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rfc:rfc2775

Network Working Group B. Carpenter Request for Comments: 2775 IBM Category: Informational February 2000

                       Internet Transparency

Status of this Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
 not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
 memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 This document describes the current state of the Internet from the
 architectural viewpoint, concentrating on issues of end-to-end
 connectivity and transparency. It concludes with a summary of some
 major architectural alternatives facing the Internet network layer.
 This document was used as input to the IAB workshop on the future of
 the network layer held in July 1999. For this reason, it does not
 claim to be complete and definitive, and it refrains from making
 recommendations.

Table of Contents

 1. Introduction.................................................2
 2. Aspects of end-to-end connectivity...........................3
 2.1 The end-to-end argument.....................................3
 2.2 End-to-end performance......................................4
 2.3 End-to-end address transparency.............................4
 3. Multiple causes of loss of transparency......................5
 3.1 The Intranet model..........................................6
 3.2 Dynamic address allocation..................................6
 3.2.1 SLIP and PPP..............................................6
 3.2.2 DHCP......................................................6
 3.3 Firewalls...................................................6
 3.3.1 Basic firewalls...........................................6
 3.3.2 SOCKS.....................................................7
 3.4 Private addresses...........................................7
 3.5 Network address translators.................................7
 3.6 Application level gateways, relays, proxies, and caches.....8
 3.7 Voluntary isolation and peer networks.......................8

Carpenter Informational [Page 1] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 3.8 Split DNS...................................................9
 3.9 Various load-sharing tricks.................................9
 4. Summary of current status and impact.........................9
 5. Possible future directions..................................11
 5.1 Successful migration to IPv6...............................11
 5.2 Complete failure of IPv6...................................12
 5.2.1 Re-allocating the IPv4 address space.....................12
 5.2.2 Exhaustion...............................................13
 5.3 Partial deployment of IPv6.................................13
 6. Conclusion..................................................13
 7. Security Considerations.....................................13
 Acknowledgements...............................................14
 References.....................................................14
 Author's Address...............................................17
 Full Copyright Statement.......................................18

1. Introduction

    "There's a freedom about the Internet: As long as we accept the
     rules of sending packets around, we can send packets containing
     anything to anywhere." [Berners-Lee]
 The Internet is experiencing growing pains which are often referred
 to as "the end-to-end problem". This document attempts to analyse
 those growing pains by reviewing the current state of the network
 layer, especially its progressive loss of transparency. For the
 purposes of this document, "transparency" refers to the original
 Internet concept of a single universal logical addressing scheme, and
 the mechanisms by which packets may flow from source to destination
 essentially unaltered.
 The causes of this loss of transparency are partly artefacts of
 parsimonious allocation of the limited address space available to
 IPv4, and partly the result of broader issues resulting from the
 widespread use of TCP/IP technology by businesses and consumers. For
 example, network address translation is an artefact, but Intranets
 are not.
 Thus the way forward must recognise the fundamental changes in the
 usage of TCP/IP that are driving current Internet growth. In one
 scenario, a complete migration to IPv6 potentially allows the
 restoration of global address transparency, but without removing
 firewalls and proxies from the picture. At the other extreme, a total
 failure of IPv6 leads to complete fragmentation of the network layer,
 with global connectivity depending on endless patchwork.

Carpenter Informational [Page 2] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 This document does not discuss the routing implications of address
 space, nor the implications of quality of service management on
 router state, although both these matters interact with transparency
 to some extent. It also does not substantively discuss namespace
 issues.

2. Aspects of end-to-end connectivity

 The phrase "end to end", often abbreviated as "e2e", is widely used
 in architectural discussions of the Internet. For the purposes of
 this paper, we first present three distinct aspects of end-to-
 endness.

