Benefits of Middleboxes to the Internet
draft-dolson-plus-middlebox-benefits-00

• Status
• IESG evaluation record
• IESG writeups
• Email expansions
• History

• Versions
• 00
• 01
• 02
• 03

Internet Engineering Task Force                                D. Dolson
Internet-Draft                                               J. Snellman
Intended status: Informational                                  Sandvine
Expires: July 27, 2017                                  January 23, 2017

                Benefits of Middleboxes to the Internet
                draft-dolson-plus-middlebox-benefits-00

Abstract

   At IETF97, at a meeting regarding the Path Layer UDP Substrate (PLUS)
   protocol, a request was made for documentation about the benefits
   that might be provided by permitting middleboxes to have some
   visibility to transport-layer information.

   This document summarizes benefits provided to the Internet by
   middleboxes -- intermediary devices that provide functions apart from
   normal IP routing between a source and destination host [RFC3234].

   RFC3234 defines a taxonomy of middleboxes and issues in the internet
   circa 2002.  Most of those middleboxes utilized or modified
   application-layer data.  This document will focus primarily on
   devices that observe and act on information found in the transport
   layer, most commonly TCP at this time.

   A primary goal of this document is to provide information to working
   groups developing new transport protocols, in particular the PLUS and
   QUIC working groups, to aid understanding of what might be gained or
   lost by design decisions.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on July 27, 2017.

Dolson & Snellman         Expires July 27, 2017                 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft             Middlebox Benefits               January 2017

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Measurements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Packet Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.2.  Round Trip Times  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.3.  Measuring Packet Reordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.4.  Throughput and Bottleneck Identification  . . . . . . . .   5
     2.5.  DDoS Detection  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.6.  Packet Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     2.7.  Application-Layer Measurements  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   3.  Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.1.  NAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.2.  Firewall  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.3.  DDoS Scrubbing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.4.  Performance-Enhancing Proxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     3.5.  Bandwidth Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     3.6.  Prioritization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     3.7.  Measurement-Based Shaping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     5.1.  Confidentiality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     5.2.  Active Attacks  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.3.  More Information Can Improve Security . . . . . . . . . .  10
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12