Re: [TLS] Last Call: <draft-ietf-tls-rfc4347-bis-04.txt> (Datagram Transport Layer Security version 1.2) to Proposed Standard

[Juho Vähä-Herttua <[e-mail]>]

On 20.12.2010, at 15.15, Pekka Savola wrote:
> 3.2.3. Message Size
> 
>   TLS and DTLS handshake messages can be quite large (in theory up to
>   2^24-1 bytes, in practice many kilobytes).  By contrast, UDP
>   datagrams are often limited to <1500 bytes if fragmentation is not
>   desired.  In order to compensate for this limitation, each DTLS
>   handshake message may be fragmented over several DTLS records.  Each
>   DTLS handshake message contains both a fragment offset and a fragment
>   length.
> 
> 4.1.1. Transport Layer Mapping
> 
>   Each DTLS record MUST fit within a single datagram.  In order to
>   avoid fragmentation, clients of the DTLS record layer SHOULD attempt
>   to size records so that they fit within any PMTU estimates obtained
>   from the record layer.
> 
> ... these seem somewhat contradictory.  Maybe I'm missing something.  The
> latter seems to be saying that DTLS implementations should try to avoid IP
> fragmentation, but the former seems to imply that it's de-facto mode of
> operation.

These are not contradictory. If a handshake message size and record header don't fit inside single datagram, it should be fragmented into several small handshake messages and each of these is put into a separate DTLS record. The resulting DTLS record after encryption should not exceed the maximum UDP (or DCCP or whatever) datagram size and therefore doesn't need IP level fragmentation.

I think what you "missed" was simply the difference of IP level fragmentation and DTLS handshake protocol level fragmentation.


Juho