Files
fips/testing/docker
Arjen dca938c104 feat(peer): switchover between a peer's transports, with no handshake
A peer reachable over more than one transport keeps one Noise session
and moves its traffic between transports on failure or degradation.
Implements docs/design/fips-multi-path-switchover.md §4-§10 and closes
the two-interface case in #143.

Three inner link messages next to Heartbeat: `0x52 PathProbe` and
`0x53 PathAck`, carrying a probe id, the sender's path id and a
`remote_active` bit, and `0x54 PathClose`, naming the receiver's path
id and a reason. A probe is an ordinary encrypted frame sent on a
candidate transport; the receiver, having decrypted it against the
session found by index, adds the path as `Probing`, marks it `rx_live`
and answers on that same path. The prober's receipt of the ack marks
the path `Live`, `tx_live`, and takes an RTT sample. No handshake, no
key material, no index allocation. Old nodes drop the unknown types at
debug, so a path to one stays `Probing` and never becomes eligible.

The discovery gate changes shape: a live peer beaconing on a transport
we hold no path to it over becomes a path candidate rather than being
skipped, and the heartbeat tick probes it. The active path's first
probe is small — the handshake proved it and seeded its MTU — while a
standby's discovery probes are padded to the link MTU, as is one a
minute on every path, so a medium that passes small frames and drops
large ones never proves itself. A standby the peer never answers on is
given up after eight probes; the active path never is.

Detection is per path and takes each medium's own failure signal: a
carrier edge, an unreachable-on-send (`ENETUNREACH`/`EHOSTUNREACH`), an
interface going away, or two unanswered heartbeats on a path the peer
is also silent on. Any of them marks the path `Suspect` and selection
leaves it at once, because the standby is warm: heartbeats run at
`node.path.active_heartbeat_ms` where either side sends and
`standby_heartbeat_ms` elsewhere, both stretched by the path's own
round trip so a Tor or Nym path is neither flooded nor declared dead
every round trip. A peer holding one live path is not heartbeated here
at all — selection has nothing to move to, and the link heartbeat keeps
its liveness. Soft signals (the peer's `remote_active` flipping away,
silence here while a standby hears the peer) trigger a probe, never
`Suspect`: reading them as a verdict forces both sides onto one path
and loops under a one-way failure.

A node that loses a path tells the peer with a `PathClose` on a
surviving one, so the peer moves at once rather than after its own
timeout. A transport that returns inside the five-minute grace revives
its dead paths as `Probing` with their RTT window and ETX intact.

Selection is measured, not configured: each path scores
`quality_index(etx, min_rtt)`, and traffic moves when the active path
is no longer eligible (mandatory) or when a standby beats it by
`switch_margin` for `switch_dwell_secs` (discretionary). Min RTT over a
window rather than SRTT, because SRTT inflates under load on the path
carrying traffic while an idle standby looks pristine — a ping-pong
generator. A `role: backup` transport carries a peer's traffic only
while no normal path is eligible, and yields outright when one becomes
eligible. `fipsctl path pin` overrides both while its path is eligible.

A switch re-seeds the path MTU from the new path, tightens the
session MTUs and refreshes the MSS ceiling, so the first frames after a
switch are not black-holed. The link record and `addr_to_link` follow
the active path. The link cost the tree sees is held at its pre-switch
value for the dwell, and until the two receiver reports that span the
switch have arrived — the first counts every frame in flight on the old
path as lost and spikes the per-report ETX for one interval, the second
replaces it — so neither a short flap nor that spike ripples mesh-wide
through parent selection or the next-hop order.

Operator surface: `role: backup` on any transport, `node.path.*`
(`switch_margin`, validated finite and at least 1.0, `switch_dwell_secs`,
`min_samples`, `active_heartbeat_ms`, `standby_heartbeat_ms`), and
`fipsctl path show|pin|unpin` over the `path_show`, `path_pin` and
`path_unpin` control commands.

Two chaos scenarios calibrate the defaults and are wired into both
runners: `dual-path-flap` (a raw-Ethernet veth as the cable, the Docker
bridge over UDP as the wifi) and `dual-udp-flap` (two interface-bound
UDP instances). Each flaps one path under iperf and carries detectors
that can fail on a switchover that did not carry traffic — a per-node
ceiling on "Peer promoted to active" (a second is a re-peering), a
one-second ceiling from link-down to the first switch, and a two-second
ceiling on any zero-byte iperf interval run — alongside the
`path_switches` band. Neither has been run to calibrate; the defaults
are chosen, not derived, and the design doc says so.

Refs #143
2026-09-23 11:48:33 -03:00
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