TCP and UDP Port 0 - Should an ISP or ITP Block it?

Tue Aug 25 19:11:46 UTC 2020

On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 8:36 AM Mel Beckman <mel at beckman.org> wrote:

> “SHOULD” is not “SHALL”, and thus this doesn’t countermand RFC 768’s
> instruction “ If not used, a value of zero is inserted." So the key
> question is, when is the source port not used? When a reply is not
> requested, is my thinking. Is there an application that implements this in
> UDP? (it’s nonsensical in TCP, which always requires a handshake, after
> all). I don’t recall one, but I can envision one: sending a one-way
> notification that requires no acknowledgement.
>

There are many applications that send UDP streams that don't expect a reply.

Here's one I worked on at previous $DAYJOB:
https://github.com/yahoo/UDPing

It emits a stream of UDP packets to a measurement box,
which collects the data and reports statistics on it.  No replies
to the UDP probes are sent.

But there's another, more common application that many
people on this list use every day, and indeed was likely the
initial trigger for this thread:
netflow collection.

Your routers emit UDP data streams, destined for a netflow collector box;
no reply is expected (and indeed, no reply is desired; the router is busy
enough *sending* the netflow stream, trying to process replies would just
be another burden on the CPU).

[...]

> I think filtering zero-sourced UDP flies in the face of fundamental
> Internet interoperability.
>
>  -mel
>
>

Indeed.  There are existing applications where the source port of
unidirectional UDP streams
is not used, as no replies are expected, and may be left as zero.

Matt
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20200825/cc740eeb/attachment.html>