2.1 The end-to-end argument

 This is an argument first described in [Saltzer] and reviewed in [RFC
 1958], from which an extended quotation follows:
    "The basic argument is that, as a first principle, certain
    required end-to-end functions can only be performed correctly by
    the end-systems themselves. A specific case is that any network,
    however carefully designed, will be subject to failures of
    transmission at some statistically determined rate. The best way
    to cope with this is to accept it, and give responsibility for the
    integrity of communication to the end systems. Another specific
    case is end-to-end security.
    "To quote from [Saltzer], 'The function in question can completely
    and correctly be implemented only with the knowledge and help of
    the application standing at the endpoints of the communication
    system.  Therefore, providing that questioned function as a
    feature of the communication system itself is not possible.
    (Sometimes an incomplete version of the function provided by the
    communication system may be useful as a performance enhancement.)'
    "This principle has important consequences if we require
    applications to survive partial network failures. An end-to-end
    protocol design should not rely on the maintenance of state (i.e.
    information about the state of the end-to-end communication)
    inside the network. Such state should be maintained only in the
    endpoints, in such a way that the state can only be destroyed when
    the endpoint itself breaks (known as fate-sharing). An immediate
    consequence of this is that datagrams are better than classical
    virtual circuits.  The network's job is to transmit datagrams as
    efficiently and flexibly as possible.  Everything else should be
    done at the fringes."

Carpenter Informational [Page 3] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 Thus this first aspect of end-to-endness limits what the network is
 expected to do, and clarifies what the end-system is expected to do.
 The end-to-end argument underlies the rest of this document.

2.2 End-to-end performance

 Another aspect, in which the behaviour of the network and that of the
 end-systems interact in a complex way, is performance, in a
 generalised sense. This is not a primary focus of the present
 document, but it is mentioned briefly since it is often referred to
 when discussing end-to-end issues.
 Much work has been done over many years to improve and optimise the
 performance of TCP. Interestingly, this has led to comparatively
 minor changes to TCP itself; [STD 7] is still valid apart from minor
 additions [RFC 1323, RFC 2581, RFC 2018]. However a great deal of
 knowledge about good practice in TCP implementations has built up,
 and the queuing and discard mechanisms in routers have been fine-
 tuned to improve system performance in congested conditions.
 Unfortunately all this experience in TCP performance does not help
 with transport protocols that do not exhibit TCP-like response to
 congestion [RFC 2309]. Also, the requirement for specified quality of
 service for different applications and/or customers has led to much
 new development, especially the Integrated Services [RFC 1633, RFC
 2210] and Differentiated Services [RFC 2475] models. At the same time
 new transport-related protocols have appeared [RFC 1889, RFC 2326] or
 are in discussion in the IETF. It should also be noted that since the
 speed of light is not set by an IETF standard, our current notions of
 end-to-end performance will be largely irrelevant to interplanetary
 networking.
 Thus, despite the fact that performance and congestion issues for TCP
 are now quite well understood, the arrival of QOS mechanisms and of
 new transport protocols raise new questions about end-to-end
 performance, but these are not further discussed here.

2.3 End-to-end address transparency

 When the catenet concept (a network of networks) was first described
 by Cerf in 1978 [IEN 48] following an earlier suggestion by Pouzin in
 1974 [CATENET], a clear assumption was that a single logical address
 space would cover the whole catenet (or Internet as we now know it).
 This applied not only to the early TCP/IP Internet, but also to the
 Xerox PUP design, the OSI connectionless network design, XNS, and
 numerous other proprietary network architectures.

