Re: [Sidrops] I-D Action: draft-sidrops-bgpsec-validation-signaling-05.txt

["Borchert, Oliver (Fed)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Job,

I'm sorry for my late reply, my emailer was hiding this email from me and I just found it.

I do not believe there is a need to change the title to specifically include "Internal BGP".
Within the latest changes, we specifically aligned the draft to follow the signaling as 
specified within RFC 4360.  As you know, RFC 4360 does govern the boundaries in which 
non-transitive attributes can be used and we referred to RFC 4360 where ever necessary.

In fact, upon your request during 108, we modified the draft in such that it goes one step 
further by limiting the signaling of validation state to only values that were locally computed 
by the sending BGP router itself.  That is, at the router level, the attribute is non-transitive, even in the case of iBGP.

Therefore I do not see any need for further modification. 

Thanks,
Oliver

-----------------------------------------------
Oliver Borchert, Computer Scientist
National Institute of Standards and Technology
(Office) +1.301.975.4856


On 9/30/20, 10:10 AM, "Sidrops on behalf of Job Snijders" <[e-mail] on behalf of [e-mail]> wrote:

    Dear all,

    I have reviewed the document and would like to offer some feedback.

    The title probably should read "BGPsec Validation State Signaling via Internal BGP" 

    Furthermore the document probably benefits replacing "BGP neighbor" with
    "IBGP neighbor", similarly "BGP peer" and "peer" should be replaced with
    "IBGP neighbor" and "neighbor" for more consistent reading. Emphasis on
    IBGP is important as this document outlines non-transitive extended
    communities. (Let's park discussion about EBGP vs CONFED vs IBGP for the
    sake of progressing conversation about the substance of this draft)

    Internal inconsistency in draft-sidrops-bgpsec-validation-signaling
    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    RFC 8205 section 5.1 states "BGPsec validation need only be performed at
    the eBGP edge.", and also "a BGPsec speaker MAY temporarily defer
    validation of incoming UPDATE messages." 

    With the above in mind, in section 4 of draft-sidrops-bgpsec-validation-signaling
    the first paragraph references an EBGP speaker that received a BGPsec
    UPDATE from a neighbor outside the administrative domain. If one follows
    the logical outcomes of temporarily deferment of validation, the EBGP
    node was unable to perform BGPsec path validation, thus MUST set
    validation state 'Unverified'. Consequently the BGP UPDATE is
    distributed to IBGP speakers, which all have to perform full BGPsec path
    validation in order to confirm that the validation state is indeed
    "Unverified". One might as well not attach any community at all because
    speaker A doesn't signal of note - because it doesn't know.

    If the EBGP edge device that (temporarily or forever) is unable to do
    BGPsec validation, it will for the duration of that event be unable to
    set the appropriate community, as it cannot validate. Whatever
    communities it sets, other nodes in the network still need to verify
    whether or not the community is true. As such, the communities are
    merely overhead.

    Imagine a two node network (ascii art, mind your MUA):

    				 +--------+
    				 |AS 65123|
    				 +----+---+
    					  |
    			   +------+----+
    	+--EBGP1---+ AS 650001 +----------------EBGP2------+
    	|          +-----------+                           |
    	|                                                  |
    	|        +-----------------------------------+     |
    	|        | AS 65666 running draft-signaling  |     |
    	|        |                                   |     |
    	|        | +---------------+                 |     |
    	+----------+ BGP speaker A |****IBGP         |     |
    			 | +---------------+     *           |     |
    			 |                       *           |     |
    			 |               +-------*-------+   |     |
    			 |               | BGP Speaker B +---------+
    			 |               +---------------+   |
    			 |                                   |
    			 +-----------------------------------+

    If BGP speaker A cannot perform BGPsec validation on EBGP1, it can't
    confirm whether _65001_65123$ is a valid BGPSec_PATH or not. But
    whatever conclusion speaker A draws, speaker B receives the
    _650001_65123$ path via its own EBGP2 session with 650001. Whatever
    validation (and signaling) happens via the IBGP session, it does not in
    any way positively impact speaker B's decisions, as speaker B can't use
    IBGP information as input into its decision making process regarding the
    BGP UPDATE received via EBGP2. Draft-sidrops-bgpsec-validation-signaling
    is not a replacement or alternative to the RPKI-To-Router protocol.

    If the meaning of the 'unverified' state is 'maybe I will do validation
    later, maybe not', I don't see any practical application.

    If the meaning of 'valid' is to be taken at face value, again, there is
    no value in a standardized community, see RFC 3514.

    If the meaning of 'invalid' is that following BGPsec path validation the
    route is deemed invalid, then why was it propagated in the first place?

    If Speaker B is not able to do Path Validation, whatever 'invalid'
    signal it receives on its IBGP session does not and cannot override or
    influence what was received via EBGP2.

    The text in the abstract and introduction about 'temporarily deferment of
    validation' should probably be removed as it is hard to see how in the
    situation of temporarily deferment the existence of these communities
    makes sense.

