three parts. The first 3 bits identify the FEC, which will help the
router or 6LSA nodes to group the IP packets that receive the same
forwarding treatment and forward them on the same virtual path. The
following 4 bits describe the application type, and the final 13 bits
(defined by each node or a group of nodes) specify the hop-specific
label. From the table below, we can see the FEC has 6 major
categories, each with up to 16 subcategories.
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Flow Label Specification (shortened from [Chakravorty08b])
+--------------------------+-------------+--------------------------+
| FEC (First 3 Bits) | Next 4 Bits | Purpose |
+--------------------------+-------------+--------------------------+
| No FEC (000) | 0000 | |
| Domain Specific (000) | 0001 - 1111 | |
| ------------------------ | | |
| VPN (001) | 0001 | (IPSec - Tunnel Mode) |
| | 0010 | (IPSec - Transport Mode) |
| | 0011 | (Special Encryption) |
| | 0100 | (VRF) |
| | 0101 | (End Network Specific) |
| | 0110 - 1111 | (Reserved) |
| ------------------------ | | |
| TE Subset/ | 0001 | (DiffServ) |
| QoS Enhancement (010) | 0010 | (RSVP) |
. . .
| | 1111 | (Reserved) |
| ------------------------ | | |
| Encapsulation (011) | 0001 | (IPv6 in IPv6) |
| | 0010 | (IPv4 in IPv6) |
| | 0011 | (Other in IPv6) |
| | 0100 | (Enterprise Specific) |
| | 0101 - 1111 | (Reserved) |
| ------------------------ | | |
| Enterprise Specific(111) | 0000 - 1111 | (Reserved) |
+--------------------------+-------------+--------------------------+
The authors claim that fast switching using 20-bit labels instead of
128-bit IPv6 addresses will provide memory and processing savings, as
well as network management advantages. "It also allows a network
management entity updating available label tables, across the network
to reduce man-in-the-middle attacks [sic]" [Chakravorty08b].
We note that a similar proposal for QoS-based switching of IPv6
packets [Roberts05] is designed to use a hop-by-hop option, which has
not so far been allocated by the IETF. Proposals related to this
have been discussed by the Telecommunications Industry Association
and the ITU-T [Adams08].
We also note that router lookup efficiency was a major concern at the
time when Clark first proposed a flow label [Deering93], but with the
advent of very large scale integrated circuits capable of rapid
lookup in a routing table, most vendors no longer express such
concern.
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3.4. Diffserv Use of IPv6 Flow Label
[Banerjee02] uses the Flow Label field as a replacement for the IPv6
Traffic Class field; this proposal suggests the incoming flow label
can indicate the QoS requirement by matching a Diffserv classifier.
The authors have used the first three bits to indicate this, and the
following 16 bits to indicate a Differentiated Services Per-Hop
Behavior Identification code (Diffserv PHB-ID) [RFC 3140]; the last
bit is reserved for future use. This method too breaks the
dependency prohibition in [RFC 3697].
[Beckman07a] blends the flow label as an MPLS-like switching tag with
Diffserv. Unlike 6LSA, the method attempts to bypass the dependency
prohibition by using one bit in the Diffserv Code Point [RFC 2474] to
indicate that the flow label is a switching tag. In this way, a
router can determine whether the flow label conforms to [RFC 3697] or
to [Beckman07a]. In [Beckman07b], the same author proposes using the
flow label as a way of compressing IPv6 headers by hashing the
addresses into the flow label, again using the Diffserv Code Point to
mark the packets accordingly.
3.5. Other Uses
The Integrated Services QoS architecture [RFC 1633] specifies that the
flow label may be used as a packet filter [RFC 2205]. At least one
implementation supported this [Braden10].
We are not aware of any proposals combining the flow label with the
Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS) [RFC 4080] architecture.
[Donley11] proposes a use case whereby certain flows encapsulated in
a particular type of IPv4-in-IPv6 tunnel would be distinguished at
the remote end of the tunnel by a specific flow label value. This
would allow a service provider to deliver a tailored quality of
service. This usage appears to be completely compatible with
[RFC 3697].
There has been some discussion of possible flow label use in both the
ROLL (Routing Over Low power and Lossy networks) [RPL-07] and MEXT
(Mobility EXTensions for IPv6) working groups of the IETF. Such uses
tend to encode specific local meanings or routing-related tags in the
label, so they appear to infringe the dependency prohibition or the
immutability of the Flow Label field. The ROLL group has indeed most
recently opted not to use the Flow Label field for these reasons,
despite having to add the undesirable overhead of an IPv6 hop-by-hop
option instead [RPL]. Similarly, MEXT has defined a new mobility
option to support flow bindings [RFC 6089] rather than using the IPv6
Flow Label field.
