|
|
|
|
|
|
IETF RFC 2775
Internet Transparency
Last modified on Friday, February 11th, 2000
 Permanent link to RFC 2775
 Search GitHub Wiki for RFC 2775
 Show other RFCs mentioning RFC 2775
Network Working Group B. Carpenter
Request for Comments: 2775 IBM
Category: Informational February 2000
Internet Transparency
 Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright © The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes the current state of the Internet from the
architectural viewpoint, concentrating on issues of end-to-end
connectivity and transparency. It concludes with a summary of some
major architectural alternatives facing the Internet network layer.
This document was used as input to the IAB workshop on the future of
the network layer held in July 1999. For this reason, it does not
claim to be complete and definitive, and it refrains from making
recommendations.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction.................................................2
2. Aspects of end-to-end connectivity...........................3
2.1 The end-to-end argument.....................................3
2.2 End-to-end performance......................................4
2.3 End-to-end address transparency.............................4
3. Multiple causes of loss of transparency......................5
3.1 The Intranet model..........................................6
3.2 Dynamic address allocation..................................6
3.2.1 SLIP and PPP..............................................6
3.2.2 DHCP......................................................6
3.3 Firewalls...................................................6
3.3.1 Basic firewalls...........................................6
3.3.2 SOCKS.....................................................7
3.4 Private addresses...........................................7
3.5 Network address translators.................................7
3.6 Application level gateways, relays, proxies, and caches.....8
3.7 Voluntary isolation and peer networks.......................8
Carpenter Informational PAGE 1 
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
3.8 Split DNS...................................................9
3.9 Various load-sharing tricks.................................9
4. Summary of current status and impact.........................9
5. Possible future directions..................................11
5.1 Successful migration to IPv6...............................11
5.2 Complete failure of IPv6...................................12
5.2.1 Re-allocating the IPv4 address space.....................12
5.2.2 Exhaustion...............................................13
5.3 Partial deployment of IPv6.................................13
6. Conclusion..................................................13
7. Security Considerations.....................................13
Acknowledgements...............................................14
References.....................................................14
Author's Address...............................................17
Full Copyright Statement.......................................18
1. Introduction
"There's a freedom about the Internet: As long as we accept the
rules of sending packets around, we can send packets containing
anything to anywhere." [Berners-Lee]
The Internet is experiencing growing pains which are often referred
to as "the end-to-end problem". This document attempts to analyse
those growing pains by reviewing the current state of the network
layer, especially its progressive loss of transparency. For the
purposes of this document, "transparency" refers to the original
Internet concept of a single universal logical addressing scheme, and
the mechanisms by which packets may flow from source to destination
essentially unaltered.
The causes of this loss of transparency are partly artefacts of
parsimonious allocation of the limited address space available to
IPv4, and partly the result of broader issues resulting from the
widespread use of TCP/IP technology by businesses and consumers. For
example, network address translation is an artefact, but Intranets
are not.
Thus the way forward must recognise the fundamental changes in the
usage of TCP/IP that are driving current Internet growth. In one
scenario, a complete migration to IPv6 potentially allows the
restoration of global address transparency, but without removing
firewalls and proxies from the picture. At the other extreme, a total
failure of IPv6 leads to complete fragmentation of the network layer,
with global connectivity depending on endless patchwork.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 2
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
This document does not discuss the routing implications of address
space, nor the implications of quality of service management on
router state, although both these matters interact with transparency
to some extent. It also does not substantively discuss namespace
issues.
2. Aspects of end-to-end connectivity
The phrase "end to end", often abbreviated as "e2e", is widely used
in architectural discussions of the Internet. For the purposes of
this paper, we first present three distinct aspects of end-to-
endness.
2.1 The end-to-end argument
This is an argument first described in [Saltzer] and reviewed in [RFC
1958], from which an extended quotation follows:
"The basic argument is that, as a first principle, certain
required end-to-end functions can only be performed correctly by
the end-systems themselves. A specific case is that any network,
however carefully designed, will be subject to failures of
transmission at some statistically determined rate. The best way
to cope with this is to accept it, and give responsibility for the
integrity of communication to the end systems. Another specific
case is end-to-end security.
"To quote from [Saltzer], 'The function in question can completely
and correctly be implemented only with the knowledge and help of
the application standing at the endpoints of the communication
system. Therefore, providing that questioned function as a
feature of the communication system itself is not possible.
