| Internet-Draft | Accurate TCP-ECN Feedback | March 2022 |
| Briscoe, et al. | Expires 23 September 2022 | [Page] |
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) is a mechanism where network nodes can mark IP packets instead of dropping them to indicate incipient congestion to the end-points. Receivers with an ECN-capable transport protocol feed back this information to the sender. ECN was originally specified for TCP in such a way that only one feedback signal can be transmitted per Round-Trip Time (RTT). Recent new TCP mechanisms like Congestion Exposure (ConEx), Data Center TCP (DCTCP) or Low Latency Low Loss Scalable Throughput (L4S) need more accurate ECN feedback information whenever more than one marking is received in one RTT. This document updates the original ECN specification to specify a scheme to provide more than one feedback signal per RTT in the TCP header. Given TCP header space is scarce, it allocates a reserved header bit previously assigned to the ECN-Nonce. It also overloads the two existing ECN flags in the TCP header. The resulting extra space is exploited to feed back the IP-ECN field received during the 3-way handshake as well. Supplementary feedback information can optionally be provided in a new TCP option, which is never used on the TCP SYN. The document also specifies the treatment of this updated TCP wire protocol by middleboxes, updating BCP 69 with respect to ACK filtering.¶
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Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) [RFC3168] is a mechanism where network nodes can mark IP packets instead of dropping them to indicate incipient congestion to the end-points. Receivers with an ECN-capable transport protocol feed back this information to the sender. In RFC 3168, ECN was specified for TCP in such a way that only one feedback signal could be transmitted per Round-Trip Time (RTT). Recently, proposed mechanisms like Congestion Exposure (ConEx [RFC7713]), DCTCP [RFC8257] or L4S [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch] need to know when more than one marking is received in one RTT which is information that cannot be provided by the feedback scheme as specified in [RFC3168]. This document specifies an update to the ECN feedback scheme of RFC 3168 that provides more accurate information and could be used by these and potentially other future TCP extensions. A fuller treatment of the motivation for this specification is given in the associated requirements document [RFC7560].¶
This documents specifies a standards track scheme for ECN feedback in the TCP header to provide more than one feedback signal per RTT. It will be called the more accurate ECN feedback scheme, or AccECN for short. This document updates RFC 3168 with respect to negotiation and use of the feedback scheme for TCP. All aspects of RFC 3168 other than the TCP feedback scheme, in particular the definition of ECN at the IP layer, remain unchanged by this specification. Section 4 gives a more detailed specification of exactly which aspects of RFC 3168 this document updates.¶
AccECN is intended to be a complete replacement for classic TCP/ECN feedback, not a fork in the design of TCP. AccECN feedback complements TCP's loss feedback and it can coexist alongside 'classic' [RFC3168] TCP/ECN feedback. So its applicability is intended to include all public and private IP networks (and even any non-IP networks over which TCP is used today), whether or not any nodes on the path support ECN, of whatever flavour. This document uses the term Classic ECN when it needs to distinguish the RFC 3168 ECN TCP feedback scheme from the AccECN TCP feedback scheme.¶
AccECN feedback overloads the two existing ECN flags in the TCP header and allocates the currently reserved flag (previously called NS) in the TCP header, to be used as one three-bit counter field indicating the number of congestion experienced marked packets. Given the new definitions of these three bits, both ends have to support the new wire protocol before it can be used. Therefore during the TCP handshake the two ends use these three bits in the TCP header to negotiate the most advanced feedback protocol that they can both support, in a way that is backward compatible with [RFC3168].¶
