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doc: improve the SIG doc with the text from the ietf drafts #4641

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75 changes: 35 additions & 40 deletions doc/sig.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2,37 +2,40 @@
SCION-IP Gateway
****************

The SCION-IP Gateway (SIG) tunnels IP packets over the SCION Internet.
Introduction
============

An ingress SIG encapsulates IP packets in a SCION packet and sends it to an egress SIG determined
by the configured routing rules, where the packet is decapsulated and forwarded toward its
destination IP address.
From the perspective of IP, a SIG looks like a router.
From the perspective of SCION, a SIG is a regular application.
The SCION IP Gateway (SIG) enables IP packets to be tunneled over SCION to support communication between hosts that do not run a SCION implementation. A SIG acts as a router from the perspective of IP, whilst acting as SCION endpoint from the perspective of the SCION network. It is typically deployed inside the same AS-internal network as its non-SCION hosts, or at the edge of an enterprise network.

.. admonition:: TODO
Tunneling IP traffic over SCION requires a pair of SIGs and it involves the following steps:

SIG Overview and introduction
1. A sender sends an IP packet towards an IP destination.

2. The IP packet reaches a SIG in the sender’s network via standard IP routing.

3. Based on the destination IP address, the source (ingress) SIG determines the destination (egress) SIG's ISD-AS endpoint address. To achieve this, SIGs are administratively configured with a set of partner ASes and discover SIGs present at these ASes. They then exchange IP prefixes. The description of that protocol is yet to be written.

4. The ingress SIG encapsulates the original IP packet within one or more SCION packets and sends them to the egress SIG. If necessary, the ingress SIG performs SCION path lookups and selects a SCION path to the egress SIG.

5. The egress SIG receives the SCION packet or packets and decapsulates the original IP packet. It then forwards the packet to the final IP destination using standard IP routing.

SIG Framing Protocol
====================

SIG Framing Protocol describes frames sent between two SIG instances.
The IP packets transported via SIG are encapsulated in SIG frames.
There can be multiple IP packets in a single SIG frame.
A single IP packet can also be split into multiple SIG frames.
IP packets are encapsulated into SIG frames, which are sent as SCION/UDP datagrams.

There may be multiple IP packets in a single SIG frame, and a single IP packet may be split into multiple SIG frames.

The ingress SIG initiates unidirectional packet flows to the egress SIG simply by sending the corresponding SIG frames. There is no handshake. The egress SIG, should it accept the traffic, instanciates the necessary resources on-demand to process each flow. Each such flow forms an independent sequence of packets (a stream) ordered by an incrementing sequence number. Between a given SIG ingress/egress pair, a (session ID, stream ID) pair uniquely identifies a stream.

SIG traffic can be sent over multiple SIG sessions. SIG uses different
sessions to transport different classes of traffic (e.g. priority vs. normal.)
To preserve performance, IP packets that form a sequence leave the egress SIG in the order in which they entered the ingress SIG. To that end:

Within each session there may be multiple streams. Streams are useful to
distinguish between traffic sent by different SIG instances. For example,
if SIG is restarted, it will create a new stream ID for each session. That way,
the peer SIG will know that the new frame with a new stream ID does not
carry trailing part of the unfinished IP packet from a different stream.
- The ingress SIG encapsulates IP packets that cannot be proven independent (e.g., with the same IP 6-tuple) in the same stream.
- The ingress SIG encapsulates IP packets to a given stream in the order in which they were received.
- The ingress SIG sends all frames of a given stream over the same SCION path.
- The egress SIG reassembles and forward packets from each stream, ordered by frame sequence number and packet within each frame.

Each SIG frame has a sequence number. The remote SIG uses the sequence
number to reassemble the contained IP packets.
The session ID part of the (session ID, stream ID) pair is used to differentiate traffic classes. The egress SIG does not interpret session IDs, but dedicates, as much as possible, processing resources to each session (and not to each individual stream). The ingress SIG takes advantage of this by using different sessions for different traffic classes, thereby allowing them to receive a fair share of the egress processing resources. As a result lesser used sessions (presumably with higher priority traffic) receive relatively more processing resources.

The Stack
---------
Expand All @@ -57,9 +60,9 @@ Each SIG frame starts with SIG frame header with the following format::
0 1 2 3
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
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Version | Session | Index |
| Version | Session ID | Index |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Reserved (12 bits) | Stream (20 bits) |
| Reserved (12 bits) | Stream ID (20 bits) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ Sequence number +
Expand All @@ -68,31 +71,23 @@ Each SIG frame starts with SIG frame header with the following format::

All fields within SIG frame header are in network byte order.

- The ``Version`` field indicates the SIG framing version. It must be set to zero.
- `Version` (8 bits) indicates the SIG framing version. It MUST be set to zero if following this specification.
- `Session ID` (8 bits) identifies a tunneling session between a pair of SIGs.
- `Index` (16 bits) is the byte offset of the first beginning of an IP packet within the payload. If no IP packet starts in the payload, e.g. if the frame contains only the middle or trailing part of an IP packet, the field MUST be set to 0xFFFF.
- `Reserved` (12 bits): it MUST be set to zero.
- `Stream ID` (20 bits), along with the session, it identifies a unique sequence of SIG frames. Frames from the same stream are, on the egress SIG, put into the same reassembly queue. There may be multiple streams per session.
- `Sequence Number` (64 bits) indicates the position of the frame within a stream. Consecutive frames of a given stream have consecutive sequence numbers. IP packets split among multiple frames are re-assembled by concatenating the payloads of consecutive frames.

- The ``Session`` field indicates the SIG session to be used.

- The ``Index`` field is the byte offset of the first beginning of an IP packet
within the payload. If no IP packet starts in the payload, for example, if
the frame contains only a trailing part of an IP packet, the field must be set
to 0xFFFF.

- The ``Reserved`` field is reserved and must be set to zero.

- The ``Stream`` field, along with the session identifies a unique sequence of
SIG frames.

- The ``Sequence number`` field indicates a position of the frame within a
stream. Consecutive frames can be used to reassemble IP packets split among
multiple frames.
A SIG MAY drop frames. In the current implementation, the egress SIG does not buffer frames that are received out-ot-order. Instead it drops any out-of-order and following frames until it finds the begining of a new encapsulated IP packet.

SIG frame payload
-----------------

SIG frame payload may contain multiple IPv4 or IPv6 packets, or parts
thereof. No other types of packets can be encapsulated. The packets are
placed one directly after another, with no padding.

Multicast traffic is not supported yet.

SIG uses IPv4/6 "payload length" field to determine the size of the packet.
To make the processing easier, it is required that the fixed part of the IP header
is in the frame where the IP packet begins. In other words, the initial fragment
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