Re: [anonsec] Comments on connection latching draft

[Nicolas Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 06:38:36PM -0500, Sam Hartman wrote:
> What is the purpose of the connection states?  I see them enumerated but never used.

To help describe the process by which latches are created and torn down.

> Why must implementations make available nat state?  I'm unconvinced
> that is well enough defined to actually be useful.

I think this is Michael's requirement.

>    o  Any IPsec channel created with a given peer while another
>       distinct, established IPsec channel exists with the same source
>       and destination addresses SHOULD be bound to the same peer.
> 
> 
> How does this interact with nats?

Hmmm, badly :)

>  Is it really desirable?

It's a mitigation for BTNS clients using non-channel binding
applications with multiple TCP connections.  It's not important to me,
and I'll be glad to remove it.

> It seems like the BITS model plus proprietary extensions might work for channel binding.

That's native IPsec built with BITS components.

> Section 2.1: What does it mean for connection latches to be broken?

That ULPs (and applications) are informed.  ULPs are informed
synchronously, so they can close/reset the connection before any
subsequent packets can be accepted.

> Section 2.1: define what a conflicting latch is; you use the term
> several times but don't  define it.  There is what I think is a
> definition but it is not associated with the term.

Here:

    o  Create a connection latch object for a ULP 5-tuple (local and
       remote address, protocol and local and remote port numbers).
       This operation succeeds when no conflicting connection latch
       objects exist and when there exist no child SAs encompassing the
       given 5-tuple or when all such SAs are with the same peer and
       equal quality of protection.  The key manager SHOULD attempt to
       create a suitable SA pair if one does not already exist; if it
       does then it MUST use the 5-tuple as the initial traffic
       selectors of the proposed child SAs.

s/no conflicting connection latch objects exist/no connection latch
exists already with the same 5-tuple/

I.e., "conflicting connection latch" there means that a latch with the
same 5-tuple as the proposed new latch already exists.  The latch
manager can know this while the ULP cannot, which is why the latch
manager checks this.

So far I'm putting latch management in the same place as key management,
but this is very abstract -- it need not translate into latch management
being done by an IKE daemon.
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