Re: [v6ops] IPv6 EHs Packet Drops (Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-gont-v6ops-ipv6-ehs-packet-drops-02.txt)

[Warren Kumari <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 6:23 AM Philip Homburg <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> >On 02/16/2016 12:13 PM, Warren Kumari wrote:
> >>     The operator adds the number when it is determined to be perfectly
> >>     safe (that I find unlikely for new extension headers) and enough
> people
> >>     are speaking up that the operator is a aware of the problem.
> >>
> >>
> >> This also requires that the application developer makes a judgment call
> >> as to when it is safe to be able to enable this unknown EH.
> >> So, after all middle boxes support "safe-unknown-extension-headers" we
> need:
> >> A: the new unknown EH written
> >> B: someone to be brave enough to try using it (and have it fail in many
> >> / most cases)
> >> C: a large upswell of people going around an poking operators (including
> >> Billybob, who runs the edge middlebox "protecting" Henrys Tire and Wheel
> >> Balancing, Middleburg, VA) to get them to log onto all their devices and
> >> add this new EH to the list of safe things
> >> D: More applications to try using this and have it fail elegantly in
> >> some set of conditions
> >> E: outreach to once again poke Billybob, who replaced his middlebox with
> >> the backup one which lives in the spares closet and wasn't turned on in
> >> step C.
> >> F: application developers to have enough faith that this will work 100%
> >> of the time (keeping in mind that they got bitten in B and D) to turn
> it on.
> >>
> >> This EH would need to provide some *really* compelling benefit to make
> >> this process worthwhile.
> >
> >I think I learned a long-version of the English word "never" (?). :-)
>
> I don't see anything that we do about this at the protocol level.


I fully agree -- and yet we seem to keep trying to...


> Do you want
> to allocate a not-evil bit that can be set on extension headers? "This
> unknown extension header is IETF certified to be not evil, please pass it
> along unchecked".
>
>
That sounds like a grand idea! Let's do that!

More seriously, I think that new EH (and "long" chains") simply won't fly,
that we should admit this and get on with fixing the other issues.
Yes, v6 was supposed to be the grand panacea, curing all ills and being
infinitely extensible - but it turns out that (just like for the
alchemists) the real world gets in the way. Shaking your fists at the gods
and demanding that the world change simply makes your feet sore and your
arm tired :-)

W