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rfc:rfc2474

Network Working Group K. Nichols Request for Comments: 2474 Cisco Systems Obsoletes: 1455, 1349 S. Blake Category: Standards Track Torrent Networking Technologies

                                                              F. Baker
                                                         Cisco Systems
                                                              D. Black
                                                       EMC Corporation
                                                         December 1998
  Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS Field)
                    in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers

Status of this Memo

 This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
 Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
 improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
 Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
 and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 Differentiated services enhancements to the Internet protocol are
 intended to enable scalable service discrimination in the Internet
 without the need for per-flow state and signaling at every hop.  A
 variety of services may be built from a small, well-defined set of
 building blocks which are deployed in network nodes.  The services
 may be either end-to-end or intra-domain; they include both those
 that can satisfy quantitative performance requirements (e.g., peak
 bandwidth) and those based on relative performance (e.g., "class"
 differentiation).  Services can be constructed by a combination of:
  1. setting bits in an IP header field at network boundaries

(autonomous system boundaries, internal administrative boundaries,

   or hosts),
 - using those bits to determine how packets are forwarded by the
   nodes inside the network, and
 - conditioning the marked packets at network boundaries in accordance
   with the requirements or rules of each service.

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 The requirements or rules of each service must be set through
 administrative policy mechanisms which are outside the scope of this
 document.  A differentiated services-compliant network node includes
 a classifier that selects packets based on the value of the DS field,
 along with buffer management and packet scheduling mechanisms capable
 of delivering the specific packet forwarding treatment indicated by
 the DS field value.  Setting of the DS field and conditioning of the
 temporal behavior of marked packets need only be performed at network
 boundaries and may vary in complexity.
 This document defines the IP header field, called the DS (for
 differentiated services) field.  In IPv4, it defines the layout of
 the TOS octet; in IPv6, the Traffic Class octet.  In addition, a base
 set of packet forwarding treatments, or per-hop behaviors, is
 defined.
 For a more complete understanding of differentiated services, see
 also the differentiated services architecture [ARCH].

Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction .................................................  3
 2.  Terminology Used in This Document ............................  5
 3.  Differentiated Services Field Definition .....................  7
 4.  Historical Codepoint Definitions and PHB Requirements ........  9
   4.1  A Default PHB .............................................  9
   4.2  Once and Future IP Precedence Field Use ................... 10
     4.2.1  IP Precedence History and Evolution in Brief .......... 10
     4.2.2  Subsuming IP Precedence into Class Selector  .......... 11
            Codepoints
       4.2.2.1  The Class Selector Codepoints ..................... 11
       4.2.2.2  The Class Selector PHB Requirements ............... 11
       4.2.2.3  Using the Class Selector PHB Requirements ......... 12
                for IP Precedence Compatibility
       4.2.2.4  Example Mechanisms for Implementing Class ......... 12
                Selector Compliant PHB Groups
   4.3  Summary ................................................... 13
 5.  Per-Hop Behavior Standardization Guidelines .................. 13
 6.  IANA Considerations .......................................... 14
 7.  Security Considerations ...................................... 15
   7.1  Theft and Denial of Service ............................... 15
   7.2  IPsec and Tunneling Interactions .......................... 16
 8.  Acknowledgments .............................................. 17
 9.  References ................................................... 17
 Authors' Addresses ............................................... 19
 Full Copyright Statement ......................................... 20

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

1. Introduction

 Differentiated services are intended  to provide a framework and
 building blocks to enable deployment of scalable service
 discrimination in the Internet.  The differentiated services approach
 aims to speed deployment by separating the architecture into two
 major components, one of which is fairly well-understood and the
 other of which is just beginning to be understood.  In this, we are
 guided by the original design of the Internet where the decision was
 made to separate the forwarding and routing components.  Packet
 forwarding is the relatively simple task that needs to be performed
 on a per-packet basis as quickly as possible.  Forwarding uses the
 packet header to find an entry in a routing table that determines the
 packet's output interface.  Routing sets the entries in that table
 and may need to reflect a range of transit and other policies as well
 as to keep track of route failures.  Routing tables are maintained as
 a background process to the forwarding task.  Further, routing is the
 more complex task and it has continued to evolve over the past 20
 years.
 Analogously, the differentiated services architecture contains two
 main components.  One is the fairly well-understood behavior in the
 forwarding path and the other is the more complex and still emerging
 background policy and allocation component that configures parameters
 used in the forwarding path.  The forwarding path behaviors include
 the differential treatment an individual packet receives, as
 implemented by queue service disciplines and/or queue management
 disciplines.  These per-hop behaviors are useful and required in
 network nodes to deliver differentiated treatment of packets no
 matter how we construct end-to-end or intra-domain services.  Our
 focus is on the general semantics of the behaviors rather than the
 specific mechanisms used to implement them since these behaviors will
 evolve less rapidly than the mechanisms.
 Per-hop behaviors and mechanisms to select them on a per-packet basis
 can be deployed in network nodes today and it is this aspect of the
 differentiated services architecture that is being addressed first.
 In addition, the forwarding path may require that some monitoring,
 policing, and shaping be done on the network traffic designated for
 "special" treatment in order to enforce requirements associated with
 the delivery of the special treatment.  Mechanisms for this kind of
 traffic conditioning are also fairly well-understood.  The wide
 deployment of such traffic conditioners is also important to enable
 the construction of services, though their actual use in constructing
 services may evolve over time.