Carpenter Informational [Page 4] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 This concept had two clear consequences - packets could flow
 essentially unaltered throughout the network, and their source and
 destination addresses could be used as unique labels for the end
 systems.
 The first of these consequences is not absolute.  In practice changes
 can be made to packets in transit. Some of these are reversible at
 the destination (such as fragmentation and compression). Others may
 be irreversible (such as changing type of service bits or
 decrementing a hop limit), but do not seriously obstruct the end-to-
 end principle of Section 2.1. However, any change made to a packet in
 transit that requires per-flow state information to be kept at an
 intermediate point would violate the fate-sharing aspect of the end-
 to-end principle.
 The second consequence, using addresses as unique labels, was in a
 sense a side-effect of the catenet concept. However, it was a side-
 effect that came to be highly significant. The uniqueness and
 durability of addresses have been exploited in many ways, in
 particular by incorporating them in transport identifiers.  Thus they
 have been built into transport checksums, cryptographic signatures,
 Web documents, and proprietary software licence servers. [RFC 2101]
 explores this topic in some detail. Its main conclusion is that IPv4
 addresses can no longer be assumed to be either globally unique or
 invariant, and any protocol or applications design that assumes these
 properties will fail unpredictably. Work in the IAB and the NAT
 working group [NAT-ARCH] has analysed the impact of one specific
 cause of non-uniqueness and non-invariance, i.e., network address
 translators. Again the conclusion is that many applications will
 fail, unless they are specifically adapted to avoid the assumption of
 address transparency. One form of adaptation is the insertion of some
 form of application level gateway, and another form is for the NAT to
 modify payloads on the fly, but in either case the adaptation is
 application-specific.
 Non-transparency of addresses is part of a more general phenomenon.
 We have to recognise that the Internet has lost end-to-end
 transparency, and this requires further analysis.

3. Multiple causes of loss of transparency

 This section describes various recent inventions that have led to the
 loss of end-to-end transparency in the Internet.

Carpenter Informational [Page 5] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

3.1 The Intranet model

 Underlying a number of the specific developments mentioned below is
 the concept of an "Intranet", loosely defined as a private corporate
 network using TCP/IP technology, and connected to the Internet at
 large in a carefully controlled manner. The Intranet is presumed to
 be used by corporate employees for business purposes, and to
 interconnect hosts that carry sensitive or confidential information.
 It is also held to a higher standard of operational availability than
 the Internet at large. Its usage can be monitored and controlled, and
 its resources can be better planned and tuned than those of the
 public network. These arguments of security and resource management
 have ensured the dominance of the Intranet model in most corporations
 and campuses.
 The emergence of the Intranet model has had a profound effect on the
 notion of application transparency. Many corporate network managers
 feel it is for them alone to determine which applications can
 traverse the Internet/Intranet boundary. In this world view, address
 transparency may seem to be an unimportant consideration.

3.2 Dynamic address allocation

3.2.1 SLIP and PPP

 It is to be noted that with the advent of vast numbers of dial-up
 Internet users, whose addresses are allocated at dial-up time, and
 whose traffic may be tunneled back to their home ISP, the actual IP
 addresses of such users are purely transient. During their period of
 validity they can be relied on end-to-end, but they must be forgotten
 at the end of every session. In particular they can have no permanent
 association with the domain name of the host borrowing them.

3.2.2 DHCP

 Similarly, LAN-based users of the Internet today frequently use DHCP
 to acquire a new address at system restart, so here again the actual
 value of the address is potentially transient and must not be stored
 between sessions.

3.3 Firewalls

3.3.1 Basic firewalls

 Intranet managers have a major concern about security: unauthorised
 traffic must be kept out of the Intranet at all costs. This concern
 led directly to the firewall concept (a system that intercepts all
 traffic between the Internet and the Intranet, and only lets through

Carpenter Informational [Page 6] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 selected traffic, usually belonging to a very limited set of
 applications). Firewalls, by their nature, fundamentally limit
 transparency.

3.3.2 SOCKS

 A footnote to the effect of firewalls is the SOCKS mechanism [RFC
 1928] by which untrusted applications such as telnet and ftp can
 punch through a firewall.  SOCKS requires a shim library in the
 Intranet client, and a server in the firewall which is essentially an
 application level relay. As a result, the remote server does not see
 the real client; it believes that the firewall is the client.

