Network Working Group                                      B. Carpenter
Request for Comments: 2775                                          IBM
Category: Informational                                   February 2000


                        Internet Transparency

Status of this Memo

  This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
  not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
  memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

  This document describes the current state of the Internet from the
  architectural viewpoint, concentrating on issues of end-to-end
  connectivity and transparency. It concludes with a summary of some
  major architectural alternatives facing the Internet network layer.

  This document was used as input to the IAB workshop on the future of
  the network layer held in July 1999. For this reason, it does not
  claim to be complete and definitive, and it refrains from making
  recommendations.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction.................................................2
  2. Aspects of end-to-end connectivity...........................3
  2.1 The end-to-end argument.....................................3
  2.2 End-to-end performance......................................4
  2.3 End-to-end address transparency.............................4
  3. Multiple causes of loss of transparency......................5
  3.1 The Intranet model..........................................6
  3.2 Dynamic address allocation..................................6
  3.2.1 SLIP and PPP..............................................6
  3.2.2 DHCP......................................................6
  3.3 Firewalls...................................................6
  3.3.1 Basic firewalls...........................................6
  3.3.2 SOCKS.....................................................7
  3.4 Private addresses...........................................7
  3.5 Network address translators.................................7
  3.6 Application level gateways, relays, proxies, and caches.....8
  3.7 Voluntary isolation and peer networks.......................8



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  3.8 Split DNS...................................................9
  3.9 Various load-sharing tricks.................................9
  4. Summary of current status and impact.........................9
  5. Possible future directions..................................11
  5.1 Successful migration to IPv6...............................11
  5.2 Complete failure of IPv6...................................12
  5.2.1 Re-allocating the IPv4 address space.....................12
  5.2.2 Exhaustion...............................................13
  5.3 Partial deployment of IPv6.................................13
  6. Conclusion..................................................13
  7. Security Considerations.....................................13
  Acknowledgements...............................................14
  References.....................................................14
  Author's Address...............................................17
  Full Copyright Statement.......................................18

1. Introduction

     "There's a freedom about the Internet: As long as we accept the
      rules of sending packets around, we can send packets containing
      anything to anywhere." [Berners-Lee]

  The Internet is experiencing growing pains which are often referred
  to as "the end-to-end problem". This document attempts to analyse
  those growing pains by reviewing the current state of the network
  layer, especially its progressive loss of transparency. For the
  purposes of this document, "transparency" refers to the original
  Internet concept of a single universal logical addressing scheme, and
  the mechanisms by which packets may flow from source to destination
  essentially unaltered.

  The causes of this loss of transparency are partly artefacts of
  parsimonious allocation of the limited address space available to
  IPv4, and partly the result of broader issues resulting from the
  widespread use of TCP/IP technology by businesses and consumers. For
  example, network address translation is an artefact, but Intranets
  are not.

  Thus the way forward must recognise the fundamental changes in the
  usage of TCP/IP that are driving current Internet growth. In one
  scenario, a complete migration to IPv6 potentially allows the
  restoration of global address transparency, but without removing
  firewalls and proxies from the picture. At the other extreme, a total
  failure of IPv6 leads to complete fragmentation of the network layer,
  with global connectivity depending on endless patchwork.






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  This document does not discuss the routing implications of address
  space, nor the implications of quality of service management on
  router state, although both these matters interact with transparency
  to some extent. It also does not substantively discuss namespace
  issues.

2. Aspects of end-to-end connectivity

  The phrase "end to end", often abbreviated as "e2e", is widely used
  in architectural discussions of the Internet. For the purposes of
  this paper, we first present three distinct aspects of end-to-
  endness.

2.1 The end-to-end argument

  This is an argument first described in [Saltzer] and reviewed in [RFC
  1958], from which an extended quotation follows:

     "The basic argument is that, as a first principle, certain
     required end-to-end functions can only be performed correctly by
     the end-systems themselves. A specific case is that any network,
     however carefully designed, will be subject to failures of
     transmission at some statistically determined rate. The best way
     to cope with this is to accept it, and give responsibility for the
     integrity of communication to the end systems. Another specific
     case is end-to-end security.

