互联网协议正在发生变化
互联网 Internet
![](/data/attachment/album/201712/17/220929xdziize505c665i0.png)


当上世纪九十年代互联网开始被广泛使用的时候，其大部分的通讯只使用几个协议：IPv4 协议路由这些数据包，TCP 协议转发这些包到连接上，SSL（及后来的 TLS）协议加密连接，DNS 协议命名那些所要连接的主机，而 HTTP 协议是最常用的应用程序协议。


多年以来，这些核心的互联网协议的变化几乎是微乎其微的；HTTP 增加了几个新的报文头和请求方式，TLS 缓慢地进行了一点小修改，TCP 调整了拥塞控制，而 DNS 引入了像 DNSSEC 这样的特性。这些协议看起来很长时间都一成不变（除了已经引起网络运营商们的大量关注的 IPv6）。


因此，希望了解（甚至有时控制）互联网的网络运营商、供应商和决策者对这些协议采用的做法是基于其原有工作方式 —— 无论是打算调试问题，提高服务质量，或施加政策。


现在，核心互联网协议的重要改变已经开始了。虽然它们意图与互联网大部分兼容（因为，如果不兼容的话，它们不会被采纳），但是它们可能会破坏那些在协议中没有规定的地方，或者根本就假设那些地方不存在变化。


### 为什么我们需要去改变互联网


有大量的因素推动这些变化。


首先，核心互联网协议的局限性越来越明显，尤其是考虑到性能的时候。由于在应用和传输协议方面的结构性问题，网络没有得到高效使用，导致终端用户认为性能不能满足要求（特别是，网络延迟）。


这就意味着人们有强烈的动机来演进或者替换这些协议，因为有 [大量的经验表明，即便是很小的性能改善也会产生影响](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/09/why-performance-matters-the-perception-of-time/)。


其次，演进互联网协议的能力 —— 无论在任何层面上 —— 会随着时间的推移变得更加困难，这主要是因为上面所讨论的对网络的非预期使用。例如，尝试去压缩响应的 HTTP 代理服务器使得部署新的压缩技术更困难；中间设备中的 TCP 优化使得部署对 TCP 的改进越来越困难。


最后，[我们正处在一个越来越多地使用加密技术的互联网变化当中](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/46197.pdf)，首次激起这种改变的事件是，2015 年 Edward Snowden 的披露事件（LCTT 译注：指的是美国中情局雇员斯诺登的事件）。那是一个单独讨论的话题，但是与之相关的是，加密技术是最好的工具之一，我们必须确保协议能够进化。


让我们来看一下都发生了什么，接下来会出现什么，它对网络有哪些影响，和它对网络协议的设计有哪些影响。


### HTTP/2


[HTTP/2](https://http2.github.io/)（基于 Google 的 SPDY） 是第一个重大变化 —— 它在 2015 年被标准化。它将多个请求复用到一个 TCP 连接上，从而避免了客户端排队请求，而不会互相阻塞。它现在已经被广泛部署，并且被所有的主流浏览器和 web 服务器支持。


从网络的角度来看，HTTP/2 带来了一些显著变化。首先，这是一个二进制协议，因此，任何假定它是 HTTP/1.1 的设备都会出现问题。


这种破坏性问题是导致 HTTP/2 中另一个重大变化的主要原因之一：它实际上需要加密。这种改变的好处是避免了来自伪装的 HTTP/1.1 的中间人攻击，或者一些更细微的事情，比如 strip headers 或者阻止新的协议扩展 —— 这两种情况都在工程师对协议的开发中出现过，导致了很明显的支持问题。


[当它被加密时，HTTP/2 请求也要求使用 TLS/1.2](http://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7540.html#TLSUsage)，并且将一些已经被证明是不安全的算法套件列入[黑名单](http://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7540.html#BadCipherSuites) —— 其效果只允许使用<ruby> 短暂密钥 <rt>  ephemeral keys </rt></ruby>。关于潜在的影响可以去看 TLS 1.3 的相关章节。


最终，HTTP/2 允许多个主机的请求被 [合并到一个连接上](http://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7540.html#reuse)，通过减少页面加载所使用的连接（从而减少拥塞控制的场景）数量来提升性能。


例如，你可以对 www.example.com 建立一个连接，也可以将这个连接用于对 images.example.com 的请求。而[未来的协议扩展也允许将其它的主机添加到连接上](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bishop-httpbis-http2-additional-certs)，即便它们没有被列在最初用于它们的 TLS 证书中。因此，假设连接上的通讯被限制于它初始化时的目的并不适用。


