On 6/17/2016 10:32 AM, Templin, Fred L wrote:
> Hi Vincent,
>
> Although Joe and I may not agree on all points (yet), I am pretty sure that
> one point we do agree on is that tunnels will ultimately need to account for
> fragmentation of one form or another. Without fragmentation, nested
> tunnels within tunnels can only recurse so far until an MTU underrun
> is encountered. And, without fragmentation, tunnels cannot support a
> minimum MTU if they traverse links with sufficiently small MTUs even
> if there is no nesting.
Yup.

> It is true that one possibility is for the tunnel to simply shut down if it
> encounters an MTU underrun meaning that one or more destinations
> will simply become unreachable.  But, that sort of arrangement may not
> be acceptable for safety-critical communications where destinations
> should be made reachable through any means available.
Yes - this is the only end-run that seems to work within the constraints
of existing specs. It does have a downside, though - it basically works
like "the tree in the forest". Until it actually falls, there's no point
in preventing its use. However, once it falls, it cannot get "back up"
again - if it did, it would act like a link that requires a different MTU.

So it's "optimistic" with a fairly bad failure mode. IMO, its' the only
safe way to deploy non-reassembling tunnels, even in a "controlled"
environment -- because "controlled" is only true as long as it can be
known, and the "shut-down" approach serves a a monitor to enforce that
control.

Joe

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