Re: [Dots] Mirja Kühlewind's Discuss on draft-ietf-dots-data-channel-28: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)

[Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]>]

Hi Med,

Sorry for my late reply.

One minor comment below:

> On 3. Jul 2019, at 19:51, [e-mail] wrote:
> 
> Re-,
> 
> Please see inline.
> 
> Cheers,
> Med
> 
>> -----Message d'origine-----
>> De : Mirja Kuehlewind [mailto:[e-mail]]
>> Envoyé : mercredi 3 juillet 2019 18:41
>> À : Konda, Tirumaleswar Reddy
>> Cc : Roman Danyliw; [e-mail]; The IESG; [e-mail]; draft-
>> [e-mail]; BOUCADAIR Mohamed TGI/OLN; Benjamin Kaduk
>> Objet : Re: [Dots] Mirja Kühlewind's Discuss on draft-ietf-dots-data-
>> channel-28: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)
>> 
>> Hi Tiru, hi Med,
>> 
>> Please see below.
>> 
>>> On 3. Jul 2019, at 10:00, Konda, Tirumaleswar Reddy
>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Mirja,
>>> 
>>> Please see inline
>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]>
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 2, 2019 9:20 PM
>>>> To: Konda, Tirumaleswar Reddy <[e-mail]>
>>>> Cc: Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]>; Roman Danyliw <[e-mail]>;
>>>> [e-mail]; The IESG <[e-mail]>; [e-mail];
>>>> [e-mail]; [e-mail]
>>>> Subject: Re: [Dots] Mirja Kühlewind's Discuss on draft-ietf-dots-data-
>>>> channel-28: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)
>>>> 
>>>> This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click
>> links or
>>>> open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content
>> is
>>>> safe.
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Tiru,
>>>> 
>>>> Below...
>>>> 
>>>>> On 2. Jul 2019, at 16:22, Konda, Tirumaleswar Reddy
>>>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Mirja Kuehlewind <[e-mail]>
>>>>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 2, 2019 7:36 PM
>>>>>> To: Konda, Tirumaleswar Reddy
>>>> <[e-mail]>
>>>>>> Cc: Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]>; Roman Danyliw <[e-mail]>;
>>>>>> [e-mail]; The IESG <[e-mail]>; [e-mail];
>>>>>> [e-mail]; [e-mail]
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Dots] Mirja Kühlewind's Discuss on
>>>>>> draft-ietf-dots-data-
>>>>>> channel-28: (with DISCUSS and COMMENT)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi Tiru,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Please see below.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 2. Jul 2019, at 09:55, Konda, Tirumaleswar Reddy
>>>>>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> I would also quickly like to discuss the use of keep-alives as
>>>>>>>>>>> described in Section 3.1: "While the communication to the DOTS
>>>>>>>>>>> server is  quiescent, the DOTS client MAY probe the server to
>>>>>>>>>>> ensure it has  maintained cryptographic state.  Such probes can
>>>>>>>>>>> also keep alive  firewall and/or NAT bindings.  A TLS heartbeat
>>>>>>>>>>> [RFC6520] verifies  that the DOTS server still has TLS state by
>>>>>>>>>>> returning
>>>>>> a TLS message."
>>>>>>>>>>> I understood that multiple requests can and should be send in
>>>>>>>>>>> the same connection, however, I would expect that those requests
>>>>>>>>>>> are send basically right after each other, such as a look-up and
>>>>>>>>>>> then change of the config. I don't see a need to keep up the
>>>>>>>>>>> connection for a
>>>>>>>> long time otherwise.
>>>>>>>>>>> Especially any action performed are (other than in the signal
>>>>>>>>>>> channel case) not time critical. Therefore I would rather
>>>>>>>>>>> recommend to close and reopen connections and not recommend
>>>> to
>>>>>> use
>>>>>>>>>>> keep-alives at all.
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> [Med] The activity of the DOTS client may be used to track/detect
>>>>>>>>>> stale
>>>>>>>> entries:
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Also, DOTS servers
>>>>>>>>>> may track the inactivity timeout of DOTS clients to detect stale
>>>>>>>>>> entries.
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> My understanding is that this is orthogonal. You can also see that
>>>>>>>> a client is inactive when it didn’t open a new connection for a
>> certain
>>>> time…?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The drop-list rules could be frequently updated by the DOTS client
>>>>>>> based on the tests used by the DOTS client domain (e.g.
>>>>>>> cryptographic
>>>>>>> challenge) to detect whether the IP address is for legitimate use or
>>>>>>> not, or based on threat intelligence feeds from security vendors
>>>>>>> providing the botnet/malicious IP addresses feed.  Further,
>>>>>>> persistent DOTS data channel is required to handle updates to target
