RFC 9452: Network Service Header (NSH) Encapsulation for In Situ OAM (IOAM) Data

Status of This Memo

This is an Internet Standards Track document.¶

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). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.¶

Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9452.¶

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2023 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 (https://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 Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

2. Conventions

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 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

Abbreviations used in this document:¶

IOAM:

In situ Operations, Administration, and Maintenance¶

MD:

NSH Metadata, see [RFC7665]¶

NSH:

Network Service Header¶

OAM:

Operations, Administration, and Maintenance¶

SFC:

Service Function Chaining¶

TLV:

Type, Length, Value¶

3. IOAM Encapsulation with NSH

The NSH is defined in [RFC8300]. IOAM-Data-Fields are carried as NSH payload using a Next Protocol header that follows the NSH headers. An IOAM header containing the IOAM-Data-Fields is added. The IOAM-Data-Fields MUST follow the definitions corresponding to IOAM Option-Types (e.g., see Section 4 of [RFC9197] and Section 3.2 of [RFC9326]). In an administrative domain where IOAM is used, insertion of the IOAM header in NSH is enabled at the NSH tunnel endpoints, which are also configured to serve as encapsulating and decapsulating nodes for IOAM. The operator MUST ensure that SFC-aware nodes along the Service Function Path support IOAM; otherwise, packets might be dropped (see the last paragraph of this section as well as Section 2.2 of [RFC8300]). The IOAM transit nodes (e.g., a Service Function Forwarder (SFF)) MUST process all the IOAM headers that are relevant based on its configuration. See [RFC9378] for a discussion of deployment-related aspects of IOAM-Data-Fields.¶

 0                   1                   2                   3
 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+<-+
|Ver|O|U|    TTL    |   Length  |U|U|U|U|MD Type| NP = 0x06  |  |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+  N
|          Service Path Identifier              | Service Index |  S
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+  H
|                            ...                                |  |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+<-+
|  IOAM-Type    | IOAM HDR Len  |    Reserved   | Next Protocol |  |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+  I
!                                                               |  O
!                                                               |  A
~                 IOAM Option and Optional Data Space           ~  M
|                                                               |  |
|                                                               |  |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+<-+
|                                                               |
|                                                               |
|                 Payload + Padding (L2/L3/...)                 |
|                                                               |
|                                                               |
|                                                               |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

The NSH header and fields are defined in [RFC8300]. The O bit MUST be handled following the rules in [RFC9451]. The "NSH Next Protocol" value (referred to as "NP" in the diagram above) is 0x06.¶

The IOAM-related fields in NSH are defined as follows:¶

IOAM-Type:

8-bit field defining the IOAM Option-Type, as defined in the "IOAM Option-Type" registry specified in [RFC9197].¶

IOAM HDR Len:

8-bit field that contains the length of the IOAM header in multiples of 4-octets, including the "IOAM-Type" and "IOAM HDR Len" fields.¶

Reserved bits:

Reserved bits are present for future use. The reserved bits MUST be set to 0x0 upon transmission and ignored upon receipt.¶

Next Protocol:

8-bit unsigned integer that determines the type of header following IOAM. The semantics of this field are identical to the Next Protocol field in [RFC8300].¶

IOAM Option and Optional Data Space:

IOAM-Data-Fields as specified by the IOAM-Type field. IOAM-Data-Fields are defined corresponding to the IOAM Option-Type (e.g., see Section 4 of [RFC9197] and Section 3.2 of [RFC9326]) and are always aligned by 4 octets. Thus, there is no padding field.¶

Multiple IOAM Option-Types MAY be included within the NSH encapsulation. For example, if an NSH encapsulation contains two IOAM Option-Types before a data payload, the Next Protocol field of the first IOAM option will contain the value 0x06, while the Next Protocol field of the second IOAM Option-Type will contain the "NSH Next Protocol" number indicating the type of the data payload. The applicability of the IOAM Active and Loopback flags [RFC9322] is outside the scope of this document and may be specified in the future.¶

In case the IOAM Incremental Trace Option-Type is used, an SFC-aware node that serves as an IOAM transit node needs to adjust the "IOAM HDR Len" field accordingly. See Section 4.4 of [RFC9197].¶

Per Section 2.2 of [RFC8300], packets with unsupported Next Protocol values SHOULD be silently dropped by default. Thus, when a packet with IOAM is received at an NSH-based forwarding node (such as an SFF) that does not support the IOAM header, it SHOULD drop the packet. The mechanisms to maintain and notify of such events are outside the scope of this document.¶

4. IANA Considerations

IANA has allocated the following code point for IOAM in the "NSH Next Protocol" registry:¶

5. Security Considerations

IOAM is considered a "per domain" feature, where the operator decides how to leverage and configure IOAM according to the operator's needs. The operator needs to properly secure the IOAM domain to avoid malicious configuration and use, which could include injecting malicious IOAM packets into a domain. For additional IOAM-related security considerations, see Section 9 of [RFC9197]. For additional OAM- and NSH-related security considerations, see Section 5 of [RFC9451].¶

Appendix A. Discussion of the IOAM-Encapsulation Approach

This section lists several approaches considered for encapsulating IOAM with NSH and presents the rationale for the approach chosen in this document.¶

An encapsulation of IOAM-Data-Fields in NSH should be friendly to an implementation in both hardware as well as software forwarders and support a wide range of deployment cases, including large networks that desire to leverage multiple IOAM-Data-Fields at the same time.¶

Different approaches for encapsulating IOAM-Data-Fields in NSH could be considered:¶

The third option has been chosen here. This option avoids the additional layer of TLV-nesting that the use of NSH MD Type 2 would result in. In addition, this option does not constrain IOAM data to a maximum of 256 octets, thus allowing support for very large deployments.¶

Authors' Addresses