AccECN is solely a change to the TCP wire protocol; it covers the negotiation and signaling of more accurate ECN feedback from a TCP Data Receiver to a Data Sender. It is completely independent of how TCP might respond to congestion feedback, which is out of scope, but ultimately the motivation for accurate ECN feedback. Like Classic ECN feedback, AccECN can be used by standard Reno congestion control [RFC5681] to respond to the existence of at least one congestion notification within a round trip. Or, unlike Reno, AccECN can be used to respond to the extent of congestion notification over a round trip, as for example DCTCP does in controlled environments [RFC8257]. For congestion response, this specification refers to RFC 3168, or ECN experiments such as those referred to in [RFC8311], namely: a TCP-based Low Latency Low Loss Scalable (L4S) congestion control [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch]; or Alternative Backoff with ECN (ABE) [RFC8511].¶
It is RECOMMENDED that the AccECN protocol is implemented alongside SACK [RFC2018] and the experimental ECN++ protocol [I-D.ietf-tcpm-generalized-ecn], which allows the ECN capability to be used on TCP control packets. Therefore, this specification does not discuss implementing AccECN alongside [RFC5562], which was an earlier experimental protocol with narrower scope than ECN++.¶
The following introductory section outlines the goals of AccECN (Section 1.2). Then terminology is defined (Section 1.3) and a recap of existing prerequisite technology is given (Section 1.4).¶
Section 2 gives an informative overview of the AccECN protocol. Then Section 3 gives the normative protocol specification, and Section 4 clarifies which aspects of RFC 3168 are updated by this specification. Section 5 assesses the interaction of AccECN with commonly used variants of TCP, whether standardized or not. Section 6 summarizes the features and properties of AccECN.¶
Section 7 summarizes the protocol fields and numbers that IANA will need to assign and Section 8 points to the aspects of the protocol that will be of interest to the security community.¶
Appendix A gives pseudocode examples for the various algorithms that AccECN uses and Appendix B explains why AccECN uses flags in the main TCP header and quantifies the space left for future use.¶
[RFC7560] enumerates requirements that a candidate feedback scheme will need to satisfy, under the headings: resilience, timeliness, integrity, accuracy (including ordering and lack of bias), complexity, overhead and compatibility (both backward and forward). It recognizes that a perfect scheme that fully satisfies all the requirements is unlikely and trade-offs between requirements are likely. Section 6 presents the properties of AccECN against these requirements and discusses the trade-offs made.¶
The requirements document recognizes that a protocol as ubiquitous as TCP needs to be able to serve as-yet-unspecified requirements. Therefore an AccECN receiver aims to act as a generic (dumb) reflector of congestion information so that in future new sender behaviours can be deployed unilaterally.¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
ECN [RFC3168] uses two bits in the IP header. Once ECN has been negotiated with the receiver at the transport layer, an ECN sender can set two possible codepoints (ECT(0) or ECT(1)) in the IP header to indicate an ECN-capable transport (ECT). If both ECN bits are zero, the packet is considered to have been sent by a Not-ECN-capable Transport (Not-ECT). When a network node experiences congestion, it will occasionally either drop or mark a packet, with the choice depending on the packet's ECN codepoint. If the codepoint is Not-ECT, only drop is appropriate. If the codepoint is ECT(0) or ECT(1), the node can mark the packet by setting both ECN bits, which is termed 'Congestion Experienced' (CE), or loosely a 'congestion mark'. Table 1 summarises these codepoints.¶
| IP-ECN codepoint | Codepoint name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0b00 | Not-ECT | Not ECN-Capable Transport |
| 0b01 | ECT(1) | ECN-Capable Transport (1) |
| 0b10 | ECT(0) | ECN-Capable Transport (0) |
| 0b11 | CE | Congestion Experienced |
In the TCP header the first two bits in byte 14 are defined as flags for the use of ECN (CWR and ECE in Figure 1 [RFC3168]). A TCP client indicates it supports ECN by setting ECE=CWR=1 in the SYN, and an ECN-enabled server confirms ECN support by setting ECE=1 and CWR=0 in the SYN/ACK. On reception of a CE-marked packet at the IP layer, the Data Receiver starts to set the Echo Congestion Experienced (ECE) flag continuously in the TCP header of ACKs, which ensures the signal is received reliably even if ACKs are lost. The TCP sender confirms that it has received at least one ECE signal by responding with the congestion window reduced (CWR) flag, which allows the TCP receiver to stop repeating the ECN-Echo flag. This always leads to a full RTT of ACKs with ECE set. Thus any additional CE markings arriving within this RTT cannot be fed back.¶