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 3] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 The configuration of network elements with respect to which packets
 get special treatment and what kinds of rules are to be applied to
 the use of resources is much less well-understood.  Nevertheless, it
 is possible to deploy useful differentiated services in networks by
 using simple policies and static configurations.  As described in
 [ARCH], there are a number of ways to compose per-hop behaviors and
 traffic conditioners to create services.  In the process, additional
 experience is gained that will guide more complex policies and
 allocations.  The basic behaviors in the forwarding path can remain
 the same while this component of the architecture evolves.
 Experiences with the construction of such services will continue for
 some time, thus we avoid standardizing this construction as it is
 premature.  Further, much of the details of service construction are
 covered by legal agreements between different business entities and
 we avoid this as it is very much outside the scope of the IETF.
 This document concentrates on the forwarding path component.  In the
 packet forwarding path, differentiated services are realized by
 mapping the codepoint contained in a field in the IP packet header to
 a particular forwarding treatment, or per-hop behavior (PHB), at each
 network node along its path.  The codepoints may be chosen from a set
 of mandatory values defined later in this document, from a set of
 recommended values to be defined in future documents, or may have
 purely local meaning.  PHBs are expected to be implemented by
 employing a range of queue service and/or queue management
 disciplines on a network node's output interface queue: for example
 weighted round-robin (WRR) queue servicing or drop-preference queue
 management.
 Marking is performed by traffic conditioners at network boundaries,
 including the edges of the network (first-hop router or source host)
 and administrative boundaries.  Traffic conditioners may include the
 primitives of marking, metering, policing and shaping (these
 mechanisms are described in [ARCH]).  Services are realized by the
 use of particular packet classification and traffic conditioning
 mechanisms at boundaries coupled with the concatenation of per-hop
 behaviors along the transit path of the traffic.  A goal of the
 differentiated services architecture is to specify these building
 blocks for future extensibility, both of the number and type of the
 building blocks and of the services built from them.
 Terminology used in this memo is defined in Sec. 2.  The
 differentiated services field definition (DS field) is given in Sec.
 3.  In Sec. 4, we discuss the desire for partial backwards
 compatibility with current use of the IPv4 Precedence field.  As a
 solution, we introduce Class Selector Codepoints and Class Selector

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 4] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 Compliant PHBs.  Sec. 5 presents guidelines for per-hop behavior
 standardization.  Sec. 6 discusses guidelines for allocation of
 codepoints.  Sec. 7 covers security considerations.
 This document is a concise description of the DS field and its uses.
 It is intended to be read along with the differentiated services
 architecture [ARCH].
 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 [RFC2119].

2. Terminology Used in This Document

 Behavior Aggregate: a collection of packets with the same codepoint
 crossing a link in a particular direction.  The terms "aggregate" and
 "behavior aggregate" are used interchangeably in this document.
 Classifier: an entity which selects packets based on the content of
 packet headers according to defined rules.
 Class Selector Codepoint: any of the eight codepoints in the range '
 xxx000' (where 'x' may equal '0' or '1').  Class Selector Codepoints
 are discussed in Sec. 4.2.2.
 Class Selector Compliant PHB: a per-hop behavior satisfying the Class
 Selector PHB Requirements specified in Sec. 4.2.2.2.
 Codepoint: a specific value of the DSCP portion of the DS field.
 Recommended codepoints SHOULD map to specific, standardized PHBs.
 Multiple codepoints MAY map to the same PHB.
 Differentiated Services Boundary: the edge of a DS domain, where
 classifiers and traffic conditioners are likely to be deployed.  A
 differentiated services boundary can be further sub-divided into
 ingress and egress nodes, where the ingress/egress nodes are the
 downstream/upstream nodes of a boundary link in a given traffic
 direction.  A differentiated services boundary typically is found at
 the ingress to the first-hop differentiated services-compliant router
 (or network node) that a host's packets traverse, or at the egress of
 the last-hop differentiated services-compliant router or network node
 that packets traverse before arriving at a host.  This is sometimes
 referred to as the boundary at a leaf router.  A differentiated
 services boundary may be co-located with a host, subject to local
 policy.  Also DS boundary.
 Differentiated Services-Compliant: in compliance with the
 requirements specified in this document.  Also DS-compliant.

