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

This idea of simply ignoring the checksum value was dicussed and 
rejected in the analysis described in rfc6936. Appendix A2.6 describes 
the reasons why this was not recommended.

Gorry

On 30/04/2014 20:01, Tom Herbert 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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