值得注意的是，尽管存在这些变化，HTTP/2 并没有出现明显的互操作性问题或者来自网络的冲突。


### TLS 1.3


[TLS 1.3](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tls-tls13/) 刚刚通过了标准化的最后流程，并且已经被一些实现所支持。


不要被它只增加了版本号的名字所欺骗；它实际上是一个新的 TLS 版本，全新打造的 “握手”机制允许应用程序数据从头开始流动（经常被称为 ‘0RTT’）。新的设计依赖于短暂密钥交换，从而排除了静态密钥。


这引起了一些网络运营商和供应商的担心 —— 尤其是那些需要清晰地知道那些连接内部发生了什么的人。


例如，假设一个对可视性有监管要求的银行数据中心，通过在网络中嗅探通讯包并且使用他们的服务器上的静态密钥解密它，它们可以记录合法通讯和识别有害通讯，无论是来自外部的攻击，还是员工从内部去泄露数据。


TLS 1.3 并不支持那些窃听通讯的特定技术，因为那也是 [一种针对短暂密钥防范的攻击形式](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_secrecy)。然而，因为他们有使用更现代化的加密协议和监视他们的网络的监管要求，这些使网络运营商处境很尴尬。


关于是否规定要求静态密钥、替代方式是否有效、并且为了相对较少的网络环境而减弱整个互联网的安全是否是一个正确的解决方案有很多的争论。确实，仍然有可能对使用 TLS 1.3 的通讯进行解密，但是，你需要去访问一个短暂密钥才能做到，并且，按照设计，它们不可能长时间存在。


在这一点上，TLS 1.3 看起来不会去改变以适应这些网络，但是，关于去创建另外一种协议有一些传言，这种协议允许第三方去偷窥通讯内容，或者做更多的事情。这件事是否会得到推动还有待观察。


### QUIC


在 HTTP/2 工作中，可以很明显地看到 TCP 有相似的低效率。因为 TCP 是一个按顺序发送的协议，一个数据包的丢失可能阻止其后面缓存区中的数据包被发送到应用程序。对于一个多路复用协议来说，这对性能有很大的影响。


[QUIC](https://quicwg.github.io/) 尝试去解决这种影响而在 UDP 之上重构了 TCP 语义（以及 HTTP/2 流模型的一部分）。像 HTTP/2 一样，它始于 Google 的一项成果，并且现在已经被 IETF 接纳作为一个 HTTP-over-UDP 的初始用例，其目标是在 2018 年底成为一个标准。然而，因为 Google 已经在 Chrome 浏览器及其网站上部署了 QUIC，它已经占有了超过 7% 的互联网通讯份额。


* 阅读 [关于 QUIC 的答疑](https://blog.apnic.net/2016/08/30/questions-answered-quic/)


除了大量的通讯从 TCP 到 UDP 的转变（以及隐含的可能的网络调整）之外，Google QUIC（gQUIC）和 IETF QUIC（iQUIC）都要求全程加密；并没有非加密的 QUIC。


iQUIC 使用 TLS 1.3 来为会话建立密钥，然后使用它去加密每个数据包。然而，由于它是基于 UDP 的，许多 TCP 中公开的会话信息和元数据在 QUIC 中被加密了。


事实上，iQUIC 当前的 [‘短报文头’](https://quicwg.github.io/base-drafts/draft-ietf-quic-transport.html#short-header) 被用于除了握手外的所有包，仅公开一个包编号、一个可选的连接标识符和一个状态字节，像加密密钥轮换计划和包字节（它最终也可能被加密）。


其它的所有东西都被加密 —— 包括 ACK，以提高 [通讯分析](https://www.mjkranch.com/docs/CODASPY17_Kranch_Reed_IdentifyingHTTPSNetflix.pdf) 攻击的门槛。


然而，这意味着通过观察连接来被动估算 RTT 和包丢失率将不再变得可行；因为没有足够多的信息。在一些运营商中，由于缺乏可观测性，导致了大量的担忧，它们认为像这样的被动测量对于他们调试和了解它们的网络是至关重要的。


为满足这一需求，它们有一个提议是 ‘[Spin Bit](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-trammell-quic-spin)’ — 这是在报文头中的一个回程翻转的位，因此，可能通过观察它来估算 RTT。因为，它从应用程序的状态中解耦的，它的出现并不会泄露关于终端的任何信息，也无法实现对网络位置的粗略估计。


