ip-precedence for management traffic

Steven Bellovin smb at cs.columbia.edu
Tue Dec 29 15:08:54 UTC 2009


On Dec 29, 2009, at 9:29 AM, Sachs, Marcus Hans (Marc) wrote:

> Totally out of the box, but here goes:  why don't we run the entire Internet management plane "out of band" so that customers have minimal ability to interact with routing updates, layer 3/4 protocols, DNS, etc.?  I don't mean 100% exclusion for all customers, but for the average Joe-customer (residential, business, etc., not the researcher, network operator, or clueful content provider) do they really need to have full access to the Internet mechanisms (routing, naming, numbering, etc.)?
> 
> We already provide lots of proxy services for end users, so why not finish the job and move all of the management mechanisms out of plain sight?

I hope you're joking.  If not, I have two questions: how can this be done, and what will the side-effects be?

Take BGP, for example.  The average residential consumer doesn't need BGP, doesn't speak it, and has no real ability to interfere with it, so there's no problem.  But a multihomed customer *must* speak it.  Perhaps you could assert that their ISPs should announce it -- but why trust random ISPs?  Is that ISP 12 hops away from you trustworthy, or a front for the Elbonian Business Network?

As for side-effects -- how can you proxy everything?  Do you know every application your customers are running?  Must someone who invents a new app first develop a proxy and persuade every ISP that it's safe, secure, high-enough performance, and worth their while to run?  It's worth remembering that most of the innovative applications have come from folks whom no one had ever heard of.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb









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