md5 for bgp tcp sessions

Thu Jun 23 14:52:35 UTC 2005

On 2005-06-23, at 09:57, Eric Gauthier wrote:

>>> likely need to make modifications to our IGP/EGP setup.  Though  
>>> we filter
>>> OSPF multicast traffic, we wanted to add in MD5 passwords to our
>>> neighbors.
>>
>> just a quick comment here.  i would encourage you not to do that.
>
> Honestly, I completely agree with you that MD5'ing our OSPF  
> adjacencies isn't
> a great idea (I've so far stalled its roll-out).

Just in case it's not obvious to any onlookers here, Eric was talking  
about using MD5 authentication in OSPF adjacencies, and Todd is  
talking about using the TCP MD5 signature option (RFC2385) between  
BGP peers.

They are two different things (although they both involve routing  
protocols and the MD5 algorithm): not all arguments for or against  
one will apply to the other.

Joe