(Sometimes an incomplete version of the function provided by the
communication system may be useful as a performance enhancement.)'
"This principle has important consequences if we require
applications to survive partial network failures. An end-to-end
protocol design should not rely on the maintenance of state (i.e.
information about the state of the end-to-end communication)
inside the network. Such state should be maintained only in the
endpoints, in such a way that the state can only be destroyed when
the endpoint itself breaks (known as fate-sharing). An immediate
consequence of this is that datagrams are better than classical
virtual circuits. The network's job is to transmit datagrams as
efficiently and flexibly as possible. Everything else should be
done at the fringes."
Carpenter Informational PAGE 3
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
Thus this first aspect of end-to-endness limits what the network is
expected to do, and clarifies what the end-system is expected to do.
The end-to-end argument underlies the rest of this document.
2.2 End-to-end performance
Another aspect, in which the behaviour of the network and that of the
end-systems interact in a complex way, is performance, in a
generalised sense. This is not a primary focus of the present
document, but it is mentioned briefly since it is often referred to
when discussing end-to-end issues.
Much work has been done over many years to improve and optimise the
performance of TCP. Interestingly, this has led to comparatively
minor changes to TCP itself; [STD 7] is still valid apart from minor
additions [RFC 1323, RFC 2581, RFC 2018]. However a great deal of
knowledge about good practice in TCP implementations has built up,
and the queuing and discard mechanisms in routers have been fine-
tuned to improve system performance in congested conditions.
Unfortunately all this experience in TCP performance does not help
with transport protocols that do not exhibit TCP-like response to
congestion [RFC 2309]. Also, the requirement for specified quality of
service for different applications and/or customers has led to much
new development, especially the Integrated Services [RFC 1633, RFC
2210] and Differentiated Services [RFC 2475] models. At the same time
new transport-related protocols have appeared [RFC 1889, RFC 2326] or
are in discussion in the IETF. It should also be noted that since the
speed of light is not set by an IETF standard, our current notions of
end-to-end performance will be largely irrelevant to interplanetary
networking.
Thus, despite the fact that performance and congestion issues for TCP
are now quite well understood, the arrival of QOS mechanisms and of
new transport protocols raise new questions about end-to-end
performance, but these are not further discussed here.
2.3 End-to-end address transparency
When the catenet concept (a network of networks) was first described
by Cerf in 1978 [IEN 48] following an earlier suggestion by Pouzin in
1974 [CATENET], a clear assumption was that a single logical address
space would cover the whole catenet (or Internet as we now know it).
This applied not only to the early TCP/IP Internet, but also to the
Xerox PUP design, the OSI connectionless network design, XNS, and
numerous other proprietary network architectures.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 4
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
This concept had two clear consequences - packets could flow
essentially unaltered throughout the network, and their source and
destination addresses could be used as unique labels for the end
systems.
The first of these consequences is not absolute. In practice changes
can be made to packets in transit. Some of these are reversible at
the destination (such as fragmentation and compression). Others may
be irreversible (such as changing type of service bits or
decrementing a hop limit), but do not seriously obstruct the end-to-
end principle of Section 2.1. However, any change made to a packet in
transit that requires per-flow state information to be kept at an
intermediate point would violate the fate-sharing aspect of the end-
to-end principle.
The second consequence, using addresses as unique labels, was in a
sense a side-effect of the catenet concept. However, it was a side-
effect that came to be highly significant. The uniqueness and
durability of addresses have been exploited in many ways, in
particular by incorporating them in transport identifiers. Thus they
have been built into transport checksums, cryptographic signatures,
Web documents, and proprietary software licence servers. [RFC 2101]
explores this topic in some detail. Its main conclusion is that IPv4
addresses can no longer be assumed to be either globally unique or
invariant, and any protocol or applications design that assumes these
properties will fail unpredictably. Work in the IAB and the NAT
working group [NAT-ARCH] has analysed the impact of one specific
cause of non-uniqueness and non-invariance, i.e., network address
translators. Again the conclusion is that many applications will
fail, unless they are specifically adapted to avoid the assumption of
address transparency. One form of adaptation is the insertion of some
form of application level gateway, and another form is for the NAT to
modify payloads on the fly, but in either case the adaptation is
application-specific.
Non-transparency of addresses is part of a more general phenomenon.
