Subject: RE: [rddp] CRC mandatory?

From: "Barron, Dwight" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 12:50:08 -0500

Somesh, my understanding is that IPSEC, even if implemented in the same node as iSCSI or RDDP is currently transparent to the ULP for any given source/destination IP address pair. How would you propose that a ULP determine this necessary information in order to know when to turn CRC on or off? This would be compounded even further by external devices located one or more hops away that provided the IPSEC functionality. 
 
Regards,
Dwight

IPSec is also mandatory to implement and optional to use. A reasonable section
of the community also feels that for iSCSI to have widespread deployment, IPSec
is a more important technology than some of the other features. And if IPSec
gets deployed, an additional CRC becomes meaningless.
 
IPSec is also something that the RDMA community will have to deal with. Customers
are likely to be very concerned about any security holes being exposed as a result
of out of order placement without authentication of the sender.
 
My position has been of having an optional CRC - not of not having a CRC.
 
Somesh

---

From: "Somesh Gupta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 10:31:11 -0700

Dwight,

I would ignore the IPSec in the gateway device for the purpose of this
discussion. Perhaps looking at the "IPSec Offload" interfaces of some
(one??) OS vendor will give an idea of how Offload is signalled from the
host.

There is always an administration/config plane to any and all apps. The
app typically does not decide which remote system it communicates
to or provides services to, it does not decide which files it will use, it
does not decide whether IPSec is on or off. It can as easily be informed
to have request CRC on or off - although that is as likely to be a
systemwide
decision.

Somesh
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Barron, Dwight [mailto:[email-masked]]
  Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 10:50 AM
  To: Somesh Gupta
  Cc: [email-masked]
  Subject: RE: [rddp] CRC mandatory?

  Somesh, my understanding is that IPSEC, even if implemented in the same
node as iSCSI or RDDP is currently transparent to the ULP for any given
source/destination IP address pair. How would you propose that a ULP
determine this necessary information in order to know when to turn CRC on or
off? This would be compounded even further by external devices located one
or more hops away that provided the IPSEC functionality.

  Regards,
  Dwight
    IPSec is also mandatory to implement and optional to use. A reasonable
section
    of the community also feels that for iSCSI to have widespread
deployment, IPSec
    is a more important technology than some of the other features. And if
IPSec
    gets deployed, an additional CRC becomes meaningless.

    IPSec is also something that the RDMA community will have to deal with.
Customers
    are likely to be very concerned about any security holes being exposed
as a result
    of out of order placement without authentication of the sender.

    My position has been of having an optional CRC - not of not having a
CRC.

    Somesh