Re: Redirection to Other IP Addresses

[Bin Ni <[e-mail]>]

Hi Erik and All,

My use case is we have a bunch of reverse proxy servers all over the world
(just like any other CDN providers).
Our customers deploy proxy policies to all those servers.
Assume company ABC is one of our customers, they may configure all our
servers to serve https://download.abc.com, with the certificate for "
download.abc.com" installed on each of the servers.
They also configure their DNS to point www.abc.com to a CNAME provided by
us, such that my company essentially takes over the resolution of that
hostname.
When an end-user is visiting download.abc.com, the hostname is resolved by
our DNS server to one of the server's IP addresses.
This IP address is chosen based on some algorithm. But this algorithm has
some limitations which may not always return an IP that is optimal for the
end user.
When the end user reaches that IP to download some object, for example
https://download.abc.com/movie.mp4 (potentially with some cookie targeting "
download.abc.com"), an algorithm running on that server
finds out that another server would provide better performance and want to
redirect the end user to the new server to download the object.
Right now what we can do is sending 30X redirection to the end user with
something like:
Location: https://{new IP}.mycompany.com/download.abc.com/movie.mp4
As I mentioned in earlier posts, this current method breaks cookie and
company ABC's client (maybe a mobile App) may refuse to be directed to a
different domain.

Hope this is a clear enough description of the use case. Please let me know
of any questions.
Thanks!

Bin

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 1:11 PM Erik Nygren <[e-mail]> wrote:

