| Internet-Draft | Routing Challenges | November 2021 |
| Farrel & King | Expires 12 May 2022 | [Page] |
Many proposals have been made to add semantics to IP packets by placing additional information existing fields, by adding semantics to IP addresses, or by adding fields to the packets. The intent is to facilitate enhanced routing decisions based on these additional semantics to provide differentiated paths for different packet flows distinct from simple shortest path first routing. The process is known as Semantic Routing.¶
This document provides a brief introduction to Semantic Routing.¶
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Historically, the meaning of an IP address has been to identify an interface on a network device. Network routing protocols were initially designed to determine paths through the network toward destination addresses so that IP packets with a common destination address converged on that destination. Anycast and multicast addresses were also defined, and these new address semantics necessitated variations to the routing protocols, and in some casese the development of new protocols.¶
Over time, routing decisions were enhanced to route packets according to additional information carried within the packets and dependent on policy coded in, configured at, or signaled to the routers. Perhaps the most obvious example is Equal-Cost Multipath (ECMP) where a router makes a consistent choice for forwarding packets over a number of parallel links or paths based on the values of a set of fields in the packet header.¶
Upper-layer applications are placing increasingly sophisticated demands on the network for better quality, more predictability, and increased reliability. Some of these applications are futuristic predictions (for example, haptic augmented reality multiplayer 3D worlds), some are new ideas on the threshold of roll-out (such as holographic conferencing), and many are rapidly developing sectors with established revenue streams (such as multiplayer immersive gaming).¶
At the same time, lower-layer network technologies are advancing rapidly providing increased bandwidth to the home and to mobile hand-held devices. These advances create an environment that enables the potential of advanced applications being run by very many end-users. This coincides with a growing trend to extend end-to-end communications to include machines and services, and to introduce routing and addressing behaviors and semantics specific to a particular use case and set of requirements applied within a limited region or domain of the Internet. Examples of these three developments include 5G, predicted wireless evolutions, IoT and vehicular connectivity, space-terrestrial communication, industrial networks, cloud computing, service function chaining and network functions virtualization, digital twins, and data-centric data brokerage platforms.¶
Despite this plurality of communication scenarios, IP-based addressing and network layer routing have remained focused on identifying locations of communication and determining paths between those locations. This has previously depended on higher-layer capabilities (e.g., for name-to-location resolution) to support those comprehensive communication scenarios, but that approach introduces latency and dependencies (e.g., changing locator assignments may depend on the capabilities of the upper-layer capability that are outside the core addressing and routing system). Furthermore, multi-layer lookups and interactions may impact the efficacy of communication scenarios, particularly those that employ different routing and addressing approaches beyond just locators.¶
"Semantic Routing" places the support for advanced routing and location functions directly at the packet routing layer, such as through extensions to the identification properties of addresses (so that the address indicates more than just the network location) or through performing routing functions on an extended set of inputs (for example, other fields carried in packet headers). Such an approach should preserve the Internet architecture as it is today while enabling additional routing function.¶
This document provides a brief introduction to semantic routing and outlines the possible approaches that might be taken. A separate document ([I-D.king-irtf-semantic-routing-survey]) makes a start at a survey of pre-existing work in this area, while [I-D.king-irtf-challenges-in-routing] sets out some of the issues that should be considered when researching, developing, or proposing a semantic routing scheme.¶
As with all advances in Internet protocols, semantic routing may be considered for Internet-wide deployment or may be restricted (possibly only initially) to well-defined and contained networks referred to as "limited domains" (see [RFC8799]). The information used for semantic routing may be opaque within the network (in other words, the additional information is not visible to the routers), may be transparent (so that routers may see the information, but their processing does not need to be changed to accommodate the information or its encoding), or may be active (so that semantic routing is fully enabled).¶
Semantic routing may select paths in one domain that are not consistent with the paths selected in other domains.¶
In any case, concern and consideration must be coexistence with, and backward compatibility to, existing routing and addressing schemes that are widely deployed.¶
