]> Registering Self-generated IPv6 Addresses using DHCPv6 Google, LLC
warren@kumari.net
Cisco Systems, Inc.
suresh.krishnan@gmail.com
Cisco Systems, Inc.
7025 Kit Creek road Research Triangle Park 27709-4987 USA rajiva@cisco.com
Google, LLC
Shibuya 3-21-3 Japan lorenzo@google.com
Google, LLC
1 Darling Island Rd Pyrmont 2009 Australia furry@google.com
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
No. 10 Xitucheng Road Beijing Haidian District 100083 China shengjiang@bupt.edu.cn
Internet Dynamic Host Configuration Internet-Draft This document defines a method to inform a DHCPv6 server that a device has a self-generated or statically configured address. About This Document The latest revision of this draft can be found at . Status information for this document may be found at . Discussion of this document takes place on the Dynamic Host Configuration Working Group mailing list (), which is archived at . Subscribe at . Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at .
Introduction It is very common operational practice, especially in enterprise networks, to use IPv4 DHCP logs for troubleshooting or security purposes. Examples of this include a help desk dealing with a ticket such as "The CEO's laptop cannot connect to the printer"; if the MAC address of the printer is known (for example from an inventory system), the IPv4 address can be retrieved from the DHCP logs and the printer pinged to determine if it is reachable. Another common example is a Security Operations team discovering suspicious events in outbound firewall logs and then consulting DHCP logs to determine which employee's laptop had that IPv4 address at that time so that they can quarantine it and remove the malware. This operational practice relies on the DHCP server knowing the IP address assignments. Therefore, the practice does not work if static IP addresses are manually configured on devices or self-assigned addresses (such as when self-configuring an IPv6 address using SLAAC ) are used. The lack of this parity with IPv4 is one of the reasons which may be hindering IPv6 deployment, especially in enterprise networks. This document provides a mechanism for a device to inform the DHCPv6 server that it has a self-configured IPv6 address (or has a statically configured address), and thus provides parity with IPv4 in this aspect.
Conventions and Definitions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
Registration Mechanism Overview The DHCPv6 protocol is used as the address registration protocol when a DHCPv6 server performs the role of an address registration server. This document introduces a new Address Registration (OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE) option which indicates that the server supports the registration mechanism. Before registering any addresses, the client MUST determine whether the network supports address registration. It can do this by including the Address Registration option code the Option Request option (see Section 21.7 of ) of the Information-Request, Solicit, Request, Renew, or Rebind messages it sends to the server as part of the regular stateless or stateful DHCPv6 configuration process. If the server supports address registration, it includes an Address Registration option in its Reply message. If the network does not support (or is not willing to receive) any address registration information, the client MUST NOT register any addresses. Otherwise, the client registers addresses as described below. After successfully assigning a self-generated IPv6 address on one of its interfaces, a client implementing this specification SHOULD multicast an ADDR-REG-INFORM message in order to inform the DHCPv6 server that this self-generated address is in use. Each ADDR-REG-INFORM message contains an DHCPv6 IA Address option to specify the address to being registered. The address registration mechanism overview is shown in Fig.1. | | | | | | | | src: link-local address | | --------------------------------------------> | | INFORMATION-REQUEST or SOLICIT/... | | - OPTION REQUEST OPTION | | -- OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE code | | | | ... | | | | | |<--------------------------------------------- | | REPLY MESSAGE | | - OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE | | | | | | src: address being registered | | --------------------------------------------> | | ADDR-REG-INFORM MESSAGE |Register/ | |log addresses | | | | | <-------------------------------------------- | | ADD-REG-REPLY MESSAGE | | | ]]> Figure 1: Address Registration Procedure Overview
DHCPv6 Address Registration Procedure
DHCPv6 Address Registration Option The DHCPv6 server includes an Address Registration option (OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE) to indicate that the server supports the mechanism described in this document. The format of the Address Registration option is described as follows: Figure 2: DHCPv6 Address Registration option If a client has the address registration mechanism enabled, it SHOULD include this option in all Option Request options that it sends. A server which supports the address registration mechanism MUST include this option in Reply messages.