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 5] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 Differentiated Services Domain: a contiguous portion of the Internet
 over which a consistent set of differentiated services policies are
 administered in a coordinated fashion.  A differentiated services
 domain can represent different administrative domains or autonomous
 systems, different trust regions, different network technologies
 (e.g., cell/frame), hosts and routers, etc.  Also DS domain.
 Differentiated Services Field: the IPv4 header TOS octet or the IPv6
 Traffic Class octet when interpreted in conformance with the
 definition given in this document.  Also DS field.
 Mechanism:  The implementation of one or more per-hop behaviors
 according to a particular algorithm.
 Microflow: a single instance of an application-to-application flow of
 packets which is identified by source address, destination address,
 protocol id, and source port, destination port (where applicable).
 Per-hop Behavior (PHB): a description of the externally observable
 forwarding treatment applied at a differentiated services-compliant
 node to a behavior aggregate.  The description of a PHB SHOULD be
 sufficiently detailed to allow the construction of predictable
 services, as documented in [ARCH].
 Per-hop Behavior Group: a set of one or more PHBs that can only be
 meaningfully specified and implemented simultaneously, due to a
 common constraint applying to all PHBs in the set such as a queue
 servicing or queue management policy.  Also PHB Group.
 Traffic Conditioning: control functions that can be applied to a
 behavior aggregate, application flow, or other operationally useful
 subset of traffic, e.g., routing updates.  These MAY include
 metering, policing, shaping, and packet marking.  Traffic
 conditioning is used to enforce agreements between domains and to
 condition traffic to receive a differentiated service within a domain
 by marking packets with the appropriate codepoint in the DS field and
 by monitoring and altering the temporal characteristics of the
 aggregate where necessary.  See [ARCH].
 Traffic Conditioner: an entity that performs traffic conditioning
 functions and which MAY contain meters, policers, shapers, and
 markers.  Traffic conditioners are typically deployed in DS boundary
 nodes (i.e., not in interior nodes of a DS domain).
 Service: a description of the overall treatment of (a subset of) a
 customer's traffic across a particular domain, across a set of
 interconnected DS domains, or end-to-end.  Service descriptions are
 covered by administrative policy and services are constructed by

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 6] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 applying traffic conditioning to create behavior aggregates which
 experience a known PHB at each node within the DS domain.  Multiple
 services can be supported by a single per-hop behavior used in
 concert with a range of traffic conditioners.
 To summarize, classifiers and traffic conditioners are used to select
 which packets are to be added to behavior aggregates.  Aggregates
 receive differentiated treatment in a DS domain and traffic
 conditioners MAY alter the temporal characteristics of the aggregate
 to conform to some requirements.  A packet's DS field is used to
 designate the packet's behavior aggregate and is subsequently used to
 determine which forwarding treatment the packet receives.  A behavior
 aggregate classifier which can select a PHB, for example a
 differential output queue servicing discipline, based on the
 codepoint in the DS field SHOULD be included in all network nodes in
 a DS domain.  The classifiers and traffic conditioners at DS
 boundaries are configured in accordance with some service
 specification, a matter of administrative policy outside the scope of
 this document.
 Additional differentiated services definitions are given in [ARCH].

3. Differentiated Services Field Definition

 A replacement header field, called the DS field, is defined, which is
 intended to supersede the existing definitions of the IPv4 TOS octet
 [RFC791] and the IPv6 Traffic Class octet [IPv6].
 Six bits of the DS field are used as a codepoint (DSCP) to select the
 PHB a packet experiences at each node.  A two-bit currently unused
 (CU) field is reserved and its definition and interpretation are
 outside the scope of this document.  The value of the CU bits are
 ignored by differentiated services-compliant nodes when determining
 the per-hop behavior to apply to a received packet.
 The DS field structure is presented below:
      0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    |         DSCP          |  CU   |
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
      DSCP: differentiated services codepoint
      CU:   currently unused

