Re: [Dots] Mirja's DISCUSS: Pending Point (AD Help Needed)

Re-,

Good point. A server can only send an empty confirmable message. 

This concludes there is no alternate approach. 

Cheers,
Med

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Konda, Tirumaleswar Reddy [mailto:TirumaleswarReddy_Konda@McAfee.com]
> Envoyé : vendredi 19 juillet 2019 14:36
> À : BOUCADAIR Mohamed TGI/OLN; Benjamin Kaduk (kaduk@mit.edu); dots-
> chairs@ietf.org; dots@ietf.org
> Objet : RE: Mirja's DISCUSS: Pending Point (AD Help Needed)
> 
> Hi Med,
> 
> I agree with all your responses except the alternate design is a duplicate
> functionality. The alternate design proposed by her to use non-confirmable
> message with ping and pong at the application layer itself will not work
> in the first place.
> The client can perform application level ping/pong (e.g. GET /heartbeat)
> but the server cannot perform application level ping/ping. The server
> cannot send non-confirmable requests or empty messages to the client.
> 
> 1) As per RFC7252, client can only send requests, and the server can only
> send responses.
> 2) (Section 4.3 in RFC7252) A Non-confirmable message always carries
> either a request or response and MUST NOT be Empty.  A Non-confirmable
> message MUST NOT be acknowledged by the recipient.
> 3) (Section 4.3 in RFC7252) Rejecting a Non-confirmable message MAY
> involve sending a matching Reset message, and apart from the Reset message
> the rejected message MUST be silently ignored.
> 
> 1), 2) and 3) make non-confirmable ping at the application layer from
> server impossible to use.
> 
> Cheers,
> -Tiru
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dots <dots-bounces@ietf.org> On Behalf Of
> > mohamed.boucadair@orange.com
> > Sent: Friday, July 19, 2019 12:27 PM
> > To: Benjamin Kaduk (kaduk@mit.edu) <kaduk@mit.edu>; dots-
> > chairs@ietf.org; dots@ietf.org
> > Subject: [Dots] Mirja's DISCUSS: Pending Point (AD Help Needed)
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi Ben, chairs, all,
> >
> > (restricting the discussion to the AD/chairs/WG)
> >
> > * Status:
> >
> > All DISCUSS points from Mirja's review were fixed, except the one
> discussed
> > in this message.
> >
> > * Pending Point:
> >
> > Rather than going into much details, I consider the following as the
> summary
> > of the remaining DISCUSS point from Mirja:
> >
> > > I believe there are flaws in the design. First it’s a layer violation,
> > > but if more an idealistic concern but usually designing in layers is a
> > > good approach. But more importantly, you end up with un-frequent
> > > messages which may still terminate the connection at some point, while
> > > what you want is to simply send messages frequently in an unreliable
> > > fashion but a low rate until the attack is over.
> >
> > * Discussion:
> >
> > (1) First of all, let's remind that RFC7252 does not define how CoAP
> ping must
> > be used. It does only say:
> >
> > ==
> >       Provoking a Reset
> >       message (e.g., by sending an Empty Confirmable message) is also
> >       useful as an inexpensive check of the liveness of an endpoint
> >       ("CoAP ping").
> > ==
> >
> > How the liveness is assessed is left to applications. So, there is ** no
> layer
> > violation **.
> >
> > (2) What we need isn't (text from Mirja):
> >
> > > to simply send messages frequently in an unreliable fashion but a low
> > > rate until the attack is over "
> >
> > It is actually the other way around. The spec says:
> >
> >   "... This is particularly useful for DOTS
> >    servers that might want to reduce heartbeat frequency or cease
> >    heartbeat exchanges when an active DOTS client has not requested
> >    mitigation."
> >
> > What we want can be formalized as:
> >  - Taking into account DDoS traffic conditions, a check to assess the
> liveness
> > of the peer DOTS agent + maintain NAT/FW state on on-path devices.
> >
> > An much more elaborated version is documented in SIG-004 of RFC 8612.
> >
> > * My analysis:
> >
> > - The intended functionality is naturally provided by existing CoAP
> messages.
> > - Informed WG decision: The WG spent a lot of cycles when specifying the
> > current behavior to be meet the requirements set in RFC8612.
> > - Why not an alternative design: We can always define messages with
> > duplicated functionality, but that is not a good design approach
> especially
> > when there is no evident benefit.
> > - The specification is not broken: it was implemented and tested.
> >
> > And a logistic comment: this issue fits IMHO under the non-discuss
> criteria in
> > https://www.ietf.org/blog/discuss-criteria-iesg-review/#stand-undisc.
> >
> > * What's Next?
> >
> > As an editor, I don't think a change is needed but I'd like to hear from
> Ben,
> > chairs, and the WG.
> >
> > Please share your thoughts and whether you agree/disagree with the above
> > analysis.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Med
> > _______________________________________________
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