Are you suggesting that ESP ICV should not cover the WESP fields?

I think, and my memory could be failing me, that this was discussed in
the WG before this got added to the draft.

Jack

On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 2:15 AM, Stephen Kent <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yaron,
>
> I hate to admit it, but I lost track of the details of WESP as it progressed
> through WG discussions and briefings at IETF meetings. When I read the I-D
> in detail, I was very surprised to see that it was no longer a
> neatly-layered wrapper, as originally proposed.  The fact that it now calls
> for the ESP ICV to be computed in a new fashion means that it really is
> replacing ESP, when used to mark ESP-NULL packets.
>
> From a protocol design perspective, the current version makes no sense to
> me. Why keep the ESP header when ESP processing is now changed in a
> significant way.  The WESP header cannot be processed (completely) by
> itself, because of the dependence on the ESP ICV. So it makes little or no
> sense to retain the ESP header in this context. I see no strong backward
> compatibility motivation for this format, given that ESP processing must
> change to accommodate WESP (as defined).
>
> The issue of using WESP for marking encrypted traffic is a separate topic. I
> believe the rationale you cited was to enable WESP extensions, but I may
> have missed other arguments put forth for this. Since most of the WESP
> extension proposals discussed so far have proven to be questionable, I am
> not enthusiastic about that rationale.  Others have noted that using WESP
> with encrypted traffic is not consistent with the scope of the WG charter
> item that authorized work on WESP.  Unless Pasi approves a WESP extension WG
> item as part of re-chartering, I think it is inappropriate to have a flag to
> mark a WESP payload as encrypted.
>
> Steve
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