     "To quote from [Saltzer], 'The function in question can completely
     and correctly be implemented only with the knowledge and help of
     the application standing at the endpoints of the communication
     system.  Therefore, providing that questioned function as a
     feature of the communication system itself is not possible.
     (Sometimes an incomplete version of the function provided by the
     communication system may be useful as a performance enhancement.)'

     "This principle has important consequences if we require
     applications to survive partial network failures. An end-to-end
     protocol design should not rely on the maintenance of state (i.e.
     information about the state of the end-to-end communication)
     inside the network. Such state should be maintained only in the
     endpoints, in such a way that the state can only be destroyed when
     the endpoint itself breaks (known as fate-sharing). An immediate
     consequence of this is that datagrams are better than classical
     virtual circuits.  The network's job is to transmit datagrams as
     efficiently and flexibly as possible.  Everything else should be
     done at the fringes."





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  Thus this first aspect of end-to-endness limits what the network is
  expected to do, and clarifies what the end-system is expected to do.
  The end-to-end argument underlies the rest of this document.

2.2 End-to-end performance

  Another aspect, in which the behaviour of the network and that of the
  end-systems interact in a complex way, is performance, in a
  generalised sense. This is not a primary focus of the present
  document, but it is mentioned briefly since it is often referred to
  when discussing end-to-end issues.

  Much work has been done over many years to improve and optimise the
  performance of TCP. Interestingly, this has led to comparatively
  minor changes to TCP itself; [STD 7] is still valid apart from minor
  additions [RFC 1323, RFC 2581, RFC 2018]. However a great deal of
  knowledge about good practice in TCP implementations has built up,
  and the queuing and discard mechanisms in routers have been fine-
  tuned to improve system performance in congested conditions.

  Unfortunately all this experience in TCP performance does not help
  with transport protocols that do not exhibit TCP-like response to
  congestion [RFC 2309]. Also, the requirement for specified quality of
  service for different applications and/or customers has led to much
  new development, especially the Integrated Services [RFC 1633, RFC
  2210] and Differentiated Services [RFC 2475] models. At the same time
  new transport-related protocols have appeared [RFC 1889, RFC 2326] or
  are in discussion in the IETF. It should also be noted that since the
  speed of light is not set by an IETF standard, our current notions of
  end-to-end performance will be largely irrelevant to interplanetary
  networking.

  Thus, despite the fact that performance and congestion issues for TCP
  are now quite well understood, the arrival of QOS mechanisms and of
  new transport protocols raise new questions about end-to-end
  performance, but these are not further discussed here.

2.3 End-to-end address transparency

  When the catenet concept (a network of networks) was first described
  by Cerf in 1978 [IEN 48] following an earlier suggestion by Pouzin in
  1974 [CATENET], a clear assumption was that a single logical address
  space would cover the whole catenet (or Internet as we now know it).
  This applied not only to the early TCP/IP Internet, but also to the
  Xerox PUP design, the OSI connectionless network design, XNS, and
  numerous other proprietary network architectures.





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  This concept had two clear consequences - packets could flow
  essentially unaltered throughout the network, and their source and
  destination addresses could be used as unique labels for the end
  systems.

  The first of these consequences is not absolute.  In practice changes
  can be made to packets in transit. Some of these are reversible at
  the destination (such as fragmentation and compression). Others may
  be irreversible (such as changing type of service bits or
  decrementing a hop limit), but do not seriously obstruct the end-to-
  end principle of Section 2.1. However, any change made to a packet in
  transit that requires per-flow state information to be kept at an
  intermediate point would violate the fate-sharing aspect of the end-
  to-end principle.

  The second consequence, using addresses as unique labels, was in a
  sense a side-effect of the catenet concept. However, it was a side-
  effect that came to be highly significant. The uniqueness and
  durability of addresses have been exploited in many ways, in
  particular by incorporating them in transport identifiers.  Thus they
  have been built into transport checksums, cryptographic signatures,
  Web documents, and proprietary software licence servers. [RFC 2101]
  explores this topic in some detail. Its main conclusion is that IPv4
  addresses can no longer be assumed to be either globally unique or
  invariant, and any protocol or applications design that assumes these
  properties will fail unpredictably. Work in the IAB and the NAT
  working group [NAT-ARCH] has analysed the impact of one specific
  cause of non-uniqueness and non-invariance, i.e., network address
  translators. Again the conclusion is that many applications will
  fail, unless they are specifically adapted to avoid the assumption of
  address transparency. One form of adaptation is the insertion of some
  form of application level gateway, and another form is for the NAT to
  modify payloads on the fly, but in either case the adaptation is
  application-specific.

  Non-transparency of addresses is part of a more general phenomenon.
  We have to recognise that the Internet has lost end-to-end
  transparency, and this requires further analysis.

3. Multiple causes of loss of transparency

  This section describes various recent inventions that have led to the
  loss of end-to-end transparency in the Internet.








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3.1 The Intranet model

  Underlying a number of the specific developments mentioned below is
  the concept of an "Intranet", loosely defined as a private corporate
  network using TCP/IP technology, and connected to the Internet at
  large in a carefully controlled manner. The Intranet is presumed to
  be used by corporate employees for business purposes, and to
  interconnect hosts that carry sensitive or confidential information.
  It is also held to a higher standard of operational availability than
  the Internet at large. Its usage can be monitored and controlled, and
  its resources can be better planned and tuned than those of the
  public network. These arguments of security and resource management
  have ensured the dominance of the Intranet model in most corporations
  and campuses.

  The emergence of the Intranet model has had a profound effect on the
  notion of application transparency. Many corporate network managers
  feel it is for them alone to determine which applications can
  traverse the Internet/Intranet boundary. In this world view, address
  transparency may seem to be an unimportant consideration.

3.2 Dynamic address allocation

3.2.1 SLIP and PPP

  It is to be noted that with the advent of vast numbers of dial-up
  Internet users, whose addresses are allocated at dial-up time, and
  whose traffic may be tunneled back to their home ISP, the actual IP
  addresses of such users are purely transient. During their period of
  validity they can be relied on end-to-end, but they must be forgotten
  at the end of every session. In particular they can have no permanent
  association with the domain name of the host borrowing them.

3.2.2 DHCP

  Similarly, LAN-based users of the Internet today frequently use DHCP
  to acquire a new address at system restart, so here again the actual
  value of the address is potentially transient and must not be stored
  between sessions.

3.3 Firewalls

3.3.1 Basic firewalls

  Intranet managers have a major concern about security: unauthorised
  traffic must be kept out of the Intranet at all costs. This concern
  led directly to the firewall concept (a system that intercepts all
  traffic between the Internet and the Intranet, and only lets through



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  selected traffic, usually belonging to a very limited set of
  applications). Firewalls, by their nature, fundamentally limit
  transparency.

3.3.2 SOCKS

  A footnote to the effect of firewalls is the SOCKS mechanism [RFC
  1928] by which untrusted applications such as telnet and ftp can
  punch through a firewall.  SOCKS requires a shim library in the
  Intranet client, and a server in the firewall which is essentially an
  application level relay. As a result, the remote server does not see
  the real client; it believes that the firewall is the client.

3.4 Private addresses

  When the threat of IPv4 address exhaustion first arose, and in some
  cases user sites were known to be "pirating" addresses for private
  use, a set of official private addresses were hurriedly allocated
  [RFC 1597] and later more carefully defined [BCP 5].  The legitimate
  existence of such an address allocation proved to very appealing, so
  Intranets with large numbers of non-global addresses came into
  existence. Unfortunately, such addresses by their nature cannot be
  used for communication across the public Internet; without special
  measures, hosts using private addresses are cut off from the world.

  Note that private address space is sometimes asserted to be a
  security feature, based on the notion that outside knowledge of
  internal addresses might help intruders. This is a false argument,
  since it is trivial to hide addresses by suitable access control
  lists, even if they are globally unique - indeed that is a basic
  feature of a filtering router, the simplest form of firewall. A
  system with a hidden address is just as private as a system with a
  private address.  There is of course no possible point in hiding the
  addresses of servers to which outside access is required.

  It is also worth noting that the IPv6 equivalent of private
  addresses, i.e. site-local addresses, have similar characteristics to
  BCP 5 addresses, but their use will not be forced by a lack of
  globally unique IPv6 addresses.

3.5 Network address translators

  Network address translators (NATs) are an almost inevitable
  consequence of the existence of Intranets using private addresses yet
  needing to communicate with the Internet at large. Their
  architectural implications are discussed at length in [NAT-ARCH], the
  fundamental point being that address translation on the fly destroys
  end-to-end address transparency and breaks any middleware or



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  applications that depend on it. Numerous protocols, for example
  H.323, carry IP addresses at application level and fail to traverse a
  simple NAT box correctly. If the full range of Internet applications
  is to be used, NATs have to be coupled with application level
  gateways (ALGs) or proxies. Furthermore, the ALG or proxy must be
  updated whenever a new address-dependent application comes along.  In
  practice, NAT functionality is built into many firewall products, and
  all useful NATs have associated ALGs, so it is difficult to
  disentangle their various impacts.

3.6 Application level gateways, relays, proxies, and caches

  It is reasonable to position application level gateways, relays,
  proxies, and caches at certain critical topological points,
  especially the Intranet/Internet boundary.  For example, if an
  Intranet does not use SMTP as its mail protocol, an SMTP gateway is
  needed. Even in the normal case, an SMTP relay is common, and can
  perform useful mail routing functions, spam filtering, etc. (It may
  be observed that spam filtering is in some ways a firewall function,
  but the store-and-forward nature of electronic mail and the
  availability of MX records allow it to be a distinct and separate
  function.)

  Similarly, for a protocol such as HTTP with a well-defined voluntary
  proxy mechanism, application proxies also serving as caches are very
  useful. Although these devices interfere with transparency, they do
  so in a precise way, correctly terminating network, transport and
  application protocols on both sides. They can however exhibit some
  shortfalls in ease of configuration and failover.

  However, there appear to be cases of "involuntary" applications level
  devices such as proxies that grab and modify HTTP traffic without
  using the appropriate mechanisms, sometimes known as "transparent
  caches", or mail relays that purport to remove undesirable words.
  These devices are by definition not transparent, and may have totally
  unforeseeable side effects.  (A possible conclusion is that even for
  non-store-and-forward protocols, a generic diversion mechanism
  analogous to the MX record would be of benefit. The SRV record [RFC
  2052] is a step in this direction.)

3.7 Voluntary isolation and peer networks

  There are communities that think of themselves as being so different
  that they require isolation via an explicit proxy, and even by using
  proprietary protocols and addressing schemes within their network. An
  example is the WAP Forum which targets very small phone-like devices
  with some capabilities for Internet connectivity. However, it's not




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  the Internet they're connecting directly to. They have to go through
  a proxy. This could potentially mean that millions of devices will
  never know the benefits of end-to-end connectivity to the Internet.

  A similar effect arises when applications such as telephony span both
  an IP network and a peer network layer using a different technology.
  Although the application may work end-to-end, there is no possibility
  of end-to-end packet transmission.

3.8 Split DNS

  Another consequence of the Intranet/Internet split is "split DNS" or
  "two faced DNS", where a corporate network serves up partly or
  completely different DNS inside and outside its firewall. There are
  many possible variants on this; the basic point is that the
  correspondence between a given FQDN (fully qualified domain name) and
  a given IPv4 address is no longer universal and stable over long
  periods.

