Currently, SPTPS packets are transported over TCP metaconnections using
extended REQ_KEY requests, in order for the packets to pass through
tinc-1.0 nodes unaltered. Unfortunately, this method presents two
significant downsides:
- An already encrypted SPTPS packet is decrypted and then encrypted
again every time it passes through a node, since it is transported
over the SPTPS channels of the metaconnections. This
double-encryption is unnecessary and wastes CPU cycles.
- More importantly, the only way to transport binary data over
standard metaconnection messages such as REQ_KEY is to encode it
in base64, which has a 33% encoding overhead. This wastes 25% of the
network bandwidth.
This commit introduces a new protocol message, SPTPS_PACKET, which can
be used to transport SPTPS packets over a TCP metaconnection in an
efficient way. The new message is appropriately protected through a
minor protocol version increment, and extended REQ_KEY messages are
still used with nodes that do not support the new message, as well as
for the intial handshake packets, for which efficiency is not a concern.
The way SPTPS_PACKET works is very similar to how the traditional PACKET
message works: after the SPTPS_PACKET message, the raw binary packet is
sent directly over the metaconnection. There is one important
difference, however: in the case of SPTPS_PACKET, the packet is sent
directly over the TCP stream completely bypassing the SPTPS channel of
the metaconnection itself for maximum efficiency. This is secure because
the SPTPS packet that is being sent is already encrypted with an
end-to-end key.
This makes sure MTU_INFO messages are only sent at the maximum rate of
5 per second (by default). As usual with these "probe" mechanisms, the
rate of these messages cannot be higher than the rate of data packets
themselves, since they are sent from the RX path.
This makes sure UDP_INFO messages are only sent at the maximum rate of
5 per second (by default). As usual with these "probe" mechanisms, the
rate of these messages cannot be higher than the rate of data packets
themselves, since they are sent from the RX path.
In this commit, nodes use MTU_INFO messages to provide MTU information.
The issue this code is meant to address is the non-trivial problem of
finding the proper MTU when UDP SPTPS relays are involved. Currently,
tinc has no idea what the MTU looks like beyond the first relay, and
will arbitrarily use the first relay's MTU as the limit. This will fail
miserably if the MTU decreases after the first relay, forcing relays to
fall back to TCP. More generally, one should keep in mind that relay
paths can be arbitrarily complex, resulting in packets taking "epic
journeys" through the graph, switching back and forth between UDP (with
variable MTUs) and TCP multiple times along the path.
A solution that was considered consists in sending standard MTU probes
through the relays. This is inefficient (if there are 3 nodes on one
side of relay and 3 nodes on the other side, we end up with 3*3=9 MTU
discoveries taking place at the same time, while technically only
3+3=6 are needed) and would involve eyebrow-raising behaviors such as
probes being sent over TCP.
This commit implements an alternative solution, which consists in
the packet receiver sending MTU_INFO messages to the packet sender.
The message contains an MTU value which is set to maximum when the
message is originally sent. The message gets altered as it travels
through the metagraph, such that when the message arrives to the
destination, the MTU value contained in the message can be used to
send packets while making sure no relays will be forced to fall back to
TCP to deliver them.
The operating principles behind such a protocol message are similar to
how the UDP_INFO message works, but there is a key difference that
prevents us from simply reusing the same message: the UDP_INFO message
only cares about relay-to-relay links (i.e. it is sent between static
relays and the information it contains only makes sense between two
adjacent static relays), while the MTU_INFO cares about the end-to-end
MTU, including the entire relay path. Therefore, UDP_INFO messages stop
when they encounter static relays, while MTU_INFO messages don't stop
until they get to the original packet sender.
Note that, technically, the MTU that is obtained through this mechanism
can be slightly pessimistic, because it can be lowered by an
intermediate node that is not being used as a relay. Since nodes have no
way of knowing whether they'll be used as dynamic relays or not (and
have no say in the matter), this is not a trivial problem. That said,
this is highly unlikely to result in noticeable issues in realistic
scenarios.
In this commit, nodes use UDP_INFO messages to provide UDP address
information. The basic principle is that the node that receives packets
sends UDP_INFO messages to the node that's sending the packets. The
message originally contains no address information, and is (hopefully)
updated with relevant address information as it gets relayed through the
metagraph - specifically, each intermediate node will update the message
with its best guess as to what the address is while forwarding it.
When a node receives an UDP_INFO message, and it doesn't have a
confirmed UDP tunnel with the originator node, it will update its
records with the new address for that node, so that it always has the
best possible guess as to how to reach that node. This applies to the
destination node of course, but also to any intermediate nodes, because
there's no reason they should pass on the free intel, and because it
results in nice behavior in the presence of relay chains (multiple nodes
in a path all trying to reach the same destination).
If, on the other hand, the node does have a confirmed UDP tunnel, it
will ignore the address information contained in the message.
In all cases, if the node that receives the message is not the
destination node specified in the message, it will forward the message
but not before overriding the address information with the one from its
own records. If the node has a confirmed UDP tunnel, that means the
message is updated with the address of the confirmed tunnel; if not,
the message simply reflects the records of the intermediate node, which
just happen to be the contents of the UDP_INFO message it just got, so
it's simply forwarded with no modification.
This is similar to the way ANS_KEY messages are currently
overloaded to provide UDP address information, with two differences:
- UDP_INFO messages are sent way more often than ANS_KEY messages,
thereby keeping the address information fresh. Previously, if the UDP
situation were to change after the ANS_KEY message was sent, the
sender would virtually never get the updated information.
- Once a node puts address information in an ANS_KEY message, it is
never changed again as the message travels through the metagraph; in
contrast, UDP_INFO messages behave the opposite way, as they get
rewritten every time they travel through a node with a confirmed UDP
tunnel. The latter behavior seems more appropriate because UDP tunnel
information becomes more relevant as it moves closer to the
destination node. The ANS_KEY behavior is not satisfactory in some
cases such as multi-layered graphs where the first hop is located
before a NAT.
Ultimately, the rationale behind this whole process is to improve UDP
hole punching capabilities when port translation is in effect, and more
generally, to make tinc more reliable in (very) hostile network
conditions (such as multi-layered NAT).
The offset value indicates where the actual payload starts, so we can
process both legacy and SPTPS UDP packets without having to do casting
tricks and/or moving memory around.
When making outgoing connections, tinc goes through the list of Addresses and
tries all of them until one succeeds. However, before it would consider
establishing a TCP connection a success, even when the authentication failed.
This would be a problem if the first Address would point to a hostname and port
combination that belongs to the wrong tinc node, or perhaps even to a non-tinc
service, causing tinc to endlessly try this Address instead of moving to the
next one.
Problem found by Delf Eldkraft.
This allows tincctl to receive log messages from a running tincd,
independent of what is logged to syslog or to file. Tincctl can receive
debug messages with an arbitrary level.
This is mainly important for Windows, where the select() call in the
main thread is not being woken up when the tapreader thread calls
route(), causing a delay of up to 1 second before the output buffer is
flushed. This would cause bad performance when UDP communication is not
possible.
This feature is not necessary anymore since we have tools like valgrind today
that can catch stack overflow errors before they make a backtrace in gdb
impossible.
- Update year numbers in copyright headers.
- Add copyright information for Michael Tokarev and Florian Forster to the
copyright headers of files to which they have contributed significantly.
- Mention Michael and Florian in AUTHORS.
- Mention that tinc is GPLv3 or later if compiled with the --enable-tunemu
flag.
- Convert cp to cp(); so that automatic indenters work.
- Convert constructions like if(x == NULL) to if(!x).
- Move all assignments out of conditions.