DHCPv6 Address Registration Request Message The DHCPv6 client sends an ADDR-REG-INFORM message to inform that an IPv6 address is in use. The format of the ADDR-REG-INFORM message is described as follows: Figure 3: DHCPv6 ADDR-REG-INFORM message The client MUST generate a transaction ID as described in and insert this value in the "transaction-id" field. The client MUST include a Client Identifier option in the ADDR-REG-INFORM message. The ADDR-REG-INFORM message MUST NOT contain the Server Identifier option and MUST contain exactly one IA Address option containing the address being registered. The valid-lifetime and preferred-lifetime fields in the option MUST match the current Valid Lifetime and Preferred Lifetime of the address being registered. The ADDR-REG-INFORM message is dedicated for clients to initiate an address registration request toward an address registration server. Consequently, clients MUST NOT put any Option Request Option(s) in the ADDR-REG-INFORM message. Clients MAY include other options, such as the Client FQDN Option . The client sends the DHCPv6 ADDR-REG-INFORM message to the All_DHCP_Relay_Agents_and_Servers multicast address (ff02::1:2). The client MUST send separate messages for each address being registered. Unlike other types of messages, which are sent from the link-local address of the client, the ADDR-REG-INFORM message MUST be sent from the address being registered. This is primarily for "fate sharing" purposes - for example, if the network implements some form of L2 security to prevent a client from spoofing other clients' addresses this prevents an attacker from spoofing ADDR-REG-INFORM messages. On clients with multiple interfaces, the client MUST only send the packet on the network interface that has the address being registered, even if it has multiple interfaces with different addresses. If the same address is configured on multiple interfaces, then the client MUST send ADDR-REG-INFORM each time the address is configured on an interface that did not previously have it, and refresh each registration independently from the others. The client MUST only send the ADDR-REG-INFORM message for valid () addresses of global scope (). This includes ULA addresses, which are defined in to have global scope. The client MUST NOT send the ADDR-REG-INFORM message for addresses configured by DHCPv6. The client SHOULD NOT send the ADDR-REG-INFORM message if it has not received any Router Advertisement message with either M or O flags set to 1. Clients MUST discard any received ADDR-REG-INFORM messages.
Server message processing Servers MUST discard any ADDR-REG-INFORM messages that meet any of the following conditions:
  • the message does not include a Client Identifier option;
  • the message includes a Server Identifier option;
  • the message does not include the IA Address option, or the IP address in the IA Address option does not match the source address of the original ADDR-REG-INFORM message sent by the client. The source address of the original message is the source IP address of the packet if it is not relayed, or the Peer-Address field of the innermost Relay-Forward message if it is relayed.
  • the message includes an Option Request Option.
If the message is not discarded, the address registration server SHOULD verify that the address being registered is "appropriate to the link" as defined by or within a prefix delegated to the client. Otherwise, it MUST drop the message, and SHOULD log this fact. Otherwise, the server:
  • SHOULD register or update a binding between the provided Client Identifier and IPv6 address in its database. The lifetime of the binding is equal to the Valid Lifetime of the address reported by the client. If there is already a binding between the registered address and another another client, the server SHOULD log the fact and update the binding.
  • SHOULD log the address registration information (as is done normally for clients to which it has assigned an address), unless configured not to do so.
  • SHOULD mark the address as unavailable for use and not include it in future ADVERTISE messages.
  • MUST send back an ADDR-REG-REPLY message to ensure the client does not retransmit.
Although a client "MUST NOT send the ADDR-REG-INFORM message for addresses configured by DHCPv6", if a server does receive such a message, it should log and discard it. DHCPv6 relay agents and switches that relay address registration messages directly from clients SHOULD include the client's link-layer address in the relayed message using the Client Link-Layer Address option ().
DHCPv6 Address Registration Acknowledgement The server MUST acknowledge receipt of a valid ADDR-REG-INFORM message by sending back an ADDR-REG-REPLY message. The format of the ADDR-REG-REPLY message is described as follows: Figure 4: DHCPv6 ADDR-REG-REPLY message If the ADDR-REG-INFORM message that the server is replying to was not relayed, then the IPv6 destination address of the message MUST be the address being registered. If the ADDR-REG-INFORM message was relayed, then the server MUST construct the Relay-reply message as specified in section 19.3. The server MUST copy the transaction-id from the ADDR-REG-INFORM message to the transaction-id field of the ADDR-REG-REPLY. The ADDR-REG-REPLY message MUST contain an IA Address option for the address being registered. The option MUST be identical to the one in the ADDR-REG-INFORM message that the server is replying to. Servers MUST ignore any received ADDR-REG-REPLY messages. Clients MUST discard any ADDR-REG-REPLY messages that meet any of the following conditions:
  • The IPv6 destination address does not match the address being registered.
  • The IA-Address option does not match the address being registered.
  • The address being registered is not assigned to the interface receiving the message.
  • The transaction-id does not match the transaction-id the client used in the corresponding ADDR-REG-INFORM message.
The ADDR-REG-REPLY message only indicates that the ADDR-REG-INFORM message has been received and that the client should not retansmit it. The ADDR-REG-REPLY message MUST NOT be considered as any indication of the address validity and MUST NOT be required for the address to be usable. DHCPv6 relays, or other devices that snoop ADDR-REG-REPLY messages, MUST NOT add or alter any forwarding or security state based on the ADDR-REG-REPLY message.
