RE: draft-ietf-ipsec-ciph-aes-ctr-00.txt

[Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net>]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Waterhouse, Richard wrote:
> The FEC has to be external to ESP for it to prevent authentication failure
> at the ESP level. But I'm unaware of any provision within IP for FECs. Where
> would one apply such an FEC in the protocol stack at the transmitting ESP
> host/gateway that will make it through to the recipient ESP host/gateway?

The "noisy environment" is a link-level problem, not an IP-level problem,
so it can be, should be, and is, solved with FEC at the link level.  That
is the right approach for a number of reasons, not least the need to
tailor the FEC to the characteristics of the noise environment. 

By the way, the reason for making authentication a MUST is that there are
effective active attacks against confidentiality without it.  You don't
*get* reliable confidentiality without authentication. 

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry@spsystems.net