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IETF RFC 6436
Last modified on Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Amante
Request for Comments: 6436 Level 3
Category: Informational B. Carpenter
ISSN: 2070-1721 Univ. of Auckland
S. Jiang
Huawei
November 2011
Rationale for Update to the IPv6 Flow Label Specification
 Abstract
Various published proposals for use of the IPv6 flow label are
incompatible with its original specification in RFC 3697.
Furthermore, very little practical use is made of the flow label,
partly due to some uncertainties about the correct interpretation of
the specification. This document discusses and motivates changes to
the specification in order to clarify it and to introduce some
additional flexibility.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are 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 6436.
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 1 
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
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. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Impact of Current Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Changes to the Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Appendix A. Alternative Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
The flow label field in the IPv6 header was reserved but left
Experimental by [RFC 2460], which mandates only that "Hosts or routers
that do not support the functions of the Flow Label field are
required to set the field to zero when originating a packet, pass the
field on unchanged when forwarding a packet, and ignore the field
when receiving a packet."
The flow label field was normatively specified by [RFC 3697]. In
particular, we quote three rules from that RFC:
a. "The Flow Label value set by the source MUST be delivered
unchanged to the destination node(s)."
b. "IPv6 nodes MUST NOT assume any mathematical or other properties
of the Flow Label values assigned by source nodes."
c. "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."
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 2
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
Additionally, RFC 3697 does not define the method a host should adopt
by default to choose the value of the flow label, if no specific
method is in use. It was expected that various signaling methods
might be defined for agreeing on values of the flow label, but no
such methods have been standardized, except a pre-existing option in
RSVP [RFC 2205].
The flow label is hardly used in practice in widespread IPv6
implementations, although some operating systems do set it
[McGann05]. To some extent, this is due to the main focus being on
basic deployment of IPv6, but the absence of a default method of
choosing the flow label value means that most host implementations
simply set it to zero. There is also anecdotal evidence that the
rules quoted above have led to uncertainty about exactly what is
possible. Furthermore, various use cases have been proposed that
infringe one or another of the rules. None of these proposals has
been accepted as a standard and in practice there is no significant
deployment of any mechanism to set the flow label.
The intention of this document is to explain this situation in more
detail and to motivate changes to RFC 3697 intended to remove the
uncertainties and encourage active usage of the flow label. It does
not formally update RFC 3697, but it serves as background material
for [RFC 6437].
2. Impact of Current Specification
Rule (a) makes it impossible for the routing system to use the flow
label as any form of dynamic routing tag. This was a conscious
choice in the early design of IPv6, and there appears to be no
practical possibility of revisiting this decision at this stage in
the deployment of IPv6, which uses conventional routing mechanisms
like those used for IPv4. However, this rule also makes it
impossible to make any use at all of the flow label unless hosts
choose to set it. It also forbids clearing the flow label for
security reasons.
This last point highlights the security properties, or rather the
lack thereof, with regards to the flow label. The flow label field
is always unprotected as it travels through the network, because
there is no IPv6 header checksum, and the flow label is not included
in transport pseudo-header checksums, nor in IPsec checksums. As a
result, intentional and malicious changes to its value cannot be
detected. Also, it could be used as a covert data channel, since
apparently pseudo-random flow label values could in fact consist of
covert data [NIST]. If the flow label were to carry quality-of-
service semantics, then like the diffserv code point [RFC 2474], it
would not be intrinsically trustworthy across domain boundaries. As
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 3
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
a result, some security specialists believe that flow labels should
be cleared for safety [LABEL-SEC] [NSA]. These points must be
considered when discussing the immutability of the flow label across
domain boundaries. In fact, the adjective "immutable" is confusing,
since it implies a property that the flow label field does not
actually possess. It has therefore been abandoned as a descriptive
term in [RFC 6437]. It is only used in the present document to
explain why it has been abandoned.
Rule (b) appears to forbid any usage in which the bits of the flow
label are encoded with a specific semantic meaning. However, the
words "MUST NOT assume" are to be interpreted precisely - if a router
knows by configuration or by signaling that the flow label has been
assigned in a certain way, it can make use of that knowledge. It is
not made clear by the rule that there is an implied distinction
between stateless models (in which there is no signaling, so no
specific assumption about the meaning of the flow label value can be
made) and stateful models (in which there is signaling and the router
has explicit knowledge about the label).
If the word "alone" is overlooked, rule (c) has sometimes been
interpreted as forbidding the use of the flow label as part of a hash
used by load distribution mechanisms. In this case too, the word
"alone" needs to be taken into account - a router is allowed to
combine the flow label value with other data in order to produce a
uniformly distributed hash.