3.4 Private addresses

 When the threat of IPv4 address exhaustion first arose, and in some
 cases user sites were known to be "pirating" addresses for private
 use, a set of official private addresses were hurriedly allocated
 [RFC 1597] and later more carefully defined [BCP 5].  The legitimate
 existence of such an address allocation proved to very appealing, so
 Intranets with large numbers of non-global addresses came into
 existence. Unfortunately, such addresses by their nature cannot be
 used for communication across the public Internet; without special
 measures, hosts using private addresses are cut off from the world.
 Note that private address space is sometimes asserted to be a
 security feature, based on the notion that outside knowledge of
 internal addresses might help intruders. This is a false argument,
 since it is trivial to hide addresses by suitable access control
 lists, even if they are globally unique - indeed that is a basic
 feature of a filtering router, the simplest form of firewall. A
 system with a hidden address is just as private as a system with a
 private address.  There is of course no possible point in hiding the
 addresses of servers to which outside access is required.
 It is also worth noting that the IPv6 equivalent of private
 addresses, i.e. site-local addresses, have similar characteristics to
 BCP 5 addresses, but their use will not be forced by a lack of
 globally unique IPv6 addresses.

3.5 Network address translators

 Network address translators (NATs) are an almost inevitable
 consequence of the existence of Intranets using private addresses yet
 needing to communicate with the Internet at large. Their
 architectural implications are discussed at length in [NAT-ARCH], the
 fundamental point being that address translation on the fly destroys
 end-to-end address transparency and breaks any middleware or

Carpenter Informational [Page 7] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 applications that depend on it. Numerous protocols, for example
 H.323, carry IP addresses at application level and fail to traverse a
 simple NAT box correctly. If the full range of Internet applications
 is to be used, NATs have to be coupled with application level
 gateways (ALGs) or proxies. Furthermore, the ALG or proxy must be
 updated whenever a new address-dependent application comes along.  In
 practice, NAT functionality is built into many firewall products, and
 all useful NATs have associated ALGs, so it is difficult to
 disentangle their various impacts.

3.6 Application level gateways, relays, proxies, and caches

 It is reasonable to position application level gateways, relays,
 proxies, and caches at certain critical topological points,
 especially the Intranet/Internet boundary.  For example, if an
 Intranet does not use SMTP as its mail protocol, an SMTP gateway is
 needed. Even in the normal case, an SMTP relay is common, and can
 perform useful mail routing functions, spam filtering, etc. (It may
 be observed that spam filtering is in some ways a firewall function,
 but the store-and-forward nature of electronic mail and the
 availability of MX records allow it to be a distinct and separate
 function.)
 Similarly, for a protocol such as HTTP with a well-defined voluntary
 proxy mechanism, application proxies also serving as caches are very
 useful. Although these devices interfere with transparency, they do
 so in a precise way, correctly terminating network, transport and
 application protocols on both sides. They can however exhibit some
 shortfalls in ease of configuration and failover.
 However, there appear to be cases of "involuntary" applications level
 devices such as proxies that grab and modify HTTP traffic without
 using the appropriate mechanisms, sometimes known as "transparent
 caches", or mail relays that purport to remove undesirable words.
 These devices are by definition not transparent, and may have totally
 unforeseeable side effects.  (A possible conclusion is that even for
 non-store-and-forward protocols, a generic diversion mechanism
 analogous to the MX record would be of benefit. The SRV record [RFC
 2052] is a step in this direction.)

3.7 Voluntary isolation and peer networks

 There are communities that think of themselves as being so different
 that they require isolation via an explicit proxy, and even by using
 proprietary protocols and addressing schemes within their network. An
 example is the WAP Forum which targets very small phone-like devices
 with some capabilities for Internet connectivity. However, it's not

Carpenter Informational [Page 8] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 the Internet they're connecting directly to. They have to go through
 a proxy. This could potentially mean that millions of devices will
 never know the benefits of end-to-end connectivity to the Internet.
 A similar effect arises when applications such as telephony span both
 an IP network and a peer network layer using a different technology.
 Although the application may work end-to-end, there is no possibility
 of end-to-end packet transmission.

3.8 Split DNS

 Another consequence of the Intranet/Internet split is "split DNS" or
 "two faced DNS", where a corporate network serves up partly or
 completely different DNS inside and outside its firewall. There are
 many possible variants on this; the basic point is that the
 correspondence between a given FQDN (fully qualified domain name) and
 a given IPv4 address is no longer universal and stable over long
 periods.

