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.
REQ_SPTPS implies the message has an ANS_ counterpart (like REQ_KEY,
ANS_KEY), but it doesn't. Therefore dropping the REQ_ seems more
appropriate, and we add a _PACKET suffix to reduce the likelihood of
naming conflicts.
Average RTT can be used to update edge weight and propagate it to the network.
tinc dump edges has been also extended to give the current RTT.
New edge weight will change only if the config has EdgeUpdateInterval set to other value than 0.
- Ignore local configuration for editors
- Extended manpage with informations about EdgeUpdateInterval
- Added clone_edge and fixed potential segfault when b->from not defined
- Compute avg_rtt based on the time values we got back in PONG
- Add avg_rtt on dump edge
- Send current time on PING and return it on PONG
- Changed last_ping_time to struct timeval
- Extended edge_t with avg_rtt
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).
This commit changes the layout of UDP datagrams to include the 6-byte ID
(i.e. node name hash) of the node that crafted the packet at the very
beginning of the datagram (i.e. before the seqno). Note that this only
applies to SPTPS.
This is implemented at the lowest layer, i.e. in
handle_incoming_vpn_data() and send_sptps_data() functions. Source ID is
added and removed there, in such a way that the upper layers are unaware
of its presence.
This is the first stepping stone towards supporting UDP relaying in
SPTPS, by providing information about the original sender in the packet
itself. Nevertheless, even without relaying this commit already provides
a few benefits such as being able to reliably determine the source node
of a packet in the presence of an unknown source IP address, without
having to painfully go through all node keys. This makes tinc's behavior
much more scalable in this regard.
This change does not break anything with regard to the protocol: It
preserves compatibility with 1.0 and even with older pre-1.1 releases
thanks to a minor protocol version change (17.4). Source ID information
won't be included in packets sent to nodes with minor version < 4.
One drawback, however, is that this change increases SPTPS datagram
overhead by 6 bytes (the size of the source ID itself).
When replying to a PMTU probe, tinc sends a packet with the same length
as the PMTU probe itself, which is usually large (~1450 bytes). This is
not necessary: the other node wants to know the size of the PMTU probes
that have been received, but encoding this information as the actual
reply length is probably the most inefficient way to do it. It doubles
the bandwidth usage of the PMTU discovery process, and makes it less
reliable since large packets are more likely to be dropped.
This patch introduces a new PMTU probe reply type, encoded as type "2"
in the first byte of the packet, that indicates that the length of the
PMTU probe that is being replied to is encoded in the next two bytes of
the packet. Thus reply packets are only 3 bytes long.
(This also protects against very broken networks that drop very small
packets - yes, I've seen it happen on a subnet of a national ISP - in
such a case the PMTU probe replies will be dropped, and tinc won't
enable UDP communication, which is a good thing.)
Because legacy nodes won't understand type 2 probe replies, the minor
protocol number is bumped to 3.
Note that this also improves bandwidth estimation, as it is able to
measure bandwidth in both directions independently (the node receiving
the replies is measuring in the TX direction) and the use of smaller
reply packets might decrease the influence of jitter.
Using the tinc command, an administrator of an existing VPN can generate
invitations for new nodes. The invitation is a small URL that can easily
be copy&pasted into email or live chat. Another person can have tinc
automatically setup the necessary configuration files and exchange keys
with the server, by only using the invitation URL.
The invitation protocol uses temporary ECDSA keys. The invitation URL
consists of the hostname and port of the server, a hash of the server's
temporary ECDSA key and a cookie. When the client wants to accept an
invitation, it also creates a temporary ECDSA key, connects to the server
and says it wants to accept an invitation. Both sides exchange their
temporary keys. The client verifies that the server's key matches the hash
in the invitation URL. After setting up an SPTPS connection using the
temporary keys, the client gives the cookie to the server. If the cookie
is valid, the server sends the client an invitation file containing the
client's new name and a copy of the server's host config file. If everything
is ok, the client will generate a long-term ECDSA key and send it to the
server, which will add it to a new host config file for the client.
The invitation protocol currently allows multiple host config files to be
send from the server to the client. However, the client filters out
most configuration variables for its own host configuration file. In
particular, it only accepts Name, Mode, Broadcast, ConnectTo, Subnet and
AutoConnect. Also, at the moment no tinc-up script is generated.
When an invitation has succesfully been accepted, the client needs to start
the tinc daemon manually.
Only the very first packet of an SPTPS session should be send with REQ_KEY,
this signals the peer to abort any previous session and start a new one as
well.
When two nodes which support SPTPS want to send packets to each other, they now
always use SPTPS. The node initiating the SPTPS session send the first SPTPS
packet via an extended REQ_KEY messages. All other handshake messages are sent
using ANS_KEY messages. This ensures that intermediate nodes using an older
version of tinc can still help with NAT traversal. After the authentication
phase is over, SPTPS packets are sent via UDP, or are encapsulated in extended
REQ_KEY messages instead of PACKET messages.
When this option is enabled, tinc will not accept dynamic updates of Subnets
from other nodes, but will only use Subnets read from local host config files
to build its routing table.
The control socket code was completely different from how meta connections are
handled, resulting in lots of extra code to handle requests. Also, not every
operating system has UNIX sockets, so we have to resort to another type of
sockets or pipes for those anyway. To reduce code duplication and make control
sockets work the same on all platforms, we now just connect to the TCP port
where tincd is already listening on.
To authenticate, the program that wants to control a running tinc daemon must
send the contents of a cookie file. The cookie is a random 256 bits number that
is regenerated every time tincd starts. The cookie file should only be readable
by the same user that can start a tincd.
Instead of the binary-ish protocol previously used, we now use an ASCII
protocol similar to that of the meta connections, but this can still change.
- 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.
Previously, tinc used a fixed address and port for each node for UDP packet
exchange. The port was the one advertised by that node as its listening port.
However, due to NAT the port might be different. Now, tinc sends a different
session key to each node. This way, the sending node can be determined from
incoming packets by checking the MAC against all session keys. If a match is
found, the address and port for that node are updated.
