LOAs for Cross Connects - Something like PeeringDB for XC

Mon Feb 22 19:01:17 UTC 2021

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 1:39 PM Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>
> > are you asking about something like this:
> >   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-spaghetti-sidrops-rpki-rsc/
> >
> > Which COULD be used to, as an AS holder:
> >   "sign something to be sent between you and the colo and your intended peer"
> >
> > that you could sign (with your rpki stuffs) and your peer could also
> > sign with their 'rpki stuffs', and which the colo provider could
> > automatically validate and action upon final signature(s) received.
>
> chris,
>
> way back, the rirs were very insistant that their use of rpki authority
> was most emphatically not to be considered an identity service.  this
> permeated the design; e.g., organization names were specifically
> forbidden in certificate CN, Subject Alternative Name, etc.
>

yup, I agree... though the b2b stuff George/Geoff have written up LOOKS like
it could be useful for this LOA type discussion. The spaghetti draft appears
to also fill this niche...

Neither are particularly rooted in the RPKI except that the CA certs are being
used as a method to attest that a 'thing' exists, and that something signed
that 'thing' as proof of knowledge (I guess, really). Effectively this is:
  1) I am 'ca-foo' in a tree that you can trust knows I am 'foo'.
  2) I signed this blob (LOA)
  3) I asked jane at bar.com to sign as well
  4) you can verify me (because rpki tree) and you can verify Jane because she's
      also using her RPKI ca cert.

this may be a little cumbersome to sort through, especially if all parties here
aren't party to the RPKI (did equinix plumb the RPKI into their customer portal
and all of the things required to make a x-connect work in this manner?), but I
imagine that if this gets wings it could be automated and it could be reliable
and all parties (except the colo folks perhaps?) may already have incentives
in places to use their RPKI goop for this function.

-chris

> aside: of course a few rirs thought that *their* names should be in
> their certs as exeptions.  i remember the laughter.
>
> randy
>
> ---
> randy at psg.com
> `gpg --locate-external-keys --auto-key-locate wkd randy at psg.com`
> signatures are back, thanks to dmarc header mangling