Do Not Complicate Routing Security with Voodoo Economics

Mon Sep 5 15:36:17 UTC 2011

Owen DeLong wrote:
>
> On Sep 5, 2011, at 7:24 AM, Jennifer Rexford wrote:
>
>>
>>>
>>> One could argue that rejecting routes which you previously had no way to
>>> know you should reject will inherently alter the routing system and that this
>>> is probably a good thing.
>>
>> Good point.  Also, "tie breaking" in favor of signed-and-verified routes over not-signed-and-verified routes does not necessarily affect your traffic "positively or negatively" -- rather, if you are letting an arbitrary final tie break make the decision anyway, you are arguably *neutral* about the outcome...
>>
>> -- Jen
>
> This is true in terms of whether you care or not, but, if one just looks at whether it changes the content of the FIB or not, changing which arbitrary tie breaker you use likely changes the contents of the FIB in at least some cases.
>
> The key point is that if you are to secure a previously unsecured database such as the routing table, you will inherently be changing the contents of said database, or, your security isn't actually accomplishing anything.
>
> Owen
>

Except if you believe we have been lucky until now and security is all 
about the future where we may be less lucky.

What I would be interested in seeing is a discussion on whether any 
anti-competitive market distortion incentives exist for large providers 
in adopting secured BGP. We might be lucky there too.

Perhaps this will finally help solve the routing slot scalability 
problem. Might also jumpstart LISP. Which may put some more steam into 
v6. Welcome to the brave new internet.

Good for everyone, right?

Are you feeling lucky?

Joe