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4. Conclusion
Three aspects of the current standard [RFC 3697] have caused problems
for many designers:
1. The immutability of labels
2. "Nodes MUST NOT assume any mathematical or other properties of
the Flow Label"
3. "Router performance SHOULD NOT be dependent on the distribution
of the Flow Label values"
Taken together, these rules essentially forbid any encoding of the
semantics of a flow, or of any information about its path, in the
flow label. This was intentional, in accordance with the stateless
nature of the Internet architecture and with the end-to-end principle
[Saltzer84], [RFC 3724]. It was also felt that QoS encoding via
Diffserv was sufficient and that the requirement for high-speed
switching could be met by MPLS. But this means that the majority of
the proposals described above breach the standard and the intent of
the standard. The authors often appear to be using the flow label
either as an MPLS-like switching handle or as an encoded QoS signal.
In contrast, a few documents mentioned above do appear to respect the
rules of RFC 3697. These are [Blake09], [Donley11], [Carpenter11],
[Beckman07a], and [Beckman07b]. Additionally, [Lin06] would have
joined this list if it had not assigned three flag bits in the Flow
Label field. Although predating RFC 3697, the Integrated Services
usage [RFC 2205] also seems to be compatible.
What would other designers need to do, if they wish to respect
RFC 3697? There appear to be two choices. One is to simply accept
the existing rules at face value, as in the proposals just listed.
This limits the application of the flow label. It can, for example,
be used as a nonce or as part of the material for a hash used to
share load among alternate paths. It cannot be the only material for
such a hash, because of the dependency prohibition. The flow label
could also be used consistently with RFC 3697, if an application
designer so chose, as a way to associate all packets belonging to a
given application session between two hosts, across multiple
transport sessions. This, however, would presumably exclude using
the flow label to govern routing decisions in any way, and would have
widespread implications that have never been explored.
The other choice, for designers who wish to use the flow label to
control switching or QoS directly, is to bypass the rules within a
given domain (a set of cooperating nodes) in a way that nodes outside
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the domain cannot detect. In this case, any deviation from RFC 3697
has no possible effect outside the domain in question.
An example scheme to emulate the immutability of labels is as
follows. Within the domain, all hosts set the label to zero, the
routers set and interpret the label in any way they wish, and the
last-hop router always sets the label back to zero. If a packet
arrives from outside the domain with a non-zero label, there is a
method (such as a special Diffserv code point) to mark this packet so
that its label would be ignored and delivered unchanged. An
alternative approach would be to define a hop-by-hop option to carry
the original flow label across the domain, so that it could be
changed within the domain but restored before forwarding the packet
beyond the domain.
If a domain allows mutable labels in such a way, it may safely ignore
the dependency prohibition, and it may set the bits in the label
according to locally defined rules. Within the domain, the label
could be used as desired, and most of the proposed designs discussed
above could be "rescued".
However, given the considerable number of designers who have proposed
solutions incompatible with RFC 3697, the relatively few designs
using the standard rules, and the failure of designs such as ROLL and
MEXT to make use of the flow label, it seems reasonable to ask
whether the RFC 3697 standard has value.
5. Security Considerations
The flow label is not protected in any way and can be forged by an
on-path attacker. Off-path attackers may be able to guess a valid
flow label unless a pseudo-random value is used. Specific usage
models for the flow label need to allow for these exposures. For
further discussion, see [RFC 3697].
6. Acknowledgements
An invaluable review of this document was performed by Bob Braden.
Helpful comments were made by Sheng Jiang.
7. Informative References
[Adams08] Adams, J., Joung, J., and J. Song, "Progress and future
development of Flow State Aware standards, and a proposal
for alerting nodes or end-systems on data related to a
flow", Work in Progress, June 2008.
Hu & Carpenter Informational PAGE 14
RFC 6294 Flow Label Use Cases June 2011
[Amante11] Amante, S., Carpenter, B., and S. Jiang, "Rationale for
update to the IPv6 flow label specification", Work
in Progress, May 2011.
[Banerjee02]
Banerjee, R., Malhotra, S., and M. M, "A Modified
Specification for use of the IPv6 Flow Label for providing
An efficient Quality of Service using a hybrid approach",
Work in Progress, April 2002.
[Beckman07a]
Beckman, M., "IPv6 Dynamic Flow Label Switching (FLS)",
Work in Progress, February 2007.
[Beckman07b]
Beckman, M., "IPv6 Header Compression via Addressing
Mitigation Protocol (IPv6 AMP)", Work in Progress,
November 2006.
[Blake09] Blake, S., "Use of the IPv6 Flow Label as a Transport-
Layer Nonce to Defend Against Off-Path Spoofing Attacks",
Work in Progress, October 2009.
[Braden10] Braden, R., "Private Communication", 2010.
[Carpenter02]
Carpenter, B. and K. Nichols, "Differentiated Services in
the Internet", Proc IEEE 90 (9) 1479-1494, 2002.
[Carpenter11]
Carpenter, B. and S. Amante, "Using the IPv6 flow label
for equal cost multipath routing and link aggregation in
tunnels", Work in Progress, May 2011.
[Chakravorty08a]
Chakravorty, S., "Challenges of IPv6 Flow Label
implementation", Proc IEEE MILCOM2008, 2008.
[Chakravorty08b]
Chakravorty, S., Bush, J., and J. Bound, "IPv6 Label
Switching Architecture", Work in Progress, July 2008.
