[e2e] How TCP might look with always there ESP

[Dan McDonald]

> First we would drop the CRC checksum.  All of the ESP auth methods are much 
> stronger.

You _may_ have a point here.  David Reed has been talking about using
cryptographically strong sums in lieu of TCP and/or IP checksums.

I'm assuming TCP checksums (and IPv4's header checksum for that matter) were
designed to protect against link-layer corruption, which doesn't look all
that much different from an active attacker.

> But what about sequence numbers?  ESP has a seq # also.  Can it be used in 
> place of TCPs?  What restrictions need be placed on ESP's seq #?

No.  TCP's sequence numbers are byte counters, not ESP's packet counters.
You'd need to rewhack TCP so much to use ESP's sequence numbers that you
wouldn't have TCP anymore.

> Why do I ask, you ask?  Well I have been concentrating on good, end-2-end
> ESP with a new Key Management Protocol called HIP.  And since I am already
> recommending changes to the TCB API (use a hash of the Host Identity in
> place of the IP address to decouple the internetwokring and transport
> layers)

Such a change is far more than an API change.  Doing that changes the TCP
protocol, though perhaps not as drastically as your previous sequence number
suggestion.

> and since I want this to be very wireless friendly, I am looking
> at what I can do to 'compression' TCP's overhead.

Is this another argument for TCPng discussions?

Dan