Signalling Address Registration Support The client MUST NOT register addresses using this mechanism unless the network's DHCPv6 servers support address registration. The client can discover this using the OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE option. The client SHOULD include this option code in all Option Request options that it sends. If the client receives and processes a Reply message with the OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE option, it concludes that the network supports address registration. If the client later receives and processes a Reply message without the the OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE from a server that previously included the option, it MUST stop transmitting ADDR-REG-INFORM messsages. This host behavior allows the network to disable address registration after enabling it. It also allows networks to progressively roll out support for the address registration option across the DHCPv6 infrastructure without causing clients to frequently stop and re-start address registration if some of the network's DHCPv6 servers support it and some of them do not.
Retransmission To reduce the effects of packet loss on registration, the client SHOULD retransmit the registration message. Retransmissions SHOULD follow the standard retransmission logic specified by section 15 of with the following default parameters:
  • IRT 1 sec
  • MRC 3
The client SHOULD allow these parameters to be configured by the administrator. To comply with section 16.1 of , the client MUST leave the transaction ID unchanged in retransmissions of an ADDR-REG-INFORM message. When the client retranmits the registration message, the lifetimes in the packet MUST be updated so that they match the current lifetimes of the address. If an ADDR-REG-REPLY message is received for the address being registered, the client MUST stop retransmission. However, the client cannot rely on the server acknowledging receipt of the registration message, because the server might not support address registration.
Registration Expiry and Refresh The client MUST refresh registrations to ensure that the server is always aware of which addresses are still valid. The client SHOULD perform refreshes as described below. Each refresh is scheduled for AddrRegRefresh seconds in the future, where AddrRegRefresh is min(4 hours, 80% of the address's current Valid Lifetime). Refreshes SHOULD be jittered by +/- 10% to avoid synchronization causing a large number of registration messages from different clients at the same time. Whenever the client creates an address or receives a PIO which changes the Valid Lifetime of an existing address by more than 1%, then:
  1. If no refresh is currently scheduled, it MUST register immediately and schedule a refresh.
  2. If a refresh is currently scheduled, it MUST reschedule the existing refresh if this would result in the refresh being sooner than currently scheduled.
When a refresh is performed, the client MAY refresh all addresses assigned to the interface that are scheduled to be refreshed within the next AddrRegRefreshCoalesce seconds. The value of AddrRegRefreshCoalesce is implementation-dependent, and a suggested default is 60 seconds. Discussion: this algorithm ensures that refreshes are not sent too frequently, while ensuring that the server never believes that the address has expired when it has not. Specifically:
  • If the network never changes the lifetime, or stops refreshing the lifetime, then only one refresh ever occurs. The address expires.
  • Point #1 ensures that any time the network changes the lifetime when no refresh is scheduled, the server will be informed of the correct lifetime. If the network does not change the address's lifetime, then the server already knows the correct lifetime and no refresh needs to be sent.
  • Point #2 ensures that if the network reduces the lifetime of the address, then the server will be informed of the new lifetime. If the network increases the lifetime of the address, the refresh will be sent at the previously scheduled time, and the server will be informed of the correct lifetime. From this point on, either the address expires (and the server is informed of when this will happen) or an RA increases the lifetime, in which case a refresh will be sent.
  • The 1% tolerance ensures that the client will not refresh or reschedule refreshes if the Valid Lifetime experiences minor changes due to transmission delays or clock skew between the client and the router(s) sending the Router Advertisement.
  • AddrRegRefreshCoalesce allows battery-powered hosts to wake up less often. In particular, it allows the client to coalesce refreshes for multiple addresses formed from the same prefix, such as the stable and privacy addresses. Higher values will result in fewer wakeups, but may result in more network traffic, because if a refresh is sent early, then the next RA received will cause the client to immediately send a refresh message.
Registration refresh packets SHOULD be retransmitted using the same logic as described in the 'Retransmission' section above. The client MUST generate a new transaction ID when refreshing the registration. When the Client-Identifier-to-IPv6-address binding has expired, the server SHOULD remove it and consider the address as available for use. The client MAY choose to notify the server when an address is no longer being used (e.g., if the client is disconnecting from the network, the address lifetime expired, or the address is being removed from the interface). To indicate that the address is not being used anymore the client MUST set the preferred-lifetime and valid-lifetime fields of the IA Address option to zero. If the server receives a message with a valid-lifetime of zero, it SHOULD act as if the address has expired.
Host configuration DHCP clients SHOULD allow the administrator to disable sending ADDR-REG-INFORM messages. This could be used, for example, to reduce network traffic on networks where the servers are known not to support the message type. Sending the messages SHOULD be enabled by default.
