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What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

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Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#61

Post by kjs3 »

jmclnx wrote: post #48

We would all be on UUCP. That was doing similar things before TCP/UDP.

UUCP was only a couple years before TCP, and isn't really an equivalent (it's fancy file transfer with a little remote command exec sprinkled on in the end) and natively its dialup oriented; it usually requires some other L3 protocol to run over networks.

There was a time when IPX/SPX was a contender. Xerox pitched XNS directly at TCP. DECNet/OSI was around. There were a lot of others...lot's of experimenting going on at the time.

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#62

Post by AnotherGoodName »

pkkm wrote: post #2

You don't need to make up your own for this experiment. There's already a pretty old protocol that's far superior to TCP, but failed to get adoption because of network hardware dropping everything other than TCP and UDP. It's called SCTP.

IPX is another that was very common just 20years ago. Many old games only support ipx networking and you need to run an ipx over tcp emulator to play them multiplayer nowadays.

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#63

Post by capitainenemo »

tsimionescu wrote: post #17
jeroenhd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SCTP is fascinating because it's one of the backbone technologies that makes communication possible for most people on the planet (as the mobile network stack pretty much relies on it), yet it's effectively unsupported on almost every consumer device. If you want to use it, you're probably going to have to ship a userland implementation that needs privileges to open a raw network socket, because kernel implementation…

While the gist of your post is spot on, I do feel it should be noted that DoH is preferred over DoT not to protect from middleboxes that don't work properly, but from middleboxes that are actively trying to outright censor encrypted DNS, but can't afford to snoop on/prevent all HTTPS traffic. It's an anti-censorship measure, not a compatibility measure.

It's also about user privacy with ISPs as well as anti-censorship. https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-over-tls/

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#64

Post by labcomputer »

api wrote: post #55
kstrauser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SLAAC’s awesome, though. It’s one of the good parts we definitely want to keep.

Let's say your ISP gives you a /64. Now you have to use V6 NAT... or assign a /96 internally. SLAAC won't let you do that. That, among other things, is a problem. SLAAC is too limited. You can use DHCPv6 but then you can't use Android because Android, and I think they're alone here, stubbornly and dogmatically refuses to implement it. I guess you could go around and statically assign V6 IPs to Android devices, or run…

Then your ISP isn’t following the RFCs. You might as well ask what you would do if you ISP gives your router a 17.0.0.0/8 address via DHCP.

These are completely invented problems in your head. SLAAC can absolutely advertise a single /64 internally. It can advertise any /64 you tell it to.

DHCPv6 can absolutely respond with DNS servers (and nothing else) in parallel. Configuring your SLAAC daemon to tell clients to get DNS servers via DHCPv6 is a 15 minute exercise with google.

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#65

Post by wrs »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #58

It feels like the article ends with a cliffhanger! Why did a single packet of the custom protocol get through with all later packets dropped? Does anyone know?

Yeah! I am baffled that even one got through, but given that it did, why only one? And I would’ve immediately tried the “every protocol” version at that point…

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#66

Post by kstrauser »

api wrote: post #55
kstrauser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SLAAC’s awesome, though. It’s one of the good parts we definitely want to keep.

Let's say your ISP gives you a /64. Now you have to use V6 NAT... or assign a /96 internally. SLAAC won't let you do that. That, among other things, is a problem. SLAAC is too limited. You can use DHCPv6 but then you can't use Android because Android, and I think they're alone here, stubbornly and dogmatically refuses to implement it. I guess you could go around and statically assign V6 IPs to Android devices, or run…

Android's right on this one (and I don't own an Android device that I know of, so this isn't me fanboying them). TBH ISPs that hand out /64's shouldn't be allowed to say that they support IPv6 because it's a completely non-standard — not as in "uncommon", but as in "violates the documented standards" - setup.

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#67

Post by Dylan16807 »

crims0n wrote: post #28
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is called protocol ossification [1] or ossification for short. Other transport layer protocol rollouts have been stymied by ossification such as MPTCP. QUIC specifically went with UDP to prevent ossification yet if you hang out in networking forums you'll still find netops who want to block QUIC if they can. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_ossification

Because from an enterprise security perspective, it breaks a lot of tools. You can’t decrypt, IDS/IPS signatures don’t work, and you lose visibility to what is going on in your network.

Wrapping everything in UDP breaks the same tools but it's more obnoxious for everyone involved.

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#68

Post by sema4hacker »

I think a more interesting question is: what if internet protocols and routing equipment were designed from scratch today? Besides much larger packets, I'm guessing something basic in the style of UDP would be chosen to replace HTTP to simplify query-response lookups, a much simpler streaming protocol would be chosen to replace TCP and support all the video playing going on, and those two protocols would more efficiently handle the vast majority of traffic.

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#69

Post by wmf »

sema4hacker wrote: post #68

I think a more interesting question is: what if internet protocols and routing equipment were designed from scratch today? Besides much larger packets, I'm guessing something basic in the style of UDP would be chosen to replace HTTP to simplify query-response lookups, a much simpler streaming protocol would be chosen to replace TCP and support all the video playing going on, and those two protocols would more efficie…

QUIC is redesigned TCP.

Re: What would happen if we didn't use TCP or UDP?

#70

Post by unethical_ban »

withinboredom wrote: post #15
geokon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is outside my area of expertise.. so naiive question.. but ports aren't tied to the protocol .. right? If you open a raw socket, it's still on some associated port number. NAT traversal multiplexes ports.. so why would that preclude using any arbitrary protocol?

Ports are tied to the protocol. IP layer doesn’t have ports (it’s in the name).

It's not like "Ports" are in the name of UDP or TCP, either.
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