    Undeployability
    ---------------

    An architectural choice to use BGP communities for any purpose
    oftentimes stems from an operator's ability to deploy 'a new thing' in a
    network where (part of) the nodes have not yet been upgraded. Good
    useful examples of this mechanism are GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN and NO_EXPORT.

    The document states in section 3 "If the router supports the extension
    as defined in this document" ... which implies that all nodes in an
    administrative domain must be upgraded, which in turn somewhat nullifies
    the justification to use communities in the first place. This doesn't
    allow a brownfield upgrade!

    Section 3.1 "Error Handling at Peers" reads as a simple paragraph, but
    is brittle and error-prone to implement in routing policy. Most network
    operators are accustomed to implementing a 'test & branch' procedure by
    positive community matching and then taking some action. RFC 1997
    defines communities as "A community is a group of destinations which
    share some common property." The implication is that when multiple
    communities are attached to a route, the route simply has multiple
    properties.

    However, this document outlines a mechanism where specific combinations
    of communities are invalid input: "(0x43,TBD,0) ∩ (0x43,TBD,1)", or
    "(0x43,TBD,1) ∩ (0x43,TBD,2)", or "(0x43,TBD,2) ∩ (0x43,TBD,0)". In
    currently available commercial|free-of-the-shelf BGP implementations
    implementing adequate error handling is error-prone. RFC 8097 shares
    this weakness.

    The Introduction proposes that a reduction of path validation processing
    load can be achieved, however Section 4 states that if there is a
    discrepancy between the locally computed validation state and the
    community, the locally computed state takes precedence. Thus, no load
    processing reduction can be achieved because a BGPsec capable node must
    compute the validation state before it can compare it to the community.

    Not analogous to RFC 8097
    -------------------------

    To many this draft may appear as 'for sure, we need something similar
    for bgpsec as we have for route origin validation' - but I think no such
    equivalence exists, or needs to exist.

    RFC 8097 defines a set of BGP communities which can optionally be
    associated with a prefix *after* the Origin Validation procedure (RFC
    6811) *successfully* is executed. This in contrast to
    draft-bgpsec-validation-signaling, where a node is *unable* to path
    validation, thus can never set the appropriate communities. RFC 8097
    does not describe a situation where Origin Validation is temporarily
    deferred.

    Reject don't tag (do, don't talk about doing it)
    ------------------------------------------------

    If a route is considered invalid (for whatever reason, beauty is in the
    eye of the beholder), the route should be rejected. Merely tagging an
    invalid route with a specific community and propagating it further, is a
    useless excercise. Such designs hampers deployment of actual security
    measures. If an operator wants to tag invalid routes for analytical
    purposes, they can easily do so and can choose from milions of values
    using any of the flavors of communities that are available. If you *are*
    propagating an invalid route, you are propagating an invalid route - in
    which case it does not matter whatever communities are attached to it.

    Conclusion
    ----------

    At this point in time I don't think this draft can proceed to
    publication, from the document itself it is not clear to me what
    benefits can be achieved and how this benefits Internet operations. The
    draft requires new code on devices in addition to what a BGPsec capable
    implementation would require. And in today's world there aren't
    off-the-shelf BGPsec implementations to start with, so piling on
    additional code requirements is too early in the innovation cycle
    anyhow. Using communities is no substitute for BGPsec validation or for
    RTR, this document may subtly lead people to believe otherwise.

    It is possible I misunderstood things, I look forward to feedback from
    the group.

    Kind regards,

    Job

    ps. nitpick: one of the author's company names seems misspelled.

    On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 07:19:10PM -0700, [e-mail] wrote:
    > 
    > A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
    > This draft is a work item of the SIDR Operations WG of the IETF.
    > 
    >         Title           : BGPsec Validation State Signaling
    >         Authors         : Oliver Borchert
    >                           Doug Montgomery
    >                           Daniel Kopp
    > 	Filename        : draft-sidrops-bgpsec-validation-signaling-05.txt
    > 	Pages           : 8
    > 	Date            : 2020-09-25
    > 
    > Abstract:
    >    This document defines a new BGP non-transitive extended community to
    >    carry the BGPsec path validation state.  BGP speakers that receive
    >    this community string can use the embedded BGPsec validation state in
    >    conjunction with configured local policies to influence their
    >    decision process.  The ability to accept and act on BGPsec path
    >    validation state from a neighbor allows for a reduction of path
    >    validation processing load and/or increased resilience in the event
    >    that a router is temporarily unable to perform local path validation.
    > 
    > 
    > The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
    > https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdatatracker.ietf.org%2Fdoc%2Fdraft-sidrops-bgpsec-validation-signaling%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7Coliver.borchert%40nist.gov%7C912e66dc7cdc4e408fd908d8654aa58a%7C2ab5d82fd8fa4797a93e054655c61dec%7C1%7C1%7C637370718565010135&amp;sdata=j%2Foh6jiZlwSn1Mct6aBZUfX7F7IWgfbLcv89c5gvsJ0%3D&amp;reserved=0
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