### DOH


即将发生的变化是 DOH — [DNS over HTTP](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/doh/about/)。[大量的研究表明，对网络实施政策干预的一个常用手段是通过 DNS 实现的](https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/99/materials/slides-99-maprg-fingerprint-based-detection-of-dns-hijacks-using-ripe-atlas/)（无论是代表网络运营商或者一个更大的权力机构）。


使用加密去规避这种控制已经 [讨论了一段时间了](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dprive/about/)，但是，它有一个不利条件（至少从某些立场来看）— 它可能与其它通讯区别对待；例如，通过它的端口号被阻止访问。


DOH 将 DNS 通讯搭载在已经建立的 HTTP 连接上，因此，消除了任何的鉴别器。希望阻止访问该 DNS 解析器的网络只能通过阻止对该网站的访问来实现。


例如，如果 Google 在 www.google.com 上部署了它的 [基于 DOH 的公共 DNS 服务](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/)，并且一个用户配置了它的浏览器去使用它，一个希望（或被要求的）被停止访问该服务的网络，将必须阻止对 Google 的全部访问（向他们提供的服务致敬！）（LCTT 译注：他们做到了）。


DOH 才刚刚开始，但它已经引起很多人的兴趣，并有了一些部署的传闻。通过使用 DNS 来实施政策影响的网络（和政府机构）如何反应还有待观察。


阅读 [IETF 100, Singapore: DNS over HTTP (DOH!)](https://blog.apnic.net/2017/11/17/ietf-100-singapore-dns-http-doh/)


### 僵化和润滑


让我们返回到协议变化的动机，有一个主题贯穿了这项工作，协议设计者们遇到的越来越多的问题是网络对流量的使用做了假设。


例如，TLS 1.3 有一些临门一脚的问题是中间设备假设它是旧版本的协议。gQUIC 将几个对 UDP 通讯进行限流的网络列入了黑名单，因为，那些网络认为 UDP 通讯是有害的或者是低优先级的。


当一个协议因为已有的部署而 “冻结” 它的可扩展点，从而导致不能再进化，我们称它为 *已经僵化了* 。TCP 协议自身就是一个严重僵化的例子，因此，太多的中间设备在 TCP 协议上做了太多的事情，比如阻止了带有无法识别的 TCP 选项的数据包，或者，“优化”了拥塞控制。


防止僵化是有必要的，确保协议可以进化以满足未来互联网的需要；否则，它将成为一个“公共灾难”，一些个别网络的行为 —— 虽然在那里工作的很好 —— 但将影响整个互联网的健康发展。


有很多的方式去防止僵化；如果被讨论的数据是加密的，它并不能被除了持有密钥的人之外任何一方所访问，阻止了干扰。如果扩展点是未加密的，但是通常以一种可以明显中断应用程序的方法使用（例如，HTTP 报头），它不太可能受到干扰。


协议设计者不能使用加密的扩展点不经常使用的情况下，人为地利用扩展点——我们称之为 *润滑* 它。


例如，QUIC 鼓励终端在 [版本协商](https://quicwg.github.io/base-drafts/draft-ietf-quic-transport.html#rfc.section.3.7) 中使用一系列的诱饵值，来避免假设它的实现永远不变化（就像在 TLS 实现中经常遇到的导致重大问题的情况）。


### 网络和用户


除了避免僵化的愿望外，这些变化也反映出了网络和它们的用户之间关系的进化。很长时间以来，人们总是假设网络总是很仁慈好善的 —— 或者至少是公正的 —— 但这种情况是不存在的，不仅是 [无孔不入的监视](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7258)，也有像 [Firesheep](http://codebutler.com/firesheep) 的攻击。


因此，当那些网络想去访问一些流经它们的网络的用户数据时，互联网用户的整体需求和那些网络之间的关系日益紧张。尤其受影响的是那些希望去对它们的用户实施政策干预的网络；例如，企业网络。


在一些情况中，他们可以通过在它们的用户机器上安装软件（或一个 CA 证书，或者一个浏览器扩展）来达到他们的目的。然而，在网络不拥有或无法访问计算机的情况下，这并不容易；例如，BYOD 已经很常用，并且物联网设备几乎没有合适的控制接口。


因此，在 IETF 中围绕协议开发的许多讨论，触及了企业和其它的 “叶子” 网络有时相互竞争的需求，以及互联网整体的好处。


### 参与


为了让互联网在以后工作的更好，它需要为终端用户提供价值、避免僵化、让网络有序运行。现在正在发生的变化需要满足所有的三个目标，但是，人们需要网络运营商更多的投入。


如果这些变化影响你的网络 —— 或者没有影响 —— 请在下面留下评论。更好地可以通过参加会议、加入邮件列表、或者对草案提供反馈来参与 [IETF](https://www.ietf.org/) 的工作。


