INTERNET-DRAFT                                           D. Eastlake 3rd
                                                   Motorola Laboratories
Expires: April 2006                                        November 2005


                              IP over MIME
                              -- ---- ----
                    <draft-eastlake-ip-mime-10.txt>




Status of This Document

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).



Abstract

   The MIME encoding of IP packets is specified so they can conveniently
   be sent via MAIL, HTTP, etc.  This may be convenient for transmitting
   packets for analysis, debugging, monitoring, or creating application
   level tunnels.



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Acknowledgement

   Helpful suggestions from Matt Crawford, Mike Ditto, Stanislav
   Shalunov, and Mark Allman have been incorporated herein.



Table of Contents

      Status of This Document....................................1
      Copyright Notice...........................................1
      Abstract...................................................1

      Acknowledgement............................................2
      Table of Contents..........................................2

      1. Introduction............................................3
      2. MIME Type Specification.................................3
      3. Security Considerations.................................5
      4. IANA Considerations.....................................5

      Copyright and Disclaimers..................................6

      Normative References.......................................7
      Informative References.....................................7
      Author's Address...........................................7
      Expiration and File Name...................................8

























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1. Introduction

   The Internet Protocol (IP [RFC 791]) has been profiled for
   transmission over a wide variety of media including Ethernet [RFC
   894], point to point circuits [RFC 1661], FDDI [RFC 1390], and even
   avian carriers [RFC 1149].  One of the most popular encoding and
   labeling (AKA, tagging and bagging) techniques defined for the TCP/IP
   protocol suite is the MIME encoding [RFC 2045, 2046] used, for
   example, in email, the web, and net news. This document specifies how
   to transmit IP over MIME.

   An unambiguous MIME encoding for IP datagrams is useful in their
   transmission for monitoring, analysis, debugging, or illustrative
   purposes.

   In addition, IP over MIME can be used as one component in creating
   application level tunnels.



2. MIME Type Specification

   MIME media type name: APPLICATION

   MIME subtype name: IP

   Required parameters: version

      version=n
         This parameter exposes the IP Version number [RFC 791] in the
         MIME Content-Type.

   Optional parameters: dilation, address

      dilation=nnn
         Typically IP packets will be MIME labeled for transmission over
         email or other application level protocols.  Such transmission
         is generally much slower than lower level network protocols.
         While this is not usually a concern if a packet is just being
         communicated for analysis, if such transmission is used to
         establish a tunnel, the sender of a datagram may wish to advise
         the recipient of the estimated rough time dilation factor.  For
         example, if datagrams typically take around a second and
         occasionally up to ten seconds end-to-end but it is more like a
         minute and occasionally up to ten minutes if they are MIME
         encoded in email, a "dilation=60" parameter would be
         reasonable.  (Since it is a ratio of times, the dilation
         parameter is dimensionless.)

         Note: Although IP and TCP are defined as protocols only loosely


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         dependent on time. The IPv4 TTL [RFC 792], although originally
         defined in terms of seconds, is usually implemented as a hop
         count which is how the corresponding IPv6 field is defined [RFC
         1752].  TCP requires a retransmission timer but has no
         specified "time out" after which an unresponsive connection
         must be torn down although all practical implementations have
         such a time out. In the event that IP in MIME encapsulation is
         being used for actual connectivity, it might be desireable to
         scale all such timing by the dilation value if it has been
         provided and is reasonable.

      address=xxx
         Full, if slow, IP connectivity via an application level
         protocol such as SMTP [RFC 2821, 2822] might require that
         routing, tunneling, and/or interface entries be installed at
         each end. Routing entries would be best created or updated by
         routing protocol messages and the establishment of tunnels is
         beyond the scope of this MIME type specification.  However, the
         "address=" parameter enables the sender to optionally indicate
         an IP address for return traffic to itself.  This may only be
         useful in cases where the sender knows an address that is
         available for itself in the recipient's addressing environment.
         It can be viewed as a replacement for ARP [RFC 826] on the
         possible path to the source of the APPLICATION/IP object via
         the same application level protocol.  (A receiver of an
         APPLICATION/IP object with an "address=" parameter might
         reasonably require that it be authenticated as meeting their
         policy as to from whom they would accept such information.  For
         example, they could ignore "address=" parameters unless the
         APPLICATION/IP object was wrapped in an acceptable
         MULTIPART/SIGNED [RFC 1847] authentication, although that
         implies some trust relationship between the parties.)

         Examples:

            address="192.0.2.123"

            address="2001:DB8::123"

   Encoding considerations: Because of the binary nature of the body,
         BASE64 transfer encoding should normally be used on transports
         that do not support binary.

   Security considerations: Care should be taken under any circumstance
         where APPLICATION/IP content could be treated as a "live"
         packet.  MULTIPART/ENCRYPTED and MULTIPART/SIGNED [RFC 1847]
         may be used to further secure and/or authenticate MIME packaged
         IP traffic.

   Interoperability considerations: See [draft-eastlake-ip-mime-*.txt].


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      MULTIPART/MIXED [RFC 2046] may be used to package multiple IP
         datagrams together.

   Published specification: See [draft-eastlake-ip-mime-*.txt].

   Applications which use this media type: Not yet in use.

   Additional information: (none)

   Person & email address to contact for further information:
      Donald E. Eastlake 3rd, Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com

   Intended usage: LIMITED USE

   Author/Change controller: IETF



3. Security Considerations

   See security considerations in Section 2 above.



4. IANA Considerations

   This document registers and specifies the APPLICATION/IP MIME type.

























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Copyright and Disclaimers

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  This document is subject
   to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
   except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.


   This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
   OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
   ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
   INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
   INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
   WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

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   pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
   this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
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   made any independent effort to identify any such rights.  Information
   on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
   found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
   assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
   attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
   such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
   specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
   http://www.ietf.org/ipr.

   The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
   copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
   rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
   this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-
   ipr@ietf.org.
















D. Eastlake 3rd                                                 [Page 6]


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Normative References

   RFC 791 - Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, September
   1981.

   RFC 1752 - Bradner, S. and A. Mankin, "The Recommendation for the IP
   Next Generation Protocol", RFC 1752, January 1995.

   RFC 1847 - Galvin, J., Murphy, S., Crocker, S., and N. Freed,
   "Security Multiparts for MIME: Multipart/Signed and
   Multipart/Encrypted", RFC 1847, October 1995.

   RFC 2045 - Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
   Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC
   2045, November 1996.

   RFC 2046 - Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
   Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046, November 1996.



Informative References

   RFC 894 - Hornig, C., "Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams
   over Ethernet networks", STD 41, RFC 894, April 1984.

   RFC 1149 - Waitzman, D., "Standard for the transmission of IP
   datagrams on avian carriers", RFC 1149, April 1990.

   RFC 1390 - Katz, D., "Transmission of IP and ARP over FDDI Networks",
   STD 36, RFC 1390, January 1993.

   RFC 1661 - Simpson, W., "The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)", STD 51,
   RFC 1661, July 1994.

   RFC 2821 - Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821,
   April 2001.

   RFC 2822 - Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April
   2001.



Author's Address

   Donald E. Eastlake, 3rd
   Motorola Laboratories
   155 Beaver Street
   Milford, MA 01757 USA



D. Eastlake 3rd                                                 [Page 7]


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   Telephone:   +1 508-786-7554 (w)
   email:       Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com



Expiration and File Name

   This draft expires May 2006.

   Its file name is draft-eastlake-ip-mime-10.txt.










































D. Eastlake 3rd                                                 [Page 8]