Considerations around Transport Header Confidentiality, Network Operations, and the Evolution of Internet Transport Protocols
draft-ietf-tsvwg-transport-encrypt-18
TSVWG G. Fairhurst
Internet-Draft University of Aberdeen
Intended status: Informational C. Perkins
Expires: May 6, 2021 University of Glasgow
November 2, 2020
Considerations around Transport Header Confidentiality, Network
Operations, and the Evolution of Internet Transport Protocols
draft-ietf-tsvwg-transport-encrypt-18
Abstract
To protect user data and privacy, Internet transport protocols have
supported payload encryption and authentication for some time. Such
encryption and authentication is now also starting to be applied to
the transport protocol headers. This helps avoid transport protocol
ossification by middleboxes, mitigate attacks against the transport
protocol, and protect metadata about the communication. Current
operational practice in some networks inspect transport header
information within the network, but this is no longer possible when
those transport headers are encrypted.
This document discusses the possible impact when network traffic uses
a protocol with an encrypted transport header. It suggests issues to
consider when designing new transport protocols or features.
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
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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 May 6, 2021.
Fairhurst & Perkins Expires May 6, 2021 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Transport Header Encryption November 2020
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Current uses of Transport Headers within the Network . . . . 4
2.1. To Identify Transport Protocols and Flows . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. To Understand Transport Protocol Performance . . . . . . 6
2.3. To Support Network Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4. To Support Network Diagnostics and Troubleshooting . . . 16
2.5. To Support Header Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6. To Verify SLA Compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3. Other Uses of Observable Transport Headers . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1. Characterising "Unknown" Network Traffic . . . . . . . . 19
3.2. Accountability and Internet Transport Protocols . . . . . 19
3.3. Impact on Tooling and Network Operations . . . . . . . . 20
3.4. Independent Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.5. Impact on Research, Development and Deployment . . . . . 22
4. Encryption and Authentication of Transport Headers . . . . . 23
4.1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.2. Approaches to Transport Header Protection . . . . . . . . 26
5. Intentionally Exposing Transport Information to the Network . 28
5.1. Exposing Transport Information in Extension Headers . . . 28
5.2. Common Exposed Transport Information . . . . . . . . . . 29
5.3. Considerations for Exposing Transport Information . . . . 29
6. Addition of Transport OAM Information to Network-Layer
Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.1. Use of OAM within a Maintenance Domain . . . . . . . . . 30
6.2. Use of OAM across Multiple Maintenance Domains . . . . . 30
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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