Re: [bmwg] WGLC on New version of draft-ietf-bmwg-ngfw-performance

bmonkman@netsecopen.org Fri, 21 May 2021 18:37 UTC

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From: bmonkman@netsecopen.org
To: 'Sarah Banks' <sbanks@encrypted.net>, 'ALFRED MORTON' <acmorton@att.com>
Cc: 'Gabor LENCSE' <lencse@hit.bme.hu>, 'Bala Balarajah' <bala@netsecopen.org>, 'Bala Balarajah' <bm.balarajah@gmail.com>, bmwg@ietf.org, "'MORTON, ALFRED C (AL)'" <acm@research.att.com>
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Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 14:37:18 -0400
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Subject: Re: [bmwg] WGLC on New version of draft-ietf-bmwg-ngfw-performance
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Sarah,

Thanks for your comments. Given when it was received with respect to the
WGLC timeframe your suggestions will be considered for the next draft.
(Which is being posted shortly.)

We will get back to you in due course.

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah Banks <sbanks@encrypted.net> 
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2021 4:35 PM
To: ALFRED MORTON <acmorton@att.com>
Cc: bmonkman@netsecopen.org; Gabor LENCSE <lencse@hit.bme.hu>; Bala
Balarajah <bala@netsecopen.org>; Bala Balarajah <bm.balarajah@gmail.com>;
bmwg@ietf.org; MORTON, ALFRED C (AL) <acm@research.att.com>
Subject: Re: [bmwg] WGLC on New version of draft-ietf-bmwg-ngfw-performance

Hi,
    Sharing feedback with my participant hat on. I do apologize for sending
it so late. A few high level comments:

- I still land in the "I don't agree that this doc clearly covers "all next
gen security devices" - and they're not clearly defined, either. For the
three that are covered, I think there's a lumping of the IPS and IDS that
would be better served separated. From my perspective, an IPS *is* a bump in
the wire, and does make "blocking" decisions, as called out in this
document. An IDS however, does not - it tells you it happened after the
fact, and it's a passive device. This draft is really keyed around "active
inline" functions - ie/ a bump in the wire - and I think keeping the focus
there makes sense, and lumping the IDS in does more harm than good. 

In short, I don't support this draft moving forward with the inclusion of
IDS - it doesn't make sense to me. One way forward might be to remove the
IDS as a device from scope (as a suggestion).


- I've been testing for a long time, but I find this draft ... uncomfortable
to approach. I expected, and would have preferred, something that walks me
through a specific set of recommended scenarios with specifics on what to
configure for repeatable tests that I could compare results with, but there
are a lot of moving parts here and a lot of assertions that have to be made
for the test beds as a whole where I think the test results could vary
wildly when the same topology is handed to Test Person A and Test Person B. 

- Most of the feedback below omits the IDS pieces, because so much of it
didn't apply. 