Both before and after these rules were laid down, a considerable
number of proposals for use of the flow label were published that
seem incompatible with them. Numerous examples and an analysis are
presented in [RFC 6294]. Those examples propose use cases in which
some or all of the following apply:
o The flow label may be changed by intermediate systems.
o It doesn't matter if the flow label is changed, because the
receiver doesn't use it.
o Some or all bits of the flow label are encoded: they have specific
meanings understood by routers and switches along the path.
o The encoding is related to the required quality of service, as
well as identifying a flow.
o The flow label is used to control forwarding or switching in some
way.
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RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
These proposals require either some form of semantics encoding in the
bits of the flow label, or the ability for routers to modify the flow
label, or both. Thus, they appear to infringe the rules from RFC
3697 quoted above.
We can conclude that a considerable number of researchers and
designers have been stymied by RFC 3697. On the other hand, some
other proposals discussed in [RFC 6294] appear to be compatible with
RFC 3697. Several are based on the originator of a packet choosing a
pseudo-random flow label for each flow, which is one option suggested
in RFC 3697. Thus, we can also conclude that there is a useful role
for this approach.
If our goal is for the flow label to be used in practice, the
conflict between the various approaches creates a dilemma. There
appear to be two major options:
1. Discourage locally defined and/or stateful use of the flow label.
Strengthen RFC 3697 to say that hosts should set a label value,
without necessarily creating state, which would clarify and limit
its possible uses. In particular, its use for load distribution
and balancing would be encouraged.
2. Relax the rules to encourage locally defined and/or stateful use
of the flow label. This approach would make the flow label
completely mutable and would exclude use cases depending on
strict end-to-end immutability. It would encourage applications
of a pseudo-random flow label, such as load distribution, on a
local basis, but it would exclude end-to-end applications.
There was considerable debate about these options and their variants
during 2010 - 2011, with a variety of proposals in previous versions
of this document and in mailing list discussions. After these
discussions, there appears to be a view that simplicity should
prevail, and that complicated proposals such as defining quality-of-
service semantics in the flow label, or sub-dividing the flow label
field into smaller sub-fields, will not prove efficient or
deployable, especially in high-speed routers. There is also a
clearly expressed view that using the flow label for various forms of
stateless load distribution is the best simple application for it.
At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that the strict
immutability rule has drawbacks as noted above.
Even under the rules of RFC 3697, the flow label is intrinsically
untrustworthy, because modifications en route cannot be detected.
For this reason, even with the current strict immutability rule,
downstream nodes cannot rely mathematically on the value being
unchanged. In this sense, any use of the flow label must be viewed
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 5
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
as an optimization on a best-effort basis; a packet with a changed
(or zero) flow label value should never cause a hard failure.
The remainder of this document discusses specific modifications to
the standard, which are defined normatively in a companion document
[RFC 6437].
3. Changes to the Specification
Although RFC 3697 requires that the flow label be delivered
unchanged, as noted above, it is not included in any transport-layer
pseudo-header checksums nor in IPsec authentication [RFC 4302]. Both
RFC 2460 and RFC 3697 define the default flow label to be zero. At
the time of writing, this is the observed value in an overwhelming
proportion of IPv6 packets; the most widespread operating systems and
applications do not set it, and routers do not rely on it. Thus,
there is no reason to expect operational difficulties if a careful
change is made to the rules of RFC 3697.
In particular, the facts that the label is not checksummed and rarely
used mean that the "immutability" of the label can be moderated
without serious operational consequences.
The purposes of the proposed changes are to remove the uncertainties
left by RFC 3697, in order to encourage setting of the flow label by
default, and to enable its generic use. The proposed generic use is
to encourage uniformly distributed flow labels that can be used to
assist load distribution or balancing. There should be no impact on
existing IETF specifications other than RFC 3697 and no impact on
currently operational software and hardware.
A secondary purpose is to allow changes to the flow label in a
limited way, to allow hosts that do not set the flow label to benefit
from it nevertheless. The fact that the flow label may in practice
be changed en route is also reflected in the reformulation of the
rules.
A general description of the changes follows. The normative text is
to be found in [RFC 6437].
The definition of a flow is subtly changed from RFC 3697 to allow any
node, not just the source node, to set the flow label value.
However, it is recommended that sources should set a uniformly
distributed flow label value in all flows, replacing the less precise
recommendation made in Section 3 of RFC 3697. Both stateful and
stateless methods of assigning a uniformly distributed value could be
used.
