nanog mailing list archives

Re: Open relays and open proxies


From: Paul Vixie <paul () vix com>
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 23:33:48 +0000


anyone who was facile with perl could transform a full list of open relays
or proxies into something that avibgpd could use, so that you could have
your access controls implemented as routes rather than acl's.  if you
combine that with policy routing so that you can blackhole traffic based
on source rather than destination, you could get the added benefit of not
having to take/deliver the SYN only to blackhole the resulting SYN-ACK.

But how will the average BGP speaking router deal with an additional half
million routes today or million routes in a few months?  My guess is "not
well"...or do you suggest some form of aggregation that would reduce the
number of routes but penalize the innocent for being in the same
/something as open systems?

i guess i have hopes of discovering a new and better equilibrium point,
such that widely scalable, mechanistic shunning of open proxies would
cause the owners of those hosts to wake up, smell the burning coffee,
and contact their software vendor to demand improved security.

but you're right, a half million additional routes would Break Stuff in
most places.  one could pixelize, aggregate on /28 or /24 boundaries, or
maintain some kind of MRU.  but it's all very hacky compared to "upgrade
the bgp core to be able to handle a million more route$".


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