感谢 Martin Thomson 和 Brian Trammell 的评论。


*本文作者 Mark Nottingham 是互联网架构委员会的成员和 IETF 的 HTTP 和 QUIC 工作组的联席主席。*




---


via: <https://blog.apnic.net/2017/12/12/internet-protocols-changing/>


作者：[Mark Nottingham](https://blog.apnic.net/author/mark-nottingham/) 译者：[qhwdw](https://github.com/qhwdw) 校对：[wxy](https://github.com/wxy)


本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出


OK
![](https://blog.apnic.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/evolution-555x202.png?v=ddc961cf494ad9f61738e23555807a6cda356dfd54454f0b517d09bd6061826b)

When the Internet started to become widely used in the 1990s, most traffic used just a few protocols: IPv4 routed packets, TCP turned those packets into connections, SSL (later TLS) encrypted those connections, DNS named hosts to connect to, and HTTP was often the application protocol using it all.

For many years, there were negligible changes to these core Internet protocols; HTTP added a few new headers and methods, TLS slowly went through minor revisions, TCP adapted congestion control, and DNS introduced features like DNSSEC. The protocols themselves looked about the same ‘on the wire’ for a very long time (excepting IPv6, which already gets its fair amount of attention in the network operator community.)

As a result, network operators, vendors, and policymakers that want to understand (and sometimes, control) the Internet have adopted a number of practices based upon these protocols’ wire ‘footprint’ — whether intended to debug issues, improve quality of service, or impose policy.

Now, significant changes to the core Internet protocols are underway. While they are intended to be compatible with the Internet at large (since they won’t get adoption otherwise), they might be disruptive to those who have taken liberties with undocumented aspects of protocols or made an assumption that things won’t change.

#### Why we need to change the Internet

There are a number of factors driving these changes.

First, the limits of the core Internet protocols have become apparent, especially regarding performance. Because of structural problems in the application and transport protocols, the network was not being used as efficiently as it could be, leading to end-user perceived performance (in particular, latency).

This translates into a strong motivation to evolve or replace those protocols because there is a [large body of experience showing the impact of even small performance gains](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/09/why-performance-matters-the-perception-of-time/).

Second, the ability to evolve Internet protocols — at any layer — has become more difficult over time, largely thanks to the unintended uses by networks discussed above. For example, HTTP proxies that tried to compress responses made it more difficult to deploy new compression techniques; TCP optimization in middleboxes made it more difficult to deploy improvements to TCP.

Finally, [we are in the midst of a shift towards more use of encryption on the Internet](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/46197.pdf), first spurred by Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2015. That’s really a separate discussion, but it is relevant here in that encryption is one of best tools we have to ensure that protocols can evolve.

Let’s have a look at what’s happened, what’s coming next, how it might impact networks, and how networks impact protocol design.

#### HTTP/2

[HTTP/2](https://http2.github.io/) (based on Google’s SPDY) was the first notable change — standardized in 2015, it multiplexes multiple requests onto one TCP connection, thereby avoiding the need to queue requests on the client without blocking each other. It is now widely deployed, and supported by all major browsers and web servers.

From a network’s viewpoint, HTTP/2 made a few notable changes. First, it’s a binary protocol, so any device that assumes it’s HTTP/1.1 is going to break.

That breakage was one of the primary reasons for another big change in HTTP/2; it effectively requires encryption. This gives it a better chance of avoiding interference from intermediaries that assume it’s HTTP/1.1, or do more subtle things like strip headers or block new protocol extensions — both things that had been seen by some of the engineers working on the protocol, causing significant support problems for them.

[HTTP/2 also requires TLS/1.2 to be used when it is encrypted](http://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7540.html#TLSUsage), and [blacklists ](http://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7540.html#BadCipherSuites)cipher suites that were judged to be insecure — with the effect of only allowing ephemeral keys. See the TLS 1.3 section for potential impacts here.

Finally, HTTP/2 allows more than one host’s requests to be [coalesced onto a connection](http://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7540.html#reuse), to improve performance by reducing the number of connections (and thereby, congestion control contexts) used for a page load.

For example, you could have a connection for `www.example.com`, but also use it for requests for `images.example.com`. [Future protocol extensions might also allow additional hosts to be added to the connection](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bishop-httpbis-http2-additional-certs), even if they weren’t listed in the original TLS certificate used for it. As a result, assuming that the traffic on a connection is limited to the purpose it was initiated for isn’t going to apply.

Despite these changes, it’s worth noting that HTTP/2 doesn’t appear to suffer from significant interoperability problems or interference from networks.

