[Condor-devel] UPNP/IGD and Condor (Summary: Probably not)

[Alan De Smet <adesmet@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was asked to poke around on a few lists to see about support
for the IGD part of UPNP in routers used in non-home
installations.  IGD allows software behind a NAT to poke holes in
the NAT.  If we to add such support to Condor, for networks that
supported it Condor would Just Work when connecting machines
behind the NAT to machines outside of the NAT, no GCB, VPN, or
hole punching necessary.

I asked around on the condor-users list and the UW campus
techpartners list to see about support for IGD for networks
behind NATs.  The reponse was underwhelming.  I got a single
useful answer (no, his hardware didn't support IGD, and even if
it did he would not enable it).  I got several people who offered
unsolicited advice, including one person who helpfully suggested
that we just rewrite Condor.  The unsolicited advice was
universally antipathic towards IGD.  There seems to be a lot of
people using NATs as a security measure, so they viewed IGD with
decided hostility.  I believe this is also true of the network
groups our users who are currently having NAT problems today.
Given this, I think adding IGD support should be pretty low on
our wishlist.

That said, Fedora Nightlife
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Nightlife) is targeting home
users, the very case IGD targets and for whom support seems much
more likely.  It's probably worth keeping IGD in mind for this.

-- 
Alan De Smet                              Condor Project Research
adesmet@xxxxxxxxxxx                http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/