CCNx path steering: Path Steering in Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) and Named Data Networking (NDN)

Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)                         I. Moiseenko
Request for Comments: 9531                                   Apple, Inc.
Category: Experimental                                           D. Oran
ISSN: 2070-1721                      Network Systems Research and Design
                                                              March 2024


   Path Steering in Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) and Named Data
                            Networking (NDN)

Abstract

   Path steering is a mechanism to discover paths to the producers of
   Information-Centric Networking (ICN) Content Objects and steer
   subsequent Interest messages along a previously discovered path.  It
   has various uses, including the operation of state-of-the-art multi-
   path congestion control algorithms and for network measurement and
   management.  This specification derives directly from the design
   published in "Path Switching in Content Centric and Named Data
   Networks" (4th ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking) and,
   therefore, does not recapitulate the design motivations,
   implementation details, or evaluation of the scheme.  However, some
   technical details are different, and where there are differences, the
   design documented here is to be considered definitive.

   This document is a product of the IRTF Information-Centric Networking
   Research Group (ICNRG).  It is not an IETF product and is not an
   Internet Standard.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for examination, experimental implementation, and
   evaluation.

   This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
   community.  This document is a product of the Internet Research Task
   Force (IRTF).  The IRTF publishes the results of Internet-related
   research and development activities.  These results might not be
   suitable for deployment.  This RFC represents the consensus of the
   Information-Centric Networking Research Group of the Internet
   Research Task Force (IRTF).  Documents approved for publication by
   the IRSG are not candidates for any level of Internet Standard; see
   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/rfc9531.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction
     1.1.  Path Steering as an Experimental Extension to ICN Protocol
           Architectures
     1.2.  Requirements Language
     1.3.  Terminology
   2.  Essential Elements of ICN Path Discovery and Path Steering
     2.1.  Path Discovery
     2.2.  Path Steering
     2.3.  Handling Path Steering Errors
     2.4.  Interactions with Interest Aggregation
     2.5.  How to Represent the Path Label
   3.  Mapping to CCNx and NDN Packet Encodings
     3.1.  Path Label TLV
     3.2.  Path Label Encoding for CCNx
     3.3.  Path Label Encoding for NDN
   4.  IANA Considerations
   5.  Security Considerations
     5.1.  Cryptographic Protection of a Path Label
   6.  References
     6.1.  Normative References
     6.2.  Informative References
   Authors' Addresses

1.  Introduction

   Path steering is a mechanism to discover paths to the producers of
   ICN Content Objects and steer subsequent Interest messages along a
   previously discovered path.  It has various uses, including the
   operation of state-of-the-art multi-path congestion control
   algorithms and for network measurement and management.  This
   specification derives directly from the design published in
   [Moiseenko2017] and, therefore, does not recapitulate the design
   motivations, implementation details, or evaluation of the scheme.
   That publication should be considered a normative reference as it is
   not likely a reader will be able to understand all elements of this
   design without first having read the reference.  However, some
   technical details are different, and where there are differences, the
   design documented here is to be considered definitive.

   Path discovery and subsequent path steering in ICN networks is
   facilitated by the symmetry of forward and reverse paths in the
   Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) and Named Data Networking (NDN)
   architectures.  Path discovery is achieved by a consumer endpoint
   transmitting an ordinary Interest message and receiving a Content
   (Data) message containing an end-to-end path label constructed on the
   reverse path by the forwarding plane.  Path steering is achieved by a
   consumer endpoint including a path label in the Interest message,
   which is forwarded to each nexthop through the corresponding egress
   interfaces in conjunction with Longest Name Prefix Match (LNPM)
   lookup in the Forwarding Information Base (FIB).

   This document is a product of the IRTF Information-Centric Networking
   Research Group (ICNRG).  It was supported by the ICNRG participants
   during its development and through Research Group Last Call.  It has
   received detailed review by experts in both the CCNx and NDN
   communities.

1.1.  Path Steering as an Experimental Extension to ICN Protocol
      Architectures

   There are a number of important use cases to justify extending ICN
   architectures such as CCNx [RFC8569] or NDN [NDN] to provide these
   capabilities.  These are summarized as follows:

   *  Support the discovery, monitoring, and troubleshooting of multi-
      path network connectivity, based on names and name prefixes.
      Analogous functions have been shown to be a crucial operational
      capability in multicast and multi-path topologies for IP.  The
      canonical tools are the well-known _traceroute_ and _ping_. For
      point-to-multipoint MPLS, the more recent MPLS traceroute
      [RFC8029] protocol is used.  Equivalent diagnostic functions have
      been defined for CCNx through the ICN Ping [RFC9508] and ICN
      Traceroute [RFC9507] specifications; both of which are capable of
      exploiting path steering, if available.

   *  Perform accurate online measurement of network performance, which
      generally requires multiple consecutive packets to follow the same
      path under control of an application.

   *  Improve the performance and flexibility of multi-path congestion
      control algorithms.  Congestion control schemes, such as
      [Mahdian2016] and [Song2018], depend on the ability of a consumer
      to explicitly steer packets onto individual paths in a multi-path
      and/or multi-destination topology.

   *  Allow a consumer endpoint to mitigate content poisoning attacks by
      directing its Interests onto the network paths that bypass
      poisoned caches.

   The path discovery machinery described here may (and likely will)
   discover paths with varying properties.  [RFC9217] discusses a number
   of open questions in path-aware networking, among which is how to
   assess and exploit paths having different properties.  Experimenting
   with ICN path steering may be helpful in further elucidating these
   questions and perhaps shedding light on which path properties are
   most useful for the use cases cited above.

   One nuance compared to other path-aware networking approaches is that
   ICN path steering piggybacks path discovery on the base ICN data
   exchange rather than having a separate path advertisement or
   discovery mechanism.  That means when the recorded path comes back in
   an ICN Data message response, the properties of the path are known
   only implicitly to the consumer as opposed to being explicitly
   labeled.  That makes the question of what properties a consumer uses
   to choose a path one of observation or measurement rather than
   advance selection based on an explicit, advertised property (e.g.,
   SCION [SCION]).

   The utility and overall technical quality of this path steering
   capability can be assessed by how well it enables the above use cases
   and what performance and robustness effects it has on the underlying
   ICN protocols and their use in various applications.  A few of the
   open questions that should be addressed through experimentation with
   path steering include:

   *  How much more accurate and useful are measurements of RTT, packet
      loss, etc. through ping and traceroute when utilizing path
      steering?

   *  How much is the performance and robustness of multi-path
      forwarding enhanced by the use of this explicit path steering
      capability?

1.2.  Requirements Language

   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.

1.3.  Terminology

   This document uses the general ICN terms that are defined in
   [RFC8793].  In addition, we define the following terms specific to
   path steering:

   Path Discovery:  The process of sending an Interest message
      requesting discovery of a path and, if successful, receiving a
      Data message containing a path label for the path the
      corresponding Interest traversed.

   Path Steering:  The process of sending an Interest message containing
      the path label of a previously discovered path so that the
      forwarders use that path when forwarding that particular Interest
      message.

   Path Label:  An optional field in the packet indicating a particular
      path from a consumer to either a producer or a forwarder cache
      that can respond with the requested item.  In an Interest message,
      the path label gets built up hop by hop as the Interest traverses
      a path.  In a Data message, the path label carries the full path
      information back to the consumer for use in one or more subsequent
      Interest messages.

   Nexthop Label:  One entry in a path label representing the next hop
      for the corresponding forwarder to use when a path-steered
      Interest message arrives at that forwarder.  A sequence of Nexthop
      Labels constitutes a full path label.

2.  Essential Elements of ICN Path Discovery and Path Steering

   We elucidate the design using CCNx semantics [RFC8569] and extend its
   CCNx Message Formats [RFC8609] defined in Section 3.2.  While the
   terminology is slightly different, this design can also be applied to
   NDN by extending its bespoke packet encodings [NDNTLV] (see
   Section 3.3).

2.1.  Path Discovery

   _End-to-end Path Discovery_ for CCNx is achieved by creating a _path
   label_ and placing it as a hop-by-hop TLV in a CCNx Content (Data)
   message.  The path label is constructed hop by hop as the message
   traverses the reverse path of transit CCNx forwarders, as shown in
   the first example in Figure 1.  The path label is updated by adding
   the Nexthop Label of the interface at which the Content (Data)
   message has arrived to the existing path label.  Eventually, when the
   Content (Data) message arrives at the consumer, the path label
   identifies the complete path the Content (Data) message took to reach
   the consumer.  As shown in the second example in Figure 1, when
   multiple paths are available, subsequent Interests may be able to
   discover additional paths by omitting a path steering TLV and
   obtaining a new path label on the returning Interest.