We have to recognise that the Internet has lost end-to-end
transparency, and this requires further analysis.
3. Multiple causes of loss of transparency
This section describes various recent inventions that have led to the
loss of end-to-end transparency in the Internet.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 5
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
3.1 The Intranet model
Underlying a number of the specific developments mentioned below is
the concept of an "Intranet", loosely defined as a private corporate
network using TCP/IP technology, and connected to the Internet at
large in a carefully controlled manner. The Intranet is presumed to
be used by corporate employees for business purposes, and to
interconnect hosts that carry sensitive or confidential information.
It is also held to a higher standard of operational availability than
the Internet at large. Its usage can be monitored and controlled, and
its resources can be better planned and tuned than those of the
public network. These arguments of security and resource management
have ensured the dominance of the Intranet model in most corporations
and campuses.
The emergence of the Intranet model has had a profound effect on the
notion of application transparency. Many corporate network managers
feel it is for them alone to determine which applications can
traverse the Internet/Intranet boundary. In this world view, address
transparency may seem to be an unimportant consideration.
3.2 Dynamic address allocation
3.2.1 SLIP and PPP
It is to be noted that with the advent of vast numbers of dial-up
Internet users, whose addresses are allocated at dial-up time, and
whose traffic may be tunneled back to their home ISP, the actual IP
addresses of such users are purely transient. During their period of
validity they can be relied on end-to-end, but they must be forgotten
at the end of every session. In particular they can have no permanent
association with the domain name of the host borrowing them.
3.2.2 DHCP
Similarly, LAN-based users of the Internet today frequently use DHCP
to acquire a new address at system restart, so here again the actual
value of the address is potentially transient and must not be stored
between sessions.
3.3 Firewalls
3.3.1 Basic firewalls
Intranet managers have a major concern about security: unauthorised
traffic must be kept out of the Intranet at all costs. This concern
led directly to the firewall concept (a system that intercepts all
traffic between the Internet and the Intranet, and only lets through
Carpenter Informational PAGE 6
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
selected traffic, usually belonging to a very limited set of
applications). Firewalls, by their nature, fundamentally limit
transparency.
3.3.2 SOCKS
A footnote to the effect of firewalls is the SOCKS mechanism [RFC
1928] by which untrusted applications such as telnet and ftp can
punch through a firewall. SOCKS requires a shim library in the
Intranet client, and a server in the firewall which is essentially an
application level relay. As a result, the remote server does not see
the real client; it believes that the firewall is the client.
3.4 Private addresses
When the threat of IPv4 address exhaustion first arose, and in some
cases user sites were known to be "pirating" addresses for private
use, a set of official private addresses were hurriedly allocated
[RFC 1597] and later more carefully defined [BCP 5]. The legitimate
existence of such an address allocation proved to very appealing, so
Intranets with large numbers of non-global addresses came into
existence. Unfortunately, such addresses by their nature cannot be
used for communication across the public Internet; without special
measures, hosts using private addresses are cut off from the world.
Note that private address space is sometimes asserted to be a
security feature, based on the notion that outside knowledge of
internal addresses might help intruders. This is a false argument,
since it is trivial to hide addresses by suitable access control
lists, even if they are globally unique - indeed that is a basic
feature of a filtering router, the simplest form of firewall. A
system with a hidden address is just as private as a system with a
private address. There is of course no possible point in hiding the
addresses of servers to which outside access is required.
It is also worth noting that the IPv6 equivalent of private
addresses, i.e. site-local addresses, have similar characteristics to
BCP 5 addresses, but their use will not be forced by a lack of
globally unique IPv6 addresses.
3.5 Network address translators
Network address translators (NATs) are an almost inevitable
consequence of the existence of Intranets using private addresses yet
needing to communicate with the Internet at large. Their
architectural implications are discussed at length in [NAT-ARCH], the
fundamental point being that address translation on the fly destroys
end-to-end address transparency and breaks any middleware or
Carpenter Informational PAGE 7
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
applications that depend on it. Numerous protocols, for example
H.323, carry IP addresses at application level and fail to traverse a
simple NAT box correctly. If the full range of Internet applications
is to be used, NATs have to be coupled with application level
gateways (ALGs) or proxies. Furthermore, the ALG or proxy must be
updated whenever a new address-dependent application comes along. In
practice, NAT functionality is built into many firewall products, and
all useful NATs have associated ALGs, so it is difficult to
disentangle their various impacts.
