North American Network Operators Group

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Re: backbone transparent proxy / connection hijacking

  • From: Paul Vixie
  • Date: Mon Jun 29 13:07:42 1998

Uh, watch out, there are packet flow descriptions here.  I'm sorry to
post something non-legal-related and non-inflammatory.  If there's a
better list for technical issues, someone please point me at it :-)...

> As far as the asmetric routing issue, the traffic INSIDE the ISP isn't
> asmetric, and shouldn't need to be cached.  I don't really see the
> problem here.  (But it could be me.)

That's true but only depending on how you look at it.  If the client and
server are in the same IGP there is probably no benefit to be had from
transparent caching -- though replication and optimal redirection would
still have a place, at least in the larger IGP's.

But if one end of the connection is outside the IGP (and it doesn't matter
whether this end is the client or the server), and if the IGP has multiple
border gateways, then hot potato routing really screws you since the two
connections inside the TCP stream can potentially take different paths.

If a stream is going to be intercepted, it must be by a device which sits
in the path of both connections, since the sequence numbers of a connection
are used in the ACK fields of the other connection.  If you can do your
interception in your customer's "tail" (the part of the customer's data
path where all ingress and egress still uses the same links/routers) you're
OK.  But if you're sending a customer's segments out one path, which is
intercepted by one device, and the ACKs or other inbound segments come in
via some other path, which is not intercepted or is intercepted by some
different device, then you are pretty much screwed.(*)

This is one reason out of several why transparent caching is an access side
issue, and why the server side caching has to be done with something more
robust like replication and redirection.

[ (*) yes I know the two devices can synch their sequence numbers with a back
  channel, or use predictable ones, but that slope is so slippery that it may
  as well be paved with vaseline -- let's just not go there, OK? ]
-- 
Paul Vixie
La Honda, CA			"Many NANOG members have been around
<[email protected]>			 longer than most." --Jim Fleming
pacbell!vixie!paul		 (An H.323 GateKeeper for the IPv8 Network)