Re: [Tofoo] VXLAN (UDP tunnel protocols) and non-zero checksums

This is what VXLAN draft says:

The UDP checksum field SHOULD be transmitted as zero.  When a packet
   is received with a UDP checksum of zero, it MUST be accepted for
   decapsulation.  Optionally, if the encapsulating endpoint includes a
   non-zero UDP checksum, it MUST be correctly calculated across the
   entire packet including the IP header, UDP header, VXLAN header and
   encapsulated MAC frame.  When a decapsulating endpoint receives a
   packet with a non-zero checksum it MAY choose to verify the checksum

value.  If it chooses to perform such verification, and the
   verification fails, the packet MUST be dropped.  If the
   decapsulating destination chooses not to perform the verification,
   or performs it successfully, the packet MUST be accepted for
   decapsulation.

What is wrong with it?

Behcet

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Tom Herbert <therbert@google.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I noticed that the VXLAN draft allows an implementation to potentially
> ignore a non-zero invalid UDP checksum.
>
> From: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mahalingam-dutt-dcops-vxlan-09
>
> "When a decapsulating endpoint receives a packet with a non-zero
> checksum it MAY choose to verify the checksum"
>
> However, from RFC 1122:
>
> "If a UDP datagram is received with a checksum that is non-zero and
> invalid, UDP MUST silently discard the datagram."
>
> It doesn't seem like 1122 allows checksum verification to be optional,
> so these would seem to be a conflict. Presumably, ignoring the RX csum
> is included for performance but since the sender can already send zero
> checksums in UDP (they are optional in IPv4 and allowed for IPv6
> tunnels in RFC 6935) I'm not sure this is necessary. Besides that, the
> UDP checksum is potentially the only thing that protection of the vni
> against corruption end to end so allowing a receiver to ignore a bad
> checksum seems very risky.
>
> As a comparison, RFC 3931 (L2TP) has the following wording:
>
> "Thus, UDP checksums MAY be disabled in order to reduce the associated
> packet processing burden at the L2TP endpoints."
>
> This is somewhat ambiguous, but seems like the correct interpretation
> should be that zero checksums may be sent with L2TP/UDP, but on
> receive non-zero checksums should still be validated.
>
> Are these interpretations correct? Is there there a need to clarify
> the requirement for UDP tunnel protocols and checksums?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom
>
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