3.6 Application level gateways, relays, proxies, and caches
It is reasonable to position application level gateways, relays,
proxies, and caches at certain critical topological points,
especially the Intranet/Internet boundary. For example, if an
Intranet does not use SMTP as its mail protocol, an SMTP gateway is
needed. Even in the normal case, an SMTP relay is common, and can
perform useful mail routing functions, spam filtering, etc. (It may
be observed that spam filtering is in some ways a firewall function,
but the store-and-forward nature of electronic mail and the
availability of MX records allow it to be a distinct and separate
function.)
Similarly, for a protocol such as HTTP with a well-defined voluntary
proxy mechanism, application proxies also serving as caches are very
useful. Although these devices interfere with transparency, they do
so in a precise way, correctly terminating network, transport and
application protocols on both sides. They can however exhibit some
shortfalls in ease of configuration and failover.
However, there appear to be cases of "involuntary" applications level
devices such as proxies that grab and modify HTTP traffic without
using the appropriate mechanisms, sometimes known as "transparent
caches", or mail relays that purport to remove undesirable words.
These devices are by definition not transparent, and may have totally
unforeseeable side effects. (A possible conclusion is that even for
non-store-and-forward protocols, a generic diversion mechanism
analogous to the MX record would be of benefit. The SRV record [RFC
2052] is a step in this direction.)
3.7 Voluntary isolation and peer networks
There are communities that think of themselves as being so different
that they require isolation via an explicit proxy, and even by using
proprietary protocols and addressing schemes within their network. An
example is the WAP Forum which targets very small phone-like devices
with some capabilities for Internet connectivity. However, it's not
Carpenter Informational PAGE 8
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
the Internet they're connecting directly to. They have to go through
a proxy. This could potentially mean that millions of devices will
never know the benefits of end-to-end connectivity to the Internet.
A similar effect arises when applications such as telephony span both
an IP network and a peer network layer using a different technology.
Although the application may work end-to-end, there is no possibility
of end-to-end packet transmission.
3.8 Split DNS
Another consequence of the Intranet/Internet split is "split DNS" or
"two faced DNS", where a corporate network serves up partly or
completely different DNS inside and outside its firewall. There are
many possible variants on this; the basic point is that the
correspondence between a given FQDN (fully qualified domain name) and
a given IPv4 address is no longer universal and stable over long
periods.
3.9 Various load-sharing tricks
IPv4 was not designed to support anycast [RFC 1546], so there is no
natural approach to load-sharing when one server cannot do the job.
Various tricks have been used to resolve this (multicast to find a
free server, the DNS returns different addresses for the same FQDN in
a round-robin, a router actually routes packets sent to the same
address automatically to different servers, etc.). While these tricks
are not particularly harmful in the overall picture, they can be
implemented in such a way as to interfere with name or address
transparency.
4. Summary of current status and impact
It is impossible to estimate with any numerical reliability how
widely the above inventions have been deployed. Since many of them
preserve the illusion of transparency while actually interfering with
it, they are extremely difficult to measure.
However it is certain that all the mechanisms just described are in
very widespread use; they are not a marginal phenomenon. In corporate
networks, many of them are the norm. Some of them (firewalls, relays,
proxies and caches) clearly have intrinsic value given the Intranet
concept. The others are largely artefacts and pragmatic responses to
various pressures in the operational Internet, and they must be
costing the industry very dearly in constant administration and
complex fault diagnosis.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 9
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
In particular, the decline of transparency is having a severe effect
on deployment of end-to-end IP security. The Internet security model
[SECMECH] calls for security at several levels (roughly, network,
applications, and object levels). The current network level security
model [RFC 2401] was constructed prior to the recognition that end-
to-end address transparency was under severe threat. Although
alternative proposals have begun to emerge [HIP] the current reality
is that IPSEC cannot be deployed end-to-end in the general case.
Tunnel-mode IPSEC can be deployed between corporate gateways or
firewalls. Transport-mode IPSEC can be deployed within a corporate
network in some cases, but it cannot span from Intranet to Internet
and back to another Intranet if there is any chance of a NAT along
the way.
Indeed, NAT breaks other security mechanisms as well, such as DNSSEC
and Kerberos, since they rely on address values.
The loss of transparency brought about by private addresses and NATs
affects many applications protocols to a greater or lesser extent.