3.9 Various load-sharing tricks

  IPv4 was not designed to support anycast [RFC 1546], so there is no
  natural approach to load-sharing when one server cannot do the job.
  Various tricks have been used to resolve this (multicast to find a
  free server, the DNS returns different addresses for the same FQDN in
  a round-robin, a router actually routes packets sent to the same
  address automatically to different servers, etc.). While these tricks
  are not particularly harmful in the overall picture, they can be
  implemented in such a way as to interfere with name or address
  transparency.

4. Summary of current status and impact

  It is impossible to estimate with any numerical reliability how
  widely the above inventions have been deployed. Since many of them
  preserve the illusion of transparency while actually interfering with
  it, they are extremely difficult to measure.

  However it is certain that all the mechanisms just described are in
  very widespread use; they are not a marginal phenomenon. In corporate
  networks, many of them are the norm. Some of them (firewalls, relays,
  proxies and caches) clearly have intrinsic value given the Intranet
  concept. The others are largely artefacts and pragmatic responses to
  various pressures in the operational Internet, and they must be
  costing the industry very dearly in constant administration and
  complex fault diagnosis.





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  In particular, the decline of transparency is having a severe effect
  on deployment of end-to-end IP security. The Internet security model
  [SECMECH] calls for security at several levels (roughly, network,
  applications, and object levels).  The current network level security
  model [RFC 2401] was constructed prior to the recognition that end-
  to-end address transparency was under severe threat.  Although
  alternative proposals have begun to emerge [HIP] the current reality
  is that IPSEC cannot be deployed end-to-end in the general case.
  Tunnel-mode IPSEC can be deployed between corporate gateways or
  firewalls.  Transport-mode IPSEC can be deployed within a corporate
  network in some cases, but it cannot span from Intranet to Internet
  and back to another Intranet if there is any chance of a NAT along
  the way.

  Indeed, NAT breaks other security mechanisms as well, such as DNSSEC
  and Kerberos, since they rely on address values.

  The loss of transparency brought about by private addresses and NATs
  affects many applications protocols to a greater or lesser extent.
  This is explored in detail in [NAT-PROT]. A more subtle effect is
  that the prevalence of dynamic addresses (from DHCP, SLIP and PPP)
  has fed upon the trend towards client/server computing.  Today it is
  largely true that servers have fixed addresses, clients have dynamic
  addresses, and servers can in no way assume that a client's IP
  address identifies the client. On the other hand, clients rely on
  servers having stable addresses since a DNS lookup is the only
  generally deployed mechanism by which a client can find a server and
  solicit service.  In this environment, there is little scope for true
  peer-to-peer applications protocols, and no easy solution for mobile
  servers. Indeed, the very limited demand for Mobile IP might be
  partly attributed to the market dominance of client/server
  applications in which the client's address is of transient
  significance. We also see a trend towards single points of failure
  such as media gateways, again resulting from the difficulty of
  implementing peer-to-peer solutions directly between clients with no
  fixed address.

  The notion that servers can use precious globally unique addresses
  from a small pool, because there will always be fewer servers than
  clients, may become anachronistic when most electrical devices become
  network-manageable and thus become servers for a management protocol.
  Similarly, if every PC becomes a telephone (or the converse), capable
  of receiving unsolicited incoming calls, the lack of stable IP
  addresses for PCs will be an issue. Another impending paradigm shift
  is when domestic and small-office subscribers move from dial-up to
  always-on Internet connectivity, at which point transient address
  assignment from a pool becomes much less appropriate.




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  Many of the inventions described in the previous section lead to the
  datagram traffic between two hosts being directly or indirectly
  mediated by at least one other host. For example a client may depend
  on a DHCP server, a server may depend on a NAT, and any host may
  depend on a firewall. This violates the fate-sharing principle of
  [Saltzer] and introduces single points of failure. Worse, most of
  these points of failure require configuration data, yet another
  source of operational risk. The original notion that datagrams would
  find their way around failures, especially around failed routers, has
  been lost; indeed the overloading of border routers with additional
  functions has turned them into critical rather than redundant
  components, even for multihomed sites.

