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

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 12:46 PM, Behcet Sarikaya
<sarikaya2012@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?
>
This makes the verification of (a non-zero) UDP checksum optional,
which as I pointed out seems contrary to established UDP standard. If
the verification isn't done then the MUST to drop packets with an
invalid checksum is moot. Also, there really should be no reason that
VXLAN needs to define a custom use of UDP checksum. The UDP checksum
is either computed across the UDP payload which should be clear in
VXLAN, or may be zero per using zero checksum in tunneling guidelines.
These should hold for all foo/UDP.

Tom

> 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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>