[Conta01a] Conta, A. and B. Carpenter, "A proposal for the IPv6 Flow
Label Specification", Work in Progress, July 2001.
Hu & Carpenter Informational PAGE 15
RFC 6294 Flow Label Use Cases June 2011
[Conta01b] Conta, A. and J. Rajahalme, "A model for Diffserv use of
the IPv6 Flow Label Specification", Work in Progress,
November 2001.
[Deering93]
Deering, S., "SIPP Overview and Issues", Minutes of the
Joint Sessions of the SIP and PIP Working Groups,
November 1993.
[Donley11] Donley, C. and K. Erichsen, "Using the Flow Label with
Dual-Stack Lite", Work in Progress, January 2011.
[Hagino01] Hagino, J., "Socket API for IPv6 flow label field", Work
in Progress, April 2001.
[Lee04] Lee, I. and S. Kim, "A QoS Improvement Scheme for Real-
Time Traffic Using IPv6 Flow Labels", Lecture Notes in
Computer Science Vol. 3043, 2004.
[Lin06] Lin, C., Tseng, P., and W. Hwang, "End-to-End QoS
Provisioning by Flow Label in IPv6", JCIS , 2006.
[Metzler00]
Metzler, J. and S. Hauth, "An end-to-end usage of the IPv6
flow label", Work in Progress, November 2000.
[Prakash04]
Prakash, B., "Using the 20 bit flow label field in the
IPv6 header to indicate desirable quality of service on
the internet", University of Colorado (M.Sc. Thesis),
2004.
[RFC 1633] Braden, R., Clark, D., and S. Shenker, "Integrated
Services in the Internet Architecture: an Overview",
RFC 1633, June 1994.
[RFC 1707] McGovern, M. and R. Ullmann, "CATNIP: Common Architecture
for the Internet", RFC 1707, October 1994.
[RFC 1710] Hinden, R., "Simple Internet Protocol Plus White Paper",
RFC 1710, October 1994.
[RFC 1752] Bradner, S. and A. Mankin, "The Recommendation for the IP
Next Generation Protocol", RFC 1752, January 1995.
Hu & Carpenter Informational PAGE 16
RFC 6294 Flow Label Use Cases June 2011
[RFC 1809] Partridge, C., "Using the Flow Label Field in IPv6",
RFC 1809, June 1995.
[RFC 1883] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 1883, December 1995.
[RFC 2205] Braden, R., Ed., Zhang, L., Berson, S., Herzog, S., and S.
Jamin, "Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) -- Version 1
Functional Specification", RFC 2205, September 1997.
[RFC 2460] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
[RFC 2474] Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black,
"Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474,
December 1998.
[RFC 3031] Rosen, E., Viswanathan, A., and R. Callon, "Multiprotocol
Label Switching Architecture", RFC 3031, January 2001.
[RFC 3140] Black, D., Brim, S., Carpenter, B., and F. Le Faucheur,
"Per Hop Behavior Identification Codes", RFC 3140,
June 2001.
[RFC 3697] Rajahalme, J., Conta, A., Carpenter, B., and S. Deering,
"IPv6 Flow Label Specification", RFC 3697, March 2004.
[RFC 3724] Kempf, J., Ed., Austein, R., Ed., and IAB, "The Rise of
the Middle and the Future of End-to-End: Reflections on
the Evolution of the Internet Architecture", RFC 3724,
March 2004.
[RFC 4080] Hancock, R., Karagiannis, G., Loughney, J., and S. Van den
Bosch, "Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS): Framework",
RFC 4080, June 2005.
[RFC 6089] Tsirtsis, G., Soliman, H., Montavont, N., Giaretta, G.,
and K. Kuladinithi, "Flow Bindings in Mobile IPv6 and
Network Mobility (NEMO) Basic Support", RFC 6089,
January 2011.
[RPL] Winter, T., Ed., Thubert, P., Ed., Brandt, A., Clausen,
T., Hui, J., Kelsey, R., Levis, P., Pister, K., Struik,
R., and J. Vasseur, "RPL: IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low
power and Lossy Networks", Work in Progress, March 2011.
Hu & Carpenter Informational PAGE 17
RFC 6294 Flow Label Use Cases June 2011
[RPL-07] Winter, T., Ed. and P. Thubert, Ed., "RPL: IPv6 Routing
Protocol for Low power and Lossy Networks", Work
in Progress, March 2010.
[Roberts05]
Roberts, L. and J. Harford, "In-Band QoS Signaling for
IPv6", Work in Progress, July 2005.
[Saltzer84]
Saltzer, J., Reed, D., and D. Clark, "End-To-End Arguments
in System Design", ACM TOCS 2 (4) 277-288, 1984.
Authors' Addresses
Qinwen Hu
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
PB 92019
Auckland 1142
New Zealand
EMail: qhu009@aucklanduni.ac.nz
Brian Carpenter
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
PB 92019
Auckland 1142
New Zealand
EMail: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com
Hu & Carpenter Informational PAGE 18
Survey of Proposed Use Cases for the IPv6 Flow Label
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 43303 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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