3.9 Various load-sharing tricks

 IPv4 was not designed to support anycast [RFC 1546], so there is no
 natural approach to load-sharing when one server cannot do the job.
 Various tricks have been used to resolve this (multicast to find a
 free server, the DNS returns different addresses for the same FQDN in
 a round-robin, a router actually routes packets sent to the same
 address automatically to different servers, etc.). While these tricks
 are not particularly harmful in the overall picture, they can be
 implemented in such a way as to interfere with name or address
 transparency.

4. Summary of current status and impact

 It is impossible to estimate with any numerical reliability how
 widely the above inventions have been deployed. Since many of them
 preserve the illusion of transparency while actually interfering with
 it, they are extremely difficult to measure.
 However it is certain that all the mechanisms just described are in
 very widespread use; they are not a marginal phenomenon. In corporate
 networks, many of them are the norm. Some of them (firewalls, relays,
 proxies and caches) clearly have intrinsic value given the Intranet
 concept. The others are largely artefacts and pragmatic responses to
 various pressures in the operational Internet, and they must be
 costing the industry very dearly in constant administration and
 complex fault diagnosis.

Carpenter Informational [Page 9] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 In particular, the decline of transparency is having a severe effect
 on deployment of end-to-end IP security. The Internet security model
 [SECMECH] calls for security at several levels (roughly, network,
 applications, and object levels).  The current network level security
 model [RFC 2401] was constructed prior to the recognition that end-
 to-end address transparency was under severe threat.  Although
 alternative proposals have begun to emerge [HIP] the current reality
 is that IPSEC cannot be deployed end-to-end in the general case.
 Tunnel-mode IPSEC can be deployed between corporate gateways or
 firewalls.  Transport-mode IPSEC can be deployed within a corporate
 network in some cases, but it cannot span from Intranet to Internet
 and back to another Intranet if there is any chance of a NAT along
 the way.
 Indeed, NAT breaks other security mechanisms as well, such as DNSSEC
 and Kerberos, since they rely on address values.
 The loss of transparency brought about by private addresses and NATs
 affects many applications protocols to a greater or lesser extent.
 This is explored in detail in [NAT-PROT]. A more subtle effect is
 that the prevalence of dynamic addresses (from DHCP, SLIP and PPP)
 has fed upon the trend towards client/server computing.  Today it is
 largely true that servers have fixed addresses, clients have dynamic
 addresses, and servers can in no way assume that a client's IP
 address identifies the client. On the other hand, clients rely on
 servers having stable addresses since a DNS lookup is the only
 generally deployed mechanism by which a client can find a server and
 solicit service.  In this environment, there is little scope for true
 peer-to-peer applications protocols, and no easy solution for mobile
 servers. Indeed, the very limited demand for Mobile IP might be
 partly attributed to the market dominance of client/server
 applications in which the client's address is of transient
 significance. We also see a trend towards single points of failure
 such as media gateways, again resulting from the difficulty of
 implementing peer-to-peer solutions directly between clients with no
 fixed address.
 The notion that servers can use precious globally unique addresses
 from a small pool, because there will always be fewer servers than
 clients, may become anachronistic when most electrical devices become
 network-manageable and thus become servers for a management protocol.
 Similarly, if every PC becomes a telephone (or the converse), capable
 of receiving unsolicited incoming calls, the lack of stable IP
 addresses for PCs will be an issue. Another impending paradigm shift
 is when domestic and small-office subscribers move from dial-up to
 always-on Internet connectivity, at which point transient address
 assignment from a pool becomes much less appropriate.

