RFC 3567 (rfc3567) - Page 1 of 6

Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) Cryptographic Authentication

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Network Working Group                                              T. Li
Request for Comments: 3567                              Procket Networks
Category: Informational                                      R. Atkinson
                                                        Extreme Networks
                                                               July 2003


          Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS)
                      Cryptographic Authentication

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document describes the authentication of Intermediate System to
   Intermediate System (IS-IS) Protocol Data Units (PDUs) using the
   Hashed Message Authentication Codes - Message Digest 5 (HMAC-MD5)
   algorithm as found in RFC 2104.  IS-IS is specified in International
   Standards Organization (ISO) 10589, with extensions to support
   Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) described in RFC 1195.  The base
   specification includes an authentication mechanism that allows for
   multiple authentication algorithms.  The base specification only
   specifies the algorithm for cleartext passwords.

   This document proposes an extension to that specification that allows
   the use of the HMAC-MD5 authentication algorithm to be used in
   conjunction with the existing authentication mechanisms.

1. Introduction

   The IS-IS protocol, as specified in ISO 10589 [1], provides for the
   authentication of Link State PDUs (LSPs) through the inclusion of
   authentication information as part of the LSP.  This authentication
   information is encoded as a Type-Length-Value (TLV) tuple.  The use
   of IS-IS for IPv4 networks is described in [3].

   The type of the TLV is specified as 10.  The length of the TLV is
   variable.  The value of the TLV depends on the authentication
   algorithm and related secrets being used.  The first octet of the
   value is used to specify the authentication type.  Type 0 is



Li & Atkinson                Informational
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