Re: null routes and VPN's

2008/5/20 Kerry Milestone <km4_at_sanger.ac.uk>:
> Hello,
>
> is it a wise idea to put a default route on the inside (trusted) side of a
> firewall with a high metric for when a VPN drops. Essentially, blackholing
> all traffic until the VPN comes back and the default route is again the end
> of the VPN?
>
> Assuming there is a rule on the outside which allows only VPN traffic from
> the other end (point to point and only traffic allowed through the VPN)
> should both ends of the VPN have null routes for when its down ( for traffic
> within the VLAN for this VPN)?
>
> What would be the implementation side affects, something along the lines of
> once the VPN is up its a matter of timeout on the routing protocol (say
> OSPF) to propagate the default route? Should a modernish firewall do this
> automagically anyway??
>
> Cheers,
> Kerry.
>
>
>
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I had a little trouble understanding your question, however i will say this.

There should be high weight black hole route for any given gateway, be
that gateway a default route, a lan interface, or a vpn, this is good
for many reasons.
1) it keeps down loop traffic, and reduces routing load in an already
compromised situation.
2) if used for a vpn it keeps you from spewing private traffic out an
unprotected or public link

i have only seen a few implementations where a vpn could use a black hole route
if your using an ipsec tunnel you dont have a real route to blackhole,
all you have is an interesting traffic filter
if your using a gre tunnel this might work
if your using mpls(or its siblings) this might work but im not sure if
its more trouble than its worth

just my 2cents

-- 
-Lawrence
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