             Discover and use first path:

                  Consumer                  Interest 1  ___  Interest 2
                     |                          |        ^       |
                     |                          |        |       |
                     |                          |        |       |
                Forwarder 1                     v        |       V
                     | (nexthop 1)          (nexthop 1)  ^   (nexthop 1)
                     |                          |        |       |
                     |                          |        |       |
                Forwarder 2                     v        |       v
        (nexthop 3) / \ (nexthop 2)         (nexthop 2)  ^   (nexthop 2)
                   /   \                        |        |       |
                  /     \                       |        |       |
                 /       \                      |        |       |
                /         \                     |        |       |
               /           \                    |        |       |
         Forwarder 4    Forwarder 3             v        |       v
   (nexthop 5)\             / (nexthop 4)   (nexthop 4)  ^   (nexthop 4)
               \           /                    |        |       |
                \         /                     |        |       |
                 \       /                      |        |       |
                  \     /                       |        |       |
                   \   /                        |        |       |
                    \ /                         v        |       v
                  Producer                     ___     Data 1   ___
                    or
               Content Store

             Discover and use second path:

                  Consumer                  Interest 3  ___  Interest 4
                     |                          |        ^       |
                     |                          |        |       |
                     |                          |        |       |
                Forwarder 1                     v        |       V
                     | (nexthop 1)          (nexthop 1)  ^   (nexthop 1)
                     |                          |        |       |
                     |                          |        |       |
                Forwarder 2                     v        |       v
        (nexthop 3) / \ (nexthop 2)         (nexthop 3)  ^   (nexthop 3)
                   /   \                        |        |       |
                  /     \                       |        |       |
                 /       \                      |        |       |
                /         \                     |        |       |
               /           \                    |        |       |
         Forwarder 4    Forwarder 3             v        |       v
   (nexthop 5)\             / (nexthop 4)   (nexthop 5)  ^   (nexthop 5)
               \           /                    |        |       |
                \         /                     |        |       |
                 \       /                      |        |       |
                  \     /                       |        |       |
                   \   /                        |        |       |
                    \ /                         v        |       v
                  Producer                     ___     Data 2   ___
                    or
               Content Store

           Figure 1: Basic Example of Path Discovery and Steering

2.2.  Path Steering

   Due to the symmetry of forward and reverse paths in CCNx, a consumer
   application can reuse a discovered path label to fetch the same or a
   similar (e.g., next chunk, next Application Data Unit, or next
   pointer in a Manifest [FLIC]) Content (Data) message over the
   discovered network path.  This _path steering_ is achieved by
   processing the Interest message's path label at each transit ICN
   forwarder and forwarding the Interest through the specified nexthop
   among those identified as feasible by LNPM FIB lookup (Figure 2).

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
                                FORWARD PATH
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

  Interest +---------+  +-----+ (path label) +--------+ (match) Interest
  -------->| Content |->| PIT | ------------>| Label  |---------------->
           |  Store  |  +-----+              | Lookup |
           +---------+   | \ (no path label) +--------+
            |            |  \                    |\(path label mismatch)
  Data      |            |   \                   | \
  <---------+            v    \                  |  \
                    aggregate  \                 |   \
                                \                |    \
                                 \               |     +-----+  Interest
                                  +--------------|---->| FIB | -------->
                                                 |     +-----+
  InterestReturn (NACK)                          v        | (no route)
  <----------------------------------------------+<-------+


  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
                                REVERSE PATH
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

  InterestReturn(NACK)  +-----+(update path label)  InterestReturn(NACK)
  <---------------------|     |<----------------------------------------
                        |     |
  Data   +---------+    | PIT |  (update path label)                Data
  <------| Content |<---|     |<----------------------------------------
         |  Store  |    |     |
         +---------+    +-----+
                           |
                           | (no match)
                           v

               Figure 2: Path Steering CCNx/NDN Data Plane

2.3.  Handling Path Steering Errors

   Over time, the state of interfaces and the FIB on forwarders may
   change such that, at any particular forwarder, a given nexthop is no
   longer valid for a given prefix.  In this case, the path label will
   point to a now-invalid nexthop.  This is detected by failure to find
   a match between the decoded nexthop ID and the nexthops of the FIB
   entry after LNPM FIB lookup.