> You get something in the middle ground.  The Origin doesn't change, but
> cookies don't get sent without extra work.
> But you gain the ability to decouple the server certificate and trust and
> integrity from the Origin.
> They do solve slightly different but heavily overlapping problems.
>
> It may make sense to take a step back and enumerate the set of problems
> and use-cases
> that would be good to solve and see which ones there is interest in
> addressing, and then
> finding a solution that covers this set.
>
> In order for any effort on this front to be worthwhile it will also
> require
> getting interest and buy-in to collaborate and implement from both server
> operators and client implementations, with the client implementations
> being the one that is going to be especially critical to success.
> (Even Alt-Svc has had limited client implementation to-date.)
>
>      Erik
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 3:38 PM Bin Ni <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Mike and Eric,
>>
>> If looks to me that if I use oob encoding for my use case, it will be the
>> same as 30X redirection.
>> I won't be able to achieve my goal of "only change the IP address,
>> everything else remain the same".
>>
>> Bin
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 7:34 AM Mike Bishop <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> I second this – given that you’re looking for a forced redirect, an
>>> out-of-band response coupled with an Alt-Svc to the other host should
>>> provide the right behavior.  The first request goes OOB and the client gets
>>> the payload from the alternate; the subsequent requests can be made
>>> directly to the alternative, since it also has a cert for the origin.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Erik Nygren <[e-mail]>
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, August 8, 2019 9:27 PM
>>> *To:* Bin Ni <[e-mail]>
>>> *Cc:* W. Felix Handte <[e-mail]>; HTTP Working Group <
>>> [e-mail]>
>>> *Subject:* Re: Redirection to Other IP Addresses
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Another directional approach for this use-case would be out-of-band
>>> content encoding.
>>>
>>> For example:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>        https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-reschke-http-oob-encoding-12.html
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It is possible that this could cover at least some of the use-cases.
>>>
>>> It has the benefit that the client signals support (via Accept-Encoding).
>>>
>>> The target won't get cookies, but authenticators could be passed in the
>>> URL target.
>>>
>>> It also has some better properties for not having to fully trust the
>>> redirect target
>>>
>>> and not having to have the same cert on the redirect target.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     Erik
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Aug 1, 2019 at 2:58 PM Bin Ni <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Felix,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What you described is exactly what my company (you probably already
>>> figured out that I work for a CDN company)
>>>
>>> is providing to our customers today. The problems are:
>>>
>>> 1. In your example, the first host "cdn.com" is the CDN customer's
>>> hostname. They usually can't provide us with a "*.geo.cdn.com" wildcard
>>> cert. Some of them requires EV certificate, which does not even support
>>> wildcard.
>>>
>>> 2. Cookies are often targeting a specific hostname. We can't ask all our
>>> customer to change the business logic of their web application to make sure
>>> all cookies are targeting the entire domain.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hope this helps. Any more questions?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Aug 1, 2019 at 9:37 AM W. Felix Handte <[e-mail]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Bin,
>>>
>>> I've been following along on this discussion and it's still not clear to
>>> me why 30X doesn't solve this use case. Take for example a request and
>>> response as follows.
>>>
>>>    GET /large_file HTTP/1.1
>>>    Host: cdn.com
>>>
>>> To which the server responds with
>>>
>>>    HTTP/1.1 307
>>>    Location: https://singapore.geo.cdn.com/large_file
>>>
>>> Or even
>>>
>>>    HTTP/1.1 307
>>>    Location: https://123_45_67_89.ip.cdn.com/large_file
>>>
>>> Maybe I'm missing something, but as I understand it, HTTPS and Cookies
>>> should work with the above (assuming you have wildcard certs for
>>> *.geo.cdn.com and/or *.ip.cdn.com, and have set your cookies with
>>> domain=.cdn.com). And it otherwise seems to accomplish exactly your
>>> intent.
>>>
>>> Can you explain in a little more detail why you believe something along
>>> those lines wouldn't solve your need?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Felix
>>>
>>> On 8/1/19 6:12 AM, Bin Ni wrote:
>>> > Hi Daniel,
>>> >
>>> > At high level, my proposal is in every other way the same as today's
>>> 30X
>>> > redirection.
>>> > With this in mind, the answer to your questions are:
>>> > 1. In general, the alternate IP should only be used once for the next
>>> > single request.
>>> > But there is nothing to prevent the clients from remembering it, which
>>> > is OK.
>>> > Just like there is nothing to prevent a client to disregard the DNS
>>> TTL.
>>> > They do it with their own risk.
>>> > 2. This proposal is to fix some limitations of the 30X with Location
>>> header.
>>> > Not very helpful to make it work together with the Location header.
>>> > 3. We are not requiring every server and every client to support this
>>> > proposal.
>>> > For the ones who find it to be useful, the "extra burden" is a
>>> non-issue.
>>> >
>>> > Thanks!
>>> >
>>> > Bin
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Aug 1, 2019 at 2:18 AM Daniel Stenberg <[e-mail]
>>> > <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >     On Thu, 1 Aug 2019, Bin Ni wrote:
>>> >
>>> >      > 2. my proposed behavior:
>>> >      > Client: Hi Server-1.1.1.1, can you send me the movie XXX?