Thanks,
Sarah



- The draft aims to replace RFC3511, but expands scope past Firewalls, to
"next generation security devices". I'm not finding a definition of what a
"next generation security device is", nor an exhaustive list of the devices
covered in this draft. A list that includes is nice, but IMO not enough to
cover what would be benchmarked here - I'd prefer to see a definition and an
exhaustive list.
- What is a NGIPS or NGIDS? If there are standardized definitions pointing
to them is fine, otherwise, there's a lot of wiggle room here.
- I still have the concern I shared at the last IETF meeting, where here,
we're putting active inline security devices in the same category as passive
devices. On one hand, I'm not sure I'd lump these three together in the
first place; on the other, active inline devices typically include
additional functions to allow administrators to control what happens to
packets in the case of failure, and I don't see those test cases included
here.
- Section 4.1 - it reads as if ANY device in the test setup cannot
contribute to network latency or throughput issues, including the DUTs - is
that what you intended?
- Option 1: It'd be nice to see a specific, clean, recommended test bed.
There are options for multiple emulated routers. As a tester, I expect to
see a specific, proscribed test bed that I should configure and test
against. 
- Follow on: I'm curious as to the choice of emulated routers here. The
previous test suggests you avoid routers and switches in the topo, but then
there are emulated ones here. I'm curious as to what advantages you think
these bring over the real deal, and, why they aren't subject to the same
limitations previously described?
- In section 4.1 the text calls out Option 1 as the preferred test bed,
which includes L3 routing, but it's not clear why that's needed?
- The difference between Option 1 and Option 2 is the inclusion of
additional physical gear in Option 2 - it's not clear why that's needed, or
why the tester can't simply directly connect the test equipment to the DUT
and remove extraneous devices from potential influence on results?
- Section 4.2, the table for NGFW features - I'm not sure what the
difference is between RECOMMENDED and OPTIONAL? (I realize that you might be
saying that RECOMMENDED is the "must have enabled" features, where as
optional is at your discretion, but would suggest that you make that clear)
- Proscribing a list of features that have to be enabled for the test, or at
least more than 1, feels like a strange choice here - I'd have expected
tests cases that either test the specific features one at a time, or suggest
several combinations, but that ultimately, we'd tell the tester to document
WHICH features were enabled, to make the test cases repeatable? This allows
the tester to apply a same set of apples to apples configurations to
different vendor gear, and omit the 1 feature that doesn't exist on a
different NGFW (for example), but hold a baseline that could be tested.
- Table 2: With the assumption that NGIPS/IDS are required to have the
features under "recommended", I disagree with this list. For example, some
customers break and inspect at the tap/agg layer of the network - in this
case, the feed into the NGIDS might be decrypted, and there's no need to
enable SSL inspection, for example. 
- Table 3: I disagree that an NGIDS IS REQUIRED to decrypt SSL. This
behaviour might be suitable for an NGIPS, but the NGIDS is not a bump on the
wire, and often isn't decrypting and re-encrypting the traffic.
- Table 3: An NGIDS IMO is still a passive device - it wouldn't be blocking
anything, but agree that it might tell you that it happened after the fact.
- Table 3: Anti-evasion definition - define "mitigates". 
- Table 3: Web-filtering - not a function of an NGIDS.
- Table 3: DLP: Not applicable for an NGIDS.
- Can you expand on "disposition of all flows of traffic are logged" -
what's meant here specifically, and why do they have to be logged? (Logging,
particularly under high loads, will impact it's own performance marks, and
colours output)
- ACLs wouldn't apply to an IDS because IDS's aren't blocking traffic :)
- It might be helpful to testers to say something like "look, here's one
suggested set of ACLs. If you're using them, great, reference that, but
otherwise, make note of the ACLs you use, and use the same ones for
repeatable testing".
- 4.3.1.1 The doc proscribes specific MSS values for v4/v6  with no
discussion around why they're chosen - that color could be useful to the
reader.
- 4.3.1.1 - there's a period on the 3rd to last line "(SYN/ACL, ACK). and"
that should be changed.
- 4.3.1.1 - As a tester with long time experience with major test equipment
manufacturers, I can't possibly begin to guess which ones of them would
conform to this - or even if they'd answer these questions. How helpful is
this section to the non test houses? I suggest expansion here, ideally with
either covering the scope of what you expect to cover, or hopefully which
(open source/generally available) test tools or emulators could be
considered for use as examples.
- 4.3.1.3 - Do the emulated web browser attributes really apply to testing
the NGIPS?
- 4.3.2.3 - Do you expect to also leverage TLS 1.3 as a configuration option
here?
- 4.3.4 - I'm surprised to see the requirement that all sessions establish a
distinct phase before moving on to the next. You might clarify why this is a
requirement, and why staggering them is specifically rejected?
- 5.1 - I like the sentence, but it leaves a world of possibilities open as
to how one confirmed that the ancillary switching or routing functions
didn't limit the performance, particularly the virtualized components?
- 5.3 - this is a nice assertion but again, how do I reasonably make the
assertion?
- 6.1 - I would suggest that the test report include the configuration of
ancillary devices on both client/server side as well 
- 6.3 - Nothing on drops anywhere?
- 7.1.3.2 - Where are these numbers coming from? How are you determining the
"initial inspected throughput"? Maybe I missed that in the document overall,
but it's not clear to me where these KPIs are collected? I suggest this be
called out.
- 7.1.3.3 - what is a "relevant application traffic mix" profile?
- 7.1.3.4 - where does this monitoring occur?
- 7.1.3.4 - This looks a bit like conformance testing -  Why does item (b)
require a specific number/threshold?
- 9: Why is the cipher squite recommendation for a real deployment outside
the scope of this document?