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 7] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 In a DSCP value notation 'xxxxxx' (where 'x' may equal '0' or '1')
 used in this document, the left-most bit signifies bit 0 of the DS
 field (as shown above), and the right-most bit signifies bit 5.
 Implementors should note that the DSCP field is six bits wide.  DS-
 compliant nodes MUST select PHBs by matching against the entire 6-bit
 DSCP field, e.g., by treating the value of the field as a table index
 which is used to select a particular packet handling mechanism which
 has been implemented in that device.  The value of the CU field MUST
 be ignored by PHB selection.  The DSCP field is defined as an
 unstructured field to facilitate the definition of future per-hop
 behaviors.
 With some exceptions noted below, the mapping of codepoints to PHBs
 MUST be configurable.  A DS-compliant node MUST support the logical
 equivalent of a configurable mapping table from codepoints to PHBs.
 PHB specifications MUST include a recommended default codepoint,
 which MUST be unique for codepoints in the standard space (see Sec.
 6).  Implementations should support the recommended codepoint-to-PHB
 mappings in their default configuration.  Operators may choose to use
 different codepoints for a PHB, either in addition to or in place of
 the recommended default.  Note that if operators do so choose, re-
 marking of DS fields may be necessary at administrative boundaries
 even if the same PHBs are implemented on both sides of the boundary.
 See [ARCH] for further discussion of re-marking.
 The exceptions to general configurability are for codepoints 'xxx000'
 and are noted in Secs. 4.2.2 and 4.3.
 Packets received with an unrecognized codepoint SHOULD be forwarded
 as if they were marked for the Default behavior (see Sec. 4), and
 their codepoints should not be changed.  Such packets MUST NOT cause
 the network node to malfunction.
 The structure of the DS field shown above is incompatible with the
 existing definition of the IPv4 TOS octet in [RFC791].  The
 presumption is that DS domains protect themselves by deploying re-
 marking boundary nodes, as should networks using the RFC 791
 Precedence designations.  Correct operational procedure SHOULD follow
 [RFC791], which states: "If the actual use of these precedence
 designations is of concern to a particular network, it is the
 responsibility of that network to control the access to, and use of,
 those precedence designations."  Validating the value of the DS field
 at DS boundaries is sensible in any case since an upstream node can
 easily set it to any arbitrary value.  DS domains that are not
 isolated by suitably configured boundary nodes may deliver
 unpredictable service.

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 8] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 Nodes MAY rewrite the DS field as needed to provide a desired local
 or end-to-end service.  Specifications of DS field translations at DS
 boundaries are the subject of service level agreements between
 providers and users, and are outside the scope of this document.
 Standardized PHBs allow providers to build their services from a
 well-known set of packet forwarding treatments that can be expected
 to be present in the equipment of many vendors.

4. Historical Codepoint Definitions and PHB Requirements

 The DS field will have a limited backwards compatibility with current
 practice, as described in this section.  Backwards compatibility is
 addressed in two ways.  First, there are per-hop behaviors that are
 already in widespread use (e.g., those satisfying the IPv4 Precedence
 queueing requirements specified in [RFC1812]), and we wish to permit
 their continued use in DS-compliant nodes.  In addition, there are
 some codepoints that correspond to historical use of the IP
 Precedence field and we reserve these codepoints to map to PHBs that
 meet the general requirements specified in Sec. 4.2.2.2, though the
 specific differentiated services PHBs mapped to by those codepoints
 MAY have additional specifications.
 No attempt is made to maintain backwards compatibility with the "DTR"
 or TOS bits of the IPv4 TOS octet, as defined in [RFC791].

4.1 A Default PHB

 A "default" PHB MUST be available in a DS-compliant node.  This is
 the common, best-effort forwarding behavior available in existing
 routers as standardized in [RFC1812].  When no other agreements are
 in place, it is assumed that packets belong to this aggregate.  Such
 packets MAY be sent into a network without adhering to any particular
 rules and the network will deliver as many of these packets as
 possible and as soon as possible, subject to other resource policy
 constraints.  A reasonable implementation of this PHB would be a
 queueing discipline that sends packets of this aggregate whenever the
 output link is not required to satisfy another PHB.  A reasonable
 policy for constructing services would ensure that the aggregate was
 not "starved".  This could be enforced by a mechanism in each node
 that reserves some minimal resources (e.g, buffers, bandwidth) for
 Default behavior aggregates.  This permits senders that are not
 differentiated services-aware to continue to use the network in the
 same manner as today.  The impact of the introduction of
 differentiated services into a domain on the service expectations of
 its customers and peers is a complex matter involving policy
 decisions by the domain and is outside the scope of this document.
 The RECOMMENDED codepoint for the Default PHB is the bit pattern '
 000000'; the value '000000' MUST map to a PHB that meets these

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 9] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 specifications.  The codepoint chosen for Default behavior is
 compatible with existing practice [RFC791].  Where a codepoint is not
 mapped to a standardized or local use PHB, it SHOULD be mapped to the
 Default PHB.
 A packet initially marked for the Default behavior MAY be re-marked
 with another codepoint as it passes a boundary into a DS domain so
 that it will be forwarded using a different PHB within that domain,
 possibly subject to some negotiated agreement between the peering
 domains.