  The loss of address transparency has other negative effects.  For
  example, large scale servers may use heuristics or even formal
  policies that assign different priorities to service for different
  clients, based on their addresses. As addresses lose their global
  meaning, this mechanism will fail. Similarly, any anti-spam or anti-
  spoofing techniques that rely on reverse DNS lookup of address values
  can be confused by translated addresses. (Uncoordinated renumbering
  can have similar disadvantages.)

  The above issues are not academic. They add up to complexity in
  applications design, complexity in network configuration, complexity
  in security mechanisms, and complexity in network management.
  Specifically, they make fault diagnosis much harder, and by
  introducing more single points of failure, they make faults more
  likely to occur.

5. Possible future directions

5.1 Successful migration to IPv6

  In this scenario, IPv6 becomes fully implemented on all hosts and
  routers, including the adaptation of middleware, applications, and
  management systems. Since the address space then becomes big enough
  for all conceivable needs, address transparency can be restored.
  Transport-mode IPSEC can in principle deploy, given adequate security
  policy tools and a key infrastructure.  However, it is widely
  believed that the Intranet/firewall model will certainly persist.

  Note that it is a basic assumption of IPv6 that no artificial
  constraints will be placed on the supply of addresses, given that
  there are so many of them. Current practices by which some ISPs
  strongly limit the number of IPv4 addresses per client will have no
  reason to exist for IPv6. (However, addresses will still be assigned
  prudently, according to guidelines designed to favour hierarchical
  routing.)



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  Clearly this is in any case a very long term scenario, since it
  assumes that IPv4 has declined to the point where IPv6 is required
  for universal connectivity. Thus, a viable version of Scenario 5.3 is
  a prerequisite for Scenario 5.1.

5.2 Complete failure of IPv6

  In this scenario, IPv6 fails to reach any significant level of
  operational deployment, IPv4 addressing is the only available
  mechanism, and address transparency cannot be restored. IPSEC cannot
  be deployed globally in its current form. In the very long term, the
  pool of globally unique IPv4 addresses will be nearly totally
  allocated, and new addresses will generally not be available for any
  purpose.

  It is unclear exactly what is likely to happen if the Internet
  continues to rely exclusively on IPv4, because in that eventuality a
  variety of schemes are likely to promulgated, with a view toward
  providing an acceptable evolutionary path for the network. However,
  we can examine two of the more simplistic sub-scenarios which are
  possible, while realising that the future would be unlikely to match
  either one exactly:

5.2.1 Re-allocating the IPv4 address space

  Suppose that a mechanism is created to continuously recover and re-
  allocate IPv4 addresses. A single global address space is maintained,
  with all sites progressively moving to an Intranet private address
  model, with global addresses being assigned temporarily from a pool
  of several billion.

  5.2.1.1 A sub-sub-scenario of this is generalised use of NAT and NAPT
          (NAT with port number translation). This has the disadvantage
          that the host is unaware of the unique address being used for
          its traffic, being aware only of its ambiguous private
          address, with all the problems that this generates. See
          [NAT-ARCH].

  5.2.1.2 Another sub-sub-scenario is the use of realm-specific IP
          addressing implemented at the host rather than by a NAT box.
          See [RSIP]. In this case the host is aware of its unique
          address, allowing for substantial restoration of the end-to-
          end usefulness of addresses, e.g. for TCP or cryptographic
          checksums.







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  5.2.1.3 A final sub-sub-scenario is the "map and encapsulate" model
          in which address translation is replaced by systematic
          encapsulation of all packets for wide-area transport.  This
          model has never been fully developed, although it is
          completely compatible with end-to-end addressing.