   On detecting an invalid path label, the forwarder SHOULD respond to
   the Interest with an InterestReturn.  Therefore, we define a new
   _invalid path label_ response code for the InterestReturn message and
   include the current path label as a hop-by-hop header.  Each transit
   forwarder processing the InterestReturn message updates the path
   label in the same manner as Content (Data) messages so that the
   consumer receiving the InterestReturn (NACK) can easily identify
   which path label is no longer valid.

   A consumer may alternatively request that a forwarder detecting the
   inconsistency forward the Interest by means of normal LNPM FIB lookup
   rather than return an error.  The consumer endpoint, if it cares, can
   keep enough information about outstanding Interests to determine if
   the path label sent with the Interest fails to match the path label
   in the corresponding returned Content (Data) and use that information
   to replace stale path labels.  It does so by setting the
   FALLBACK_MODE flag of the path label TLV in its Interest message.

2.4.  Interactions with Interest Aggregation

   If two or more Interests matching the same Pending Interest
   Table (PIT) entry arrive at a forwarder, under current behavior, they
   will be aggregated whether or not they carry identical path label
   TLVs.  This may or may not be appropriate.  For example, multiple
   Interests with different modes (e.g., one with DISCOVERY_MODE and one
   without) will get aggregated; therefore, the behavior of the
   forwarder might be dependent on the arrival order of those Interests.
   In particular:

   *  If the DISCOVERY_MODE Interest arrives first, it will be forwarded
      and potentially discover a new path, while the other Interest will
      be aggregated.  If that Interest carried no path label, its
      behavior is essentially unchanged, but if it carried a path label
      without specifying DISCOVERY_MODE, the consumer's intent for the
      Interest to traverse the specified path will be ignored, and it is
      indeterminate if the chosen path will actually be used.

   *  If the two Interests arrive in the reverse order, the DISCOVERY
      MODE Interest will be aggregated, and the consumer issuing it will
      not achieve its desire to discover a new path.

   Multiple Interests intended to discover paths (i.e., by carrying the
   DISCOVERY_MODE flag defined in Section 3.1) might also be aggregated
   by a forwarder.  This limits the ability to discover multiple paths
   in parallel and, instead, must be discovered incrementally in
   subsequent exchanges.  In other words, aggregated Interests will all
   discover only one single path carried by one single Data packet.
   This has implications for management applications, like traceroute
   [RFC9507], which would likely perform much better if they discover
   paths in parallel.  Hence, when employing path steering, it is
   RECOMMENDED that such applications craft their Interests with unique
   name suffixes in order to avoid being aggregated.

      |  While path steering still operates correctly if DISCOVERY MODE
      |  Interests are aggregated, after further experimentation, it may
      |  be appropriate to advise that a forwarder:
      |
      |     *  SHOULD NOT aggregate Interests carrying different path
      |        labels and
      |
      |     *  SHOULD apply a rate limit to DISCOVERY_MODE Interests in
      |        order to limit redundant traffic.

2.5.  How to Represent the Path Label

   [Moiseenko2017] presents various options for how to represent a path
   label, with different trade-offs in flexibility, performance, and
   space efficiency.  For this specification, we choose the _polynomial
   encoding_, which achieves reasonable space efficiency at the cost of
   establishing a hard limit on the length of paths that can be
   represented.

   The polynomial encoding utilizes a fixed-size bit array.  Each
   transit ICN forwarder is allocated a fixed-size portion of the bit
   array.  This design allocates 12 bits (i.e., 4095 as a _generator
   polynomial_) to each intermediate ICN forwarder.  This matches the
   scalability of today's commercial routers that support up to 4096
   physical and logical interfaces and usually do not have more than a
   few hundred active ones.

   +------------------------------------------------------------------+
   |                      path label bitmap                           |
   +----------+-----------------+-----------------+-------------------+
   |   index  |  Nexthop Label  |  Nexthop Label  |                   |
   +----------+-----------------+-----------------+-------------------+
   |<- 8bit ->|<---- 12bit ---->|<---- 12bit ---->|<----------------->|

                      Figure 3: Fixed-Size Path Label

   A forwarder that receives a Content (Data) message encodes the
   Nexthop Label in the next available slot and increments the label
   index.  Conversely, a forwarder that receives an Interest message
   reads the current Nexthop Label and decrements the label index.
   Therefore, the extra computation required at each hop to forward
   either an Interest or Content Object message with a path label is
   minimized and constitutes a fairly trivial additional overhead
   compared to FIB lookup and other required operations.

