The IPv6 w.g. chairs believe there are some important open issues that they
would like to see the working group discuss as part of the working group
last call on the "IPv6 Flow Label Specification"
<draft-ietf-ipv6-flow-label-03.txt>.
The current draft allows flow labels to be used in ways that go beyond the
consensus that was reached when the working group agreed to make this
document a working group document. This consensus was that the flow label
would be set by a source node to label a set of packets (with same source
and destination addresses) that the source wanted to be treated as a
flow. The flow label in this definition did not have any defined
structure. The main application for this was to make it easier for other
nodes to recognize flows without having to search to one or more headers to
find the transport port numbers. The current draft has a number of
features that go beyond this model and permit many other modes. Examples
include:
- Allowing for other standard specifications to define properties and/or
structure of the flow label field.
- A strong focus on the assignment of flow label via signaling protocols.
- Allowing a specific flow label value to be assigned via a signaling
protocol to identify flows with different source and destination
addresses.
The draft may be trying to accommodate uses of the flow label that were not
agreed to by the working group.
There are a number of other areas in the draft that need additional
discussion and/or clarification. These include:
- No default time out for the life time for specific flow label values.
- No requirement that signaling mechanisms must include a lifetime
when providing flow label setup information.
- No default mechanisms if flow label values requested via a signaling
mechanisms conflict with existing flow label values.
- Security considerations need to discuss the impact of labeling flows
of encrypted traffic.
The chairs would like to see these issues discussed by the working group in
the last call.
Bob Hinden, Steve Deering, Margaret Wasserman
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