Carpenter Informational [Page 10] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 Many of the inventions described in the previous section lead to the
 datagram traffic between two hosts being directly or indirectly
 mediated by at least one other host. For example a client may depend
 on a DHCP server, a server may depend on a NAT, and any host may
 depend on a firewall. This violates the fate-sharing principle of
 [Saltzer] and introduces single points of failure. Worse, most of
 these points of failure require configuration data, yet another
 source of operational risk. The original notion that datagrams would
 find their way around failures, especially around failed routers, has
 been lost; indeed the overloading of border routers with additional
 functions has turned them into critical rather than redundant
 components, even for multihomed sites.
 The loss of address transparency has other negative effects.  For
 example, large scale servers may use heuristics or even formal
 policies that assign different priorities to service for different
 clients, based on their addresses. As addresses lose their global
 meaning, this mechanism will fail. Similarly, any anti-spam or anti-
 spoofing techniques that rely on reverse DNS lookup of address values
 can be confused by translated addresses. (Uncoordinated renumbering
 can have similar disadvantages.)
 The above issues are not academic. They add up to complexity in
 applications design, complexity in network configuration, complexity
 in security mechanisms, and complexity in network management.
 Specifically, they make fault diagnosis much harder, and by
 introducing more single points of failure, they make faults more
 likely to occur.

5. Possible future directions

5.1 Successful migration to IPv6

 In this scenario, IPv6 becomes fully implemented on all hosts and
 routers, including the adaptation of middleware, applications, and
 management systems. Since the address space then becomes big enough
 for all conceivable needs, address transparency can be restored.
 Transport-mode IPSEC can in principle deploy, given adequate security
 policy tools and a key infrastructure.  However, it is widely
 believed that the Intranet/firewall model will certainly persist.
 Note that it is a basic assumption of IPv6 that no artificial
 constraints will be placed on the supply of addresses, given that
 there are so many of them. Current practices by which some ISPs
 strongly limit the number of IPv4 addresses per client will have no
 reason to exist for IPv6. (However, addresses will still be assigned
 prudently, according to guidelines designed to favour hierarchical
 routing.)

Carpenter Informational [Page 11] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 Clearly this is in any case a very long term scenario, since it
 assumes that IPv4 has declined to the point where IPv6 is required
 for universal connectivity. Thus, a viable version of Scenario 5.3 is
 a prerequisite for Scenario 5.1.

5.2 Complete failure of IPv6

 In this scenario, IPv6 fails to reach any significant level of
 operational deployment, IPv4 addressing is the only available
 mechanism, and address transparency cannot be restored. IPSEC cannot
 be deployed globally in its current form. In the very long term, the
 pool of globally unique IPv4 addresses will be nearly totally
 allocated, and new addresses will generally not be available for any
 purpose.
 It is unclear exactly what is likely to happen if the Internet
 continues to rely exclusively on IPv4, because in that eventuality a
 variety of schemes are likely to promulgated, with a view toward
 providing an acceptable evolutionary path for the network. However,
 we can examine two of the more simplistic sub-scenarios which are
 possible, while realising that the future would be unlikely to match
 either one exactly:

5.2.1 Re-allocating the IPv4 address space

 Suppose that a mechanism is created to continuously recover and re-
 allocate IPv4 addresses. A single global address space is maintained,
 with all sites progressively moving to an Intranet private address
 model, with global addresses being assigned temporarily from a pool
 of several billion.
 5.2.1.1 A sub-sub-scenario of this is generalised use of NAT and NAPT
         (NAT with port number translation). This has the disadvantage
         that the host is unaware of the unique address being used for
         its traffic, being aware only of its ambiguous private
         address, with all the problems that this generates. See
         [NAT-ARCH].
 5.2.1.2 Another sub-sub-scenario is the use of realm-specific IP
         addressing implemented at the host rather than by a NAT box.
         See [RSIP]. In this case the host is aware of its unique
         address, allowing for substantial restoration of the end-to-
         end usefulness of addresses, e.g. for TCP or cryptographic
         checksums.

Carpenter Informational [Page 12] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 5.2.1.3 A final sub-sub-scenario is the "map and encapsulate" model
         in which address translation is replaced by systematic
         encapsulation of all packets for wide-area transport.  This
         model has never been fully developed, although it is
         completely compatible with end-to-end addressing.

