5 ms·

I thought he was pretty clear. The internet itself shouldn't be limited to merely TCP et al. It's just wires.

batch12 5y ago
It is more than just wires though. The traffic has to be routed- so it has to use some kind of protocol understood by every device in the path, right?
- Ekaros 5y ago
  IP It really doesn't care what sort of wire it comes to router and what sort of wire it leaves over. And then not really even what is inside, it supports up to 252 different protocols inside. Now gathering and transferring information where to transfer is somewhat more tricky, but really IP is pair of addresses and some data.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ale42 5y ago
    Except that for many users IP is unusable, only the TCP and UDP layers are actually properly handled by most "home" device. SCTP? Maybe over UDP... definitely not as protocol 132 inside IP. And CGNAT makes things even more complicated.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  You're correct, of course, but that routing should strictly be done on the network layer. If some downstream router receives a packet for host 2002:abcd::abcd:ef that uses some unknown transport protocol, it should just forward the packet (unless a firewall rule explicitly bans the packet, of course). What we're seeing today is that routing hardware is also parsing the session transport layer (and sometimes even more!). TLS 1.3 lies about its TLS version (pretends to be a TLS 1.2 client hello) because some big companies can't deal with arbitrary version numbers. To "fix" this problem in the future, the real version numbers in the TLS protocol are now pretty much randomized to ensure no new middleboxes look at them again. Also take HTTP/2: most of the fixes HTTP/2 provides (basically forming a tunnel) are already embedded into smarter transport protocols like SCTP. Because of lack of middlebox support, using such an alternative transport wasn't even an option. Alternatives like SST also had no chance, leaving everything to the TCP-packets-within-TCP HTTP/2 approach because of compatibility. [1]: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/uia/sst/ https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/uia/sst/

It is more than just wires though. The traffic has to be routed- so it has to use some kind of protocol understood by every device in the path, right?

Ekaros 5y ago
IP It really doesn't care what sort of wire it comes to router and what sort of wire it leaves over. And then not really even what is inside, it supports up to 252 different protocols inside. Now gathering and transferring information where to transfer is somewhat more tricky, but really IP is pair of addresses and some data.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ale42 5y ago
  Except that for many users IP is unusable, only the TCP and UDP layers are actually properly handled by most "home" device. SCTP? Maybe over UDP... definitely not as protocol 132 inside IP. And CGNAT makes things even more complicated.
jeroenhd 5y ago
You're correct, of course, but that routing should strictly be done on the network layer. If some downstream router receives a packet for host 2002:abcd::abcd:ef that uses some unknown transport protocol, it should just forward the packet (unless a firewall rule explicitly bans the packet, of course). What we're seeing today is that routing hardware is also parsing the session transport layer (and sometimes even more!). TLS 1.3 lies about its TLS version (pretends to be a TLS 1.2 client hello) because some big companies can't deal with arbitrary version numbers. To "fix" this problem in the future, the real version numbers in the TLS protocol are now pretty much randomized to ensure no new middleboxes look at them again. Also take HTTP/2: most of the fixes HTTP/2 provides (basically forming a tunnel) are already embedded into smarter transport protocols like SCTP. Because of lack of middlebox support, using such an alternative transport wasn't even an option. Alternatives like SST also had no chance, leaving everything to the TCP-packets-within-TCP HTTP/2 approach because of compatibility. [1]: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/uia/sst/ https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/uia/sst/