#### TLS 1.3

[TLS 1.3](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tls-tls13/) is just going through the final processes of standardization and is already supported by some implementations.

Don’t be fooled by its incremental name; this is effectively a new version of TLS, with a much-revamped handshake that allows application data to flow from the start (often called ‘0RTT’). The new design relies upon ephemeral key exchange, thereby ruling out static keys.

This has caused concern from some network operators and vendors — in particular those who need visibility into what’s happening inside those connections.

For example, consider the datacentre for a bank that has regulatory requirements for visibility. By sniffing traffic in the network and decrypting it with the static keys of their servers, they can log legitimate traffic and identify harmful traffic, whether it be attackers from the outside or employees trying to leak data from the inside.

TLS 1.3 doesn’t support that particular technique for intercepting traffic, since it’s also [a form of attack that ephemeral keys protect against](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_secrecy). However, since they have regulatory requirements to both use modern encryption protocols and to monitor their networks, this puts those network operators in an awkward spot.

There’s been much debate about whether regulations require static keys, whether alternative approaches could be just as effective, and whether weakening security for the entire Internet for the benefit of relatively few networks is the right solution. Indeed, it’s still possible to decrypt traffic in TLS 1.3, but you need access to the ephemeral keys to do so, and by design, they aren’t long-lived.

At this point it doesn’t look like TLS 1.3 will change to accommodate these networks, but there are rumblings about creating another protocol that allows a third party to observe what’s going on— and perhaps more — for these use cases. Whether that gets traction remains to be seen.

#### QUIC

During work on HTTP/2, it became evident that TCP has similar inefficiencies. Because TCP is an in-order delivery protocol, the loss of one packet can prevent those in the buffers behind it from being delivered to the application. For a multiplexed protocol, this can make a big difference in performance.

[QUIC](https://quicwg.github.io/) is an attempt to address that by effectively rebuilding TCP semantics (along with some of HTTP/2’s stream model) on top of UDP. Like HTTP/2, it started as a Google effort and is now in the IETF, with an initial use case of HTTP-over-UDP and a goal of becoming a standard in late 2018. However, since Google has already deployed QUIC in the Chrome browser and on its sites, it already accounts for more than 7% of Internet traffic.

**Read ****Your questions answered about QUIC**

Besides the shift from TCP to UDP for such a sizable amount of traffic (and all of the adjustments in networks that might imply), both Google QUIC (gQUIC) and IETF QUIC (iQUIC) require encryption to operate at all; there is no unencrypted QUIC.

iQUIC uses TLS 1.3 to establish keys for a session and then uses them to encrypt each packet. However, since it’s UDP-based, a lot of the session information and metadata that’s exposed in TCP gets encrypted in QUIC.

In fact, iQUIC’s current ‘short header’ — used for all packets except the handshake — only exposes a packet number, an optional connection identifier, and a byte of state for things like the encryption key rotation schedule and the packet type (which might end up encrypted as well).

Everything else is encrypted — including ACKs, to raise the bar for traffic analysis attacks.

However, this means that passively estimating RTT and packet loss by observing connections is no longer possible; there isn’t enough information. This lack of observability has caused a significant amount of concern by some in the operator community, who say that passive measurements like this are critical for debugging and understanding their networks.

One proposal to meet this need is the ‘[Spin Bit](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-trammell-quic-spin)‘ — a bit in the header that flips once a round trip, so that observers can estimate RTT. Since it’s decoupled from the application’s state, it doesn’t appear to leak any information about the endpoints, beyond a rough estimate of location on the network.

#### DOH

The newest change on the horizon is DOH — [DNS over HTTP](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/doh/about/). A [significant amount of research has shown that networks commonly use DNS as a means of imposing policy](https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/99/materials/slides-99-maprg-fingerprint-based-detection-of-dns-hijacks-using-ripe-atlas/) (whether on behalf of the network operator or a greater authority).

Circumventing this kind of control with encryption has been [discussed for a while](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dprive/about/), but it has a disadvantage (at least from some standpoints) — it is possible to discriminate it from other traffic; for example, by using its port number to block access.

DOH addresses that by piggybacking DNS traffic onto an existing HTTP connection, thereby removing any discriminators. A network that wishes to block access to that DNS resolver can only do so by blocking access to the website as well.

For example, if Google was to deploy its [public DNS service over DOH](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/) on `www.google.com` and a user configures their browser to use it, a network that wants (or is required) to stop it would have to effectively block all of Google (thanks to how they host their services).