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 6
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
Flow label values should be chosen such that their bits exhibit a
high degree of variability, thus making them suitable for use as part
of the input to a hash function used in a load distribution scheme.
At the same time, third parties should have a low probability of
guessing the next value that a source of flow labels will choose.
In statistics, a discrete uniform distribution is defined as a
probability distribution in which each value in a given range of
equally spaced values (such as a sequence of integers) is equally
likely to be chosen as the next value. The values in such a
distribution exhibit both variability and unguessability. Thus, an
approximation to a discrete uniform distribution is preferable as the
source of flow label values. In contrast, an implementation in which
flow labels are assigned sequentially is definitely not recommended,
to avoid guessability.
In practice, it is expected that a uniform distribution of flow label
values will be approximated by use of a hash function or a pseudo-
random number generator. Either approach will produce values that
will appear pseudo-random to an external observer.
Section 3 of RFC 3697 allows nodes to participate in an unspecified
stateful method of flow state establishment. The changes do not
remove that option, but clarify that stateless models are also
possible and are the recommended default. The specific text on
requirements for stateful models has been reduced to a bare minimum
requirement that they do not interfere with the stateless model. To
enable stateless load distribution at any point in the Internet, a
node using a stateful model should never send packets whose flow
label values do not conform to a uniform distribution.
The main novelty is that a forwarding node (typically a first-hop or
ingress router) may set the flow label value if the source has not
done so, according to the same recommendations that apply to the
source. This might place a considerable processing load on ingress
routers that choose to do so, even if they adopted a stateless method
of flow identification and label assignment.
The value of the flow label, once it has been set, must not be
changed. However, some qualifications are placed on this rule, to
allow for the fact that the flow label is an unprotected field and
might be misused. No Internet-wide mechanism can depend
mathematically on immutable flow labels. The new rules require that
flow labels exported to the Internet should always be either zero or
uniformly distributed, but even this cannot be relied on
mathematically. Use cases need to be robust against non-conforming
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 7
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
flow label values. This will also enhance compatibility with any
legacy hosts that set the flow label according to RFC 2460 and RFC
3697.
A complication that led to much discussion is the possibility that
hosts inside a particular network domain might use a stateful method
of setting the flow label, and that packets bearing stateful labels
might then erroneously escape the domain and be received by nodes
performing stateless processing, such as load balancing. This might
result in undesirable operational implications (e.g., congestion,
reordering) for not only the inappropriately flow-labeled packets,
but also well-behaved flow-labeled packets, during forwarding at
various intermediate devices. It was suggested that border routers
might "correct" this problem by overwriting such labels in packets
leaving the domain. However, neither domain border egress routers
nor intermediate routers/devices (using a flow label, for example, as
a part of an input key for a load-distribution hash) can determine by
inspection that a value is not part of a uniform distribution. Thus,
there is no way that such values can be detected and "corrected".
Therefore, the recommendation to choose flow labels from a uniform
distribution also applies to stateful schemes.
4. Discussion
The following are some practical consequences of the above changes:
o Sending hosts that are not updated will in practice continue to
send all-zero labels. If there is no label-setting router along
the path taken by a packet, the label will be delivered as zero.
o Sending hosts conforming to the new specification will by default
choose uniformly distributed labels between 1 and 0xFFFFF.
o Sending hosts may continue to send all-zero labels, in which case
an ingress router may set uniformly distributed labels between 1
and 0xFFFFF.
o The flow label is no longer unrealistically asserted to be
strictly immutable; it is recognized that it may, incorrectly, be
changed en route. In some circumstances, this will break end-to-
end usage, e.g., potential detection of third-party spoofing
attacks [LABEL-SEC].
o The expected default usage of the flow label is some form of
stateless load distribution, such as the ECMP/LAG usage defined in
[RFC 6438].
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 8
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
o If the new rules are followed, all IPv6 traffic flows on the
Internet should have zero or uniformly distributed flow label
values.
From an operational viewpoint, existing IPv6 hosts that set a default
(zero) flow label value and ignore the flow label on receipt will be
unaffected by implementations of the new specification. In general,
it is assumed that hosts will ignore the value of the flow label on
receipt; it cannot be relied on as an end-to-end signal. However,
this doesn't apply if a cryptographically generated label is being
used to detect attackers [LABEL-SEC].
Similarly, routers that ignore the flow label will be unaffected by
implementations of the specification.
Hosts that set a default (zero) flow label but are in a domain where
routers set a label as recommended in Section 3 will benefit from
whatever flow label handling is used on the path.
Hosts and routers that adopt the recommended mechanism will enhance
the performance of any load balancing devices that include the flow
label in the hash used to select a particular path or server, even
when packets leave the local domain.
5. Security Considerations
See [RFC 6437] and [LABEL-SEC] for full discussion. Some useful
remarks are in [Partridge].
6. Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Qinwen Hu for general discussion about
the flow label and for his work in searching the literature.
Valuable comments and contributions were made by Ran Atkinson, Fred
Baker, Steve Blake, Remi Despres, Alan Ford, Fernando Gont, Brian
Haberman, Tony Hain, Joel Halpern, Chris Morrow, Thomas Narten, Pekka
Savola, Mark Smith, Pascal Thubert, Iljitsch van Beijnum, and other
participants in the 6man working group.
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 9
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
7. Informative References
[FLOWSWITCH] Beckman, M., "IPv6 Dynamic Flow Label Switching (FLS)",
Work in Progress, March 2007.
[LABEL-SEC] Gont, F., "Security Assessment of the IPv6 Flow Label",
Work in Progress, November 2010.
[McGann05] McGann, O. and D. Malone, "Flow Label Filtering
Feasibility", European Conference on Computer Network
Defence , 2005.
[NIST] Frankel, S., Graveman, R., Pearce, J., and M. Rooks,
"Guidelines for the Secure Deployment of IPv6",
National Institute of Standards and Technology Special
Publication 800-119, 2010, <http://csrc.nist.gov/
publications/nistpubs/800-119/sp800-119.pdf>.
[NSA] Potyraj, C., "Firewall Design Considerations for IPv6",
National Security Agency I733-041R-2007, 2007,
<http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/ipv6/I733-041R-2007.pdf>.
[Partridge] Partridge, C., Arsenault, A., and S. Kent, "Information
Assurance and the Transition to IP Version 6 (IPv6)",
Military Communications Conference (MILCOM 2007) ,
2007, <http://www.ir.bbn.com/documents/articles/
MILCOM_Paper_from_Proceedings.pdf>.
[RFC 2205] Braden, B., 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 3697] Rajahalme, J., Conta, A., Carpenter, B., and S.
Deering, "IPv6 Flow Label Specification", RFC 3697,
March 2004.
[RFC 4302] Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302,
December 2005.
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 10
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
[RFC 6294] Hu, Q. and B. Carpenter, "Survey of Proposed Use Cases
for the IPv6 Flow Label", RFC 6294, June 2011.
[RFC 6437] Amante, S., Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and J. Rajahalme,
"IPv6 Flow Label Specification", RFC 6437, November
2011.
[RFC 6438] Carpenter, B. and S. Amante, "Using the IPv6 Flow Label
for Equal Cost Multipath Routing and Link Aggregation
in Tunnels", RFC 6438, November 2011.
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 11
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
Appendix A. Alternative Approaches
A model was discussed in an earlier version of this document which
defined a notion of 'flow label domain' analogous to a differentiated
services domain [RFC 2474]. This model would have encouraged local
usage of the flow label as an alternative to any form of generic use,
but it required complex rules for the behavior of domain boundary
routers, and proved controversial in discussion.
Two even more complex alternative approaches were also considered and
rejected.
The first was to distinguish locally significant flow labels from
those conforming to RFC 3697 by setting or clearing the most
significant bit (MSB) of the flow label. This led to quite
complicated rules, seems impossible to make fully self-consistent,
and was not considered practical.
The second was to use a specific differentiated services code point
(DSCP) [RFC 2474] in the Traffic Class octet instead of the MSB of the
flow label itself, to flag a locally defined behavior. A more
elaborate version of this was proposed in [FLOWSWITCH]. There are
two issues with that approach. One is that DSCP values are
themselves only locally significant, inconsistent with the end-to-end
nature of the original flow label definition. Secondly, it seems
unwise to meld the semantics of differentiated services, which are
currently deployed, with the unknown future semantics of flow label
usage. However, this approach, while not recommended, does not
appear to violate any basic principles if applied strictly within a
single differentiated services domain.
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 12
RFC 6436 Flow Label Update November 2011
Authors' Addresses
Shane Amante
Level 3 Communications, LLC
1025 Eldorado Blvd
Broomfield, CO 80021
USA
EMail: shane@level3.net
Brian Carpenter
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
PB 92019
Auckland, 1142
New Zealand
EMail: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com
Sheng Jiang
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
Q14, Huawei Campus
No.156 Beiqing Road
Hai-Dian District, Beijing 100095
P.R. China
EMail: jiangsheng@huawei.com
Amante, et al. Informational PAGE 13
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 28062 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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