Hello David
Yes, that’s exactly the case. The main purpose of CoPP is to protect the control plane of a network device from excessive traffic, which can be caused by malicious attacks (DoS and others), misconfigurations, or unpredictable traffic behavior. If CoPP is not configured, then any of these situations can cause a network device to become overwhelmed and malfunction.
Yes, all protocols can be potential attack vectors in a DoS attack, however their effectiveness depends on the target system itself and its vulnerabilities. It also depends upon the scale of deployment of a particular protocol in a particular network. Some protocols are more frequently used or can be more effective in DoS attacks due to their inherent characteristics or widespread deployment.
I’m not sure what you mean by group and classify. As far as the CoPP configuration goes, yes there should be a reasonable logic that’s followed in creating CoPP policies based on the protocols being used. Can you clarify your question?
To a certain extent yes. However, remember that any packet that is destined to a network device, regardless of the upper layer protocol, will still need to be processed. For example, if a switch that’s not running BGP receives a BGP message destined for itself, it must still receive it, decapsulate it, and discover that it is a BGP message to discard it. This still takes some processing power… potentially less than if the device was running BGP, but still, packets must be processed. So you should take that into consideration as well.
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz