Subject: RE: [midcom] draft-brim-midcom-inandout-00.txt

From: Mark Duffy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 12:58:13 -0400

At 09:40 AM 9/14/01 -0700, Christian Huitema wrote:
>> I meant "forward the packet".  I am talking about a middlebox with
>> exactly
>> 2 interfaces that has no idea what IP addresses are "inside" or what
>> addresses are "outside".  It has no knowledge of topology or routing
>> information except that one of the interfaces connects to "inside" and
>> the
>> other to "outside".  Packets received by it are processed for
>> middlebox
>> services then (assuming not dropped by the middlebox) transmitted on
>> whichever of its 2 interfaces the packet was not received on.  I
>> believe
>> there are middleboxes of this sort.  I  believe such a middlebox would
>> be
>> incapable of implementing your draft since it could not determine by
>> examining target or informant addresses whether they resided inside or
>> outside.
>
>I don't know of such things, and I don't believe we have to support them
>anyhow. Let's keep some focus: our primary concern is NAT and firewalls,
>and then boxes that look them. We do not have a requirement to enable
>any wacko box that someone may invent.
>
>-- Christian Huitema

I believe that what I described is a basic legacy Fw or nat box.  Perhaps
my description was flawed.

Do you believe then that all middleboxes of concern to midcom either:
a) Have a routing table, or
b) Know the prefix/mask for each of their interfaces AND are not used in
topologies where the NAT/security/etc domains contain other prefixes
reached via routers (and therefore unknown to the mb).

It may well be true that we can assume either a or b holds true.  But to me
at least it is not patently obvious.

- Mark

_______________________________________________
midcom mailing list
[email-masked]
http://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/midcom