netdev - Re: [PATCHv2 net-next 3/3] xfrm: Add file to document IPsec corner case

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Message-ID: <20131216094622.GF31491@secunet.com>
Date:	Mon, 16 Dec 2013 10:46:22 +0100
From:	Steffen Klassert <steffen.klassert@...unet.com>
To:	Fan Du <fan.du@...driver.com>
Cc:	davem@...emloft.net, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCHv2 net-next 3/3] xfrm: Add file to document IPsec corner
 case

On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 05:19:54PM +0800, Fan Du wrote:
> Create Documentation/networking/ipsec.txt to document IPsec
> corner issues and other info, which will be useful when user
> deploying IPsec.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Fan Du <fan.du@...driver.com>
> ---
>  Documentation/networking/ipsec.txt |   40 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 40 insertions(+)
>  create mode 100644 Documentation/networking/ipsec.txt
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/networking/ipsec.txt b/Documentation/networking/ipsec.txt
> new file mode 100644
> index 0000000..3b02806
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/Documentation/networking/ipsec.txt
> @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
> +
> +Here documents known IPsec corner cases which need to be keep in mind when
> +deploy various IPsec configuration in real world production environment.
> +
> +1. IPcomp: Small IP packet won't get compressed at sender, and failed on
> +	   policy check on receiver.
> +
> +Quote from RFC3173:
> +2.2. Non-Expansion Policy
> +
> +   If the total size of a compressed payload and the IPComp header, as
> +   defined in section 3, is not smaller than the size of the original
> +   payload, the IP datagram MUST be sent in the original non-compressed
> +   form.  To clarify: If an IP datagram is sent non-compressed, no
> +
> +   IPComp header is added to the datagram.  This policy ensures saving
> +   the decompression processing cycles and avoiding incurring IP
> +   datagram fragmentation when the expanded datagram is larger than the
> +   MTU.
> +
> +   Small IP datagrams are likely to expand as a result of compression.
> +   Therefore, a numeric threshold should be applied before compression,
> +   where IP datagrams of size smaller than the threshold are sent in the
> +   original form without attempting compression.  The numeric threshold
> +   is implementation dependent.
> +
> +Current IPComp implementation is indeed by the book, while as in practice
> +when sending non-compressed packet to the peer(whether or not packet len
> +is smaller than the threshold or the compressed len is large than original
> +packet len), the packet is dropped when checking the policy as this packet
> +matches the selector but not coming from any XFRM layer, i.e., with no
> +security path. Such naked packet will not eventually make it to upper layer.
> +The result is much more wired to the user when ping peer with different
> +payload length.
> +
> +One workaround is try to set "level use" for each policy if user observed
> +above scenario. The consequence of doing so is small packet(uncompressed)
> +will skip policy checking on receiver side.
> +
> +

Please remove the empty lines at the end of the file.

Also, it might be good to mention what the user exactly
has configure do to get a workaround.
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