Re: [v6ops] Mitigation against IPv6 Router Advertisements flooding - draft-moonesamy-ra-flood-limit-00

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi Arturo, David,
At 08:52 05-07-2013, David Farmer wrote:
>I think some kind of applicability statement would be a useful 
>addition to the Draft.

 From an IETF Stream perspective it's difficult to assess how to 
write an applicability statement in this context.

>   I'm less worried about a network operators deciding that they 
> don't need to implement RA-Guard because their hosts implement 
> RA-Flood-Limit.  I'm more concerned about OS vendors or 
> implementors deciding they don't need to implement RA-Flood-Limit 
> because they view this as a network operator issue and if only the 
> network operators would just implement RA-Guard then RA-Flood-Limit 
> wouldn't be necessary.

I see.

>I think it needs to be made clear that both RA-Guard and 
>RA-Flood-Limit are independently necessary to ensure both the 
>security and stability of a network and its hosts.

Let me see if I can write some text to discuss the network versus host angle.

>1. RA-Guard or the other the techniques discussed in RFC6104 can 
>effectively prevent RAs sourced from hosts either by malicious 
>activity or simple miss-configuration.  But, RA-Guard can do little 
>to prevent RAs caused by software or hardware bugs within, or 
>miss-configuration of the network itself.

I prefer not to comment about this. :-)

>2. RA-Flood-Limit prevents the consequences of many different RAs 
>being seen by a host, regardless of the source of those RAs.  But, 
>can not distinguish between the source of the RAs, and may allow 
>malicious configuration of the host.

Yes.

>3. Therefore, implementation of BOTH RA-Guard and RA-Flood-Limit are 
>necessary to ensure BOTH the security and stability of a network and its hosts.

I think that the above looks at the proposal as a solution to the RA 
flooding problem whereas the scope of the proposal is a mitigation to 
a problem which a host may encounter.

At 09:06 05-07-2013, Arturo Servin wrote:
>     I also agree with you that both RA-Guard and RA-Flood-Limit are
>necessary. I think those statements should be added to the draft.

Please see the comment above about the scope.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy