Re: [TERNLI] Forwarding corrupt packets

[Michael Welzl <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 16:06, Joe Touch wrote:
> Michael Welzl wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > Here's an idea for a potentially useful message that
> > could be exchanged between end systems and the inner
> > network:
> > 
> >>From transport end point to network:
> > "Corruption Acceptable (CA)" (meaning that it would be
> > preferrable to forward packets that are corrupt rather
> > than drop them)
> > 
> >>From network to transport end point: "Corruption
> > Forwarding supported (CF)"
> > 
> > Purpose: help the end system decide whether to use
> > UDP-Lite, or partial checksums in DCCP, or the
> > Data Checksum option in DCCP.
> 
> Why does the _network_ need to know about these? The network doesn't
> check (or shouldn't check) transport checksums.
> 
> The only reason the network would think a packet is corrupt:
> 
> 1) bad net checksum (e.g., IPv4)

I agree that, if this checksum is known to be corrupt, the
packet should be dropped.


> 2) bad link checksum

which normally covers everything, e.g. in 802.11 nets AFAIK.
So that's the one that I'm concerned about.


> In both cases, the destination address is not trusted anymore, so you're
> potentially sending the corrupt packet to the wrong _place_. If you
> can't send it the right place, then why are you sending it?

i remember you saying some time ago that sending it to the
wrong destination isn't a big problem for the network, and
therefore the lack of a checksum in ipv6 isn't a big issue.

chances are that it would reach the right place, so where's
the problem?


> This isn't a new issue; it's one of the reasons for the partial checksum
> in lite/DCCP - but also why it should be only over the _data_ portion.

This is at least the only portion the end node is concerned
with, so yep - the precise message from the sender would have
to be "corrupt data portion is okay" (no matter how exactly
the element in the network would handle this message - e.g. by
looking at the data portion, which I consider ugly design,
or by always forwarding corrupt data when at least the IP
checksum is ok, which I'd prefer).


> In those conditions, you might end up with one e2e-pair causing a
> separate endpoint to throttle-back thinking its packets are corrupted.
> That cross-contamination seems like a sufficient reason not to do this.

I don't get this - could you go into more details?


> IMO, partial transport checksums are useful only where the header
> checksum is still valid; otherwise, there's no point in interpreting the
> header at all.

As I say above, that's an implementation detail in my opinion.
We can make recommendations in either direction - right now,
I'm just suggesting this explicit message between the transport
endpoints and the network.

Cheers,
Michael