4.2 Once and Future IP Precedence Field Use

 We wish to maintain some form of backward compatibility with present
 uses of the IP Precedence Field: bits 0-2 of the IPv4 TOS octet.
 Routers exist that use the IP Precedence field to select different
 per-hop forwarding treatments in a similar way to the use proposed
 here for the DSCP field.  Thus, a simple prototype differentiated
 services architecture can be quickly deployed by appropriately
 configuring these routers.  Further, IP systems today understand the
 location of the IP Precedence field, and thus if these bits are used
 in a similar manner as DS-compliant equipment is deployed,
 significant failures are not likely during early deployment.  In
 other words, strict DS-compliance need not be ubiquitous even within
 a single service provider's network if bits 0-2 of the DSCP field are
 employed in a manner similar to, or subsuming, the deployed uses of
 the IP Precedence field.

4.2.1 IP Precedence History and Evolution in Brief

 The IP Precedence field is something of a forerunner of the DS field.
 IP Precedence, and the IP Precedence Field, were first defined in
 [RFC791].  The values that the three-bit IP Precedence Field might
 take were assigned to various uses, including network control
 traffic, routing traffic, and various levels of privilege.  The least
 level of privilege was deemed "routine traffic".  In [RFC791], the
 notion of Precedence was defined broadly as "An independent measure
 of the importance of this datagram."  Not all values of the IP
 Precedence field were assumed to have meaning across boundaries, for
 instance "The Network Control precedence designation is intended to
 be used within a network only.  The actual use and control of that
 designation is up to each network." [RFC791]
 Although early BBN IMPs implemented the Precedence feature, early
 commercial routers and UNIX IP forwarding code generally did not.  As
 networks became more complex and customer requirements grew,
 commercial router vendors developed ways to implement various kinds
 of queueing services including priority queueing, which were

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 10] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 generally based on policies encoded in filters in the routers, which
 examined IP addresses, IP protocol numbers, TCP or UDP ports, and
 other header fields.  IP Precedence was and is among the options such
 filters can examine.
 In short, IP Precedence is widely deployed and widely used, if not in
 exactly the manner intended in [RFC791].  This was recognized in
 [RFC1122], which states that while the use of the IP Precedence field
 is valid, the specific assignment of the priorities in [RFC791] were
 merely historical.

4.2.2 Subsuming IP Precedence into Class Selector Codepoints

 A specification of the packet forwarding treatments selected by the
 IP Precedence field today would have to be quite general; probably
 not specific enough to build predictable services from in the
 differentiated services framework.  To preserve partial backwards
 compatibility with known current uses of the IP Precedence field
 without sacrificing future flexibility, we have taken the approach of
 describing minimum requirements on a set of PHBs that are compatible
 with most of the deployed forwarding treatments selected by the IP
 Precedence field.  In addition, we give a set of codepoints that MUST
 map to PHBs meeting these minimum requirements.  The PHBs mapped to
 by these codepoints MAY have a more detailed list of specifications
 in addition to the required ones stated here.  Other codepoints MAY
 map to these same PHBs.  We refer to this set of codepoints as the
 Class Selector Codepoints, and the minimum requirements for PHBs that
 these codepoints may map to are called the Class Selector PHB
 Requirements.

4.2.2.1 The Class Selector Codepoints

 A specification of the packet forwarding treatments selected by the
 The DS field values of 'xxx000|xx', or DSCP = 'xxx000' and CU
 subfield unspecified, are reserved as a set of Class Selector
 Codepoints.  PHBs which are mapped to by these codepoints MUST
 satisfy the Class Selector PHB requirements in addition to preserving
 the Default PHB requirement on codepoint '000000' (Sec. 4.1).

4.2.2.2 The Class Selector PHB Requirements

 We refer to a Class Selector Codepoint with a larger numerical value
 than another Class Selector Codepoint as having a higher relative
 order while a Class Selector Codepoint with a smaller numerical value
 than another Class Selector Codepoint is said to have a lower
 relative order.  The set of PHBs mapped to by the eight Class
 Selector Codepoints MUST yield at least two independently forwarded
 classes of traffic, and PHBs selected by a Class Selector Codepoint

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 11] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 SHOULD give packets a probability of timely forwarding that is not
 lower than that given to packets marked with a Class Selector
 codepoint of lower relative order, under reasonable operating
 conditions and traffic loads.  A discarded packet is considered to be
 an extreme case of untimely forwarding.  In addition, PHBs selected
 by codepoints '11x000' MUST give packets a preferential forwarding
 treatment by comparison to the PHB selected by codepoint '000000' to
 preserve the common usage of IP Precedence values '110' and '111' for
 routing traffic.
 Further, PHBs selected by distinct Class Selector Codepoints SHOULD
 be independently forwarded; that is, packets marked with different
 Class Selector Codepoints MAY be re-ordered.  A network node MAY
 enforce limits on the amount of the node's resources that can be
 utilized by each of these PHBs.
 PHB groups whose specification satisfy these requirements are
 referred to as Class Selector Compliant PHBs.
 The Class Selector PHB Requirements on codepoint '000000' are
 compatible with those listed for the Default PHB in Sec. 4.1.