Security Considerations An attacker may attempt to register a large number of addresses in quick succession in order to overwhelm the address registration server and / or fill up log files. Similar attack vectors exist today, e.g. an attacker can DoS the server with messages contained spoofed DUIDs. If a network is using FCFS SAVI , then the DHCPv6 server can trust that the ADDR-REG-INFORM message was sent by the legitimate holder of the address. This prevents a host from registering an address owned by another host. One of the use cases for the mechanism described in this document is to identify sources of malicious traffic after the fact. Note, however, that as the device itself is responsible for informing the DHCPv6 server that it is using an address, a malicious or compromised device can simply not send the ADDR-REG-INFORM message. This is an informational, optional mechanism, and is designed to aid in troubleshooting and forensics. On its own, it is not intended to be a strong security access mechanism. In particular, the ADDR-REG-INFORM message MUST not be used for authentication and authorization purposes, because in addition to the reasons above, the packets containing the message may be dropped.
IANA Considerations This document introduces the following new entities which require an allocation out of the DHCPv6 registries defined at http://www.iana.org/assignments/dhcpv6-parameters/:
  • one new DHCPv6 option, described in Section 4.1 which requires an allocation out of the registry of DHCPv6 Option Codes:
    • Value: TBA0
    • Description: OPTION_ADDR_REG_ENABLE
    • Client ORO: Yes
    • Singleton Option: Yes
  • two new DHCPv6 messages which require an allocation out of the registry of Message Types:
    • ADDR-REG-INFORM message (TBA1) described in Section 4.2
    • ADDR-REG-REPLY (TBA2) described in Section 4.3.
References Normative References Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels In many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture This document specifies the architectural characteristics, expected behavior, textual representation, and usage of IPv6 addresses of different scopes. According to a decision in the IPv6 working group, this document intentionally avoids the syntax and usage of unicast site-local addresses. [STANDARDS-TRACK] Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Addresses This document defines an IPv6 unicast address format that is globally unique and is intended for local communications, usually inside of a site. These addresses are not expected to be routable on the global Internet. [STANDARDS-TRACK] IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration This document specifies the steps a host takes in deciding how to autoconfigure its interfaces in IP version 6. The autoconfiguration process includes generating a link-local address, generating global addresses via stateless address autoconfiguration, and the Duplicate Address Detection procedure to verify the uniqueness of the addresses on a link. [STANDARDS-TRACK] Client Link-Layer Address Option in DHCPv6 This document specifies the format and mechanism that is to be used for encoding the client link-layer address in DHCPv6 Relay-Forward messages by defining a new DHCPv6 Client Link-Layer Address option. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) This document describes the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6): an extensible mechanism for configuring nodes with network configuration parameters, IP addresses, and prefixes. Parameters can be provided statelessly, or in combination with stateful assignment of one or more IPv6 addresses and/or IPv6 prefixes. DHCPv6 can operate either in place of or in addition to stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC). This document updates the text from RFC 3315 (the original DHCPv6 specification) and incorporates prefix delegation (RFC 3633), stateless DHCPv6 (RFC 3736), an option to specify an upper bound for how long a client should wait before refreshing information (RFC 4242), a mechanism for throttling DHCPv6 clients when DHCPv6 service is not available (RFC 7083), and relay agent handling of unknown messages (RFC 7283). In addition, this document clarifies the interactions between models of operation (RFC 7550). As such, this document obsoletes RFC 3315, RFC 3633, RFC 3736, RFC 4242, RFC 7083, RFC 7283, and RFC 7550. Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words RFC 2119 specifies common key words that may be used in protocol specifications. This document aims to reduce the ambiguity by clarifying that only UPPERCASE usage of the key words have the defined special meanings. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) Client Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) Option This document specifies a new Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6) option that can be used to exchange information about a DHCPv6 client's Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) and about responsibility for updating DNS resource records (RRs) related to the client's address assignments. [STANDARDS-TRACK] Informative References FCFS SAVI: First-Come, First-Served Source Address Validation Improvement for Locally Assigned IPv6 Addresses This memo describes First-Come, First-Served Source Address Validation Improvement (FCFS SAVI), a mechanism that provides source address validation for IPv6 networks using the FCFS principle. The proposed mechanism is intended to complement ingress filtering techniques to help detect and prevent source address spoofing. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
Acknowledgments Many thanks to Bernie Volz for significant review and feedback, as well as Hermin Anggawijaya, Brian Carpenter, Stuart Cheshire, Alan DeKok, Ryan Globus, Erik Kline, David Lamparter, Ted Lemon, Eric Levy-Abegnoli, Jim Reid, Michael Richardson, Mark Smith, Éric Vyncke, Timothy Winters for their feedback, comments and guidance. We apologize if we inadvertently forgot to acknowledge anyone’s contributions. This document borrows heavily from a previous document, draft-ietf-dhc-addr-registration, which defined "a mechanism to register self-generated and statically configured addresses in DNS through a DHCPv6 server". That document was written Sheng Jiang, Gang Chen, Suresh Krishnan, and Rajiv Asati.
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