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Re: Do Not Complicate Routing Security with Voodoo Economics


From: Joe Maimon <jmaimon () ttec com>
Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:36:17 -0400



Owen DeLong wrote:

On Sep 5, 2011, at 7:24 AM, Jennifer Rexford wrote:



One could argue that rejecting routes which you previously had no way to
know you should reject will inherently alter the routing system and that this
is probably a good thing.

Good point.  Also, "tie breaking" in favor of signed-and-verified routes over not-signed-and-verified routes does not necessarily 
affect your traffic "positively or negatively" -- rather, if you are letting an arbitrary final tie break make the decision 
anyway, you are arguably *neutral* about the outcome...

-- Jen

This is true in terms of whether you care or not, but, if one just looks at whether it changes the content of the FIB 
or not, changing which arbitrary tie breaker you use likely changes the contents of the FIB in at least some cases.

The key point is that if you are to secure a previously unsecured database such as the routing table, you will inherently be 
changing the contents of said database, or, your security isn't actually accomplishing anything.

Owen



Except if you believe we have been lucky until now and security is all about the future where we may be less lucky.

What I would be interested in seeing is a discussion on whether any anti-competitive market distortion incentives exist for large providers in adopting secured BGP. We might be lucky there too.

Perhaps this will finally help solve the routing slot scalability problem. Might also jumpstart LISP. Which may put some more steam into v6. Welcome to the brave new internet.

Good for everyone, right?

Are you feeling lucky?


Joe


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