CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Steve Deering/Stanford RDISC Minutes Agenda o Draft Specification - comments? - disposition? o Implementations o Black-Hole Detection This was the fourth meeting of the Router Discovery Working Group. The first and dominant item on the agenda was a discussion of the (late) July draft of the ICMP router discovery specification. The following improvements and changes were agreed upon: o Add a few sentences emphasizing that this is NOT a routing protocol -- hosts are expected to rely on Redirects for finding the ``best'' first-hop router for any given destination. o Make it even clearer than it already is that hosts must NOT continuously send solicitations. o Add a note explaining that, even though the timing values are defined or configured in units of seconds, randomized intervals should be computed at the best available resolution of the system's interval timer. o Fill in the missing ICMP Type values with officially-allocated numbers. o Change MAX_RESPONSE_DELAY from 5 seconds to 2 seconds. o Change the upper bound on MaxAdvertisementInterval from (2^16 - 1) to 1800 seconds (30 minutes). o Even when a router is configured to use multicast instead of broadcast, it may respond to a broadcast solicitation with a broadcast advertisement (if not a unicast advertisement). o When a router performs a graceful shutdown, it should send out advertisements with a lifetime of 0, to flush its addresses from the hosts' router lists. There was also discussion of adding an authentication field to the Router Advertisement message. Deering argued that such a field could be appended to the existing message format if and when a non-null authentication type is defined for router discovery (i.e., the absence of an authentication field indicates ``null'' authentication.) Noel Chiappa was not very happy with this proposal, but said he would check it out with the security gurus [which he subsequently did; apparently, Deering's proposed scheme will be acceptable]. 1 The group then agreed that, with the above modifications, the draft specification was ready to enter into the Internet standardization track. Chiappa explained the necessary steps, as follows: o Update the specification to incorporate the agreed changes and make it available as an Internet Draft as soon as possible. o After a one month comment period as an Internet Draft, if no significant problems are uncovered, submit it to the IESG with the group's recommendation that it be published as a Proposed Standard. o Operational experience with multiple, independently-developed implementations is generally required for advancement beyond Proposed Standard status. The decision to advance to the next stage (Draft Standard) is up to the IAB, with advice from the IESG. That led to the next topic on the agenda: implementations. Andy Cherenson and Deering confirmed their previous commitment to generate an implementation of the protocol to run in user space on 4.3BSD and derived systems, perhaps starting from the source code for cisco's GDP demon; the implementation will include both the host and the router parts of the protocol. John Veizades volunteered to do a Macintosh implementation of the host part of the protocol, and said he had an environment for testing the protocol's behavior under the simultaneous startup scenario (a rack of Macs on a single power circuit). Implementations for other platforms, and at the kernel level in BSD, were solicited, but no promises were made. The importance of getting the major router vendors to implement the router part of the protocol and make it available for user testing was recognized; group members were encouraged to make that desire known to their favorite router vendors. We then concluded that no further meetings of the Router Discovery Working Group would be necessary, if all goes according to plan. (Yah!!) We discussed the possibility of transforming into a ``Black Hole Detection'' Working Group, and decided not to do so. A document addressing the wider issue of host routing, of which black hole detection is a part, would be very valuable, but there was little enthusiasm for forming a new Working Group for that purpose; it might be taken up by the next incarnation of the Host Requirements Working Group, or perhaps some individual(s) will generate a document recommending (but not standardizing) good host routing strategies. ACTION ITEMS o Deering: Ask the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for two new ICMP Types. o Deering: Revise the specification as agreed at this meeting and submit it as an Internet Draft. If no substantive, negative comments are received during a one month comment period, recommend the specification to the IESG as a Proposed Standard. o Deering and Cherenson: Implement both the host and router parts of 2 the protocol as a user-level demon for 4.3BSD-derived systems, and make it available to the Working Group and the wider internet community for testing and validation of the protocol. o Veizades: Implement the host part of the protocol for Macintosh and test it in an environment with many hosts on the same subnet (especially under the simultaneous startup scenario). o Everyone: Encourage your favorite router vendor to do a prototype implementation of the protocol, for in-house and customer- site testing. Attendees Zorica Avramovic zorica@sparta.com Art Berggreen art@opal.acc.com Larry Brandt lbrandt@sparta.com Eric Brunner brunner@monet.berkeley.edu Andrew Cherenson arc@sgi.com Steve Deering deering@pescadero.stanford.edu Robert Elz kre@munnari.oz.au Karen Frisa karen@kinetics.com Robert Gilligan gilligan@sun.com Tony Hain alh@eagle.es.net Steven Hubert hubert@cac.washington.edu Ole Jacobsen ole@csli.stanford.edu Ken Jones uunet!konkord!ksj Michael Karels karels@berkeley.edu Stev Knowles stev@ftp.com Alex Koifman akoifman@bbn.com Sam Lam Gregory Lauer glauer@bbn.com John Lekashman lekash@orville.nas.nasa.gov Solomon Liou solomon%penril@uunet.uu.net Yoni Malachi malachi@polya.stanford.edu Tony Mason mason@transarc.com Paul McKenney mckenney@sri.com John Moy jmoy@proteon.com John Mullen Stephanie Price cmcvax!price@hub.ucsb.edu Tim Seaver tas@mcnc.org Deepinder Sidhu sidhu@umbc3.umbc.edu Craig Smelser Frank Solensky solensky@interlan.interlan.com Martha Steenstrup msteenst@bbn.com Zaw-Sing Su zsu@tsca.istc.sri.com Paul Tsuchiya tsuchiya@thumper.bellcore.com John Veizades veizades@apple.com Carol Ward cward@spot.colorado.edu Jonathan Wenocur jhw@shiva.com Walter Wimer ww0n+@andrew.cmu.edu 3