This is explored in detail in [NAT-PROT]. A more subtle effect is
that the prevalence of dynamic addresses (from DHCP, SLIP and PPP)
has fed upon the trend towards client/server computing. Today it is
largely true that servers have fixed addresses, clients have dynamic
addresses, and servers can in no way assume that a client's IP
address identifies the client. On the other hand, clients rely on
servers having stable addresses since a DNS lookup is the only
generally deployed mechanism by which a client can find a server and
solicit service. In this environment, there is little scope for true
peer-to-peer applications protocols, and no easy solution for mobile
servers. Indeed, the very limited demand for Mobile IP might be
partly attributed to the market dominance of client/server
applications in which the client's address is of transient
significance. We also see a trend towards single points of failure
such as media gateways, again resulting from the difficulty of
implementing peer-to-peer solutions directly between clients with no
fixed address.
The notion that servers can use precious globally unique addresses
from a small pool, because there will always be fewer servers than
clients, may become anachronistic when most electrical devices become
network-manageable and thus become servers for a management protocol.
Similarly, if every PC becomes a telephone (or the converse), capable
of receiving unsolicited incoming calls, the lack of stable IP
addresses for PCs will be an issue. Another impending paradigm shift
is when domestic and small-office subscribers move from dial-up to
always-on Internet connectivity, at which point transient address
assignment from a pool becomes much less appropriate.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 10
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
Many of the inventions described in the previous section lead to the
datagram traffic between two hosts being directly or indirectly
mediated by at least one other host. For example a client may depend
on a DHCP server, a server may depend on a NAT, and any host may
depend on a firewall. This violates the fate-sharing principle of
[Saltzer] and introduces single points of failure. Worse, most of
these points of failure require configuration data, yet another
source of operational risk. The original notion that datagrams would
find their way around failures, especially around failed routers, has
been lost; indeed the overloading of border routers with additional
functions has turned them into critical rather than redundant
components, even for multihomed sites.
The loss of address transparency has other negative effects. For
example, large scale servers may use heuristics or even formal
policies that assign different priorities to service for different
clients, based on their addresses. As addresses lose their global
meaning, this mechanism will fail. Similarly, any anti-spam or anti-
spoofing techniques that rely on reverse DNS lookup of address values
can be confused by translated addresses. (Uncoordinated renumbering
can have similar disadvantages.)
The above issues are not academic. They add up to complexity in
applications design, complexity in network configuration, complexity
in security mechanisms, and complexity in network management.
Specifically, they make fault diagnosis much harder, and by
introducing more single points of failure, they make faults more
likely to occur.
5. Possible future directions
5.1 Successful migration to IPv6
In this scenario, IPv6 becomes fully implemented on all hosts and
routers, including the adaptation of middleware, applications, and
management systems. Since the address space then becomes big enough
for all conceivable needs, address transparency can be restored.
Transport-mode IPSEC can in principle deploy, given adequate security
policy tools and a key infrastructure. However, it is widely
believed that the Intranet/firewall model will certainly persist.
Note that it is a basic assumption of IPv6 that no artificial
constraints will be placed on the supply of addresses, given that
there are so many of them. Current practices by which some ISPs
strongly limit the number of IPv4 addresses per client will have no
reason to exist for IPv6. (However, addresses will still be assigned
prudently, according to guidelines designed to favour hierarchical
routing.)
Carpenter Informational PAGE 11
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
Clearly this is in any case a very long term scenario, since it
assumes that IPv4 has declined to the point where IPv6 is required
for universal connectivity. Thus, a viable version of Scenario 5.3 is
a prerequisite for Scenario 5.1.
5.2 Complete failure of IPv6
In this scenario, IPv6 fails to reach any significant level of
operational deployment, IPv4 addressing is the only available
mechanism, and address transparency cannot be restored. IPSEC cannot
be deployed globally in its current form. In the very long term, the
pool of globally unique IPv4 addresses will be nearly totally
allocated, and new addresses will generally not be available for any
purpose.
It is unclear exactly what is likely to happen if the Internet
continues to rely exclusively on IPv4, because in that eventuality a
variety of schemes are likely to promulgated, with a view toward
providing an acceptable evolutionary path for the network. However,
we can examine two of the more simplistic sub-scenarios which are
possible, while realising that the future would be unlikely to match
either one exactly:
5.2.1 Re-allocating the IPv4 address space
Suppose that a mechanism is created to continuously recover and re-
allocate IPv4 addresses. A single global address space is maintained,
with all sites progressively moving to an Intranet private address
model, with global addresses being assigned temporarily from a pool
of several billion.
