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)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2019-02-05 | ||
| Replaces | draft-dolson-plus-middlebox-benefits | ||
| Stream | ISE | ||
| Formats | plain text 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 device
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