DOH has just started its work, but there’s already a fair amount of interest in it, and some rumblings of deployment. How the networks (and governments) that use DNS to impose policy will react remains to be seen.

**Read **

**IETF 100, Singapore: DNS over HTTP (DOH!)**

#### Ossification and grease

To return to motivations, one theme throughout this work is how protocol designers are increasingly encountering problems where networks make assumptions about traffic.

For example, TLS 1.3 has had a number of last-minute issues with middleboxes that assume it’s an older version of the protocol. gQUIC blacklists several networks that throttle UDP traffic, because they think that it’s harmful or low-priority traffic.

When a protocol can’t evolve because deployments ‘freeze’ its extensibility points, we say it has *ossified*. TCP itself is a severe example of ossification; so many middleboxes do so many things to TCP — whether it’s blocking packets with TCP options that aren’t recognized, or ‘optimizing’ congestion control.

It’s necessary to prevent ossification, to ensure that protocols can evolve to meet the needs of the Internet in the future; otherwise, it would be a ‘tragedy of the commons’ where the actions of some individual networks — although well-intended — would affect the health of the Internet overall.

There are many ways to prevent ossification; if the data in question is encrypted, it cannot be accessed by any party but those that hold the keys, preventing interference. If an extension point is unencrypted but commonly used in a way that would break applications visibly (for example, HTTP headers), it’s less likely to be interfered with.

Where protocol designers can’t use encryption and an extension point isn’t used often, artificially exercising the extension point can help; we call this *greasing* it.

For example, QUIC encourages endpoints to use a range of decoy values in its version negotiation, to avoid implementations assuming that it will never change (as was often encountered in TLS implementations, leading to significant problems).

#### The network and the user

Beyond the desire to avoid ossification, these changes also reflect the evolving relationship between networks and their users. While for a long time people assumed that networks were always benevolent — or at least disinterested — parties, this is no longer the case, thanks not only to [pervasive monitoring](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7258) but also attacks like [Firesheep](https://github.com/codebutler/firesheep).

As a result, there is growing tension between the needs of Internet users overall and those of the networks who want to have access to some amount of the data flowing over them. Particularly affected will be networks that want to impose policy upon those users; for example, enterprise networks.

In some cases, they might be able to meet their goals by installing software (or a CA certificate, or a browser extension) on their users’ machines. However, this isn’t as easy in cases where the network doesn’t own or have access to the computer; for example, BYOD has become common, and IoT devices seldom have the appropriate control interfaces.

As a result, a lot of discussion surrounding protocol development in the IETF is touching on the sometimes competing needs of enterprises and other ‘leaf’ networks and the good of the Internet overall.

#### Get involved

For the Internet to work well in the long run, it needs to provide value to end users, avoid ossification, and allow networks to operate. The changes taking place now need to meet all three goals, but we need more input from network operators.

If these changes affect your network — or won’t— please leave comments below, or better yet, get involved in the [IETF](https://www.ietf.org) by attending a meeting, joining a mailing list, or providing feedback on a draft.

Thanks to Martin Thomson and Brian Trammell for their review.

*Mark Nottingham is a member of the Internet Architecture Board and co-chairs the IETF’s HTTP and QUIC Working Groups.
*

[Discuss on Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15906664)

The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own
and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC. Please note a [Code of Conduct](/?p=395) applies to this blog.

BillWow, maybe there is hope for an encrypted and unencumbered internet for our future. This was a refreshing read, thanks for the post.

And I suppose thanks to all the engineers at the IETF (et al) that are working their hardest to preserve a free-as-in-freedom and open internet.

My only comment is that, although enterprises and banks etc all have a legitimate usecase for crippling the security of their employees and other client software, despite that legit use, it is still a crippling of security. Bending to such needs is how we got into the situation where all modern x86 chips around the world are necessarily remotely owned with no workaround or way to disable it. I ask that you do not acquiesce to these requests, that you do not allow a general way in the various protocols for networks to, as you describe it, “impose policies” on their users. That is nothing less than the destruction of liberty and openness on the internet, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to preserve that to the utter maximum extent possible. I’m not sure how to solve the problem where business legitimately need to control their own computers remotely, but it should not be by the crippling of public and global protocols.

Thanks again for the years of hard, unrecognized service on these topics, and thanks for taking the time to share this post.

KyleThank you for looking at ways to engineer a robust open platform. Experience has shown we cannot rely on political action nor network benevolence to guarantee it. I echo Bill’s concerns about not acquiescing to the needs of “leaf” networks — if enterprise networks absolutely must “enforce policy” in certain ways, then they need to be responsible for deploying the intentionally-crippled hardware to their employees, rather than demanding the network itself be crippled so they can foist the cost of hardware onto their workers.

