Re: [TLS] DTLS/SCTP and fragmentation

> On 2. Apr 2021, at 23:46, Rick van Rein <rick@openfortress.nl> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I was looking into DTLS/SCTP as a carrier for Diameter.  Lengths in
> Diameter are 24 bit to avoid ever having to bother about that, but when
> run over the preferred DTLS/SCTP carrier this may yet be a concern, so
> that its only option is to fallback to a _separate_ TLS/TCP connection:
> 
>   *  For DTLS over TCP or SCTP, which automatically fragment and
>      reassemble datagrams, there is no PMTU limitation.  However, the
>      upper layer protocol MUST NOT write any record that exceeds the
>      maximum record size of 2^14 bytes.
> 
> SCTP can offer better guarantees than UDP; this relaxation may provide
> leverage to split a large application message into a sequence of DTLS
> frames carried under specific guarantees.
> 
> 1. To handle a larger application message, it is split into pieces
>    of 2^14 bytes, followed by one that has <2^14 (possibly 0) bytes.
>    Fragments are sent to the same stream, without interleaving other
>    content, and in-order.  Upon reception, the DTLS frames are each
>    decoded and the result concatenated to recover the message.
Doesn't that results in head of line blocking?
> 
> 2. Since delivery is reliable for SCTP, it would (also) be possible
>    to send the same sequence number for the fragments.  The sequence
>    number field is not as useful for SCTP as it is for UDP.
> 
> 3. It may be an idea to allocate one stream for all fragmentation.
>    But even within a stream, it is possible to combine in-order and
>    out-of-order.  It is probably good to continue in-order sending
>    until the <2^14 sized DTLS frame is acknowledged.  The application
>    or DTLS handshake may further constrain this.
> 
> These are three possible ways of relaxing this.  If we pick a simple
> one, like the 1st, we might pass more SCTP semantics over to the
> application that wants DTLS but not its size constraints.  What DTLS
> does to Diameter is best resolved.
What about using: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-westerlund-tsvwg-dtls-over-sctp-bis-01

Best regards
Michael
> 
> 
> I hope this is useful,
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rick van Rein
> 
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