Re: Genart last call review of draft-ietf-grow-large-communities-usage-06

[Job Snijders <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 09:46:53AM +0100, Stewart Bryant wrote:
> > >     Operations and Security [RFC7454].
> > > 
> > > SB> You do not address the question of whether there are new
> > > SB> considerations, or considerations that are of increased importance?
> > 
> > It is my understanding that RFC 8092 "BGP Large Communities" are
> > just like RFC 1997 "BGP Communities", but ...  larger (for lack of
> > better words). Referencing RFC 7454 seems plenteous.
> > 
> > So, what if there are not any additional considerations, If there
> > were, they would've been (or are) covered in RFC 8092's security
> > section, right?
> > 
> > This is an Internet-Draft targetted for Informational status, I'm
> > not sure what you expect here.
>
> I was wondering if there was more scope to make mischief at a distance
> in a less less obvious way than before.
> 
> If everyone is happy that there is no additional risk then I am fine,
> but seems to me the more knobs you give the mischeif maker to turn the
> more security risks you have.

Ah, I see now. This document does not create new knobs. RFC 8092
definded the BGP Large Community attribute, and this internet-draft
reflects on possible use cases, much like RFC 1998 was a companion for
RFC 1997.

> > > SB> Is there is text somewhere that discusses the integrity and
> > > SB> synchronization of the parameters and any consequences that arise?
> >
> > the what now? Can you elaborate on the above?
>
> So you rely on the nodes that receive these community strings to
> interpret them in a common way. Maybe this is an already solved
> problem, or an known risk, but what if the dictionaries get out of
> sync?

Yes, there is not anything novel here. How to keep a list of integers
like UN M.49 up to date (or how to write bug-free software) is out of
scope for this internet draft. ;-)

Deploy coherent routing policy configurations on an autonomous
system-wide level is not for this document to cover.

Kind regards,

Job