"Paul D. Robertson" wrote:
> 
> Right, but I was wondering if the [w2k] frag reassembly code is 
> now threaded where it wasn't before.

Nah. I just think someone clued them in on having more than 100
reassembly slots being a good idea. That, and zapping old 
reassemblies when the slots are full.

That, And perhaps NOT storing identical fragments in a linear 
lookup list.
(I'm not sure that that is what they did, but I can't think of many
other reasons to why jolt2 worked the way it did with ramping up 
CPU load logarithmically. The effects of a low-bandwidth jolt2 were
really interesting to watch.)


> Ah, but a firewall isn't just a L3/4 protection device, and clients 
> aren't just L3/4 devices.  The essence of "more secure" is "less 
> places exposed to high risk."

I agree that a "firewall" (as in the "collection of systems" sense of
the word) is not just a L3/L4 "device".
That would be why I started talking about proxies and relays
farther down ;)


> Yes, but the *important* point there is that with an ALG you can pick the
> BEST per-protocol gateway available.  With an SPF, you're stuck with
> whatever protocol support the vendor chose (e.g. I could put Raptor's SMTP
> gateway on a Guantlet, while you couldn't put Checkpoint's SMTP stuff on a
> PIX.)

Please note that I DO NOT consider grepping for strings in 
unreassembled TCP packets "an ALG" or even "protocol support" at 
all. TCP streams needs to be reassembled before you can use the 
data they transport.
Although, yes, some vendors extend the meaning of "stateful 
inspection" into poking around in raw TCP packets, and this
is where (IMHO) things start approaching extreme suckiness.
(And I guess you agree.)


Hmm. This is getting real silly real fast. We keep arriving at
firewalling environments that invalidate the topic completely.

Maybe the topic should have been "proxy+stateful" so we can all just 
sit around agreeing with eachother and beeing all nicey-nicey :P

I'll just stop the pain by not even trying to count points. Your 
beer will be in the mail as soon as you tell me where to send it :)


-- 
Mikael Olsson, Clavister AB
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Phone: +46 (0)660 29 92 00   Mobile: +46 (0)70 26 222 05
Fax: +46 (0)660 122 50       WWW: http://www.clavister.com

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