RFC - 3682

The Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (GTSM)

Original:	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc3682.txt
Authors:	V. Gill [], J. Heasley [], D. Meyer []
Date:	February 2004
Category:	Experimental Standard

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Referred by:	5 RFC
Refers to:	16 RFC

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Status

This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

The use of a packet's Time to Live (TTL) (IPv4) or Hop Limit (IPv6) to protect a protocol stack from CPU-utilization based attacks has been proposed in many settings (see for example, RFC 2461^draft). This document generalizes these techniques for use by other protocols such as BGP (RFC 1771(-> 4271^draft)), Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP), Bidirectional Forwarding Detection, and Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) (RFC 3036^prop). While the Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (GTSM) is most effective in protecting directly connected protocol peers, it can also provide a lower level of protection to multi-hop sessions. GTSM is not directly applicable to protocols employing flooding mechanisms (e.g., multicast), and use of multi-hop GTSM should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

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