Re: [DNSOP] I-D Action: draft-ietf-dnsop-avoid-fragmentation-00.txt

[Mark Andrews <[e-mail]>]

> On 9 Jul 2020, at 00:50, Marek Majkowski <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 10:01 AM <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> DNSOP WG,
>> 
>> Paul Vixie and I submitted draft-ietf-dnsop-avoid-fragmentation-00.
>> Please review it.
> 
> Hi!
> 
>> UDP requestors and responders SHOULD send DNS responses with
>> IP_DONTFRAG / IPV6_DONTFRAG [RFC3542] options, which will yield
>> either a silent timeout, or a network (ICMP) error, if the path
>> MTU is exceeded.
> 
> When MTU is exceeded the sender might also receive plain old EMSGSIZE
> error on sendto(). I would love to see an example on what
> IP_MTU_DISCOVER settings authors expect. This option is notoriously
> hard to get right.
> 
>> The maximum buffer size offered by an EDNS0 initiator SHOULD be
>> no larger than the estimated maximum DNS/UDP payload size...
> 
> This seems to indicate that EDNS0 over TCP should have a small buffer
> size as well. Consider wording like "...buffer size offered by an
> EDNS0 initator over UDP...".
> 
>> Fragmented DNS/UDP messages may be dropped without IP reassembly
> 
> Not sure what it has to do with the draft. Are we worried about
> request fragmentation and allowing the DNS server to drop fragmented
> requests? Are we worried about response fragmentation?
> 
> 
> 
> I have two problems with this proposal. First, it doesn't mention IPv4
> vs IPv6 differences at all. In IPv4 landscape fragmentation, while a
> security issue, is generally fine. In the IPv6 world, fragmentation is
> disastrous - packets with extension headers are known to be dropped.

Not really. UNKNOWN extensions tend to get dropped but the fragmentation
header is a KNOWN extension header.

> Second, this proposal assumes that path MTU detection works correctly.
> This is surprisingly optimistic. Let's consider IPv6 - in IPv6 the
> smaller path MTU < 1500 is very common.

Which is why IPV6_USE_MIN_MTU exists (RFC 3542).  USE THE SOCKET OPTION.
It was put there specifically to support DNS over UDP and other applications
like that.  I know this as I proposed the predecessor option back in 1999
which became IPV6_USE_MIN_MTU.

If the OS hosting your DNS server doesn’t support this option 17 years
after is was defined throw it in the bin.

IPV6_USE_MIN_MTU also helps with TCP.  DNS does not need to suffer from
PMTUD issues.

> Let's say a DNS auth server sent an IPv6 DNS response packet exceeding
> path MTU. An intermediate router will drop the offending packet and
> one of three scenarios will happen:
> 
> - (A) No ICMP PTB message is sent back.
> 
> - (B) ICMP PTB message is sent back, but fails to be delivered.
> 
> - (C) ICMP PTB message is sent back and delivered correctly to the server.
> 
> All three scenarios are disastrous on the practical internet. The
> proposal assumes (A) and (B) will rarely happen, and puts the
> responsibility on the DNS client to retry over TCP. This will cause
> unnecessary timeouts and degrade the overall quality of the service.
> 
> But perhaps most importantly even option (C) will *not* result in good
> service. Consider a setup with multiple DNS servers behind an ECMP
> router, or another L4 load balancer. Even if the return ICMP will hit
> back the correct server - which is far from obvious - the ICMP will
> update the Path MTU on *one server*. If a client attempts to retry the
> query, as suggested by the proposal, it will most likely hit another
> server, which is not aware of non standard Path MTU.
> 
> These days DNS Auth installations use ECMP routing for load balancing.
> A single physical box serving important DNS is a rare occurrence.
> 
> In this proposal all three (A), (B), and (C) scenarios will result in
> dropped responses. DNS client needs to wait for timeout, retry over
> UDP, wait more and eventually retry over TCP. This is bad.
> 
> We could fix (C) by making the DNS server to capture the ICMP PTB in
> DNS server code. The ICMP payload often has enough context for the DNS
> server to prepare another reply. This reply of course should be sent
> with lowered MTU.
> 
> In other words, I'm asking for capturing ICMP PTB in DNS servers,
> unpacking the paylad and treating it as another request to be handled.
> This would solve (C). Also, note this opens an interesting DDoS
> vector, but this is another story.
> 
> On Linux it is possible to capture the ICMP PTB without privileges, by
> setting IP_RECVERR and inspecting MSG_ERRQUEUE. In IPv4 the PTB
> messages often have 520 bytes of payload and in IPv6 1184 bytes. This
> is enough context to build another response, without having to wait
> for any timeout.
> 
> Cheers,
> Marek
> 
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Mark Andrews, ISC
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