   This approach results in individual path label TLV instances being of
   fixed pre-computed size.  While this places a hard upper bound on the
   maximum number of network hops that can be represented, this is not a
   significant practical problem in NDN and CCNx, since the size can be
   preset during Content (Data) message encoding based on the exact
   number of network hops traversed by the Interest message.  Even long
   paths of 24 hops will fit in a path label bitmap of 36 bytes if the
   Nexthop Label is encoded in 12 bits.

3.  Mapping to CCNx and NDN Packet Encodings

3.1.  Path Label TLV

   A path label TLV is the tuple: {[Flags], [Path Label Hop Count],
   [Nexthop Label], [path label bitmap]}.

   +================+=============+
   |      Flag      | Value (hex) |
   +================+=============+
   | DISCOVERY_MODE |     0x00    |
   +----------------+-------------+
   | FALLBACK_MODE  |     0x01    |
   +----------------+-------------+
   |  STRICT_MODE   |     0x02    |
   +----------------+-------------+
   |   Unassigned   |  0x03-0xFF  |
   +----------------+-------------+

      Table 1: Path Label Flags

   The Path Label Hop Count (PLHC) MUST be incremented by NDN and CCNx
   forwarders if the Interest packet carries a path label and the
   DISCOVERY_MODE flag is set.  A producer node or a forwarder with a
   cached Data packet MUST use the PLHC in calculation of a path label
   bitmap size that is suitable for encoding the entire path to the
   consumer.  The PLHC MUST be set to zero in newly created Data or
   InterestReturn (NACK) packets.  A consumer node MUST reuse the PLHC
   together with the path label bitmap (PLB) in order to correctly
   forward the Interest(s) along the corresponding network path.

   If an NDN or CCNx forwarder supports path labeling, the Nexthop Label
   MUST be used to determine the correct egress interface for an
   Interest packet carrying either the FALLBACK_MODE or the STRICT_MODE
   flag.  If any particular NDN or CCNx forwarder is configured to
   decrypt path labels of Interest packets (see Security
   Considerations), then the forwarder MUST:

   1.  decrypt the path label with its own symmetric key,

   2.  update the Nexthop Label with outermost label in the path label,

   3.  decrement the PLHC, and

   4.  remove the outermost label from the path label.

   If any particular NDN or CCNx forwarder is NOT configured to decrypt
   path labels of Interest packets, then path label decryption SHOULD
   NOT be performed.

   The Nexthop Label MUST be ignored by NDN and CCNx forwarders if it is
   present in Data or InterestReturn (NACK) packets.  If any particular
   NDN or CCNx forwarder is configured to encrypt path labels of Data
   and InterestReturn (NACK) packets (see Security Considerations), then
   the forwarder MUST encrypt the existing path label with its own
   symmetric key, append the Nexthop Label of the ingress interface to
   the path label, and increment the PLHC.  If any particular NDN or
   CCNx forwarder is NOT configured to encrypt path labels of Interest
   packets, then path label encryption SHOULD NOT be performed.

   NDN and CCNx forwarders MUST fall back to Longest Name Prefix Match
   (LNPM) FIB lookup if an Interest packet carries an invalid Nexthop
   Label and the FALLBACK_MODE flag is set.

   CCNx forwarders MUST respond with an InterestReturn packet specifying
   a T_RETURN_INVALID_PATH_LABEL code if the Interest packet carries an
   invalid path label and the STRICT_MODE flag is set.  This is a new
   InterestReturn code defined herein (see Section 4 for the value
   allocation).

   CCNx forwarders MUST respond with an InterestReturn packet specifying
   the existing T_RETURN_MALFORMED_INTEREST code if the Interest packet
   carries a path label TLV with both the FALLBACK_MODE and STRICT_MODE
   flags set.

3.2.  Path Label Encoding for CCNx

   Path label is an optional hop-by-hop header TLV that can be present
   in CCNx Interest, InterestReturn, and Content Object packets.