5.2.2 Exhaustion

  Suppose that no mechanism is created to recover addresses (except
  perhaps black or open market trading). Sites with large address
  blocks keep them.  All the scenarios of 5.2.1 appear but are
  insufficient.  Eventually the global address space is no longer
  adequate.  This is a nightmare scenario - NATs appear within the
  "global" address space, for example at ISP-ISP boundaries. It is
  unclear how a global routing system and a global DNS system can be
  maintained; the Internet is permanently fragmented.

5.3 Partial deployment of IPv6

  In this scenario, IPv6 is completely implemented but only deploys in
  certain segments of the network (e.g. in certain countries, or in
  certain areas of application such as mobile hand-held devices).
  Instead of being transitional in nature, some of the IPv6 transition
  techniques become permanent features of the landscape. Sometimes
  addresses are 32 bits, sometimes they are 128 bits. DNS lookups may
  return either or both. In the 32 bit world, the scenarios 5.2.1 and
  5.2.2 may occur. IPSEC can only deploy partially.

6. Conclusion

  None of the above scenarios is clean, simple and straightforward.
  Although the pure IPv6 scenario is the cleanest and simplest, it is
  not straightforward to reach it. The various scenarios without use of
  IPv6 are all messy and ultimately seem to lead to dead ends of one
  kind or another. Partial deployment of IPv6, which is a required step
  on the road to full deployment, is also messy but avoids the dead
  ends.

7. Security Considerations

  The loss of transparency is both a bug and a feature from the
  security viewpoint. To the extent that it prevents the end-to-end
  deployment of IPSEC, it damages security and creates vulnerabilities.
  For example, if a standard NAT box is in the path, then the best that
  can be done is to decrypt and re-encrypt IP traffic in the NAT.  The
  traffic will therefore be momentarily in clear text and potentially
  vulnerable. Furthermore, the NAT will possess many keys and will be a
  prime target of attack.  In environments where this is unacceptable,



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  encryption must be applied above the network layer instead, of course
  with no usage whatever of IP addresses in data that is
  cryptographically protected. See section 4 for further discussion.

  In certain scenarios, i.e. 5.1 (full IPv6) and 5.2.1.2 (RSIP), end-
  to-end IPSEC would become possible, especially using the "distributed
  firewalls" model advocated in [Bellovin].

  The loss of transparency at the Intranet/Internet boundary may be
  considered a security feature, since it provides a well defined point
  at which to apply restrictions. This form of security is subject to
  the "crunchy outside, soft inside" risk, whereby any successful
  penetration of the boundary exposes the entire Intranet to trivial
  attack. The lack of end-to-end security applied within the Intranet
  also ignores insider threats.

  It should be noted that security applied above the transport level,
  such as SSL, SSH, PGP or S/MIME, is not affected by network layer
  transparency issues.

Acknowledgements

  This document and the related issues have been discussed extensively
  by the IAB. Special thanks to Steve Deering for a detailed review and
  to Noel Chiappa. Useful comments or ideas were also received from Rob
  Austein, John Bartas, Jim Bound, Scott Bradner, Vint Cerf, Spencer
  Dawkins, Anoop Ghanwani, Erik Guttmann, Eric A. Hall, Graham Klyne,
  Dan Kohn, Gabriel Montenegro, Thomas Narten, Erik Nordmark, Vern
  Paxson, Michael Quinlan, Eric Rosen, Daniel Senie, Henning
  Schulzrinne, Bill Sommerfeld, and George Tsirtsis.

References

  [Bellovin]    Distributed Firewalls, S. Bellovin, available at
                http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/distfw.pdf or
                http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/distfw.ps (work
                in progress).

  [Berners-Lee] Weaving the Web, T. Berners-Lee, M. Fischetti,
                HarperCollins, 1999, p 208.

  [Saltzer]     End-To-End Arguments in System Design, J.H. Saltzer,
                D.P.Reed, D.D.Clark, ACM TOCS, Vol 2, Number 4,
                November 1984, pp 277-288.

  [IEN 48]      Cerf, V., "The Catenet Model for Internetworking,"
                Information Processing Techniques Office, Defense
                Advanced Research Projects Agency, IEN 48, July 1978.