A strategic objective of semantic routing, and associated semantic enhancements, is to enable Service Providers to modify the default forwarding behaviour to be based on other information present in the packet and policy configured or dynamically programmed into the routers and devices. This is aimed to cause new and alternative path processing by routers, including:¶
Efficiency of manageability in terms of:¶
Issues of security and privacy have been largely overlooked within the routing systems. However, there is increasing concern that attacks on routing systems can not only be disruptive (for example, causing traffic to be dropped), but may cause traffic to be routed via inspection points that can breach the security or privacy of the payloads. While semantic routing may offer tools for increasing security and privacy, it is possible that semantic routing and the additional information that may be carried in packets to enable semantic routing may provide vectors for attacks or compromise privacy. This must be examined by any semantic routing proposals.¶
Typically, in an IP-based network packets are forwarded using the least-cost path to the destination IP address. Service Providers may also use techniques to modify the default forwarding behavior based on other information present in the packet and configured or programmed into the routers. These mechanisms, sometimes called semantic routing techniques include "Preferential Routing", "Policy-based Routing", and "Flow Steering".¶
Examples of existing semantic routing usage in IP-based networks include the following.¶
A more comprehensive list of existing implementations and research projects can be found in [I-D.king-irtf-semantic-routing-survey].¶
Semantic routing, operates to forward packets dependent on information carried in the packets and rules present in the routers. Those rules could be:¶
Semantic routing will also require information about network state and capabilities just as existing shortest path first routing systems do. That may require information (such as link delays or other qualitative attributes) to be collected by network nodes and distributed between routers by routing protocols. Alternatively, this information could be collected centrally by a network controller and used to derive the rules installed in the routers.¶
Forwarding by the router is based on a look-up of the semantic routing information carried in the packet (see Section 4) and forwarding instructions programmed into the forwarding element. The actions to perform may be derived by the router based on the rules and information that the router has collected, or may be programmed directly from the network controller.¶
Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. For example, IP routing uses IP addresses for source and destination identification and is typically used for packet networks, such as the Internet. IP routing assumes that network addresses are structured and facilitates routing entries in a routing table entry to represent a group of IP capable devices.¶
Service routing and information-centric networking (ICN) use an overlay approach that creates a layer on top of the IP network. Control of the overlay necessitates augmentation of existing routing mechanisms, or entirely new discovery, propagation and resource management protocols and procedures.¶
IP Routing and service routing are not the same thing.¶
The subsections below describe some of the common techniques to enable semantic routing in more detail. The sections are unordered and no meaning should be assigned to how one approach is presented before another. They are not a complete list of possible approaches.¶
The approaches described here have many advantages and disadvantages. The purpose here is not to determine which approach is best or most appropriate, and so those advantages and disadvantages are not discussed. The reader will inevitably have a preference and see drawbacks.¶
In some cases, an address prefix is assigned a special purpose and meaning. When such an address appears in the packet's address field, a router can know from the prefix that particular routing/forwarding actions are required. An example of this approach is seen in multicast addressing.¶
The owner of a prefix to use the low-order bits of an address for their own purposes.¶
The semantics of such an approach might be coordinated between prefix owners, or could be indicated through information that is part of the encoding, and is standardised.¶
Semantic addressing is a term applied to any approach that adds semantics to IP addresses. This includes the mechanisms described in Section 4.1 and Section 4.2. Other semantic addressing proposals suggest variable address lengths, hierarchical addresses, or a structure to addresses so that they can carry additional information in a common way.¶
In any case, semantic addressing intends to facilitate routing decisions based solely on the address and without the need to find and process information carried in other fields within the packets.¶
Flow marking is a way of indicating, in a simple field in the packet header, the treatment that the packet should receive in the network. In IPv4 the six-bit DSCP field is commonly used for this purpose. In IPv6, while the Traffic Class field could be used, it is generally recommended that the Flow Label field should serve this and a more general purpose.¶
The term "deep packet inspection" (DPI) is used here to mean that the router examines various packet fields, including those beyond the IP packet header. For example, many router processes may look at the "five-tuple" consisting of:¶
