Updating the Networking Section of the NetBSD Guide

[nia]

Hello, I'm doing my best to bring the "Networking in practice" section of
the guide into the current decade, since the guide is very outdated and
focused on Dial Up and IPF rather than NPF.

http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-net-practice.html

I'm not a networking expert and I only know enough to configure a basic
SoHo router so I'd appreciate any advice and suggestions of things to add.

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[Robert Swindells]

Post by nia
Hello, I'm doing my best to bring the "Networking in practice" section of
the guide into the current decade, since the guide is very outdated and
focused on Dial Up and IPF rather than NPF.

The section on "Setting up MSS clamping" could be modified a bit. It
isn't always needed, not for OpenReach in the UK at least.

When I modified the pppoe(4) man page I didn't have a feel for whether
needing to do MSS clamping was more common than not.

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[Joerg Sonnenberger]

Post by Robert Swindells
The section on "Setting up MSS clamping" could be modified a bit. It
isn't always needed, not for OpenReach in the UK at least.

Some providers support PPPoE with "mini" jumbo frames now, so that the
inner packet is 1500 Bytes. Not all do, e.g. Deutsche Telekom didn't
role that out as part of the BGN migration like others do.

Post by Robert Swindells
When I modified the pppoe(4) man page I didn't have a feel for whether
needing to do MSS clamping was more common than not.

The need has gone down a lot as blanket ICMP filtering is less common
and the failure cases are more obvious with the move to a TLS focused
internet.

Joerg

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[Hector]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 16:12:59 +0000

Post by nia
Hello, I'm doing my best to bring the "Networking in practice" section of
the guide into the current decade, since the guide is very outdated and
focused on Dial Up and IPF rather than NPF.
http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-net-practice.html
I'm not a networking expert and I only know enough to configure a basic
SoHo router so I'd appreciate any advice and suggestions of things to add.

I agree that this section of the Guide needs some improvement.

I suggest a section on how to set up a WiFi Access Point with hostapd.

I suggest a top-level section on IPv6. Currently the only brief
mention of IPv6 is misplaced inside the section on PPPoE.

I also suggest that the section on firewall at least mention pf. It is
premature to pretend pf no longer exists and that npf is a complete
replacement for it.

The section on creating a bridge is somewhat incomplete. I ran into a
couple of problems while trying to create a bridge, and it was difficult
to find any helpful anecdotes on the internet about bridging on NetBSD.
One problem was related to this bug:
http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/netinet/in_offload.c?rev=1.14&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

Over the years I have written a fair amount of material on the above topics,
as part of my private lab notebook. Perhaps some of it could be integrated
into this section of the Guide. I can make it available to whoever would
care to read it and form an opinion on its usefulness.

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[nia]

Post by Hector
On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 16:12:59 +0000

Post by nia
Hello, I'm doing my best to bring the "Networking in practice" section of
the guide into the current decade, since the guide is very outdated and
focused on Dial Up and IPF rather than NPF.
http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-net-practice.html
I'm not a networking expert and I only know enough to configure a basic
SoHo router so I'd appreciate any advice and suggestions of things to add.

I agree that this section of the Guide needs some improvement.
I suggest a section on how to set up a WiFi Access Point with hostapd.

I agree. I can do this.

Post by Hector
I suggest a top-level section on IPv6. Currently the only brief
mention of IPv6 is misplaced inside the section on PPPoE.

I don't know enough about IPv6 to feel confident writing this but
I can add text from others.

Post by Hector
I also suggest that the section on firewall at least mention pf. It is
premature to pretend pf no longer exists and that npf is a complete
replacement for it.

I do not want to mention things that are excluded from the default
kernel due to having open vulnerabilities. It would be better to
mention IPF, but even the future of that is not good.

Post by Hector
The section on creating a bridge is somewhat incomplete. I ran into a
couple of problems while trying to create a bridge, and it was difficult
to find any helpful anecdotes on the internet about bridging on NetBSD.
http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/netinet/in_offload.c?rev=1.14&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
Over the years I have written a fair amount of material on the above topics,
as part of my private lab notebook. Perhaps some of it could be integrated
into this section of the Guide. I can make it available to whoever would
care to read it and form an opinion on its usefulness.

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Please direct questions, flames, donations, etc. to news-***@muc.de