GIF(4) BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual GIF(4)NAMEgif — generic tunnel interface
SYNOPSIS
pseudo-device gifDESCRIPTION
The gif interface is a generic tunneling pseudo device for IPv4 and IPv6.
It can tunnel IPv[46] traffic over IPv[46]. Therefore, there can be four
possible configurations. The behavior of gif is mainly based on RFC2893
IPv6-over-IPv4 configured tunnel. On NetBSD, gif can also tunnel ISO
traffic over IPv[46] using EON encapsulation.
Each gif interface is created at runtime using interface cloning. This
is most easily done with the ifconfig(8) create command or using the
gifconfig_⟨interface⟩ variable in rc.conf(5).
To use gif, administrator needs to configure protocol and addresses used
for the outer header. This can be done by using gifconfig(8), or
SIOCSIFPHYADDR ioctl. Also, administrator needs to configure protocol
and addresses used for the inner header, by using ifconfig(8). Note that
IPv6 link-local address (those start with fe80::) will be automatically
configured whenever possible. You may need to remove IPv6 link-local
address manually using ifconfig(8), when you would like to disable the
use of IPv6 as inner header (like when you need pure IPv4-over-IPv6 tun‐
nel). Finally, use routing table to route the packets toward gif inter‐
face.
gif can be configured to be ECN friendly. This can be configured by
IFF_LINK1.
ECN friendly behavior
gif can be configured to be ECN friendly, as described in
draft-ietf-ipsec-ecn-02.txt. This is turned off by default, and can be
turned on by IFF_LINK1 interface flag.
Without IFF_LINK1, gif will show a normal behavior, like described in
RFC2893. This can be summarized as follows:
Ingress Set outer TOS bit to 0.
Egress Drop outer TOS bit.
With IFF_LINK1, gif will copy ECN bits (0x02 and 0x01 on IPv4 TOS byte or
IPv6 traffic class byte) on egress and ingress, as follows:
Ingress Copy TOS bits except for ECN CE (masked with 0xfe) from
inner to outer. Set ECN CE bit to 0.
Egress Use inner TOS bits with some change. If outer ECN CE bit
is 1, enable ECN CE bit on the inner.
Note that the ECN friendly behavior violates RFC2893. This should be
used in mutual agreement with the peer.
Security
Malicious party may try to circumvent security filters by using tunnelled
packets. For better protection, gif performs martian filter and ingress
filter against outer source address, on egress. Note that mar‐
tian/ingress filters are no way complete. You may want to secure your
node by using packet filters. Ingress filter can be turned off by
IFF_LINK2 bit.
Miscellaneous
By default, gif tunnels may not be nested. This behavior may be modified
at runtime by setting the sysctl(8) variable net.link.gif.max_nesting to
the desired level of nesting. Additionally, gif tunnels are restricted
to one per pair of end points. Parallel tunnels may be enabled by set‐
ting the sysctl(8) variable net.link.gif.parallel_tunnels to 1.
SEE ALSOinet(4), inet6(4), gifconfig(8)
R. Gilligan and E. Nordmark, "Transition Mechanisms for IPv6 Hosts and
Routers", RFC2893, August 2000, ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2893.txt.
Sally Floyd, David L. Black, and K. K. Ramakrishnan, IPsec Interactions
with ECN, December 1999, draft-ietf-ipsec-ecn-02.txt.
HISTORY
The gif device first appeared in WIDE hydrangea IPv6 kit.
BUGS
There are many tunneling protocol specifications, defined differently
from each other. gif may not interoperate with peers which are based on
different specifications, and are picky about outer header fields. For
example, you cannot usually use gif to talk with IPsec devices that use
IPsec tunnel mode.
The current code does not check if the ingress address (outer source
address) configured to gif makes sense. Make sure to configure an
address which belongs to your node. Otherwise, your node will not be
able to receive packets from the peer, and your node will generate pack‐
ets with a spoofed source address.
If the outer protocol is IPv4, gif does not try to perform path MTU dis‐
covery for the encapsulated packet (DF bit is set to 0).
If the outer protocol is IPv6, path MTU discovery for encapsulated packet
may affect communication over the interface. The first bigger-than-pmtu
packet may be lost. To avoid the problem, you may want to set the inter‐
face MTU for gif to 1240 or smaller, when outer header is IPv6 and inner
header is IPv4.
gif does not translate ICMP messages for outer header into inner header.
In the past, gif had a multi-destination behavior, configurable via
IFF_LINK0 flag. The behavior was obsoleted and is no longer supported.
It is thought that this is not actually a bug in gif, but rather lies
somewhere around a manipulation of an IPv6 routing table.
BSD April 10, 1999 BSD
