[mat-wg] IPv6 extension headers support on RIPE Atlas

Jen,

> Therefore it would be great if Atlas supports:
> - inserting Ipv6 extension headers into probe packets. Ideally user
> should be allowed to define a chain of extension headers as specified
> in RFC2460. In particular, it would be nice to insert the following
> headers:
>   -- Hop-by-Hop Options
>   -- Fragment
>   -- Destination Options
>
> - HTTP measurements (Tim, please add particular requirements if you have any).
>
> If anyone else would like to see such features supported by Atlas -
> please speak up!
>

This would be really useful. Any protocol that supports extensions is 
subject to being blocked somewhere. Your example mentions IPv6 
extensions, but the same problem occurs with any TCP option or TCP 
extension that can be blocked or modified by middleboxes on a path. The 
only possibility to verify whether a new TCP extension (ECN, TFO, SACK, 
Multipath TCP, ...) can be safely deployed is to perform measurements 
from a large number of sources.

One possibility to allow RIPE Atlas users to perform such measurements 
in a controlled environment would be to port a tool like tracebox on 
RIPE Atlas. tracebox works like traceroute but allows to send any type 
of packet (v4,v6, tcp, udp, ...) and observes the interference caused by 
middleboxes the path towards a given destination. The tool has been 
presented at IMC recently and you can find additional details on 
http://www.tracebox.org

We would be interested in porting tracebox on the RIPE Atlas platform if 
this meets the needs from the Atlas community


Olivier


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INL, ICTEAM, UCLouvain, Belgium, http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be