Hi, Gorry,

Again, thanks for the detailed comments. We welcome them!

Responses below...

> On Apr 16, 2019, at 4:28 AM, Gorry Fairhurst <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
> I have read draft-ietf-intarea-tunnels-09, because it is cited from another 
> document that I am reviewing. I have a number of technical questions that I’d 
> like to pass to the WG/editors for consideration.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Gorry
> 
> (I also earlier posted some editorial comments.)
> 
> 
> *** Technical questions:
> 
> In section 4.1.1:
> “Similarly, the DF field of the
> transit packet is not related to that field in the tunnel link packet
> header (presuming both are IPv4) “
> - Why is this not true when IPv4 and IPv6 are used in combination to tunnel 
> one over the other?

Because IPv6 has no DF field. DF on DF matters only when both headers have DF 
;-)

IPv6 is always DF, so there are cases to explain, though.

I can make that more clear.

> ---
> In section4.2.1:
> “The high cost of
> fragmentation and reassembly is why it is useful for applications to
> avoid sending messages too close to the size of the tunnel path MTU
> [Ke95], although there is no signaling mechanism that can achieve
> this (see Section 4.2.3).”
> - This sentence seems like teh cost is just segmentation/reassembly costs. 
> It's more complex we you wish to defend from attack and need to keep state in 
> devices. So the original paper cited is just one part of the whole problem 
> space. This ID seems to help clarify some of these issues: 
> [I-D.ietf-intarea-frag-fragile-09].

As an aside, IMO, that document is a thinly veiled attempt to deprecate 
fragmentation that I continue to have concerns over.

That said, this sentence describes the problem of trying to tune closely to the 
tunnel path MTU; the attack and state issues in frag-fragile aren’t affected by 
whether a 2000B packet is split into 1280 and 720 or 1000 and 1000. It 
basically implies (though it could be more clear) that 1280 and 720 is a bad 
choice because the 1280 could later end up being fragmented into 1200, 80, and 
720 (as a set) vs 1000 and 1000 if then going over a tunnel that needs to 
fragment to support 1280.

This can happen when you do PMTUD one hop at a time or even if you do the 
entire path with PMTUD if path properties change even a little (see below).

> - If you probed with context, as in (D)PLPMTUD you could achieve this signal?

You could but see above - the issue is trying to over-tune, not whether you can 
tune or not.

> Some further context on how to build more robust solutions is in 
> [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-datagram-plpmtud].Using that approach I don’t see why that is 
> the case - maybe my question is because section 4.2.3 is exclusively about 
> PMTUD, and not PLPMTUD?

It wasn’t intended that way - it doesn’t matter how you find out, if you tune 
too close you end up running risks due to path changes, tunnel overhead 
changes, etc. too - even if you do it for the full path (PLPMTUD) vs each hop 
one at a time (PMTUD).

> ---
> In section 4.2.2:
> “Although many of these issues with tunnel fragmentation and MTU
> handling were discussed in [RFC4459]”
> - What is the relationship to the ID on Fragmentation Fragile 
> [I-D.ietf-intarea-frag-fragile-09]?

Well, to start with I’m not trying to deprecate fragmentation — in fact, this 
document is a good reason why that can’t happen...

> - The present document in 5.3.1. states: “Always include frag support for at 
> least two frags; do NOT try to deprecate fragmentation.“, which seems to be 
> slightly incompatible with the other WG document?

Yes, IMO it is if you interpret frag-fragile as deprecating fragmentation (as I 
do, though the authors continue to claim isn’t really true - they’re just 
trying to get fragmentation to not be used, rather than to outlaw it).

> ---
> In section 4.3.2:
> - I think the following is open to misinterpretation and that concerns me, 
> itdoes not seem strong enough::
> “ Tunnels carrying IP traffic (i.e., the focus of this document) need
> not react directly to congestion any more than would any other link
> layer [RFC8085].”
> - This refers to the UDP-Guidelines as BCP, which is OK, but if that is a 
> reference then please more precisely quote the text in that RFC that says:
> “Two factors determine whether a UDP tunnel needs to employ specific
> congestion control mechanisms: first, whether the payload traffic is
> IP-based; and second, whether the tunneling scheme generates UDP
> traffic at a volume that corresponds to the volume of payload traffic
> carried within the tunnel.”
> - Is it posisble to also add a cition the detailed guidance in section 3.1.11 
> of RFC8085?

Yes.

> - It would be good to say [RFC2914] describes the best current practice for 
> congestion control. Would that be OK?

Sure.

> - Please also consider citing [RFC8084] as a way to provide network tunnels 
> and applications when using non-congestion-controlled traffic, to illustrate 
> what can be done to realise some form of protection.

Absolutely - again, many of these docs didn’t exist when I started, so it’s 
very helpful to catch up this way…

> ---
> In section 4.3.3:
> - The section in Multipoint Tunnels and Multicast has no statement about 
> unicast tunnels carrying multicast. I think this is a common deployment 
> scenario. Is it possible to add something explicit, like:
> “Tunnels that carry IP multicast traffic with a unicast destination address, 
> such as Automatic Multicast Tunneling [RFC7450] need to follow the same 
> requirements as a tunnel carrying unicast data”
> - Do you think this is a fair recommendation? or have some other idea?

I’d have to think about this a little more, but yes, a recommendation in this 
area would be useful.

> ---
> In section 8:
> There are some references that I think need to be checked and referenced more:
> [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-encap-guidelines]
> [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-rfc6040update-shim]
> [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-datagram-plpmtud]
> [I-D.ietf-intarea-frag-fragile-09]?

Thanks again - these are helpful.

> ---
> In section 8.1:
> - I think there needs to be more normative references, especially on the 
> documents where this recommends a change, or RFC2119 usage.

Agreed - I also think it’s likely this doc will end up UPDATING a lot of these 
docs where there are such explicit errors.

That may create a WG problem though - I don’t know if a BCP can update a 
STANDARD, but that’s for the WG and IESG to figure out, IMO…

---

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