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Revision: 1.1
Committed: Wed Oct 15 01:02:27 2003 UTC (20 years, 8 months ago) by pcg
Branch: MAIN
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# User Rev Content
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131     .IX Title "VPE.PROTOCOL 7"
132     .TH VPE.PROTOCOL 7 "2003-04-15" "0.9" "Virtual Private Ethernet"
133     .SH "The VPE Protocol"
134     .IX Header "The VPE Protocol"
135     .Sh "Anatomy of a \s-1VPN\s0 packet"
136     .IX Subsection "Anatomy of a VPN packet"
137     The exact layout and field lengths of a \s-1VPN\s0 packet is determined at
138     compiletime and doesn't change. The same structure is used for all
139     protocols, be it rawip or tcp.
140     .PP
141     .Vb 3
142     \& +------+------+--------+------+
143     \& | HMAC | TYPE | SRCDST | DATA |
144     \& +------+------+--------+------+
145     .Ve
146     .PP
147     The \s-1HMAC\s0 field is present in all packets, even if not used (e.g. in
148     authentification packets), in which case it is set to all zeroes. The
149     checksum itself is over the \s-1TYPE\s0, \s-1SRCDST\s0 and \s-1DATA\s0 fields in all cases.
150     .PP
151     The \s-1TYPE\s0 field is a single byte and determines the purpose of the packet
152     (e.g. \s-1RESET\s0, \s-1COMPRESSED/UNCOMPRESSED\s0 \s-1DATA\s0, \s-1PING\s0, \s-1AUTH\s0 \s-1REQUEST/RESPONSE\s0,
153     \&\s-1CONNECT\s0 \s-1REQUEST/INFO\s0 etc.).
154     .PP
155     \&\s-1SRCDST\s0 is a three byte field which contains the source and destination
156     node ids (12 bits each). The protocol does not yet scale well beyond 30+
157     hosts, since all hosts connect to each other on startup. But if restarts
158     are rare or tolerable and most connections are on demand, larger networks
159     are possible.
160     .PP
161     The \s-1DATA\s0 portion differs between each packet type, naturally, and is the
162     only part that can be encrypted encrypted. Data packets contain more
163     fields, as shown:
164     .PP
165     .Vb 3
166     \& +------+------+--------+------+-------+------+
167     \& | HMAC | TYPE | SRCDST | RAND | SEQNO | DATA |
168     \& +------+------+--------+------+-------+------+
169     .Ve
170     .PP
171     \&\s-1RAND\s0 is a sequence of fully random bytes, used to increase the entropy of the data
172     for encryption purposes.
173     .PP
174     \&\s-1SEQNO\s0 is a 32\-bit sequence number. It is negotiated at every connection
175     initialization and starts at some random value.
176     .Sh "The authentification protocol"
177     .IX Subsection "The authentification protocol"
178     Before hosts can exchange packets, they need to establish authenticity of
179     the other side and a key. Every host has a private \s-1RSA\s0 key and the public
180     \&\s-1RSA\s0 keys of all other hosts.
181     .PP
182     A host establishes a simplex connection by sending the other host a \s-1RSA\s0
183     challenge containing the random digest and encryption keys (different)
184     to use when sending packets, plus more randomness plus some \s-1PKCS1_OAEP\s0
185     padding plus a random 16 byte id. The destination host will respond by
186     replying with an (unencrypted) \s-1RIPEMD160\s0 hash of the decrypted data, which
187     will authentify that host. The destination host will also set the outgoing
188     encryption parameters as given in the packet.
189     .PP
190     When the source host receives a correct auth reply (by verifying the
191     hash and the id, which will expire after 20 seconds). it will start to
192     accept data packets from the destination host. The protocol is completely
193     symmetric, so to be able to send packets the destination host must send a
194     challenge in the exact same way as already described.
195     .Sh "Retrying"
196     .IX Subsection "Retrying"
197     When there is no response to an auth request, the host will send auth
198     requests in bursts with an exponential backoff. After some time it will
199     resort to \s-1PING\s0 packets, which are very small (8 byte) and lightweight (no
200     \&\s-1RSA\s0 operations). A host that receives ping requests from an unconnected
201     peer will respond by trying to create a connection.
202     .PP
203     In addition to the exponential backoff, there is a global rate-limit on
204     a per-ip base. It allows long bursts but will limit total packet rate to
205     something like one control packet every ten seconds, to avoid accidental
206     floods due to protocol problems (like a rsa key file mismatch between two
207     hosts).
208     .Sh "Routing and Protocol translation"
209     .IX Subsection "Routing and Protocol translation"
210     The vpe routing algorithm is easy: there isn't any routing. Vped always
211     tries to establish direct connections, if the protocol abilities of the
212     two hosts allow it.
213     .PP
214     If the two hosts should be able to reach each other (common protocol, ip
215     and port all known), but cannot (network down), then there will be no
216     connection, point.
217     .PP
218     A host can usually declare itself unreachable directly by setting it's
219     port number(s) to zero. It can declare other hosts as unreachable by using
220     a config-file that disables all protocols for these other hosts.
221     .PP
222     If two hosts cannot connect to each other because their \s-1IP\s0 address(es)
223     are not known (such as dialup hosts), one side will send a connection
224     request to a router (routers must be configured to act as routers!), which
225     will send both the originating and the destination host a connection info
226     request with protocol information and \s-1IP\s0 address of the other host (if
227     known). Both hosts will then try to establish a connection to the other
228     peer, which is usually possible even when both hosts are behind a \s-1NAT\s0
229     gateway.
230     .PP
231     If the hosts cannot reach each other because they have no common protocol,
232     the originator instead use the router with highest priority and matching
233     protocol as peer. Since the \s-1SRCDST\s0 field is not encrypted, the router host
234     can just forward the packet to the destination host. Since each host uses
235     it's own private key, the router will not be able to decrypt or encrypt
236     packets, it will just act as a simple router and protocol translator.
237     .PP
238     When no router is connected, the host will aggressively try to connect to
239     all routers, and if a router is asked for an unconnected host it will try
240     to ask another router to establish the connection.
241     .PP
242     \&... more not yet written about the details of the routing, please bug me
243     \&...