The last bit in byte 13 of the TCP header was defined as the Nonce Sum (NS) for the ECN Nonce [RFC3540]. In the absence of widespread deployment RFC 3540 has been reclassified as historic [RFC8311] and the respective flag has been marked as "reserved", making this TCP flag available for use by the AccECN experiment instead.¶
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | | | N | C | E | U | A | P | R | S | F | | Header Length | Reserved | S | W | C | R | C | S | S | Y | I | | | | | R | E | G | K | H | T | N | N | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
This section provides an informative overview of the AccECN protocol that will be normatively specified in Section 3¶
Like the original TCP approach, the Data Receiver of each TCP half-connection sends AccECN feedback to the Data Sender on TCP acknowledgements, reusing data packets of the other half-connection whenever possible.¶
The AccECN protocol has had to be designed in two parts:¶
The two part design was necessary, given limitations on the space available for TCP options and given the possibility that certain incorrectly designed middleboxes prevent TCP using any new options.¶
The essential part overloads the previous definition of the three flags in the TCP header that had been assigned for use by ECN. This design choice deliberately replaces the classic ECN feedback protocol, rather than leaving classic ECN feedback intact and adding more accurate feedback separately because:¶
AccECN is designed to work even if the supplementary part is removed or zeroed out, as long as the essential part gets through.¶
AccECN is a change to the wire protocol of the main TCP header, therefore it can only be used if both endpoints have been upgraded to understand it. The TCP client signals support for AccECN on the initial SYN of a connection and the TCP server signals whether it supports AccECN on the SYN/ACK. The TCP flags on the SYN that the client uses to signal AccECN support have been carefully chosen so that a TCP server will interpret them as a request to support the most recent variant of ECN feedback that it supports. Then the client falls back to the same variant of ECN feedback.¶
An AccECN TCP client does not send the new AccECN Option on the SYN as SYN option space is limited. The TCP server sends the AccECN Option on the SYN/ACK and the client sends it on the first ACK to test whether the network path forwards the option correctly.¶
A Data Receiver maintains four counters initialized at the start of the half-connection. Three count the number of arriving payload bytes respectively marked CE, ECT(1) and ECT(0) in the IP-ECN field. The fourth counts the number of packets arriving marked with a CE codepoint (including control packets without payload if they are CE-marked).¶
The Data Sender maintains four equivalent counters for the half connection, and the AccECN protocol is designed to ensure they will match the values in the Data Receiver's counters, albeit after a little delay.¶
Each ACK carries the three least significant bits (LSBs) of the packet-based CE counter using the ECN bits in the TCP header, now renamed the Accurate ECN (ACE) field (see Figure 3 later). The 24 LSBs of each byte counter are carried in the AccECN Option.¶
With both the ACE and the AccECN Option mechanisms, the Data Receiver continually repeats the current LSBs of each of its respective counters. There is no need to acknowledge these continually repeated counters, so the congestion window reduced (CWR) mechanism is no longer used. Even if some ACKs are lost, the Data Sender ought to be able to infer how much to increment its own counters, even if the protocol field has wrapped.¶
The 3-bit ACE field can wrap fairly frequently. Therefore, even if it appears to have incremented by one (say), the field might have actually cycled completely then incremented by one. The Data Receiver is not allowed to delay sending an ACK to such an extent that the ACE field would cycle. However cycling is still a possibility at the Data Sender because a whole sequence of ACKs carrying intervening values of the field might all be lost or delayed in transit.¶
The fields in the AccECN Option are larger, but they will increment in larger steps because they count bytes not packets. Nonetheless, their size has been chosen such that a whole cycle of the field would never occur between ACKs unless there had been an infeasibly long sequence of ACK losses. Therefore, as long as the AccECN Option is available, it can be treated as a dependable feedback channel.¶