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RFC 2775                 Internet Transparency             February 2000


  [CATENET]     Pouzin, L., "A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet
                Switching Networks," Proceedings of EUROCOMP, Brunel
                University, May 1974, pp. 1023-36.

  [STD 7]       Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC
                793, September 1981.

  [RFC 1546]    Partridge, C., Mendez, T. and  W. Milliken,  "Host
                Anycasting Service", RFC 1546, November 1993.

  [RFC 1597]    Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D. and G. de
                Groot, "Address Allocation for Private Internets", RFC
                1597, March 1994.

  [RFC 1633]    Braden, R., Clark, D. and S. Shenker, "Integrated
                Services in the Internet Architecture: an Overview",
                RFC 1633, June 1994.

  [RFC 1889]    Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R. and V.
                Jacobson, "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time
                Applications", RFC 1889, January 1996.

  [BCP 5]       Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D., de Groot,
                G.  and E. Lear, "Address Allocation for Private
                Internets", BCP 5, RFC 1918, February 1996.

  [RFC 1928]    Leech, M., Ganis, M., Lee, Y., Kuris, R., Koblas, D.
                and L. Jones, "SOCKS Protocol Version 5", RFC 1928,
                March 1996.

  [RFC 1958]    Carpenter, B., "Architectural Principles of the
                Internet", RFC 1958, June 1996.

  [RFC 2018]    Mathis, M., Mahdavi, J., Floyd, S. and A. Romanow, "TCP
                Selective Acknowledgement Options", RFC 2018, October
                1996.

  [RFC 2052]    Gulbrandsen, A. and P. Vixie, "A DNS RR for specifying
                the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2052, October
                1996.

  [RFC 2101]    Carpenter, B., Crowcroft, J. and Y. Rekhter, "IPv4
                Address Behaviour Today", RFC 2101, February 1997.

  [RFC 2210]    Wroclawski, J., "The Use of RSVP with IETF Integrated
                Services", RFC 2210, September 1997.





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  [RFC 2309]    Braden, B., Clark, D., Crowcroft, J., Davie, B.,
                Deering, S., Estrin, D., Floyd, S., Jacobson, V.,
                Minshall, G., Partridge, C., Peterson, L.,
                Ramakrishnan, K., Shenker, S., Wroclawski, J. and L.
                Zhang, "Recommendations on Queue Management and
                Congestion Avoidance in the Internet", RFC 2309, April
                1998.

  [RFC 2326]    Schulzrinne, H., Rao, A. and R. Lanphier, "Real Time
                Streaming Protocol (RTSP)", RFC 2326, April 1998.

  [RFC 2401]    Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for
                the Internet Protocol", RFC 2401, November 1998.

  [RFC 2475]    Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.
                and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
                Service", RFC 2475, December 1998.

  [RFC 2581]    Allman, M., Paxson, V. and W. Stevens, "TCP Congestion
                Control", RFC 2581, April 1999.

  [NAT-ARCH]    Hain, T., "Architectural Implications of NAT", Work in
                Progress.

  [NAT-PROT]    Holdrege, M. and P. Srisuresh, "Protocol Complications
                with the IP Network Address Translator (NAT)", Work in
                Progress.

  [SECMECH]     Bellovin, S., "Security Mechanisms for the Internet",
                Work in Progress.

  [RSIP]        Lo, J., Borella, M. and D. Grabelsky, "Realm Specific
                IP: A Framework", Work in Progress.

  [HIP]         Moskowitz, R., "The Host Identity Payload", Work in
                Progress.















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Author's Address

  Brian E. Carpenter
  IBM
  c/o iCAIR
  Suite 150
  1890 Maple Avenue
  Evanston, IL 60201
  USA

  EMail: [email protected]








































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Full Copyright Statement

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

  This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
  others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
  or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
  and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
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  document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
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  The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
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  This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
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  TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
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  HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
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Acknowledgement

  Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
  Internet Society.



















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