4.2.2.3 Using the Class Selector PHB Requirements for IP Precedence

       Compatibility
 A DS-compliant network node can be deployed with a set of one or more
 Class Selector Compliant PHB groups.  This document states that the
 set of codepoints 'xxx000' MUST map to such a set of PHBs.  As it is
 also possible to map multiple codepoints to the same PHB, the vendor
 or the network administrator MAY configure the network node to map
 codepoints to PHBs irrespective of bits 3-5 of the DSCP field to
 yield a network that is compatible with historical IP Precedence use.
 Thus, for example, codepoint '011010' would map to the same PHB as
 codepoint '011000'.

4.2.2.4 Example Mechanisms for Implementing Class Selector Compliant

       PHB Groups
 Class Selector Compliant PHBs can be realized by a variety of
 mechanisms, including strict priority queueing, weighted fair
 queueing (WFQ), WRR, or variants [RPS, HPFQA, DRR], or Class-Based
 Queuing [CBQ].  The distinction between PHBs and mechanisms is
 described in more detail in Sec. 5.
 It is important to note that these mechanisms might be available
 through other PHBs (standardized or not) that are available in a
 particular vendor's equipment.  For example, future documents may
 standardize a Strict Priority Queueing PHB group for a set of

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 12] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 recommended codepoints.  A network administrator might configure
 those routers to select the Strict Priority Queueing PHBs with
 codepoints 'xxx000' in conformance with the requirements of this
 document.
 As a further example, another vendor might employ a CBQ mechanism in
 its routers.  The CBQ mechanism could be used to implement the Strict
 Priority Queueing PHBs as well as a set of Class Selector Compliant
 PHBs with a wider range of features than would be available in a set
 of PHBs that did no more than meet the minimum Class Selector PHB
 requirements.

4.3 Summary

 This document defines codepoints 'xxx000' as the Class Selector
 codepoints, where PHBs selected by these codepoints MUST meet the
 Class Selector PHB Requirements described in Sec. 4.2.2.2.  This is
 done to preserve a useful level of backward compatibility with
 current uses of the IP Precedence field in the Internet without
 unduly limiting future flexibility.  In addition, codepoint '000000'
 is used as the Default PHB value for the Internet and, as such, is
 not configurable.  The remaining seven non-zero Class Selector
 codepoints are configurable only to the extent that they map to PHBs
 that meet the requirements in Sec. 4.2.2.2.

5. Per-Hop Behavior Standardization Guidelines

 The behavioral characteristics of a PHB are to be standardized, and
 not the particular algorithms or the mechanisms used to implement
 them.  A node may have a (possibly large) set of parameters that can
 be used to control how packets are scheduled onto an output interface
 (e.g., N separate queues with settable priorities, queue lengths,
 round-robin weights, drop algorithm, drop preference weights and
 thresholds, etc).  To illustrate the distinction between a PHB and a
 mechanism, we point out that Class Selector Compliant PHBs might be
 implemented by several mechanisms, including: strict priority
 queueing, WFQ, WRR, or variants [HPFQA, RPS, DRR], or CBQ [CBQ], in
 isolation or in combination.
 PHBs may be specified individually, or as a group (a single PHB is a
 special case of a PHB group).  A PHB group usually consists of a set
 of two or more PHBs that can only be meaningfully specified and
 implemented simultaneously, due to a common constraint applying to
 each PHB within the group, such as a queue servicing or queue
 management policy.  A PHB group specification SHOULD describe
 conditions under which a packet might be re-marked to select another
 PHB within the group.  It is RECOMMENDED that PHB implementations do
 not introduce any packet re-ordering within a microflow.  PHB group

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 13] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 specifications MUST identify any possible packet re-ordering
 implications which may occur for each individual PHB, and which may
 occur if different packets within a microflow are marked for
 different PHBs within the group.
 Only those per-hop behaviors that are not described by an existing
 PHB standard, and have been implemented, deployed, and shown to be
 useful, SHOULD be standardized.  Since current experience with
 differentiated services is quite limited, it is premature to
 hypothesize the exact specification of these per-hop behaviors.
 Each standardized PHB MUST have an associated RECOMMENDED codepoint,
 allocated out of a space of 32 codepoints (see Sec. 6).  This
 specification has left room in the codepoint space to allow for
 evolution, thus the defined space ('xxx000') is intentionally sparse.
 Network equipment vendors are free to offer whatever parameters and
 capabilities are deemed useful or marketable.  When a particular,
 standardized PHB is implemented in a node, a vendor MAY use any
 algorithm that satisfies the definition of the PHB according to the
 standard.  The node's capabilities and its particular configuration
 determine the different ways that packets can be treated.
 Service providers are not required to use the same node mechanisms or
 configurations to enable service differentiation within their
 networks, and are free to configure the node parameters in whatever
 way that is appropriate for their service offerings and traffic
 engineering objectives.  Over time certain common per-hop behaviors
 are likely to evolve (i.e., ones that are particularly useful for
 implementing end-to-end services) and these MAY be associated with
 particular EXP/LU PHB codepoints in the DS field, allowing use across
 domain boundaries (see Sec. 6).  These PHBs are candidates for future
 standardization.
 It is RECOMMENDED that standardized PHBs be specified in accordance
 with the guidelines set out in [ARCH].

