An Inventory of Transport-Centric Functions Provided by Middleboxes: An Operator Perspective
RFC 8517
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(February 2019; No errata)
Was draft-dolson-transport-middlebox (individual)
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Authors | David Dolson , Juho Snellman , Mohamed Boucadair , Christian Jacquenet | ||
Last updated | 2019-02-05 | ||
Replaces | draft-dolson-plus-middlebox-benefits | ||
Stream | ISE | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
IETF conflict review | conflict-review-dolson-transport-middlebox | ||
Stream | ISE state | Published RFC | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Document shepherd | Adrian Farrel | ||
Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2018-11-14) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 8517 (Informational) | |
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | (None) | ||
Send notices to | Adrian Farrel <rfc-ise@rfc-editor.org> | ||
IANA | IANA review state | Version Changed - Review Needed | |
IANA action state | No IANA Actions |
Independent Submission D. Dolson, Ed. Request for Comments: 8517 Category: Informational J. Snellman ISSN: 2070-1721 M. Boucadair, Ed. C. Jacquenet Orange February 2019 An Inventory of Transport-Centric Functions Provided by Middleboxes: An Operator Perspective Abstract This document summarizes an operator's perception of the benefits that may be provided by intermediary devices that execute functions beyond normal IP forwarding. Such intermediary devices are often called "middleboxes". RFC 3234 defines a taxonomy of middleboxes and issues in the Internet. Most of those middleboxes utilize or modify application- layer data. This document primarily focuses on devices that observe and act on information carried in the transport layer, and especially information carried in TCP packets. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at its discretion and makes no statement about its value for implementation or deployment. Documents approved for publication by the RFC Editor are not candidates for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8517. Dolson, et al. Informational [Page 1] RFC 8517 Transport-Centric Middlebox Functions February 2019 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2019 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 (https://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. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Operator Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.1. Packet Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2. Round-Trip Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.3. Measuring Packet Reordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.4. Throughput and Bottleneck Identification . . . . . . . . 7 2.5. Congestion Responsiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.6. Attack Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.7. Packet Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.8. Application-Layer Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3. Functions beyond Measurement: A Few Examples . . . . . . . . 9 3.1. NAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.2. Firewall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.3. DDoS Scrubbing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.4. Implicit Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 3.5. Performance-Enhancing Proxies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 3.6. Network Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 3.7. Network-Assisted Bandwidth Aggregation . . . . . . . . . 13 3.8. Prioritization and Differentiated Services . . . . . . . 13 3.9. Measurement-Based Shaping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 3.10. Fairness to End-User Quota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 5.1. Confidentiality and Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 5.2. Active On-Path Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 5.3. Improved Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 6. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Dolson, et al. Informational [Page 2] RFC 8517 Transport-Centric Middlebox Functions February 2019 1. Introduction From [RFC3234], "A middlebox is defined as any intermediary deviceShow full document text