Re: Unrecoverable loss pattern

[Marten Seemann <[e-mail]>]

@Nick: The server did get all handshake packets, please see 1. in my
description. It's the server's ACK for the FINISHED message that is lost,
not the FINISHED message itself.
@Martin: Yes, it is, but I don't think there's anything problematic about
the language in this paragraph. Since the server received ACKs for all the
handshake messages it sent, it makes sense to not open unencrypted packets
any more.

On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 6:47 AM Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> I assume that this is the language you refer to:
>
>    A server MUST process ACK frames in unprotected packets
>    until the TLS handshake is reported as complete, or it receives an
>    ACK frame in a protected packet that acknowledges all of its
>    handshake messages.
>
> That talks about ACK frames, not Finished.
>
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 1:25 AM, Marten Seemann <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
> > I’ve been playing around with QUIC loss recovery and in my tests I’m
> > encountering one specific loss pattern which it seems impossible to
> recover
> > from. It's pretty rare, because there are a couple of conditions that
> must
> > be fulfilled for it to occur:
> >
> > 1. Client and server perform the handshake, no packets are lost so far.
> > Client and server both arrive at the CONNECTED state, and the server
> > receives all ACKs for handshake packets it sent. The client receives ACKs
> > for all handshake packets except for the one containing the FINISHED
> message
> > is lost (the packet containing the ACK for the FINISHED is lost).
> > 2. The client starts using 1-RTT keys, and it sends two packets: First, a
> > packet only containing an ACK, and then a packet containing stream data
> > (e.g. a request). The request packet is then lost.
> > 3. The server receives the ACK in the 1-RTT packet, and it stops
> accepting
> > unencrypted packets according to 6.1.2 of the TLS draft. It doesn’t
> generate
> > an ACK in response, since the packet only contained an ACK.
> > 4. The client is now missing acknowledgements for two packets: the
> > (unencrypted) packet containing the FINISHED message, and the (1-RTT)
> packet
> > containing the request. It runs its loss recovery algorithm
> > (OnLossDetectionAlarm), and since there is one outstanding handshake
> packet,
> > it retransmit all outstanding handshake packets.
> >
> > Now we’ve run into a situation we can’t recover from: The server won’t
> even
> > open packet sent as a retransmission (since these packets are
> unencrypted,
> > and arrive after it already received a 1-RTT packet), and the client will
> > never retransmit the request packet. Furthermore, the server won't send
> any
> > other packets, since it's just waiting for a request from the client.
> >
> > I think the solution for this is to also retransmit 1-RTT packets in a
> case
> > like this. Can we just apply the normal retransmission rules in
> > OnLossDetectionAlarm, even if there are still handshake packets
> outstanding?
> >
> >
>