"Overloading" is a term applied to placing additional semantics on the contents of a field beyond how it is specified. This is relatively hard to do in an IPv6 header because the number of fields is small, and all fields have specific meanings that are needed in all cases. In IPv4 there may be more opportunity to use some fields in very controlled situations to carry additional semantics that can be used for semantic routing.¶
IPv6 defines extension headers explicitly for carrying information that may be used by routers along the path. This information can be used to instruct all routers, only the router indicated by the destination address, or by the ultimate destination of the packet.¶
Extension headers may carry any information to enable semantic routing.¶
Another approach is to define a new protocol extension to carry information on which semantic routing can be performed. Such an extension could be in the form of a new extension header (see Section 4.7) or as a new shim encapsulation immediately after the IP header.¶
Some semantic routing proposals are intended to be deployed in limited domains [RFC8799] (networks) that are IP-based, while other proposals are intended for use across the Internet. The impact the proposals have on routing systems may require clean-slate solutions, hybrid solutions, extensions to existing routing protocols, or potentially no changes at all.¶
Semantic data may be applied in a number of ways to integrate with existing routing architectures. The most obvious is to build an overlay such that IP is used only to route packets between network nodes that utilize the semantics at a higher layer. An overlay may be achieved in a higher protocol layer, or may be performed using tunneling techniques (such as IP-in-IP) to traverse the areas of the IP network that cannot parse additional semantics thereby joining together those nodes that use the semantic data.¶
The application of semantics may also be constrained to within a limited domain. In some cases, such a domain will use IP, but be disconnected from Internet (see Section 5.1). In other cases, traffic from within the domain is exchanged with other domains that are connected together across an IP-based network using tunnels or via application gateways (see Section 5.2). And in still another case traffic from the domain is routed across the Internet to other nodes and this requires backward-compatible routing approaches (see Section 5.3).¶
Some IP network domains are entirely isolated from the Internet and other IP-based networks. In these cases, there is no risk to external networks from any semantic routing schemes carried out within the domain.¶
Many approaches in isolated domains will utilize environment-specific routing protocols. For example, those suited to constrained environments (for IoT) or mobile environments (for smart vehicles). Such routing protocols can be optimized for the exchange of information specific to semantic routing.¶
In some deployments, it will be desirable to connect together a number of isolated domains to build a larger network. These domains may be connected (or bridged) over an IP network or even over the Internet.¶
Ideally, the function of the bridged domains should not be impeded by how they are connected, and the operation of the IP network providing the connectivity should not be compromised by the act of carrying traffic between the domains. This can generally be achieved by tunneling the packets between domains using any tunneling technique, and this will not require the IP network to know about the semantic routing used by the domains.¶
An alternative to tunneling is achieved using gateway functionality where packets from a domain are mapped at the domain boundary to produce regular IP packets that are sent across the IP network to the boundary of the destination domain where they are mapped back into packets for use within that domain.¶
A semantic prefix domain [I-D.jiang-semantic-prefix] is a portion of the Internet over which a consistent set of semantic-based policies are administered in a coordinated fashion. This is achieved by assigning a routable address prefix (or a set of prefixes) for use with semantic addressing and routing so that packets may be routed through the regular IP network (or the Internet) using the prefix and without encountering or having to use any semantic addressing. Once delivered to the semantic prefix domain, a packet can be subjected to whatever semantic routing is enabled in the domain.¶
Semantic routing must give full consideration to the security and privacy issues that are introduced by these mechanisms. Placing additional information into packet header fields might reveal details of what the packet is for, what function the user is performing, who the user is, etc. Furthermore, in-flight modification of the additional information might not directly change the destination of the packet, but might change how the packet is handled within the network and at the destination.¶
It should also be considered how packet encryption techniques that are increasingly popular for end-to-end or edge-to-edge security may obscure the semantic information carried in some fields of the packet header or found deeper in the packet. This may render some semantic routing techniques impractical and may dictate other methods of carrying the necessary information to enable semantic routing.¶
This document makes no requests for IANA action.¶
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