Subject: [OPS-AREA] It needs a new transport layer protocol to promote IPv6

From: 高 军安 <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 11:33:28 +0000

A new transport protocol should help

- to alleviate, if not to eliminate, the routing scalability problem,

-  to phase out NAT to eliminate processing delay caused by unnecessary middleboxes, and

- to make more efficient utilization of abundant IPv6 addresses.

A new transport protocol called FSP is proposed:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gao-flexible-session-protocol/

Detailed motivations of designing FSP is explained in https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gao-fsp-motivations/<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gao-fsp-motivations/>

In short, FSP is a connection-oriented transport layer provides mobility, multi-homing and multi-path support by introducing the concept of 'upper layer thread ID' (ULTID), which was firstly suggested in "Fuzzy-layering and its suggestion" (https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/u-6i-6f-Etuvh80-SUuRbSCDTwg).

An integrity check code (ICC) field associated with the ULTID is designed in the FSP header to protect authenticity and optionally privacy of the FSP packet. An FSP packet is assumed to originate from the same source if the ICC value associated with certain destination ULTID passes validation, regardless of the source or destination address in the underlying layer.

The ULTID is assigned roughly the same semantics with Security Parameter Index (SPI) in MOBIKE [RFC4555]. Either the weak key or the shared secret key is indexed by the source or destination ULTID in the local context of the sender or the receiver, respectively.

FSP facilitates secret key installation by introducing the concept of transmit transaction. Mechanism of transmit transaction also provides the session-connection synchronization service to the upper layer.

FSP effectively separates the identifier role and routing locator role of the IPv6 address. The identifier role is localized while the routing locator role is kept global. By supporting mobility and multihoming at the transport layer it alleviates the routing scalability problem caused by supporting mobility and multihoming at the network layer.

When implemented over IPv6 abundance of IPv6 addresses makes NAT obsolete. However FSP over UDP is still friendly to NAT.

FSP eliminates the concept of 'port number'. Instead it proposes to take use of the lower 32 bits of the 128-bit IPv6 address as the 'upper layer thread ID'. It could considerably enhance allocation efficiency of the IPv6 address space.

Jason (Jun-an), Gao
General Manager,
Information Technology Department
Beijing Static Traffic Investment and Operation Co.,Ltd.