Segment Routing in the Linux kernel
Segment Routing is a new packet forwarding technique which is being developed by the SPRING working group of the IETF. Until now, two packet forwarding techniques were supported by the IETF protocols :
- datagram mode with IPv4 and IPv6
- label swapping with MPLS
Segment Routing is a modern realisation of source routing that was supported by IPv4 in RFC 791 and initially in IPv6 RFC 2460. Source routing enables a source to indicate inside each packet that it sends a list of intermediate nodes to reach the final destination. Although rather old, this technique is not widely used today because it causes several security problems. For IPv6, various attacks against source routing were demonstrated in 2007. In the end, the IETF chose to deprecate source routing in IPv6 RFC 5095.
However, source routing has several very useful applications inside a controlled network such as an entreprise or a single ISP network. For this reason, the IETF has revived source routing and considers two data planes :
- IPv6
- MPLS