Considerations around Transport Header Confidentiality, Network Operations, and the Evolution of Internet Transport Protocols
draft-ietf-tsvwg-transport-encrypt-15
TSVWG G. Fairhurst
Internet-Draft University of Aberdeen
Intended status: Informational C. Perkins
Expires: November 2, 2020 University of Glasgow
May 01, 2020
Considerations around Transport Header Confidentiality, Network
Operations, and the Evolution of Internet Transport Protocols
draft-ietf-tsvwg-transport-encrypt-15
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, while also protecting 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. These
considerations arise from concerns such as network operations,
prevention of network ossification, enabling transport protocol
evolution and respect for user privacy.
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 https://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 November 2, 2020.
Fairhurst & Perkins Expires November 2, 2020 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Transport Header Encryption May 2020
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Context and Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Use of Transport Header Information in the Network . . . 6
2.2. Authentication of Transport Header Information . . . . . 8
2.3. Perspectives on Observable Transport Header Fields . . . 8
3. Current uses of Transport Headers within the Network . . . . 12
3.1. Observing Transport Information in the Network . . . . . 12
3.2. Transport Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.3. Use for Network Diagnostics and Troubleshooting . . . . . 24
3.4. Header Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4. Encryption and Authentication of Transport Headers . . . . . 25
4.1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2. Approaches to Transport Header Protection . . . . . . . . 26
5. Addition of Transport OAM Information to Network-Layer
Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.1. Use of OAM within a Maintenance Domain . . . . . . . . . 28
5.2. Use of OAM across Multiple Maintenance Domains . . . . . 29
6. Intentionally Exposing Transport Information to the Network . 29
6.1. Exposing Transport Information in Extension Headers . . . 30
6.2. Common Exposed Transport Information . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.3. Considerations for Exposing Transport Information . . . . 30
7. Implications of Protecting the Transport Headers . . . . . . 31
7.1. Independent Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7.2. Characterising "Unknown" Network Traffic . . . . . . . . 33
7.3. Accountability and Internet Transport Protocols . . . . . 34
7.4. Impact on Network Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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