Hi Bala’zs,

see inline for some follow-up.


Regards,

Mustapha.


From: Balázs Varga A <[email protected]>
Date: Friday, April 10, 2026 at 7:30 AM
To: Mustapha Aissaoui (Nokia) <[email protected]>, SPRING WG List 
<[email protected]>, IPv6 List <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: New Version Notification for draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn-01.txt


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Hi Mustapha,

Many thanks for the very good and relevant comments.

1, Regarding RFC2473:
Yes, the described general ICMP relay function is similar to the
VPN-associated-ICMP-process-function of the draft. The major
difference is the capability to process probes sent in VRF context.
SRv6 VPN is basically a form of IPv6 tunneling and some of its
aspects (like Binding-SID) are form of nested tunneling.

Do You propose to describe the ICMP-process-function in the
draft as an extension of the RFC2473 ICMP relay function?

MA> I would say we ought to address the following three topics:

  1.  Mention that processing by the ingress SRv6 PE of the ICMP reply message 
to a sent UDP/TCP traceroute probe is inline with the relay function specified 
in RFC 2473.

  2.
Clarify the scope of the relay function for traceroute probes.
     *
For traceroute probes originating at the ingress SRv6 PE, ingress SRv6 PE can 
process replies for traceroute probes to destination prefixes in both global 
routing table and a VRF.
     *
For traceroute probes originating at a CE, it seems to me ingress SRv6 PE can 
only process replies for traceroute probes to destination prefixes in the 
global routing table. I am not sure you can configure a specific VRF service 
SID as the source address for the entire SRv6 tunnel. See my comment on the 
next point below.

  3.
For probes which originate on the ingress SRv6 PE, we want to avoid receiving 
two replies to the same traceroute packet. One possible way for addressing this 
would be to recommend in draft-ali-6man-srv6-vpn-icmp-error-handling that a 
transit SRv6 router should only send a single ICMP reply message to a given 
expired traceroute packet, either to:
     *
the source address in the outer IPv6 header which may trigger the relay 
function at the ingress SRv6 PE, or
     *
to the original source address in the inner traceroute payload using the ICMP 
tunneling method.

2, Regarding SRv6 service SID as the source address:
Yes, agree with your view, that for probes sent from ingress SRv6 PE
using a service SID as source address is not the only solution. As
the ingress SRv6 PE node is the originator of the packet more
information/state exists on the node.
Also, thanks for pointing out that downstream routers may report various
ICMP error messages on the SRv6 tunnel, which may not be relevant
for VRF endpoints. In my view, local termination or selective forwarding
of ICMP error messages towards VRF endpoints is a decision of the
VPN-associated-ICMP-process-function.

Do You propose here to work on the details of such a selective filtering,
similar to the description in RFC2473?

MA> Yes, we need to add some details of the ICMP error message processing by 
the ingress SRv6 PE. I know some implementations use an incrementing source or 
dest UDP/TCP port number for the probes when incrementing the TTL/Hop-Limit of 
the traceroute packets. So for probes originated at the ingress SRv6 PE there 
is definitely an alternative to identify by the ingress SRv6 PE a specific 
traceroute session, be it in the global routing table or in a VRF, without 
setting the source address of the outer IPv6 header to a VRF service SID.

For probes originated on a CE, it may be a tough sell to mandate that the 
source address of the SRv6 tunnel used by each VRF needs to be set to the VRF 
service SID. I understand your point that the ingress SRv6 PE can implement a 
selective forwarding of the SRv6 probes to a VRF but the truth is that the SRv6 
tunnel leaves in the global routing table and it must be able to process any 
ICMP message, not just ICMP replies to a traceroute, from the SRv6 network 
without having any VRF service associated with it.

Again, many thanks for your thoughtful comments.

Cheers
Bala’zs


From: Mustapha Aissaoui (Nokia) 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2026 10:31 PM
To: Balázs Varga A 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; SPRING WG 
List <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; IPv6 List 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: New Version Notification for draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn-01.txt

Hi Balazs,
I have a couple of comments on this draft.

The first one is to reference RFC 
2473<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2473*section-8__;Iw!!NEt6yMaO-gk!CQq_FdKjC1gmIXsGJG4jQ7N1Vqiian8wAqFRv79hihx0kcrkd9DMQMiDKTMEWmjTVjCAp5ToOHpDhefmyEnrsOAOGLTzd08$>
 as it is well described that an ICMP reply must be sent on the outer IPv6 
header in the case of an IP-in-IP tunnel. For me this is the closest prior art 
we can refer to when discussing potential new solutions, other than ICMP 
tunneling.

This RFC also describes a general ICMP relay function covering various ICMP 
error messages. In the specific context of a TCP/UDP traceroute probe, this 
relay function will only work for traceroute packets of routes in the global 
routing table as discussed in an earlier thread on 
draft-ali-6man-srv6-vpn-icmp-error-handling. It does however not address probes 
sent in VRF context.

The second is regarding the use of a SRv6 service SID as the source address on 
the outer IPv6 header. The source address in the outer IPv6 header is used by 
downstream routers to report various ICMP error messages on the SRv6 tunnel, 
some of which are ad-hoc and triggered by malformed outer headers in user 
packets. Hence it cannot be sent to a specific VRF context of the ingress SRv6 
PE.

I can see a service SID being used as the source address of the traceroute for 
probes originating at the ingress SRv6 PE since the user can configure this 
specifically for these probes. But not for probes generated by the CE since 
they are treated as user packets at the ingress SRv6 PE and they would inherit 
the source address of the SRv6 tunnel. For probes originating at the ingress 
SRv6 PE, one can correlate the error message with a specific VPN or global 
routing table traceroute probe based on TCP or UDP port number. So there are 
alternatives too.

Regards,
Mustapha.

From: Balázs Varga A 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Monday, March 16, 2026 at 9:51 AM
To: SPRING WG List <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, IPv6 List 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: [spring] FW: New Version Notification for 
draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn-01.txt

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Hi,

Based on the valuable feedbacks on the lists the draft on
"ICMP Error Handling for VPNs in SRv6 Networks" was
updated.

Thanks & Cheers
Bala'zs (and Joel)

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2026 2:36 PM
To: Balázs Varga A 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; Joel Halpern 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: New Version Notification for draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn-01.txt

A new version of Internet-Draft draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn-01.txt has been 
successfully submitted by Balazs Varga and posted to the IETF repository.

Name:     draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn
Revision: 01
Title:    ICMP Error Handling for VPNs in SRv6 Networks
Date:     2026-03-16
Group:    Individual Submission
Pages:    12
URL:      https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn-01.txt
Status:   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn/
HTMLized: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn
Diff:     
https://author-tools.ietf.org/iddiff?url2=draft-varhal-6man-icmp-srv6-vpn-01

Abstract:

   This document specifies ICMP error handling in SRv6-based Virtual
   Private Networks, that support direct localization of failures.  It
   provides a solution for connectivity check and fault localization
   without adding complexity to P nodes and keeps P nodes service
   agnostic.  ICMP processing is changed only on ingress PE nodes and
   gains from adding VPN-specific information to the SRv6 encapsulated
   packet.  Egress PE nodes are not involved in the forwarding of the
   ICMP error messages.  Therefore, the solution provides visibility
   upto the failure even if ingress PE to egress PE connectivity is
   broken within the SR domain.



The IETF Secretariat


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