If the AccECN Option is not available, e.g. it is being stripped by a middlebox, the AccECN protocol will only feed back information on CE markings (using the ACE field). Although not ideal, this will be sufficient, because it is envisaged that neither ECT(0) nor ECT(1) will ever indicate more severe congestion than CE, even though future uses for ECT(0) or ECT(1) are still unclear [RFC8311]. Because the 3-bit ACE field is so small, when it is the only field available, the Data Sender has to interpret it assuming the most likely wrap, but with a degree of conservatism.¶
Certain specified events trigger the Data Receiver to include an AccECN Option on an ACK. The rules are designed to ensure that the order in which different markings arrive at the receiver is communicated to the sender (as long as options are reaching the sender and as long as there is no ACK loss). Implementations are encouraged to send an AccECN Option more frequently, but this is left up to the implementer.¶
The CE packet counter in the ACE field and the CE byte counter in the AccECN Option both provide feedback on received CE-marks. The CE packet counter includes control packets that do not have payload data, while the CE byte counter solely includes marked payload bytes. If both are present, the byte counter in the option will provide the more accurate information needed for modern congestion control and policing schemes, such as L4S, DCTCP or ConEx. If the option is stripped, a simple algorithm to estimate the number of marked bytes from the ACE field is given in Appendix A.3.¶
Feedback in bytes is provided in order to protect against the receiver using attacks similar to 'ACK-Division' to artificially inflate the congestion window, which is why [RFC5681] now recommends that TCP counts acknowledged bytes not packets.¶
The ACE field provides feedback about CE markings in the IP-ECN field of both data and control packets. According to [RFC3168] the Data Sender is meant to set the IP-ECN field of control packets to Not-ECT. However, mechanisms in certain private networks (e.g. data centres) set control packets to be ECN capable because they are precisely the packets that performance depends on most.¶
For this reason, AccECN is designed to be a generic reflector of whatever ECN markings it sees, whether or not they are compliant with a current standard. Then as standards evolve, Data Senders can upgrade unilaterally without any need for receivers to upgrade too. It is also useful to be able to rely on generic reflection behaviour when senders need to test for unexpected interference with markings (for instance Section 3.2.2.3, Section 3.2.2.4 and Section 3.2.3.2 of the present document and para 2 of Section 20.2 of [RFC3168]).¶
The initial SYN is the most critical control packet, so AccECN provides feedback on its IP-ECN field. Although RFC 3168 prohibits an ECN-capable SYN, providing feedback of ECN marking on the SYN supports future scenarios in which SYNs might be ECN-enabled (without prejudging whether they ought to be). For instance, [RFC8311] updates this aspect of RFC 3168 to allow experimentation with ECN-capable TCP control packets.¶
Even if the TCP client (or server) has set the SYN (or SYN/ACK) to not-ECT in compliance with RFC 3168, feedback on the state of the IP-ECN field when it arrives at the receiver could still be useful, because middleboxes have been known to overwrite the IP-ECN field as if it is still part of the old Type of Service (ToS) field [Mandalari18]. For example, if a TCP client has set the SYN to Not-ECT, but receives feedback that the IP-ECN field on the SYN arrived with a different codepoint, it can detect such middlebox interference. Previously, neither end knew what IP-ECN field the other had sent. So, if a TCP server received ECT or CE on a SYN, it could not know whether it was invalid (or valid) because only the TCP client knew whether it originally marked the SYN as Not-ECT (or ECT). Therefore, prior to AccECN, the server's only safe course of action in this example was to disable ECN for the connection. Instead, the AccECN protocol allows the server to feed back the received ECN field to the client, which then has all the information to decide whether the connection has to fall-back from supporting ECN (or not).¶
