nanog mailing list archives

Re: Dropping IPv6 Fragments


From: joel jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:58:36 -0700

On 10/4/12 7:36 AM, Dobbins, Roland wrote:
On Oct 4, 2012, at 9:26 PM, Sander Steffann wrote:

The closer you get to the edge the more common it might become...
iACLs should be implemented at the network edge to drop all IPv4 and IPv6 traffic - including non-initial fragments - 
directed towards point-to-point links, loopbacks, and other internal infrastructure with exceptions made for cases where 
there's a legitimate need for sources outside your network to be able to communicate with your infrastructure.

As mentioned previously on the thread, this has nothing to do with transit data-plane traffic, which should be left 
untouched unless it's specifically classified as attack traffic or other undesirable traffic.

There's an apparently common misperception that fragmented traffic is somehow bad.  It isn't.  It's normal, under most 
circumstances.  Protect your infrastructure proactively, deal with anything else on a case-by-case basis.

So the thing I'd note is that stateless IPV6 ACLs or load balancing provide you with an interesting problem since a fragment does not contain the headers beyond the required unfragmentable headers. it is possible but unlikely that the fragment will hash into the same bucket in a stateless load balancer (using what's left of 5-tuple).

Likewise with the acl I have the property that the initial packet has all the info in it while the fragment does not. I would have to reassemble the packet (which isn't going to happen in the place where the stateless acl is applied) prior to being able to decide to pass it or not (or just pass fragments through that acl).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () arbor net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

          Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.

                       -- John Milton






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