>>>>>>> resources (e.g. CDN hosting a domain, and it needs DDoS protection)
>>>>>>> and target IP/prefix may also change frequently (mobile branch
>>>>>>> office, prefix re-numbering etc.)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> This still doesn’t sounds like it is desirable to keep the TCP
>> connection
>>>> open.
>>>>>> Also if you can bear the time to reconnect (1-2 RTT for the
>>>>>> handshake) that is usually the better and easier options. I don’t
>>>>>> think the information we talk about here are that time-critical, is
>>>>>> it? When you say frequent what time frame do you mean, Hours,
>> minutes,
>>>> seconds, milliseconds?
>>>>> 
>>>>> The frequency of updates to drop-list rules can be few milliseconds.
>> For
>>>> example, CAPTCHA and cryptographic puzzles can be used by DOTS client
>>>> domain to determine whether the IP address is used for legitimate
>> purpose
>>>> or not, and can configure the drop-list rules.
>>>>> Further, the specification does not mandate the connection to be
>>>> persistent, but when needed, the probe mechanism applies.
>>>> 
>>>> Then it really seems to me that the document would need to provide
>> further
>>>> guidance when a persistent connection is useful or when it is recommend
>> to
>>>> close the connection (and reopen if needed).
>>> 
>>> Sure, will add the following text:
>>> 
>>>  A DOTS client can either maintain a persistent connection or periodic
>>>  connections with its DOTS server(s).  If the DOTS client needs to
>>>  frequently update the drop-list or accept-list filtering rules or
>>>  aliases, it maintains a persistent connection with the DOTS server.
>>>  For example, CAPTCHA and cryptographic puzzles can be used by the
>>>  mitigation service in the DOTS client domain to determine whether the
>>>  IP address is used for legitimate purpose or not, and the DOTS client
>>>  can frequently update the drop-list filtering rules.  A persistent
>>>  connection is also useful if the DOTS client subscribes to event
>>>  notifications (Section 6.3 of [RFC8040]).
>>> 
>>> - Tiru and Med
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Two more small comments:
>> 
>> At least to me the term “periodic" is not clear. I guess mean something
>> like short-lived connections, where you have a request, you open a
>> connection, send it, get a reply, and close the connection immediately or
>> after a short idle period. Or is there actually any kind of periodicity in
>> the dots protocol in general? Can you pleas clarify.
> 
> [Med] We are trying to reuse the same terminology as RESTCONF (draft-ietf-netconf-restconf-client-server). 
> 
> For the DOTS case, the DOTS client is required to register and send requests to refresh the registration in regular intervals (otherwise, the DOTS client won't be able to created filters). Likewise, cycles will be observed because the client will need to maintains the aliases and ACLs it created. The client may use these cycles for any planned activity (create new aliases, create a new filter, etc.) or not. 
> 
>> 
>> Also if a persistent connection is used, I think it would (again) be good
>> to clarify what should be done if the connection fails. I think the right
>> advise in this case, is to not reconnect immediately but only if you have
>> another request to send, right?
>> 	
> 
> [Med] draft-ietf-netconf-restconf-client-server voices for the following:
> 
>   Maintain a persistent connection to the
>   RESTCONF server. If the connection goes down,
>   immediately start trying to reconnect to the
>   RESTCONF server, using the reconnection strategy.
> 
> Which is the right approach, IMO.
> 
> We didn't touched on connection management because we are relying on RESTCONF. DOTS will use whatever strategy adopted for RESTCONF.
> 
> I don't think it is a good idea to add specific behavior into our spec. 

That is fine. I wasn’t aware that this is specified like this in RESTCONF and that your are replying on it. Instead of (re-)specifying in this in document, I would recommend to actually add a reference to this part  of the RESTCONF document and make clear that this is what you are replying on.

Thanks!
Mirja

> 
> 
> 
>> Mirja
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Mirja
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -Tiru
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Mirja
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Further, we are not mandating the connection to be persistent, but
>>>>>>> when
>>>>>> needed, the probe mechanism applies. Please note
>>>>>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-netconf-netconf-client-server-
>>>>>> 13 discusses persistent-connection and it’s a client preference on
>>>>>> how the connection is maintained (persistent or periodic).
>>>>> 
>>> 
>