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Revision: 1.4
Committed: Sat Jan 22 17:42:30 2005 UTC (19 years, 4 months ago) by pcg
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CVS Tags: HEAD
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# User Rev Content
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131     .IX Title "VPE.PROTOCOL 7"
132 pcg 1.3 .TH VPE.PROTOCOL 7 "2004-06-07" "1.7" "Virtual Private Ethernet"
133     .SH "The GNU-VPE Protocol"
134     .IX Header "The GNU-VPE Protocol"
135 pcg 1.1 .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 pcg 1.2 The \s-1HMAC\s0 field is present in all packets, even if not used (e.g. in auth
148     request packets), in which case it is set to all zeroes. The checksum
149     itself is over the \s-1TYPE\s0, \s-1SRCDST\s0 and \s-1DATA\s0 fields in all cases.
150 pcg 1.1 .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 pcg 1.2 only part that can be encrypted. Data packets contain more fields, as
163     shown:
164 pcg 1.1 .PP
165     .Vb 3
166     \& +------+------+--------+------+-------+------+
167     \& | HMAC | TYPE | SRCDST | RAND | SEQNO | DATA |
168     \& +------+------+--------+------+-------+------+
169     .Ve
170     .PP
171 pcg 1.2 \&\s-1RAND\s0 is a sequence of fully random bytes, used to increase the entropy of
172     the data for encryption purposes.
173 pcg 1.1 .PP
174     \&\s-1SEQNO\s0 is a 32\-bit sequence number. It is negotiated at every connection
175 pcg 1.2 initialization and starts at some random 31 bit value. \s-1VPE\s0 currently uses
176     a sliding window of 512 packets to detect reordering, duplication and
177     reply attacks.
178 pcg 1.1 .Sh "The authentification protocol"
179     .IX Subsection "The authentification protocol"
180     Before hosts can exchange packets, they need to establish authenticity of
181     the other side and a key. Every host has a private \s-1RSA\s0 key and the public
182     \&\s-1RSA\s0 keys of all other hosts.
183     .PP
184 pcg 1.2 A host establishes a simplex connection by sending the other host a
185     \&\s-1RSA\s0 encrypted challenge containing a random challenge (consisting of
186     the encryption key to use when sending packets, more random data and
187     \&\s-1PKCS1_OAEP\s0 padding) and a random 16 byte \*(L"challenge\-id\*(R" (used to detect
188     duplicate auth packets). The destination host will respond by replying
189     with an (unencrypted) \s-1RIPEMD160\s0 hash of the decrypted challenge, which
190 pcg 1.1 will authentify that host. The destination host will also set the outgoing
191     encryption parameters as given in the packet.
192     .PP
193     When the source host receives a correct auth reply (by verifying the
194 pcg 1.2 hash and the id, which will expire after 120 seconds), it will start to
195     accept data packets from the destination host.
196     .PP
197     This means that a host can only initate a simplex connection, telling the
198     other side the key it has to use when it sends packets. The challenge
199     reply is only used to set the current \s-1IP\s0 address and protocol parameters.
200     .PP
201     The protocol here is completely symmetric, so to be able to send packets
202     the destination host must send a challenge in the exact same way as
203     already described (so, in essence, two simplex connections are created per
204     host pair).
205 pcg 1.1 .Sh "Retrying"
206     .IX Subsection "Retrying"
207     When there is no response to an auth request, the host will send auth
208     requests in bursts with an exponential backoff. After some time it will
209     resort to \s-1PING\s0 packets, which are very small (8 byte) and lightweight (no
210     \&\s-1RSA\s0 operations). A host that receives ping requests from an unconnected
211     peer will respond by trying to create a connection.
212     .PP
213     In addition to the exponential backoff, there is a global rate-limit on
214     a per-ip base. It allows long bursts but will limit total packet rate to
215     something like one control packet every ten seconds, to avoid accidental
216     floods due to protocol problems (like a rsa key file mismatch between two
217     hosts).
218     .Sh "Routing and Protocol translation"
219     .IX Subsection "Routing and Protocol translation"
220     The vpe routing algorithm is easy: there isn't any routing. Vped always
221     tries to establish direct connections, if the protocol abilities of the
222     two hosts allow it.
223     .PP
224     If the two hosts should be able to reach each other (common protocol, ip
225     and port all known), but cannot (network down), then there will be no
226     connection, point.
227     .PP
228     A host can usually declare itself unreachable directly by setting it's
229     port number(s) to zero. It can declare other hosts as unreachable by using
230     a config-file that disables all protocols for these other hosts.
231     .PP
232     If two hosts cannot connect to each other because their \s-1IP\s0 address(es)
233     are not known (such as dialup hosts), one side will send a connection
234     request to a router (routers must be configured to act as routers!), which
235     will send both the originating and the destination host a connection info
236     request with protocol information and \s-1IP\s0 address of the other host (if
237     known). Both hosts will then try to establish a connection to the other
238     peer, which is usually possible even when both hosts are behind a \s-1NAT\s0
239     gateway.
240     .PP
241     If the hosts cannot reach each other because they have no common protocol,
242     the originator instead use the router with highest priority and matching
243     protocol as peer. Since the \s-1SRCDST\s0 field is not encrypted, the router host
244     can just forward the packet to the destination host. Since each host uses
245     it's own private key, the router will not be able to decrypt or encrypt
246     packets, it will just act as a simple router and protocol translator.
247     .PP
248     When no router is connected, the host will aggressively try to connect to
249     all routers, and if a router is asked for an unconnected host it will try
250     to ask another router to establish the connection.
251     .PP
252     \&... more not yet written about the details of the routing, please bug me
253     \&...