6. IANA Considerations

 The DSCP field within the DS field is capable of conveying 64
 distinct codepoints.  The codepoint space is divided into three pools
 for the purpose of codepoint assignment and management: a pool of 32
 RECOMMENDED codepoints (Pool 1) to be assigned by Standards Action as
 defined in [CONS], a pool of 16 codepoints (Pool 2) to be reserved
 for experimental or Local Use (EXP/LU) as defined in [CONS], and a
 pool of 16 codepoints (Pool 3) which are initially available for
 experimental or local use, but which should be preferentially

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 14] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 utilized for standardized assignments if Pool 1 is ever exhausted.
 The pools are defined in the following table (where 'x' refers to
 either '0' or '1'):
 Pool        Codepoint space          Assignment Policy
 ----        ---------------          -----------------
  1            xxxxx0                 Standards Action
  2            xxxx11                 EXP/LU
  3            xxxx01                 EXP/LU (*)
 (*) may be utilized for future Standards Action allocations as
     necessary
 This document assigns eight RECOMMENDED codepoints ('xxx000') which
 are drawn from Pool 1 above.  These codepoints MUST be mapped, not to
 specific PHBs, but to PHBs that meet "at least" the requirements set
 forth in Sec. 4.2.2.2 to provide a minimal level of backwards
 compatibility with IP Precedence as defined in [RFC791] and as
 deployed in some current equipment.

7. Security Considerations

 This section considers security issues raised by the introduction of
 differentiated services, primarily the potential for denial-of-
 service attacks, and the related potential for theft of service by
 unauthorized traffic (Section 7.1).  Section 7.2 addresses the
 operation of differentiated services in the presence of IPsec
 including its interaction with IPsec tunnel mode and other tunnelling
 protocols.  See [ARCH] for more extensive treatment of the security
 concerns raised by the overall differentiated services architecture.

7.1 Theft and Denial of Service

 The primary goal of differentiated services is to allow different
 levels of service to be provided for traffic streams on a common
 network infrastructure.  A variety of techniques may be used to
 achieve this, but the end result will be that some packets receive
 different (e.g., better) service than others.  The mapping of network
 traffic to the specific behaviors that result in different (e.g.,
 better or worse) service is indicated primarily by the DS codepoint,
 and hence an adversary may be able to obtain better service by
 modifying the codepoint to values indicating behaviors used for
 enhanced services or by injecting packets with such codepoint values.
 Taken to its limits, such theft-of-service becomes a denial-of-
 service attack when the modified or injected traffic depletes the
 resources available to forward it and other traffic streams.

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 15] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 The defense against this class of theft- and denial-of-service
 attacks consists of the combination of traffic conditioning at DS
 domain boundaries with security and integrity of the network
 infrastructure within a DS domain.  DS domain boundary nodes MUST
 ensure that all traffic entering the domain is marked with codepoint
 values appropriate to the traffic and the domain, remarking the
 traffic with new codepoint values if necessary.  These DS boundary
 nodes are the primary line of defense against theft- and denial-of-
 service attacks based on modified codepoints, as success of any such
 attack indicates that the codepoints used by the attacking traffic
 were inappropriate.  An important instance of a boundary node is that
 any traffic-originating node within a DS domain is the initial
 boundary node for that traffic.  Interior nodes in a DS domain rely
 on DS codepoints to associate traffic with the forwarding PHBs, and
 are NOT REQUIRED to check codepoint values before using them.  As a
 result, the interior nodes depend on the correct operation of the DS
 domain boundary nodes to prevent the arrival of traffic with
 inappropriate codepoints or in excess of provisioned levels that
 would disrupt operation of the domain.