Jack SmithThink one of the most interesting is the Google network stack they developed for Spanner.

It is a determinate network stack and kind of like a virtual circuit switch. Lowers cost for network gear with the smarts on the edges.

Google has a paper that covers the protocol and highly recommend.

Rana SircarThanks for the details. One query – how are these and ETSI NGP initiative related?

Sam“Finally, we are in the midst of a shift towards more use of encryption on the Internet, first spurred by Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2015.”

Citation, please? The linked paper shows that SSL usage has been increasing steadily since at least 2013 (the earliest year it measured), and there’s no noticeable spurt that would correspond to Snowden. The paper doesn’t mention him at all.

We’ve known about Room 641A for a decade. I don’t think Snowden’s reveal was a revelation for anyone who knew what HTTPS was, or had the means to implement it.

EvanI think it might be that Snowden et. al. pushing the idea of vulnerability on the mainstream has more end users desiring encryption/etc., motivating companies like Google that make a living collecting/storing user data to try and make their users feel safe. Like yeah a journalist in Iran has always been conscious of data security but mass surveillance pushed into the public eye more and more makes average Joe want to encrypt his email too.

KathleenSeveral of the efforts to make it easier to encrypt, like, “Let’s Encrypt” got buy in for IETF standardization after Snowden and the publication of RFC7258. Other similar efforts had come before it, but timing and running code helped this one and it has had a substantial impact on the increase for web traffic. There was en EFF report and other statistics right after Snowden that showed a clear connection, but the efforts after that were motivated by Snowden can be seen in various IETF presentations.

Chip SharpMark,

It would be very useful to include the status of each effort and whether it is standards-track or informational.

JeroenThe real reason for “moar TLS” is not Snowden (though it definitely helped and did good to release all that data: more paranoia at TLAs) but availability of common fast crypto hardware (read AES support in standard cpus and loadbalancer gear) and more importantly: that the large advertising networks did not want their ads to be changed/removed by inline filtering devices….

bunnyDOH + Http over UDP + ??? = thoroughly confusing.

No wonder people prefer the ossified version

Iqbal AhmedThanks for sharing.

Toerless Eckert“Google Browser support protocols” would have been a more appropriate title to describe the majority of protocols discussed here.

Of course Google never said “L’Internet c’est moi!”, like Louis XIV never said “L’état c’est moi!”, but it’s easy to assume they did.

LukasThe blog posting says the Snowden revelations were in 2015, but they were in 2013.

Mark NottinghamBah, a horrible slip of the keyboard – thanks!

Kshitij AtryaThanks for sharing this.

Joe MeleIn addition to this, why cant we move to a system where domain names are like crypto currency on a blockchain. so registrar and their fees are not needed. we all know the right owner of domain name would be in the block chain. a wallet would have public ip address for the domain to point to. and the wallet in the blockchain is the current owner of the domain. etc

Jim ShieldsExcellent article. Thank you for putting all this information together. Now we just need more folks to read it …

Richard Kay@Joe Mele: “why cant we move to a system where domain names are like crypto currency on a blockchain”

1. See Metcalfe’s Law – objects already have a popular globally unique naming system and it will be difficult for a new protocol to compete with the existing DNS network. Properties for a new protocol to be accepted have to add sufficient value to be used, e.g. see Tor/Onion routed hidden services.

2. So who pays for the mining, and you think this is cheaper than the current system ? Also because protocols where 1KWh == 1 vote are bad for the planet, so won’t be used or accepted and will be actively blocked by those who care. Blockchain consensus systems which avoid wasted electricity involve central authority (e.g. a trusted CA signing node keys accepted by user community as contributing to network consensus). Having a central authority will have to be funded, hence no advantage over the current system.

wtarreauHi Mark!

We still need to find the right spot between policy enforcement and end-user security, otherwise we’ll end up preventing new protocols from being adopted. For example, networks *need* protections such as firewalls to prevent against remote attacks. By making protocols harder to inspect, we’re effectively making them harder to follow, and stateful firewalls will be harder to build, if at all (eg: QUIC doesn’t even allow to detect an ACK). This will cause leaf nodes to be permanently connected to the net without any form of network protection, thus reachable from outside on UDP from port 443. Nowadays most leaf nodes run behind NAT due to the shortage of IPv4 address space.

