[IPv6]Re: Adoption call for draft-bonica-6man-deprecate-router-alert

[Ron Bonica <[e-mail]>]

Bob,

Thanks for posing the most interesting architectural question!

The HBH Processing draft positions the HBH Options Extension Header as a clean mechanism for signaling through the IPv6 forwarding plane without touching the control plane or exposing it to additional vulnerabilities. The Router Alert option compromises that architectural goal by allowing packets to weave in and out, between the forwarding and control planes.

If a new protocol needs to weave in and out between the control and forwarding planes, it can do so by addressing its packets to the node whose control plane it needs to touch. This strategy has been demonstrated by RSVP-TE. Its benefits are:


  *
It has been deployed on the global internet (i.e., across domains)
  *
It can be ACL'd by simply examining the destination address and next (non-IPv6) header. There is no need for the ACL mechanism to parse the HBH Options header

                                                                                                          Ron



Juniper Business Use Only

________________________________
From: Bob Hinden <[e-mail]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2024 11:55 AM
To: IPv6 List <[e-mail]>
Cc: Bob Hinden <[e-mail]>; 6man Chairs <[e-mail]>; [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Adoption call for draft-bonica-6man-deprecate-router-alert

[External Email. Be cautious of content]


Hi,

With no hats on.

My thoughts on deprecating Router Alert is what was written in Section 5.2.1 of the HBH Processing draft (now in RFC Editor queue):

      DISCUSSION

      The function of a Router Alert Option can result in the processing
      that this specification is proposing to eliminate, that is, to
      instruct a router to process the packet in the control plane.
      This results in the concerns discussed in section 4.  One approach
      would be to deprecate this, because current usage beyond the local
      network appears to be limited, and packets containing Hop-by-Hop
      options are frequently dropped.  Deprecation would allow current
      implementations to continue and its use could be phased out over
      time.

      The Router Alert Option could have a potential for use with new
      functions that have to be processed in the control plane.  Keeping
      this as the single exception for processing in the control plane
      with the following restrictions is a reasonable compromise to
      allow future flexibility.  These restrictions are compatible with
      Section 5 of [RFC6398].

My question is do we want to disable the possibility of any new functions that need Router Alert in the future.

Bob



> On Jun 10, 2024, at 4:23 PM, Jen Linkova <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> This email starts 6MAN adoption call for the following document:
>
> Title : Deprecation Of The IPv6 Router Alert Option
> Authors : Ron Bonica
> Date : 2024-02-19
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-bonica-6man-deprecate-router-alert/__;!!NEt6yMaO-gk!CmCegd8V41HWGLJly2mqXbYx0AwGFa6dv4knJdVkLfmlQRCdNqHTUVtGQ5yfA2rqkdAZnI3aY_VTaJ06BDI$
>
> Substantive comments, statements of support for adopting this
> document or objections to the adoption should be sent to the mailing
> list.  Editorial suggestions can be sent to the authors.