    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
   +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
   |         T_PATH_LABEL          |          Length + 4           |
   +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
   |     Flags     |  Path Label   |        Nexthop Label          |
   |               |  Hop Count    |                               |
   +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
   /                                                               /
   /               Path label bitmap (Length octets)               /
   /                                                               /
   +---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+

            Figure 4: Path Label Hop-by-Hop Header TLV for CCNx

3.3.  Path Label Encoding for NDN

   Path label is an optional TLV for NDN Interest and Data packets.  It
   is carried in the NDN Link Adaptation Protocol [NDNLPv2], which is
   used to wrap NDN packets for carriage over various link layer
   protocols.  NDNLPv2 was chosen over the NDN packet itself since it
   can carry hop-by-hop information that potentially mutates at each hop
   and, therefore, cannot be included in the secured hash computation or
   the signature of NDN packets.  Further, it can be used instead of the
   existing NextHopFaceId TLV since it not only can specify the single
   outgoing face for a consumer but manages the selection and forwarding
   over an entire path.  The path label TLV in NDNLPv2 is defined below:

   PathLabel         = PATH-LABEL-TYPE TLV-LENGTH
                       PathLabelFlags
                       PathLabelBitmap

   PathLabelFlags    = PATH-LABEL-FLAGS-TYPE
                       TLV-LENGTH ; == 1
                       OCTET

   NexthopLabel      = PATH-LABEL-NEXTHOP-LABEL-TYPE
                       TLV-LENGTH ; == 2
                       2 OCTET

   PathLabelHopCount = PATH-LABEL-HOP-COUNT-TYPE
                       TLV-LENGTH ; == 1
                       OCTET

   PathLabelBitmap   = PATH-LABEL-BITMAP-TYPE
                       TLV-LENGTH ; == 64
                       64 OCTET

                      Figure 5: Path Label TLV for NDN

   +============================+=========================+
   |            Flag            | (Suggested) Value (hex) |
   +============================+=========================+
   | T_PATH_LABEL               |           0x0A          |
   +----------------------------+-------------------------+
   | T_PATH_LABEL_FLAGS         |           0x0B          |
   +----------------------------+-------------------------+
   | T_PATH_LABEL_BITMAP        |           0x0D          |
   +----------------------------+-------------------------+
   | T_PATH_LABEL_NEXTHOP_LABEL |           0x0E          |
   +----------------------------+-------------------------+
   | T_PATH_LABEL_HOP_COUNT     |           0x0F          |
   +----------------------------+-------------------------+

         Table 2: TLV-TYPE Number Assignments for NDN

4.  IANA Considerations

   IANA has made the following assignments:

   1.  The value 0x000A has been assigned to T_PATH_LABEL in the "CCNx
       Hop-by-Hop Types" registry, established by [RFC8609].

   2.  The value 0x0A has been assigned to T_RETURN_INVALID_PATH_LABEL
       in the "CCNx Interest Return Code Types" registry, established by
       [RFC8609].

5.  Security Considerations

   A path is invalidated by renumbering one or more Nexthop Labels.  A
   malicious consumer can attempt to mount an attack by transmitting
   Interests with path labels that differ only in a single now-invalid
   Nexthop Label in order to _brute-force_ a valid Nexthop Label.  If
   such an attack succeeds, a malicious consumer would be capable of
   steering Interests over a network path that may not match the paths
   computed by the routing algorithm or learned adaptively by the
   forwarders.

   When a label lookup fails, by default, an _invalid path label_
   InterestReturn (NACK) message is returned to the consumer.  This
   contains a path label identical to the one included in the
   corresponding Interest message.  Therefore, a malicious consumer can
   analyze the message's Hop Count field to infer which specific Nexthop
   Label had failed and direct an attack to influence path steering at
   that hop.  This threat can be mitigated by the following
   countermeasures:

   *  A Nexthop Label that is larger in size is harder to crack.  If
      Nexthop Labels are not allocated in a predictable fashion by the
      routers, brute-forcing a 32-bit Nexthop Label requires on average
      O(2^31) Interests.  However, this specification uses Nexthop
      Labels with much less entropy (12 bits), so depending on
      computational hardness is not workable.

   *  An ICN forwarder can periodically update Nexthop Labels to limit
      the maximum lifetime of paths.  It is RECOMMENDED that forwarders
      update path labels at least every few minutes.

   *  A void Hop Count field in an _invalid path label_ InterestReturn
      (NACK) message would not give out the information on which a
      specific Nexthop Label had failed.  An attacker might need to
      brute-force all Nexthop Labels in all combinations.  However, some
      useful diagnostic capability is lost by obscuring the hop count.
      For example, the locus of routing churn is harder to pin down
      through analysis of path-steered pings or traceroutes.  A
      forwarder MAY choose to invalidate the hop count in addition to
      changing Nexthop Labels periodically as described above.

   Because ICN forwarders maintain per-face state and forwarding state
   for Interest messages, state inflation attacks are a general concern.
   The addition of path steering capabilities in Interest and Data
   messages does not, however, constitute a meaningful increase in
   susceptibility to such attacks.  This is because:

   *  The labels that identify each forwarding face is state O(number of
      faces) and constitutes a small increase to the existing state
      needed to represent a face.