5.2.1.1 A sub-sub-scenario of this is generalised use of NAT and NAPT
(NAT with port number translation). This has the disadvantage
that the host is unaware of the unique address being used for
its traffic, being aware only of its ambiguous private
address, with all the problems that this generates. See
[NAT-ARCH].
5.2.1.2 Another sub-sub-scenario is the use of realm-specific IP
addressing implemented at the host rather than by a NAT box.
See [RSIP]. In this case the host is aware of its unique
address, allowing for substantial restoration of the end-to-
end usefulness of addresses, e.g. for TCP or cryptographic
checksums.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 12
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
5.2.1.3 A final sub-sub-scenario is the "map and encapsulate" model
in which address translation is replaced by systematic
encapsulation of all packets for wide-area transport. This
model has never been fully developed, although it is
completely compatible with end-to-end addressing.
5.2.2 Exhaustion
Suppose that no mechanism is created to recover addresses (except
perhaps black or open market trading). Sites with large address
blocks keep them. All the scenarios of 5.2.1 appear but are
insufficient. Eventually the global address space is no longer
adequate. This is a nightmare scenario - NATs appear within the
"global" address space, for example at ISP-ISP boundaries. It is
unclear how a global routing system and a global DNS system can be
maintained; the Internet is permanently fragmented.
5.3 Partial deployment of IPv6
In this scenario, IPv6 is completely implemented but only deploys in
certain segments of the network (e.g. in certain countries, or in
certain areas of application such as mobile hand-held devices).
Instead of being transitional in nature, some of the IPv6 transition
techniques become permanent features of the landscape. Sometimes
addresses are 32 bits, sometimes they are 128 bits. DNS lookups may
return either or both. In the 32 bit world, the scenarios 5.2.1 and
5.2.2 may occur. IPSEC can only deploy partially.
6. Conclusion
None of the above scenarios is clean, simple and straightforward.
Although the pure IPv6 scenario is the cleanest and simplest, it is
not straightforward to reach it. The various scenarios without use of
IPv6 are all messy and ultimately seem to lead to dead ends of one
kind or another. Partial deployment of IPv6, which is a required step
on the road to full deployment, is also messy but avoids the dead
ends.
7. Security Considerations
The loss of transparency is both a bug and a feature from the
security viewpoint. To the extent that it prevents the end-to-end
deployment of IPSEC, it damages security and creates vulnerabilities.
For example, if a standard NAT box is in the path, then the best that
can be done is to decrypt and re-encrypt IP traffic in the NAT. The
traffic will therefore be momentarily in clear text and potentially
vulnerable. Furthermore, the NAT will possess many keys and will be a
prime target of attack. In environments where this is unacceptable,
Carpenter Informational PAGE 13
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
encryption must be applied above the network layer instead, of course
with no usage whatever of IP addresses in data that is
cryptographically protected. See section 4 for further discussion.
In certain scenarios, i.e. 5.1 (full IPv6) and 5.2.1.2 (RSIP), end-
to-end IPSEC would become possible, especially using the "distributed
firewalls" model advocated in [Bellovin].
The loss of transparency at the Intranet/Internet boundary may be
considered a security feature, since it provides a well defined point
at which to apply restrictions. This form of security is subject to
the "crunchy outside, soft inside" risk, whereby any successful
penetration of the boundary exposes the entire Intranet to trivial
attack. The lack of end-to-end security applied within the Intranet
also ignores insider threats.
It should be noted that security applied above the transport level,
such as SSL, SSH, PGP or S/MIME, is not affected by network layer
transparency issues.
Acknowledgements
This document and the related issues have been discussed extensively
by the IAB. Special thanks to Steve Deering for a detailed review and
to Noel Chiappa. Useful comments or ideas were also received from Rob
Austein, John Bartas, Jim Bound, Scott Bradner, Vint Cerf, Spencer
Dawkins, Anoop Ghanwani, Erik Guttmann, Eric A. Hall, Graham Klyne,
Dan Kohn, Gabriel Montenegro, Thomas Narten, Erik Nordmark, Vern
Paxson, Michael Quinlan, Eric Rosen, Daniel Senie, Henning
Schulzrinne, Bill Sommerfeld, and George Tsirtsis.
