Comments on Nalini et al's IPv6 EHs presentation

[nalini.elkins at insidethestack.com]

Fernando,

Thanks for your comments.

We actually tested successfully from quite a few other points while at the HackAThon, including from South Africa to the IETF network.

We will continue our testing and have a draft for v6ops as well as for IEPG for the London IETF.

Two different ISP's have offered us their network to test with.  We are trying to set up a meeting with one of the CDN providers to get logs.  One of the RIR's will get us diagnostic data from their Internet Exchange Points.   One of the major router vendors is also working with us.

The JAMES folks would like to collaborate with us on testing.  We would welcome you joining also.  You have set the initial stage with your fine work.   Let's keep going!   I believe that if we all work together and are in consensus, then we can come up with results that we all agree are valid.    

If anyone else has interest, please contact me, Mike Ackermann or Tommaso Pecorello or catch us in the hallways.  Their emails are in the cc.   We have a lot of work to do!   I can certainly put people to work!!!   Much fun lies ahead!

Nalini Elkins
CEO and Founder
Inside Products, Inc.
www.insidethestack.com
(831) 659-8360






On Monday, July 25, 2022 at 08:25:41 PM PDT, Fernando Gont <fgont at si6networks.com> wrote: 





Hi, folks,

I couldn't make it to the IEPG session (neither in person nor remotely), 
but did watch the videos off-line. Nice to see there's still interest on 
this topic!

Some comments:

* Nalini et al's measurements seem to be from one specific point in the
  network topology, to a very small subset of destination endpoints.
  If anything, the results may indicate that EHs do work on some
  specific paths (we knew they do), but certainly is not an indication
  that they are usable on the public Internet -- i.e., think of
  statistical significance of the measurements, so to speak.

* There doesn't seem to be any practical difference between the probe
  packets that we (RFC7872) sent, vs the ones in this experiment: at
  the end of the day, the network doesn't really care whether the
  packets were crafted by the kernel, or by pcap_inject().

* In RFC7872, we did measure whether EHs are dropped at transit ASes vs.
  the destination AS -- and there's a bit of both. (the probable reasons
  are analyzed in RFC9098)

* Not sure why Nalini refers to other measurements employing "fake
  data"/crafted packets. At the end of the day, From the pov of the
  network, PDM option looks probably like an unsupported option anyway.
  Whereas, on the other hand, we (RFC7872) employed PadN, which is way
  more likely t be supported than PDM.

* You don't really care about the DNS names of the path, but rather
  about their corresponding ASN.

Thanks,
-- 
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
e-mail: fgont at si6networks.com
PGP Fingerprint: 6666 31C6 D484 63B2 8FB1 E3C4 AE25 0D55 1D4E 7492