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TO COMPRESS OR NOT TO CMPRS (please reply)
Since my last posting about adding compression in the form of an "optional
feature of ESP", I have received several offline inputs from wg members.
Specifically, two issues arose:
1. What is the status of adding compression to ESP?
I know that there are some wg members who support the use of compression,
some who don't and some who haven't expressed an interest either way. Well,
the time has come to decide. PLEASE RESPOND BY INDICATING YOUR POSITION.
Be sure to copy the wg list in your reply.
2. Placement of the "packet compressed/not-compressed" byte/bit
Several people have suggested that rather than using a whole byte for this
purpose, simply "steal" the uppermost bit of the pad length field. This is
a simple solution. It was suggested to me that a maximum of 128 bytes of
padding is sufficient. Note that the preferred ESP transform for the IPSEC
DOI (draft-ietf-ipsec-esp-des-md5-03.txt) provides for up to 255 bytes of
padding. There are two ways to approach this issue:
(a) alter the transform draft to specify a max of 128 bytes of padding, or
(b) for implementations which do not negotiate the use of compression (for
a particular SA, or never), they can continue to use up to 255 bytes
of padding; for those that *do* support compression, the maximum
padding
would be 128 bytes.
INPUTS ON THIS DECISION ARE NEEDED. Assuming that the group wants to
proceed
with compression, the decision on this issue will affect the ESP draft,
the
latest of which has yet to be issued. So, please respond.
Regards,
Bob
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