RFC 5094

Mobile IPv6 Vendor Specific Option

📅 published December 2007, from ietf

RFC 5094: Mobile IPv6 Vendor Specific Option ✨

Title block, bestie: this is RFC 5094, published December 2007 🍓 It's a Standards Track doc from the Network Working Group, written by V. Devarapalli (Azaire Networks), A. Patel, and K. Leung (both Cisco). Its header doesn't have an Obsoletes or Updates line, so it doesn't replace or change any other RFC 💅

Status of This Memo

This document is an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and it's asking for discussion and suggestions for improvements 🦋 For the standardization state and status of this protocol, check the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1). Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Abstract 🎀

Okay so Mobile IPv6 vendors need a way to add their own extensions to Mobility Header messages, whether they're doing research or deploying something real 🔬 This doc introduces one new mobility option that vendors can use for exactly that ✨

Table of Contents 📚

1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.  Vendor-Specific Mobility Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
  7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
  7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1. Introduction 🌸

Vendor-specific messages have always been how vendors add their own extensions to a protocol and stand out from everyone else 💅 They get marked with a Vendor ID that says whose they are. A vendor's implementation spots its own extension by recognizing that Vendor ID. Implementations that don't recognize the Vendor ID either throw the message away or skip over it 🙈

Mobile IPv6 [2] is getting deployed for real now, so vendors need a way to extend Mobility Header messages for research or deployment purposes ✨

This doc defines a new mobility option, the Vendor-Specific Mobility Option, which can ride along in any Mobility Header message 🦋 The Vendor-Specific mobility option MUST be used only with a Mobility Header message. Mobility options can be skipped by design if an implementation doesn't recognize the mobility option type [2] 🫶

The messages in this doc can also be used for NEMO [3] and Proxy MIPv6 [4], since those protocols use Mobility Header messages too 🧚

Heads up, bestie: vendor-specific extensions can cause serious interoperability issues and might have adverse operational impact if they aren't designed and used carefully 💀 This option is meant for simple use cases, where it's enough to include some vendor data in the standardized Mobile IPv6 protocol exchanges. It is not suitable for more complex vendor extensions that modify Mobile IPv6 itself 🙅‍♀️ Even though these options let vendors piggyback extra data onto Mobile IPv6 message exchanges, RFC 3775 [2] requires that unrecognized options be ignored and that the end systems be able to process the remaining parts of the message correctly. Extensions that use the vendor-specific mobility option should require an indication that the option was processed, in the response, using the vendor-specific mobility option.

Vendors are generally encouraged to bring their protocol extensions to the IETF for review and standardization 🎀 Complex vendor extensions that modify Mobile IPv6 itself, will see large-scale deployment, or involve industry consortia or other multi-vendor organizations MUST be standardized in the IETF. Past experience has shown that extensions of IETF protocols like this depend heavily on IETF review and standardization 👑

2. Terminology 💜

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [1].

3. Vendor-Specific Mobility Option 🧚

The Vendor Specific Mobility Option can be included in any Mobility Header message and has an alignment requirement of 4n+2. If the Mobility Header message includes a Binding Authorization Data option [2], then the Vendor Specific mobility option should appear before the Binding Authorization Data option. Multiple Vendor-Specific mobility options MAY be present in a Mobility Header message 🌈

   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
  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  |     Type      |   Length      |
  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  |                         Vendor ID                             |
  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  |   Sub-Type    |             Data.......
  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Type

An 8-bit field that says this is a Vendor-Specific mobility option 🎀

Length

An 8-bit field giving the length of the option in octets. It leaves out the Type and Length fields themselves, but counts all the other fields 📏

Vendor ID

The SMI Network Management Private Enterprise Code from the IANA-maintained Private Enterprise Numbers registry [5] 🏷️

Sub-type

An 8-bit field that says what kind of vendor-specific information the option carries. The vendor handles the administration of the Sub-type 🫶

Data

The vendor-specific data carried in this message 💖

4. Security Considerations 🔐

This part is seriously important, babe 😭 The Vendor-Specific mobility messages should be protected in a way similar to Binding Updates and Binding Acknowledgements if they carry information that shouldn't be revealed on the wire, or information that can affect the binding cache entry at the home agent or the correspondent node. In particular, the messages containing the Vendor Specific mobility option MUST be integrity protected.

5. IANA Considerations 🌷

The Vendor-Specific mobility option, defined in Section 3, has been assigned the type value (19), allocated from the same space as the Mobility Options registry created by RFC 3775 [2] ✨

6. Acknowledgements 🙌

The author would like to thank Jari Arkko and Basavaraj Patil, with whom the contents of this document were first discussed 💜

7. References 📖

7.1. Normative References

[1]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
     Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

[2]  Johnson, D., Perkins, C., and J. Arkko, "Mobility Support in
     IPv6", RFC 3775, June 2004.

7.2. Informative References

[3]  Devarapalli, V., Wakikawa, R., Petrescu, A., and P. Thubert,
     "Network Mobility (NEMO) Basic Support Protocol", RFC 3963,
     January 2005.

[4]  Gundavelli, S., "Proxy Mobile IPv6", Work in Progress,
     March 2007.

[5]  IANA Assigned Numbers Online Database, "Private Enterprise
     Numbers", <http://www.iana.org/assignments/enterprise-numbers>.

Authors' Addresses 📮

Vijay Devarapalli
Azaire Networks
3121 Jay Street
Santa Clara, CA  95054
USA

EMail: vijay.devarapalli@azairenet.com


Alpesh Patel
Cisco
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA  95134
USA

EMail: alpesh@cisco.com


Kent Leung
Cisco
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA  95134
USA

EMail: kleung@cisco.com

Full Copyright Statement 🌈

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Acknowledgement 🫶

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