uPRF strict more

Wed Sep 29 17:07:33 UTC 2021

We just ran into a typical case where uRPF caused a partial outage for one of my customers: the customer is multi-homed, with another provider that I'm also connected to.  Customer advertised a longer-prefix to the other guy, so I started sending traffic destined for Customer to the Other Provider... who then promptly dropped it because they had uRPF enabled on the peering link, and they were seeing random source IPs that weren't mine.  Well... yeah, that can happen (semi-legitimately) anytime you have a topological triangle in peering.

I've concluded over the last 2 years that uRPF is only useful on interfaces pointing directly at non-multi-homed customers, and actively dangerous anywhere else.

-Adam

Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
[1593169877849]
100 - 135 Innovation Drive
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8
(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)
athompson at merlin.mb.ca<mailto:athompson at merlin.mb.ca>
www.merlin.mb.ca<http://www.merlin.mb.ca/>
________________________________
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+athompson=merlin.mb.ca at nanog.org> on behalf of Amir Herzberg <amir.lists at gmail.com>
Sent: September 28, 2021 20:06
To: Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
Cc: North American Network Operators' Group <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: Re: uPRF strict more

Randy, great question. I'm teaching that it's very rarely, if ever, used (due to high potential for benign loss); it's always great to be either confirmed or corrected...

So if anyone replies just to Randy - pls cc me too (or, Randy, if you could sum up and send to list or me - thanks!)

Amir
--
Amir Herzberg

Comcast professor of Security Innovations, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut
Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/amirherzberg/home
`Applied Introduction to Cryptography' textbook and lectures: https://sites.google.com/site/amirherzberg/applied-crypto-textbook<https://sites.google.com/site/amirherzberg/applied-crypto-textbook>

On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 8:50 PM Randy Bush <randy at psg.com<mailto:randy at psg.com>> wrote:
do folk use uPRF strict mode?  i always worried about the multi-homed
customer sending packets out the other way which loop back to me;  see
RFC 8704 §2.2

do vendors implement the complexity of 8704; and, if so, do operators
use it?

clue bat please

randy
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