7.2 IPsec and Tunnelling Interactions

 The IPsec protocol, as defined in [ESP, AH], does not include the IP
 header's DS field in any of its cryptographic calculations (in the
 case of tunnel mode, it is the outer IP header's DS field that is not
 included).  Hence modification of the DS field by a network node has
 no effect on IPsec's end-to-end security, because it cannot cause any
 IPsec integrity check to fail.  As a consequence, IPsec does not
 provide any defense against an adversary's modification of the DS
 field (i.e., a man-in-the-middle attack), as the adversary's
 modification will also have no effect on IPsec's end-to-end security.
 IPsec's tunnel mode provides security for the encapsulated IP
 header's DS field.  A tunnel mode IPsec packet contains two IP
 headers: an outer header supplied by the tunnel ingress node and an
 encapsulated inner header supplied by the original source of the
 packet.  When an IPsec tunnel is hosted (in whole or in part) on a
 differentiated services network, the intermediate network nodes
 operate on the DS field in the outer header.  At the tunnel egress
 node, IPsec processing includes removing the outer header and
 forwarding the packet (if required) using the inner header.  The
 IPsec protocol REQUIRES that the inner header's DS field not be
 changed by this decapsulation processing to ensure that modifications
 to the DS field cannot be used to launch theft- or denial-of-service
 attacks across an IPsec tunnel endpoint.  This document makes no
 change to that requirement.  If the inner IP header has not been
 processed by a DS boundary node for the tunnel egress node's DS

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 16] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 domain, the tunnel egress node is the boundary node for traffic
 exiting the tunnel, and hence MUST ensure that the resulting traffic
 has appropriate DS codepoints.
 When IPsec tunnel egress decapsulation processing includes a
 sufficiently strong cryptographic integrity check of the encapsulated
 packet (where sufficiency is determined by local security policy),
 the tunnel egress node can safely assume that the DS field in the
 inner header has the same value as it had at the tunnel ingress node.
 An important consequence is that otherwise insecure links within a DS
 domain can be secured by a sufficiently strong IPsec tunnel.  This
 analysis and its implications apply to any tunnelling protocol that
 performs integrity checks, but the level of assurance of the inner
 header's DS field depends on the strength of the integrity check
 performed by the tunnelling protocol.  In the absence of sufficient
 assurance for a tunnel that may transit nodes outside the current DS
 domain (or is otherwise vulnerable), the encapsulated packet MUST be
 treated as if it had arrived at a boundary from outside the DS
 domain.

8. Acknowledgements

 The authors would like to acknowledge the Differentiated Services
 Working Group for discussions which helped shape this document.

9. References

 [AH]        Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "IP Authentication Header",
             RFC 2402, November 1998.
 [ARCH]      Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.
             and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
             Services", RFC 2475, December 1998.
 [CBQ]       S. Floyd and V. Jacobson, "Link-sharing and Resource
             Management Models for Packet Networks", IEEE/ACM
             Transactions on Networking, Vol. 3 no. 4, pp. 365-386,
             August 1995.
 [CONS]      Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
             IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", RFC 2434, October
             1998.
 [DRR]       M. Shreedhar and G. Varghese, Efficient Fair Queueing
             using Deficit Round Robin", Proc. ACM SIGCOMM 95, 1995.

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 17] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

 [ESP]       Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "IP Encapsulating Security
             Payload (ESP)", RFC 2406, November 1998.
 [HPFQA]     J. Bennett and Hui Zhang, "Hierarchical Packet Fair
             Queueing Algorithms", Proc. ACM SIGCOMM 96, August 1996.
 [IPv6]      Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
             (IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.
 [RFC791]    Postel, J., Editor, "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
             September 1981.
 [RFC1122]   Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet hosts -
             communication layers", STD 3, RFC 1122, October 1989.
 [RFC1812]   Baker, F., Editor, "Requirements for IP Version 4
             Routers", RFC 1812, June 1995.
 [RFC2119]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
             Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
 [RPS]       D. Stiliadis and A. Varma, "Rate-Proportional Servers:  A
             Design Methodology for Fair Queueing Algorithms", IEEE/
             ACM Trans. on Networking, April 1998.

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 18] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

Authors' Addresses

 Kathleen Nichols
 Cisco Systems
 170 West Tasman Drive
 San Jose, CA  95134-1706
 Phone:  +1-408-525-4857
 EMail: kmn@cisco.com
 Steven Blake
 Torrent Networking Technologies
 3000 Aerial Center, Suite 140
 Morrisville, NC  27560
 Phone:  +1-919-468-8466 x232
 EMail: slblake@torrentnet.com
 Fred Baker
 Cisco Systems
 519 Lado Drive
 Santa Barbara, CA  93111
 Phone:  +1-408-526-4257
 EMail: fred@cisco.com
 David L. Black
 EMC Corporation
 35 Parkwood Drive
 Hopkinton, MA  01748
 Phone:  +1-508-435-1000 x76140
 EMail: black_david@emc.com

Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 19] RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998

Full Copyright Statement

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998).  All Rights Reserved.
 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
 and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
 kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
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 copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
 followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
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 The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
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 TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
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Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 20]

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