[Babel-users] althea presentation on isp in a box at nanog 76

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> I actually have mostly written RFC's for both.

Please submit them as I-Ds:

  https://datatracker.ietf.org/submit

Please make sure you agree with this:

  https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp78

> The price updates are hacked onto the update tlv as we aren't running
> the price extension I specified. which is why I advertise a different
> protocol number for now. I do hope to upgrade to the full spec version
> of the price advertisement at some point.

I see.

> I've been conflicted over making full path packet loss it's own TLV or
> not. You can derive it from the metric field if all nodes are configured
> 'the althea way' but that's very much not spec behavior. So I should
> probably bite the bullet.

I agree, it's better to be explicit -- it doesn't eat up a lot of bytes on
the wire, and makes troubleshooting easier.

> If the general protocol registry form on the IANA site is appropriate
> than this shouldn't take but a few minutes. I think 45, 46, and 47 are
> all available right?

You need to write a specification and go through expert review (I believe
that Donald Eastlake and myself are the experts right now).  RFC is not
required, an Internet-Draft should be enough.

>> You're running Wireguard over Babel or the other way around?  Any issues
>> with that?

> We're running Babel over WireGuard and WireGuard over Babel. The bottom
> layer for authenticating packets between peers and the top for securing
> user traffic as it traverses the network.

Hmm... does HMAC alleviate the need for the bottom layer?

  https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-babel-hmac

(It's implemented, but not merged yet -- I've got two students working on
making it mergeable.)

> I think now we could condense this by configuring unicast peer discovery
> which from what I understand is in master.

No, it's not implemented yet.  More exactly, the protocol bits are in
there, but the configuration bits are not.

It's also only designed to work with link-local addresses, I'm not sure
how much work it would be to get it work over global addresses.

> Oh yeah the default number of management connections is puny, I bumped
> it to 128, might want to make it configurable.

Ok, I'll see how much memory that would waste.

> The final thing on my wishlist is just a Rust Babel implementation. It's
> such a pleasure to write in, very easy to get your code to the point
> where if it compiles it works. Chances are we'll make one ourselves
> eventually.

It should be easy enough.  (I'm a Go fan myself, we'll hopefully have
a debate on the subject at some point.)

-- Juliusz