5.2.2 Exhaustion

 Suppose that no mechanism is created to recover addresses (except
 perhaps black or open market trading). Sites with large address
 blocks keep them.  All the scenarios of 5.2.1 appear but are
 insufficient.  Eventually the global address space is no longer
 adequate.  This is a nightmare scenario - NATs appear within the
 "global" address space, for example at ISP-ISP boundaries. It is
 unclear how a global routing system and a global DNS system can be
 maintained; the Internet is permanently fragmented.

5.3 Partial deployment of IPv6

 In this scenario, IPv6 is completely implemented but only deploys in
 certain segments of the network (e.g. in certain countries, or in
 certain areas of application such as mobile hand-held devices).
 Instead of being transitional in nature, some of the IPv6 transition
 techniques become permanent features of the landscape. Sometimes
 addresses are 32 bits, sometimes they are 128 bits. DNS lookups may
 return either or both. In the 32 bit world, the scenarios 5.2.1 and
 5.2.2 may occur. IPSEC can only deploy partially.

6. Conclusion

 None of the above scenarios is clean, simple and straightforward.
 Although the pure IPv6 scenario is the cleanest and simplest, it is
 not straightforward to reach it. The various scenarios without use of
 IPv6 are all messy and ultimately seem to lead to dead ends of one
 kind or another. Partial deployment of IPv6, which is a required step
 on the road to full deployment, is also messy but avoids the dead
 ends.

7. Security Considerations

 The loss of transparency is both a bug and a feature from the
 security viewpoint. To the extent that it prevents the end-to-end
 deployment of IPSEC, it damages security and creates vulnerabilities.
 For example, if a standard NAT box is in the path, then the best that
 can be done is to decrypt and re-encrypt IP traffic in the NAT.  The
 traffic will therefore be momentarily in clear text and potentially
 vulnerable. Furthermore, the NAT will possess many keys and will be a
 prime target of attack.  In environments where this is unacceptable,

Carpenter Informational [Page 13] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 encryption must be applied above the network layer instead, of course
 with no usage whatever of IP addresses in data that is
 cryptographically protected. See section 4 for further discussion.
 In certain scenarios, i.e. 5.1 (full IPv6) and 5.2.1.2 (RSIP), end-
 to-end IPSEC would become possible, especially using the "distributed
 firewalls" model advocated in [Bellovin].
 The loss of transparency at the Intranet/Internet boundary may be
 considered a security feature, since it provides a well defined point
 at which to apply restrictions. This form of security is subject to
 the "crunchy outside, soft inside" risk, whereby any successful
 penetration of the boundary exposes the entire Intranet to trivial
 attack. The lack of end-to-end security applied within the Intranet
 also ignores insider threats.
 It should be noted that security applied above the transport level,
 such as SSL, SSH, PGP or S/MIME, is not affected by network layer
 transparency issues.

Acknowledgements

 This document and the related issues have been discussed extensively
 by the IAB. Special thanks to Steve Deering for a detailed review and
 to Noel Chiappa. Useful comments or ideas were also received from Rob
 Austein, John Bartas, Jim Bound, Scott Bradner, Vint Cerf, Spencer
 Dawkins, Anoop Ghanwani, Erik Guttmann, Eric A. Hall, Graham Klyne,
 Dan Kohn, Gabriel Montenegro, Thomas Narten, Erik Nordmark, Vern
 Paxson, Michael Quinlan, Eric Rosen, Daniel Senie, Henning
 Schulzrinne, Bill Sommerfeld, and George Tsirtsis.

References

 [Bellovin]    Distributed Firewalls, S. Bellovin, available at
               http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/distfw.pdf or
               http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/distfw.ps (work
               in progress).
 [Berners-Lee] Weaving the Web, T. Berners-Lee, M. Fischetti,
               HarperCollins, 1999, p 208.
 [Saltzer]     End-To-End Arguments in System Design, J.H. Saltzer,
               D.P.Reed, D.D.Clark, ACM TOCS, Vol 2, Number 4,
               November 1984, pp 277-288.
 [IEN 48]      Cerf, V., "The Catenet Model for Internetworking,"
               Information Processing Techniques Office, Defense
               Advanced Research Projects Agency, IEN 48, July 1978.

