IP Block 99/8 (DHS insanity - offtopic)

Tue Apr 24 03:02:21 UTC 2007

Thus spake <bmanning at karoshi.com>
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 05:23:03PM -0400, Sandy Murphy wrote:
>> You might try taking a look at the various presentations at
>> NANOG/RIPE/ARIN/APNIC/APRICOT about the whole idea.
>> Central point: the entity that gives you a suballocation of its
>> own address space signs something that says you now hold it.
>>
>> No governments involved.
>
> no problemo...  when i hand out a block of space, i'll expect
> my clients to hand me a DS record ...  then I sign the DS.
> and I'll hand a DS to my parent, which they sign.
> That works a treat.... today (if you run current code)
> and gives you exactly what you describe above.

That roughly matches what I expect, but the process seems backwards.  If 
IANA hands, say, 99/8 to ARIN, I'd expect that to come with a certificate 
saying so.  Then, if ARIN hands 99.1/16 to an ISP, they'd hand a certificate 
saying so to the ISP, which could be linked somehow to ARIN's authority to 
issue certificates under 99/8.  And so on down the line.  Then, when the 
final holder advertises their 99.1.1/24 route via BGP, receivers would check 
that it was signed by a certificate that had a verifiable path all the way 
back to IANA.

Of course, one must be prepared to accept unsigned routes since they'll be 
the majority for a long time, which means you still run afoul of the 
longest-match rule.  If someone has a signed route for 99.1/16, and someone 
else has unsigned routes for one or more (or all) of 99.1.0/24 through 
99.1.255/24, what do you do?  Do you block an unsigned route from entering 
the FIB if there's a signed aggregate present?  Doesn't that break common 
forms of TE and multihoming?  If you don't, doesn't that defeat signing in 
general since hijackers would merely need to use longer routes than the real 
holders of the space?

To paraphrase Barbie, "security is hard; let's go shopping!"

S

Stephen Sprunk      "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723         are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS                                             --Isaac Asimov 