Telechat Review of draft-ietf-rtgwg-bgp-routing-large-dc-11
review-ietf-rtgwg-bgp-routing-large-dc-11-secdir-telechat-nir-2016-06-17-00

Hi

The new version addresses my concern from the message below. The document is
now ready IMO.

Thanks

Yoav

> On 5 May 2016, at 10:24 AM, Yoav Nir <ynir.ietf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's  ongoing
effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the > IESG.  These
comments were written primarily for the benefit of the security area directors.
 Document editors and WG chairs should treat  these comments just like any
other last call comments. > > Summary: Almost Ready > > This document is an
Informational discussion of packet routing within data centers. It describes
existing practice with using layer-2 protocols such as STP or TRILL, hybrid
setups, and layer-3 routing protocols, mostly IGPs. It finally recommends
replacing these with EBGP and a Clos structure. The document is very clear and
quite an interesting read. > > The document does not deal with security
questions such as what kind of damage a rogue node can do, and that is fine.
That is not the subject of this document. > > My one issue is with the Security
Considerations section. Section 9 defers to the BGP RFCs (4271 and 4272) for
the security considerations. This is a common pattern and it's usually fine,
but in this case it is missing something. RFC 4271 requires the use of TCP-MD5
(RFC 2385) for authenticating the BGP connections between routers. RFC 4271
also mentions (but does not solve) the problem of key management. ISTM that in
a large-scale and dynamically scalable data center, the problem of key
management should be addressed. It might also be nice to use something less
antiquated than TCP-MD5. > > Now it's possible to decide that all elements
within the data center are trusted and under the administrator's control, and
that therefore no authentication is necessary as long as BGP is somehow blocked
from outside the DC to internal nodes. But if these assumptions exist, I
believe they should be stated. > > Yoav