icmp rpf

Mon Sep 25 13:06:54 UTC 2006

[ Quotations have been reordered for clarity in the reply ]
On 24 Sep 2006, at 22:59, Mark Kent wrote:

> If so, which of these two nets is unreasonable in their actions/ 
> policies?
>

I don't think either are *unreasonable* in what they've done. Both  
actions are prima facie reasonable but have an unforeseen synthesis  
that is undesirable.

> One of the largest North American network providers filters/drops
> ICMP messages so that they only pass those with a source IP
> address that appears in their routing table.
>

This is clearly reasonable as part of an effort to mitigate ICMP  
based network abuse. In fact, I'd argue that it would probably be  
reasonable to drop any packet, not just ICMP, based on its absence  
from the routing table - conditioned on having a full, stable routing  
table.

> A smaller North American network provider, with a modest North
> American backbone, numbers their internal routers on public IP space
> that they do not announce to the world.

Several people have mooted this as good practice on the basis routers  
do not need to be reachable (as an end system) except by legitimate  
managers of those routers (i.e. within the AS in question).

> As a result, traceroutes from big.net into small.net have numerous
> hops that time out.
>
> Traceroutes from elsewhere that go into small.net but return on
> big.net also have numerous hops that time out.
>
> We do all still think that traceroute is important, don't we?
>

On balance, it's small.net that will have to change to rectify this.  
My argument would be:

1) Big.net's approach is wholly legitimate - deny spoofed packets  
transit.

2) Small.net's intentions are good, but they are pseudo-spoofing  
packets.

ICMP packets will, by design, originate from the incoming interface  
used by the packet that triggers the ICMP packet. Thus giving an  
interface an address is implicitly giving that interface the ability  
to source packets with that address to potential anywhere in the  
Internet. If you don't legitimately announce address space then  
sourcing packets with addresses in that space is (one definition of)  
spoofing.

On balance both are acting with good intent, but small.net haven't  
fully seen the consequences for ICMP in their scheme.

> Please note that we're not talking about RFC1918 space, or reserved IP
> space of any kind.   Also, think about the scenario where some failure
> happens leaving big.net with an incomplete routing table, thus  
> breaking
> traceroute when it is perhaps most needed.

Filtering ICMP is always dangerous. If you are going to do it you  
*must* understand the consequences both to yourself and to others,  
and also understand the consequences in both normal situations and  
all possible failure modes. (If I had a penny for every broken PMTU  
detection I'd seen because of someone's over eager filtering of ICMP...)

>
> Thanks,
> -mark