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RE: IKE transport (was INITIAL-CONTACT issues)





>From: Paul Koning [pkoning@xedia.com]
>Sent: Monday, May 17, 1999 6:57 AM
>To: Sankar@vpnet.com
>Cc: ipsec@lists.tislabs.com
>Subject: RE: IKE transport (was INITIAL-CONTACT issues) 
>
>>>>>> "Sankar" == Sankar Ramamoorthi <Sankar@vpnet.com> writes:
>
> Sankar> How about using udp for the first IKE session between 2
> Sankar> endpoints and then using a tcp-over-ipsec as the transport
> Sankar> for the rest of the IKE sessions that could happen between
> Sankar> the end-points?
>
>Yikes.  It seems really ugly to changes horses, er., transports in
>midstream.  There really is no major functional difference between
>using UDP with reliability/keepalive in the application, and TCP with
>some of that stuff moved into the transport.  Given that the decision
>has been made to use UDP, my inclination is to say we should stick
>with it.  If there is strong enough reason to switch, then let's
>switch.  But I find it hard to imagine a reason strong enough to
>justify switching half the time, yet weak enough to justify not
>switching the rest of the time.
>
>	paul

I agree there is no functional difference with using UDP with
reliablity/keepalive in the application and TCP with some of the
stuff moved into the transport. However some of those functions are
yet to be defined/standardized for IKE hence the desire to take
advantage of TCP. Hopefully IPSecond will address many of the issues.

One thing I am concerned with reliablity in the application is

retransmission timers

  can gateways/end-stations aggressively retransmit for lost
  packets? If so could it have any effect on congestion
  (consider a gateway handling thousands of IKE sessions aggressively
  retransmitting).

  Or should the IKE implementation take into account of 
  end-to-end characterstics (RTT..), congestion avoidance measures
  while retransmitting (similiar to TCP)?

  Or is congestion not an issue for IKE traffic?

Thanks,

-- sankar --