Re: [tcpm] Progressing draft-ietf-tcpm-converters

[Yuchung Cheng <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 4:52 AM Olivier Bonaventure
<[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Yuchung,
>
> >>
> >> We believe that a specialised TCP application should be allowed to use its own cookie inside the payload instead of relying on the TCP header to use fast open. The 0-RTT convert protocol is one example, but there could be others. Looking at other application layer protocols, I noticed that TLS1.3 (rfc8446) also includes a cookie which is mainly designed enable servers to get a confirmation of the reachability of the client IP addresses for DTLS, but the same approach could be used when TLS sends its initial data in the SYN as well.
> >>
> >> Another point that should be clarified in RFC7413 are how middleboxes should handle SYN packets containing a non-zero payload. According to RFC793, such packets are valid TCP packets. The TFO option, defined in RFC7314 is not and should not be considered as an indication that is required to “authorise” the utilisation of payload inside a SYN packet. During the Prague meeting, Christoph Paasch mentioned at the mike that they have one application that uses data inside the SYN and their measurements indicate that sending this SYN without the TFO option enables it to pass through more middleboxes than when the same SYN contains the TFO option.
> >>
> >> Another point is the socket API. Currently, Linux and MacOS decouple the transmission of data inside the SYN from the utilisation of the TFO option. This makes it possible for a client to send data inside the SYN without enabling TFO. On Windows, the API seems to force the utilisation of TFO when there is data in the SYN. As indicated earlier, RFC793 does not mandate the presence of the TFO to place data inside the SYN.
> >>
> >> The approach we are proposing has the benefits of RFC7413 but without its drawbacks. Moreover, given that RFC7413 is Experimental, we don't think that there is a harm if we proceed with the approach 0-rtt convert protocol while the IETF can further tweak and adjust the applicability scope of RFC7413. For example, an update can be proposed to RFC7413 to clarify that specialized application-level protocols could place cookie information in their payload and thus not use the TFO option.
> > Just to confirm: you mean an API that
> > let application sets the TFO cookie (on either server and client)?
>
>
> No, we suggest to let specific applications use data in the SYN without using the TFO cookie. Those applications can manage their cookie inside the SYN payload if needed. Instead of having TFO cookies that are managed by the TCP stack and have limited size, those specialised protocols would use application-level cookies which can be longer and are managed by these application protocols.
I see. though I suppose this requires changing RFC793 of not uploading
the data to application until 3WHS completes.

>
> > otherwise obviously application can place any data in their TCP payload for its
> > purposes.
>
> This is what we proposed in Prague, i.e. using data in the TCP SYN without the TFO option.
>
>
> Olivier
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