Vyatta as a BRAS

Wed Jul 14 14:27:15 UTC 2010

On Jul 14, 2010, at 8:59 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:

> There might be contractual reasons not to enable that feature. 8-/

Ignoring is generally pretty harmless; dropping can break traceroute, RSVP, et. al.

Conversely, there are also generally pretty strong contractual reasons not to have one's edge routers go down due to excessive punts.

;>

> Some vendors can process options in hardware, though.

True.

> It's probably not a high-priority issue for vendors until there are
> network issues (as opposed to potential problems seen in labs),

This is always true when it comes to security, and especially to availability.  That being said, I know that at least one major vendor is cognizant of the header-extenstion issue, and is taking steps to mitigate the associated risk.

> so it's going to take quite a bit of time.

Yes, this is always the case, unfortunately.

>  Demand for devices with some IP-layer inspection capability that can handle (Fast or Gigabit)
> Ethernet at line rate, no matter what type of frames come in, is also
> a pretty recent thing, and I would be surprised if vendors can provide
> such capabilities across their entire relevant product line (where
> they advertise line-based forwarding).

With large vendors, these things are generally accomplished piecemeal, on a BU-by-BY, product-by-product basis.  Unfortunate, but true, nonetheless.

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