On 06/11/2013 11:01 AM, Ole Troan wrote:
>
> a router does ECMP on the 5-tuple. the extension header chain doesn't
> help with that. a middlebox makes some policy decision on arbitrary
> bits in the packet (including L7). I'm not sure I see what help the
> middlebox gets from the extension header chain here?
> 
> in my view there is no difference between the following cases: 
> - 2nd fragment
> - extension header chain longer than first packet
> - unknown extension header
> - unknown L4 - ESP

These cases are different (at least from a fw point of view).

- 2nd fragment is okay, beacuse you'd apply the fltering policy t the
first fragment.

- extension header chain longer than first apcket is harmful

- Unknown ext header is enough to block as "unwanted traffic"

- unknown layer 4 is enough to block

- ESP may or may not be okay depending on your policy


> a firewall/filtering router with the policy of only allowing packets
> with known L4, will drop the packet in all the above cases. 

Not really. For instance, stateless filters allow non-first fragments.



> what should we as the IETF do?
> 
> we could accommodate our protocols to become more firewall friendly, 

Yes -- or be prepared that more traffic is blocked.



> e.g. deprecate IP layer fragmentation, deprecate extension headers
> (or limit their length).

Me, I would deprecate fragmentation, nor would I deprecate extension
headers. I would, however, limit the size of the extension header chain
(to some value... whether 256 bytes, 1280 bytes, or whatever).


> but, do we then also push the Internet
> further away from an open end to end capable Internet, stifle
> innovation in transport etc?

This cat is out of the bug (and has been out of the bag for.. what? 20
years?). Firewalls block unknown traffic.

And from a netadmin pov, you usually want your network to do what's
required to do, and not more than that -- that's what "default deny" is
about.

You don't really want an attacker to hack your network using something
for which there wasn't a legitimate use case (legitimate == such traffic
was needed by the task to be performed, and this was known as such to
the admin).


-- 
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
e-mail: [email protected]
PGP Fingerprint: 6666 31C6 D484 63B2 8FB1 E3C4 AE25 0D55 1D4E 7492




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