[Help-gnutls] Re: Application Data Spanning Mulitple TLS Records

[Simon Josefsson]

Rich Fought <whatever at fsrz.net> writes:

> Hello Simon,
>
> I apologize, my question was actually directed more at the TLS
> specification itself rather than GnuTLS.
>
> I did some research and answered my own question.  The gist of the
> question was: since application
> data can be fragmented across multiple TLS records, is there any way
> to tell from the TLS protocol
> what records go together to form a single application-level message,
> *without actually looking at the
> application data*.
>
> The answer to this question appears to be "no."

Hi Rich!  I understand now, and I agree with your analysis and answer.

Regards,
Simon

> From the TLS 1.0 RFC:
>
>       struct {
>           ContentType type;
>           ProtocolVersion version;
>           uint16 length;
>           opaque fragment[TLSPlaintext.length];
>       } TLSPlaintext;
>
> ...
>
>   fragment
>       The application data. This data is transparent and treated as an
>       independent block to be dealt with by the higher level protocol
>       specified by the type field.
>
> So one must analyze the application data inside the records to
> determine if a record contains a
> single application-level message or a portion of a fragmented
> application-level message.
>
> I was *hoping* that the TLS protocol might have in indication of which
> records go together to
> form a single application-level message, much like TCP/IP.  It appears
> that it does not; as such
> the thought of a GnuTLS API change is moot.
>
> Regards,
> Rich
>
> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Rich Fought <whatever at fsrz.net> writes:
>>
>>   
>>> I'm sending large messages greater than 16k over TLS, so I'm having to
>>> deal with multiple records.
>>>
>>> Is there any way in GnuTLS to determine how many records constitute a
>>> complete message
>>> (perhaps an indicator in the record header, for instance), or is this
>>> left to the application layer?
>>>     
>>
>> I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are looking for and why.
>> Do you want to find out how many record protocol messages is used for
>> some particular application data?  I'm not sure it is easy to extract
>> this.  Perhaps Nikos will understand more and answer.
>>
>> It would help if you could suggest an API that would solve your
>> problem, then I can see how difficult it would be to implement that
>> API.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Simon
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>