Re: sysctl should disable ECN by default
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 05:30:12PM +0200, T.Pospisek's MailLists wrote:
> The question is only if devices should be programmed in order to know
> the future and it's potential proposed stadards by the IETF. Mind you I
> don't know if the devices in question (websites, routers etc. droping ECN
> packets) *are* violating a standard that was current at *their* time. The
> routers in particular I think *are* wrong, since they are making decisions
> based on bits that at that time were reserved.
They are violating Internet Standards. "Reserved bits" means exactly
that: reserved. And not: has to be zero.
But the whole discussion here is folly. The whole thing has been discussed
on linux-kernel by people far more knowlegable in this things than the
average debian developer. I think we should follow the conclusions
from that discussions: enable ECN by default and every non-compliant
device be dammned.
Mind you that we are only talking about firewalls here (and all of the
can be fixed by firmware upgrades, or at least they should). Ordinary
routers have no business altering packets passing through and ordinary
hosts have to ignore "reserved bits" they don't know about. Routers
doing NAT are to be treated as firewalls. If they are broken: replace
them. They will have more bugs that this one anyway.
Dominik
--
ScioByte GmbH, Zum Schiersteiner Grund 2, 55127 Mainz (Germany)
Phone: +49 6131 550 117 Fax: +49 6131 610 99 16
GnuPG: 717F16BB / A384 F5F1 F566 5716 5485 27EF 3B00 C007 717F 16BB
Reply to: