Subject: Re: [IPsec] Bis issue #14: Bounding the retransmit time

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:38:25 +0100

Yoav Nir wrote:

> On the other hand, even with a window size of 1, the current text
> seems to suggest that the last packet should be retained
> indefinitely. This doesn't make sense, as the initiator of that
> packet is also bound by the "at least a dozen times over a period of
> at least several minutes", so four hours later, the initiator has
> either given up on the IKE SA, or has received the response.
>
> So I'm with Tero on this one.

Hmm... this assumes that the *only* reason for seeing a retransmitted
request is that the sender has not seen the response yet.

I remember that when we specified the MOBIKE extension, we did talk
about possible need to retransmit a request (to test whether a path
works) even when you've already seen the response... but I think the
outcome was that this probably is not needed (and I can't find text
in 4555 or 4621 saying anything about this).

So probably Tero's suggestion is safe to do.

Best regards,
Pasi