References
[Bellovin] Distributed Firewalls, S. Bellovin, available at
http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/distfw.pdf or
http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/distfw.ps (work
in progress).
[Berners-Lee] Weaving the Web, T. Berners-Lee, M. Fischetti,
HarperCollins, 1999, p 208.
[Saltzer] End-To-End Arguments in System Design, J.H. Saltzer,
D.P.Reed, D.D.Clark, ACM TOCS, Vol 2, Number 4,
November 1984, pp 277-288.
[IEN 48] Cerf, V., "The Catenet Model for Internetworking,"
Information Processing Techniques Office, Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, IEN 48, July 1978.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 14
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
[CATENET] Pouzin, L., "A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet
Switching Networks," Proceedings of EUROCOMP, Brunel
University, May 1974, pp. 1023-36.
[STD 7] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC
793, September 1981.
[RFC 1546] Partridge, C., Mendez, T. and W. Milliken, "Host
Anycasting Service", RFC 1546, November 1993.
[RFC 1597] Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D. and G. de
Groot, "Address Allocation for Private Internets", RFC
1597, March 1994.
[RFC 1633] Braden, R., Clark, D. and S. Shenker, "Integrated
Services in the Internet Architecture: an Overview",
RFC 1633, June 1994.
[RFC 1889] Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R. and V.
Jacobson, "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time
Applications", RFC 1889, January 1996.
[BCP 5] Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D., de Groot,
G. and E. Lear, "Address Allocation for Private
Internets", BCP 5, RFC 1918, February 1996.
[RFC 1928] Leech, M., Ganis, M., Lee, Y., Kuris, R., Koblas, D.
and L. Jones, "SOCKS Protocol Version 5", RFC 1928,
March 1996.
[RFC 1958] Carpenter, B., "Architectural Principles of the
Internet", RFC 1958, June 1996.
[RFC 2018] Mathis, M., Mahdavi, J., Floyd, S. and A. Romanow, "TCP
Selective Acknowledgement Options", RFC 2018, October
1996.
[RFC 2052] Gulbrandsen, A. and P. Vixie, "A DNS RR for specifying
the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2052, October
1996.
[RFC 2101] Carpenter, B., Crowcroft, J. and Y. Rekhter, "IPv4
Address Behaviour Today", RFC 2101, February 1997.
[RFC 2210] Wroclawski, J., "The Use of RSVP with IETF Integrated
Services", RFC 2210, September 1997.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 15
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
[RFC 2309] Braden, B., Clark, D., Crowcroft, J., Davie, B.,
Deering, S., Estrin, D., Floyd, S., Jacobson, V.,
Minshall, G., Partridge, C., Peterson, L.,
Ramakrishnan, K., Shenker, S., Wroclawski, J. and L.
Zhang, "Recommendations on Queue Management and
Congestion Avoidance in the Internet", RFC 2309, April
1998.
[RFC 2326] Schulzrinne, H., Rao, A. and R. Lanphier, "Real Time
Streaming Protocol (RTSP)", RFC 2326, April 1998.
[RFC 2401] Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for
the Internet Protocol", RFC 2401, November 1998.
[RFC 2475] Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.
and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
Service", RFC 2475, December 1998.
[RFC 2581] Allman, M., Paxson, V. and W. Stevens, "TCP Congestion
Control", RFC 2581, April 1999.
[NAT-ARCH] Hain, T., "Architectural Implications of NAT", Work in
Progress.
[NAT-PROT] Holdrege, M. and P. Srisuresh, "Protocol Complications
with the IP Network Address Translator (NAT)", Work in
Progress.
[SECMECH] Bellovin, S., "Security Mechanisms for the Internet",
Work in Progress.
[RSIP] Lo, J., Borella, M. and D. Grabelsky, "Realm Specific
IP: A Framework", Work in Progress.
[HIP] Moskowitz, R., "The Host Identity Payload", Work in
Progress.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 16
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
Author's Address
Brian E. Carpenter
IBM
c/o iCAIR
Suite 150
1890 Maple Avenue
Evanston, IL 60201
USA
EMail: brian@icair.org
Carpenter Informational PAGE 17
RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright © The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Carpenter Informational PAGE 18
Internet Transparency
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 42956 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Friday, February 11th, 2000
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
|
