Subject: Re: [BEHAVE] Summary of TURN open-issues call on Monday, 28 Jan 2008

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 11:55:58 +0100

On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 05:06:11PM -0500,
 Philip Matthews <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 125 lines which said:

> *) Preserving bits in the IP header. When relaying packets, how
> should various IP header bits be set?

My personal opinion, based on the tests I ran on various machines, is
that:

TURN is a "last resort" solution, anyway, for the case where users are
stuck behind badly behaving NATs. We all know it is not the best
solution but its main feature is that it always works, whatever the
behaviour of the NATs. So, having more things (such as preservation of
IP options) is nice but should not be mandatory, it is most important
to have TURN servers available than to have them preserve every IP
option.

So, I favor something like "TURN servers MAY preserve the options set
in the IP header".

Other things to keep in mind (and that's why i suggest MAY and not
SHOULD):

* being a TURN server will not be fun, it takes a lot of resources. We
should not ask them more.

* IP options such as DSCP are very rarely used, anyway.

* we can always design later an extension which will ask for strict
preservation of IP options.

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From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:59:36 -0600

From: "Stephane Bortzmeyer" <[email-masked]>

> to have TURN servers available than to have them preserve every IP

I guess a related question is whether TURN servers would refuse clients if 
the client asks for IP option preservation and the TURN server doesn't do 
that - I'm guessing "no", but does anyone think the answer is "yes"?

Spencer