>>> >      > Server-1.1.1.1: Sorry, I can't give you the movie, you need to
>>> >     ask server
>>> >      > 2.2.2.2 for this movie.
>>> >      > Client: Hi Server-2.2.2.2, can you send me the movie XXX?
>>> >      > Server-2.2.2.2: Here is the movie.
>>> >      > (It then took 0.5 hours to deliver the movie, because
>>> >     server-2.2.2.2 is
>>> >      > closer to the client, or less loaded)
>>> >
>>> >     If we for a moment play with the idea that we'd do something like
>>> >     this, then I
>>> >     think it should be aligned with and work together with Alt-Svc in a
>>> >     better way
>>> >     than what is currently proposed...
>>> >
>>> >     There's no max-age/TTL. For how long is the user-agent supposed to
>>> >     consider
>>> >     the alternative IP addresses as the only ones that the given origin
>>> >     has?
>>> >     Forever? Only for the next single connect (attempt)?
>>> >
>>> >     Are the alternative IPs supposed to be used for the entire origin
>>> or
>>> >     for that
>>> >     specific URI only?
>>> >
>>> >     A 3xx redirect without a Location: header? Wouldn't it make more
>>> >     sense and
>>> >     work more similar to existing 3xx redirects if it also sends a
>>> >     Location:? Then
>>> >     existing clients that don't understand 312 might have a higher
>>> >     chance of at
>>> >     least doing something sensible.
>>> >
>>> >     If a client gets this response and starts downloading huge content
>>> >     from the
>>> >     new IP and the client then opens a second connection to the origin
>>> >     in a second
>>> >     tab. Which IPs is that supposed to use? The original ones or the
>>> >     redirected
>>> >     ones?
>>> >
>>> >     Requring user-agent snooping for a server to figure out if the
>>> >     feature works
>>> >     or not is a totally broken idea and I think this detail needs to be
>>> >     worked out
>>> >     for this idea to be considered for real.
>>> >
>>> >     My personal preference is probably to add some sort of "urgency"
>>> >     thing to
>>> >     alt-svc instead of this 312 plus several headers, so that a client
>>> >     can be told
>>> >     that it should switch sooner rather than later.
>>> >
>>> >     --
>>> >
>>> >        / daniel.haxx.se <http://daniel.haxx.se>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> >
>>> > Bin Ni
>>> > VP of Engineering
>>> >
>>> > Quantil
>>> >
>>> > Connecting users with content...it's that simple.
>>> >
>>> > Office: [phone] <tel:(888)%20847-9851>
>>> >
>>> > Tweeter <https://twitter.com/Team_Quantil> Google Plus
>>> > <https://plus.google.com/+Quantil_team/> Linked In
>>> > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/quantil>
>>> >
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>>>
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>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Bin Ni
>>> VP of Engineering
>>>
>>> [image: Image removed by sender. Quantil]
>>>
>>> Connecting users with content...it's that simple.
>>>
>>> Office: [phone] <(888)%20847-9851>
>>>
>>>
>>> [image: Image removed by sender. Tweeter]
>>> <https://twitter.com/Team_Quantil>  [image: Image removed by sender.
>>> Google Plus] <https://plus.google.com/+Quantil_team/>  [image: Image
>>> removed by sender. Linked In] <https://www.linkedin.com/company/quantil>
>>>
>>>
>>> The information contained in this email may be confidential and/or
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>>> recipient(s). If the reader of this message is not an intended recipient,
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>>> Bascom Ave #600, Campbell, CA 95008
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>>> or visit our website at www.quantil.com. <https://www.quantil.com/>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Bin Ni
>> VP of Engineering
>> [image: Quantil]
>>
>> Connecting users with content...it's that simple.
>>
>> Office: [phone] <(888)%20847-9851>
>>
>> [image: Tweeter] <https://twitter.com/Team_Quantil>  [image: Google Plus]
>> <https://plus.google.com/+Quantil_team/>  [image: Linked In]
>> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/quantil>
>>
>> The information contained in this email may be confidential and/or
>> legally privileged. It has been sent for the sole use of the intended
>> recipient(s). If the reader of this message is not an intended recipient,
>> you are hereby notified that any unauthorized review, use, disclosure,
>> dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication, or any of
>> its contents, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this
>> communication in error, please reply to the sender and destroy all copies
>> of the message. To contact us directly, send to QUANTIL, INC. at 1919 S
>> Bascom Ave #600, Campbell, CA 95008
>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=1919+S+Bascom+Ave+%23600,+Campbell,+CA+95008&entry=gmail&source=g>,
>> or visit our website at www.quantil.com. <https://www.quantil.com/>
>>
>>

-- 

Bin Ni
VP of Engineering
[image: Quantil]

Connecting users with content...it's that simple.

Office: [phone] <(888)%20847-9851>

[image: Tweeter] <https://twitter.com/Team_Quantil>  [image: Google Plus]
<https://plus.google.com/+Quantil_team/>  [image: Linked In]
<https://www.linkedin.com/company/quantil>

The information contained in this email may be confidential and/or legally
privileged. It has been sent for the sole use of the intended recipient(s).
If the reader of this message is not an intended recipient, you are hereby
notified that any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, dissemination,
distribution, or copying of this communication, or any of its contents, is
strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error,
please reply to the sender and destroy all copies of the message. To
contact us directly, send to QUANTIL, INC. at 1919 S Bascom Ave #600,
Campbell, CA 95008
<https://maps.google.com/?q=1919+S+Bascom+Ave+%23600,+Campbell,+CA+95008&entry=gmail&source=g>,
or visit our website at www.quantil.com. <https://www.quantil.com/>