Those of us having IPv6 at home know that their IPv6 nodes tend to be a bit less protected by being permanently visible from outside and absolutely need to be protected by a firewall. I fear that by making it harder to protect leaf nodes against attacks on future protocols, we’ll make IPv6 perceived as much more dangerous for leaf nodes, which itself will become a real pain as it will still not allow transparent end-to-end communications. I already predict that we’ll see a new class of malware deployed on leaf nodes using UDP because it’s impossible to differenciate their traffic from outgoing QUIC traffic, and that may more leaf nodes will permanently be part of botnets. For example many firewalls only allow one or a few packets from port 53 in response to an outgoing packet to prevent unauthorized traffic from claiming to be DNS traffic and allowing intruders to access an end point. Here it will not be possible from source port 443 since we’ll never know when a connection is terminated, if it was at all started.

Thus my point is that we need to be very careful that building devices to protect infrastructure and end points is still possible without making it easy to build devices to inspect contents and communications.

Shawn MooreThis a good read, and will be interesting on how things pan out. As mentioned ease of use will be important as I feel that’s reason most of us are still on IPv4.

People are scared to even understand IPv6 address formatting because of the 128 bit addressing let alone implement it, even in a test environment.

Georgi IvanovI wonder why there is nothing about SMTP. All the mail protocols are so old and there is almost nothing new in the last 10-20 years.

Dan FooteI find it interesting that none of the comments that favor “unrestricted, unfettered flow of traffic that’s encrypted” because “it breaks the internet and security” fail to acknowledge that w upwards of 70% of all traffic now encrypted, so is the malware that infects machines. Expecting reliance on anti-virus alone makes little sense and not decrypting packets at the perimeter means that any sort of gateway anti-virus is also ineffective.

Businesses must have the ability to examine & inspect traffic onto their networks or else they’ll be sitting ducks for future waves of malware, ransomware, et al.

EtienneAll the changes listed still assume a top/down relationship, a provider/consumer model. Would be nice to have a “I want this file (UUID)” from consumer to be served by a computer as close as possible, to reduce network duplicate transmission. Allows mesh network, cryptographic signature might be served by initial server, download only once software updates, fonts, popular videos, …

BaldeepCoping with larger amounts of data it keep end users happy is key.

User experience will help drive repeat visits and enable website owners to be rewarded when they offer services relevant to the customer.

BongomanOne thing that is not stressed enough IMO is that protocols are, at least in part, a common good: we must not only be able to implement them, but also observe, measure, analyse their behaviours, in order to improve them, and make various kinds of prediction.

The opacification trend seems to be creating a fundamental shift from public to private of what started as a common good. ISTM that as a byproduct of the demand for more privacy we get an increase in privatisation. Not surprisingly, Google & the likes – whose core business is based on being able to creating VPNs from their datacentre to your data – are very content and supportive of this recent (western world) social trend.

Are we building protocols in the interest of the current incumbents? Or are we building for the common good?

online college helpIt’s really interesting article! At this time I’m working as a writer, but I’d like to become a pro in telecommunications. Always I were interested in different protocols and web-clients. And I think that I’ll get really amazing perspectives in this field.

So could someone advice me some useful topics like this?

I’ll be grateful to any answer.

Thank you that you are sharing such useful end rare content.

career in Hardware and networkingHello,

Thank you very much for this informative blog..You explain all the protocol’s very clearly and understandable languages..This information is very helpful for all.Thank you so much…Keep sharing

JoAnn ChateauAs a WordPress blogger and general Internet user, I’ve suspected Internet protocol changes. I experience them as user-UN-friendly (needing to click-twice for everything, right-click works like left-click, difficulties in placing the cursor, etc.) This article is the only one I’ve found, so far, that comes near to addressing the issues I experience. However, it’s too technical for me to fully grasp, and I’m unsure that it relates to my personal Internet experience concern.

Never-the-less, and for the record, from my viewpoint, I wonder if the changes are about touch-screen technology, prioritizing advertisers, or the result of pressure from Homeland Security.

Whatever the reason, if using the Internet gets any more annoying, I’m going back to reading by firelight… for information AND entertainment.

TCP/IP protocolIP switching is one of the most used technique which routes data packets faster than the traditional method by using layer 3 switches.

Sakshi SharmaThanku for showing the new ways to engineers ..it is the mostly used techniques.

SakshamThanku for a wonderfull Article..

NiyiThanks for that, wtarreau. I believe that the greatest challenge facing the internet now is security. Designing protocols that are uninspectable makes me cringe.

Snehal YadavGreat article and very informative. Thank you for sharing it.

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Thank you very much for this informative blog.You explain all the protocol’s very clear and understandable languages.This information is very helpful for all. Thank you so much…Keep sharing

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