   *  Interest message data is placed in the PIT.  The path steering
      header does, in fact, inflate the size of the Interest message
      and, hence, the PIT state but not by an amount that is a concern.
      The forwarder needs to protect against state inflation attacks on
      the PIT in general, and an attacker can mount one just as or more
      easily by issuing Interests with long names and/or by including
      Interest payload data.

   ICN protocols can be susceptible to a variety of cache poisoning
   attacks, where a colluding consumer and producer arrange for bogus
   content (with either invalid or inappropriate signatures) to populate
   forwarder caches.  These are generally confined to on-path attacks.
   It is also theoretically possible to launch a similar attack without
   a cooperating producer such that the caches of on-path routers become
   poisoned with the content from off-path routers (i.e., physical
   connectivity but no route in a FIB for a given prefix).  We estimate
   that, without any prior knowledge of the network topology, the
   complexity of this type of attack is in the ballpark of Breadth-
   First-Search and Depth-First-Search algorithms with the additional
   burden of transmitting 2^31 Interests in order to crack a Nexthop
   Label on each hop.  A relatively short periodic update of Nexthop
   Labels, together with heuristics implemented in the ICN forwarder to
   foil _label scans_, may successfully mitigate this type of attack.

5.1.  Cryptographic Protection of a Path Label

   If the countermeasures listed above do not provide sufficient
   protection against malicious mis-steering of Interests, the path
   label can be made opaque to the consumer endpoint via hop-by-hop
   symmetric cryptography applied to the path labels (Figure 6).  This
   method is viable due to the symmetry of forward and reverse paths in
   CCNx and NDN architectures combined with ICN path steering requiring
   only reads and writes of the topmost Nexthop Label (i.e., active
   Nexthop Label) in the path label.  This way, a path-steering-capable
   ICN forwarder receiving a Content (Data) message encrypts the current
   path label with its own non-shared symmetric key prior to adding a
   new Nexthop Label to the path label.  The Content (Data) message is
   forwarded downstream with an unencrypted topmost (i.e., active)
   Nexthop Label and the remaining encrypted content of the path label.
   As a result, a consumer endpoint receives a Content (Data) message
   with a unique path label exposing only the topmost Nexthop Label as
   cleartext.  A path steering forwarder receiving an Interest message
   performs label lookup using the topmost Nexthop Label, decrypts the
   path label with its own non-shared symmetric key, and forwards the
   message upstream.

   Cryptographic protection of a path label does not require any key
   negotiation among ICN forwarders and is no more expensive than Media
   Access Control Security (MACsec) or IPsec.  It is also quite possible
   that strict hop-by-hop path label encryption is not necessary and
   path label encryption only on the border routers of the trusted
   administrative or routing domains may suffice.

                               Producer
                               |      ^
                               |      |
        Path Label TLV         |      |           Path Label TLV
   +-----------------------+   |      |     +-----------------------+
   |nexthop label=456      |   v      |     |nexthop label=456      |
   |encrypted path label={}|  Forwarder 3   |encrypted path label={}|
   +-----------------------+   |      ^     +-----------------------+
                               |      |
   path label is encrypted     |      |     path label is decrypted
   with Forwarder 3            |      |     with Forwarder 3
   symmetric key               |      |     symmetric key
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
        Path Label TLV         |      |           Path Label TLV
   +-----------------------+   |      |     +-----------------------+
   |nexthop label=634      |   v      |     |nexthop label=634      |
   |encrypted path label=  |  Forwarder 2   |encrypted path label=  |
   | {456}                 |   |      ^     | {456}                 |
   +-----------------------+   |      |     +-----------------------+
                               |      |
   path label is encrypted     |      |     path label is decrypted
   with Forwarder 2            |      |     with Forwarder 2
   symmetric key               |      |     symmetric key
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
        Path Label TLV         |      |           Path Label TLV
   +-----------------------+   |      |     +-----------------------+
   |nexthop label=912      |   v      |     |nexthop label=912      |
   |encrypted path label=  |  Forwarder 1   |encrypted path label=  |
   | {634, encrypted path  |   |      ^     | {634, encrypted path  |
   | label {456}}          |   |      |     | label {456}}          |
   +-----------------------+   |      |     +-----------------------+
                               |      |
   path label is encrypted     |      |     path label is decrypted
   with Forwarder 1            |      |     with Forwarder 1
   symmetric key               |      |     symmetric key
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               |      |
                               v      |
                               Consumer

         Figure 6: Path Label Protection with Hop-by-Hop Symmetric
                                Cryptography

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [Moiseenko2017]
              Moiseenko, I. and D. Oran, "Path Switching in Content
              Centric and Named Data Networks", Proceedings of the 4th
              ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking, Pages
              66-76, DOI 10.1145/3125719.3125721,
              DOI 10.1145/3125719.3125721, September 2017,
              <https://conferences.sigcomm.org/acm-icn/2017/proceedings/
              icn17-2.pdf>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8569]  Mosko, M., Solis, I., and C. Wood, "Content-Centric
              Networking (CCNx) Semantics", RFC 8569,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8569, July 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8569>.

   [RFC8609]  Mosko, M., Solis, I., and C. Wood, "Content-Centric
              Networking (CCNx) Messages in TLV Format", RFC 8609,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8609, July 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8609>.

6.2.  Informative References

   [FLIC]     Tschudin, C., Wood, C. A., Mosko, M., and D. Oran, Ed.,
              "File-Like ICN Collections (FLIC)", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-irtf-icnrg-flic-05, 22 October 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-irtf-icnrg-
              flic-05>.

   [Mahdian2016]
              Mahdian, M., Arianfar, S., Gibson, J., and D. Oran,
              "MIRCC: Multipath-aware ICN Rate-based Congestion
              Control", Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on
              Information-Centric Networking, Pages 1-10,
              DOI 10.1145/2984356.2984365, September 2016,
              <http://conferences2.sigcomm.org/acm-icn/2016/proceedings/
              p1-mahdian.pdf>.

   [NDN]      NDN, "Named Data Networking: Executive Summary",
              <https://named-data.net/project/execsummary/>.

   [NDNLPv2]  NFD, "NDNLPv2", <https://redmine.named-
              data.net/projects/nfd/wiki/NDNLPv2>.

   [NDNTLV]   NDN, "NDN Packet Format Specification v0.3",
              <https://named-data.net/doc/NDN-packet-spec/current/>.

   [RFC8029]  Kompella, K., Swallow, G., Pignataro, C., Ed., Kumar, N.,
              Aldrin, S., and M. Chen, "Detecting Multiprotocol Label
              Switched (MPLS) Data-Plane Failures", RFC 8029,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8029, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8029>.

   [RFC8793]  Wissingh, B., Wood, C., Afanasyev, A., Zhang, L., Oran,
              D., and C. Tschudin, "Information-Centric Networking
              (ICN): Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) and Named Data
              Networking (NDN) Terminology", RFC 8793,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8793, June 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8793>.

   [RFC9217]  Trammell, B., "Current Open Questions in Path-Aware
              Networking", RFC 9217, DOI 10.17487/RFC9217, March 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9217>.

   [RFC9507]  Mastorakis, S., Oran, D., Moiseenko, I., Gibson, J., and
              R. Droms, "Information-Centric Networking (ICN) Traceroute
              Protocol Specification", RFC 9507, DOI 10.17487/RFC9507,
              March 2024, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9507>.

   [RFC9508]  Mastorakis, S., Oran, D., Gibson, J., Moiseenko, I., and
              R. Droms, "Information-Centric Networking (ICN) Ping
              Protocol Specification", RFC 9508, DOI 10.17487/RFC9508,
              March 2024, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9508>.

   [SCION]    de Kater, C., Rustignoli, N., and A. Perrig, "SCION
              Overview", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              dekater-panrg-scion-overview-05, 5 November 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dekater-
              panrg-scion-overview-05>.

   [Song2018] Song, J., Lee, M., and T. Kwon, "SMIC: Subflow-level
              Multi-path Interest Control for Information Centric
              Networking", Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on
              Information-Centric Networking, Pages 77-87,
              DOI 10.1145/3267955.3267971, September 2018,
              <https://conferences.sigcomm.org/acm-icn/2018/proceedings/
              icn18-final62.pdf>.

Authors' Addresses

   Ilya Moiseenko
   Apple, Inc.
   Cupertino, CA
   United States of America
   Email: iliamo@mailbox.org


   Dave Oran
   Network Systems Research and Design
   4 Shady Hill Square
   Cambridge, MA 02138
   United States of America
   Email: daveoran@orandom.net