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Re: [PATCH + RFC] neighbour/ARP cache scalability

To: YOSHIFUJI Hideaki / 吉藤英明 <yoshfuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [PATCH + RFC] neighbour/ARP cache scalability
From: Tim Gardner <timg@xxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:39:21 -0600
Cc: pekkas@xxxxxxxxxx, laforge@xxxxxxxxxxxx, netdev@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <20040922.010428.104988024.yoshfuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Organization: TriplePoint, Inc.
References: <20040922.001448.73843048.yoshfuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0409211856260.9906-100000@xxxxxxxxxx> <20040922.010428.104988024.yoshfuji@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-to: timg@xxxxxxx
Sender: netdev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 10:04, YOSHIFUJI Hideaki / 吉藤英明 wrote:
> In article <Pine.LNX.4.44.0409211856260.9906-100000@xxxxxxxxxx> (at Tue, 21 
> Sep 2004 18:58:05 +0300 (EEST)), Pekka Savola <pekkas@xxxxxxxxxx> says:
> 
> > This still doesn't take a stance on rate-limiting the ND/ARP packets,
> > in case that there still is enough memory, but some kind of attack is
> > clearly underway.  Should it still be done?  Consider 100Kpps of
> > router-generated ARP/ND probes -- not good!
> 

Detecting an attack would require some kind of heuristic in the core
router code. I believe that logic is better suited for an iptables
filter. Why burden well guarded machines that are unikely to experience
this kind of attack? I think the only thing NUD should do is limit the
absolute number of NUD entries that it can create. Give it a sysctl knob
for large networks, but make the default something reasonable (like
2K).  

I've developed a variant of the Port Scan Detector (PSD) iptables filter
that combats this very problem. It only allows so many destination
IP/Port pairs from a given address to be opened over time. This limits
the rate at which connections can be opened as well as the absolute
number. For example, on my edge routers I set the policy that no single
IP source address can create more then 64 connections within a 30 second
sliding window. This has made a huge impact on the ARP storms that our
network used to experience.

rtg

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