Carpenter Informational [Page 14] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 [CATENET]     Pouzin, L., "A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet
               Switching Networks," Proceedings of EUROCOMP, Brunel
               University, May 1974, pp. 1023-36.
 [STD 7]       Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC
               793, September 1981.
 [RFC 1546]    Partridge, C., Mendez, T. and  W. Milliken,  "Host
               Anycasting Service", RFC 1546, November 1993.
 [RFC 1597]    Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D. and G. de
               Groot, "Address Allocation for Private Internets", RFC
               1597, March 1994.
 [RFC 1633]    Braden, R., Clark, D. and S. Shenker, "Integrated
               Services in the Internet Architecture: an Overview",
               RFC 1633, June 1994.
 [RFC 1889]    Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R. and V.
               Jacobson, "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time
               Applications", RFC 1889, January 1996.
 [BCP 5]       Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D., de Groot,
               G.  and E. Lear, "Address Allocation for Private
               Internets", BCP 5, RFC 1918, February 1996.
 [RFC 1928]    Leech, M., Ganis, M., Lee, Y., Kuris, R., Koblas, D.
               and L. Jones, "SOCKS Protocol Version 5", RFC 1928,
               March 1996.
 [RFC 1958]    Carpenter, B., "Architectural Principles of the
               Internet", RFC 1958, June 1996.
 [RFC 2018]    Mathis, M., Mahdavi, J., Floyd, S. and A. Romanow, "TCP
               Selective Acknowledgement Options", RFC 2018, October
               1996.
 [RFC 2052]    Gulbrandsen, A. and P. Vixie, "A DNS RR for specifying
               the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2052, October
               1996.
 [RFC 2101]    Carpenter, B., Crowcroft, J. and Y. Rekhter, "IPv4
               Address Behaviour Today", RFC 2101, February 1997.
 [RFC 2210]    Wroclawski, J., "The Use of RSVP with IETF Integrated
               Services", RFC 2210, September 1997.

Carpenter Informational [Page 15] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

 [RFC 2309]    Braden, B., Clark, D., Crowcroft, J., Davie, B.,
               Deering, S., Estrin, D., Floyd, S., Jacobson, V.,
               Minshall, G., Partridge, C., Peterson, L.,
               Ramakrishnan, K., Shenker, S., Wroclawski, J. and L.
               Zhang, "Recommendations on Queue Management and
               Congestion Avoidance in the Internet", RFC 2309, April
               1998.
 [RFC 2326]    Schulzrinne, H., Rao, A. and R. Lanphier, "Real Time
               Streaming Protocol (RTSP)", RFC 2326, April 1998.
 [RFC 2401]    Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for
               the Internet Protocol", RFC 2401, November 1998.
 [RFC 2475]    Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.
               and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
               Service", RFC 2475, December 1998.
 [RFC 2581]    Allman, M., Paxson, V. and W. Stevens, "TCP Congestion
               Control", RFC 2581, April 1999.
 [NAT-ARCH]    Hain, T., "Architectural Implications of NAT", Work in
               Progress.
 [NAT-PROT]    Holdrege, M. and P. Srisuresh, "Protocol Complications
               with the IP Network Address Translator (NAT)", Work in
               Progress.
 [SECMECH]     Bellovin, S., "Security Mechanisms for the Internet",
               Work in Progress.
 [RSIP]        Lo, J., Borella, M. and D. Grabelsky, "Realm Specific
               IP: A Framework", Work in Progress.
 [HIP]         Moskowitz, R., "The Host Identity Payload", Work in
               Progress.

Carpenter Informational [Page 16] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

Author's Address

 Brian E. Carpenter
 IBM
 c/o iCAIR
 Suite 150
 1890 Maple Avenue
 Evanston, IL 60201
 USA
 EMail: brian@icair.org

Carpenter Informational [Page 17] RFC 2775 Internet Transparency February 2000

Full Copyright Statement

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 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
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Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
 Internet Society.

Carpenter Informational [Page 18]

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