North American Network Operators Group

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Re: LSR and packet filters

  • From: Hank Nussbacher
  • Date: Sun Sep 14 03:54:16 1997

At 02:37 AM 9/14/97 -0400, Alex \"Mr. Worf\" Yuriev wrote:

>> Quoting Radia Perlman:
>> 
>>  "The goal is to design a network that will guarantee that
>>   a packet transmitted between two nonfaulty end systems A
>>   and B will have a high probability of being delivered,
>>   provided that at least one path consists of nonfaulty
>>   components connects the two end systems. [...] The
>>   network layer makes no attempt to keep conversations
>>   private.  If privacy is necessary, encryption must be
>>   done at a higher layer. Also, the network layer need not
>>   certify data that it delivers.  For instance, it is
>>   possible for some malicious node C to generate data, get
>>   it delivered to B, and claim that the data was from A.
>>   It is up to the higher layer in B to differentiate
>>   between corrupted or counterfeit data and real data,
>>   using known cryptographic techniques".
>
>Well, then he is *WRONG*. Authentication and privacy should be a function
>of the network layer, not the application layer because it is a lot easier
>to attack application layer encryption compared to lower layers.

Radia is a she.  Anyone who has been in this field for more than 2 years
should know that even if you can't guess what tli or pst or Yakov are :-)

-Hank