Given the ECN Nonce [RFC3540] has been reclassified as historic [RFC8311], the present specification re-allocates the TCP flag at bit 7 of the TCP header, which was previously called NS (Nonce Sum), as the AE (Accurate ECN) flag (see IANA Considerations in Section 7) as shown below.¶
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | | | A | C | E | U | A | P | R | S | F | | Header Length | Reserved | E | W | C | R | C | S | S | Y | I | | | | | R | E | G | K | H | T | N | N | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
During the TCP handshake at the start of a connection, to request more accurate ECN feedback the TCP client (host A) MUST set the TCP flags AE=1, CWR=1 and ECE=1 in the initial SYN segment.¶
If a TCP server (B) that is AccECN-enabled receives a SYN with the above three flags set, it MUST set both its half connections into AccECN mode. Then it MUST set the AE, CWR and ECE TCP flags on the SYN/ACK to the combination in the top block of Table 2 that feeds back the IP-ECN field that arrived on the SYN. This applies whether or not the server itself supports setting the IP-ECN field on a SYN or SYN/ACK (see Section 2.5 for rationale).¶
When the TCP server returns any of the 4 combinations in the top block of Table 2, it confirms that it supports AccECN. The TCP server MUST NOT set one of these 4 combination of flags on the SYN/ACK unless the preceding SYN requested support for AccECN as above.¶
Once a TCP client (A) has sent the above SYN to declare that it supports AccECN, and once it has received the above SYN/ACK segment that confirms that the TCP server supports AccECN, the TCP client MUST set both its half connections into AccECN mode.¶
Once in AccECN mode, a TCP client or server has the rights and obligations to participate in the ECN protocol defined in Section 3.1.5.¶
The procedure for the client to follow if a SYN/ACK does not arrive before its retransmission timer expires is given in Section 3.1.4.¶
The three flags set to 1 to indicate AccECN support on the SYN have been carefully chosen to enable natural fall-back to prior stages in the evolution of ECN, as above. Table 2 tabulates all the negotiation possibilities for ECN-related capabilities that involve at least one AccECN-capable host. The entries in the first two columns have been abbreviated, as follows:¶
| A | B | SYN A->B | SYN/ACK B->A | Feedback Mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AE CWR ECE | AE CWR ECE | |||
| AccECN | AccECN | 1 1 1 | 0 1 0 | AccECN(no ECT on SYN) |
| AccECN | AccECN | 1 1 1 | 0 1 1 | AccECN (ECT1 on SYN) |
| AccECN | AccECN | 1 1 1 | 1 0 0 | AccECN (ECT0 on SYN) |
| AccECN | AccECN | 1 1 1 | 1 1 0 | AccECN (CE on SYN) |
| AccECN | Nonce | 1 1 1 | 1 0 1 | (Reserved) |
| AccECN | ECN | 1 1 1 | 0 0 1 | classic ECN |
| AccECN | No ECN | 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 | Not ECN |
| Nonce | AccECN | 0 1 1 | 0 0 1 | classic ECN |
| ECN | AccECN | 0 1 1 | 0 0 1 | classic ECN |
| No ECN | AccECN | 0 0 0 | 0 0 0 | Not ECN |
| AccECN | Broken | 1 1 1 | 1 1 1 | Not ECN |
Table 2 is divided into blocks each separated by an empty row.¶
The second block shows the cases where the TCP client (A) supports AccECN but the TCP server (B) supports some earlier variant of TCP feedback, indicated in its SYN/ACK. Therefore, as soon as an AccECN-capable TCP client (A) receives the SYN/ACK shown it MUST set both its half connections into the feedback mode shown in the rightmost column. If it has set itself into classic ECN feedback mode it MUST then comply with [RFC3168].¶
The server response called 'Nonce' in the table is now historic. For an AccECN implementation, there is no need to recognize or support ECN Nonce feedback [RFC3540], which has been reclassified as historic [RFC8311]. AccECN is compatible with alternative ECN feedback integrity approaches (see Section 5.3).¶
The third block shows the cases where the TCP server (B) supports AccECN but the TCP client (A) supports some earlier variant of TCP feedback, indicated in its SYN.¶
When an AccECN-enabled TCP server (B) receives a SYN with AE,CWR,ECE = 0,1,1 it MUST do one of the following:¶
When an AccECN-enabled TCP server (B) receives a SYN with AE,CWR,ECE = 0,0,0 it MUST set both its half connections into the Not ECN feedback mode, return a SYN/ACK with AE,CWR,ECE = 0,0,0 as shown and continue with ECN disabled.¶
The following additional rules do not fit the structure of the table, but they complement it:¶
If a TCP server that implements AccECN receives a SYN with the three TCP header flags (AE, CWR and ECE) set to any combination other than 000, 011 or 111, it MUST negotiate the use of AccECN as if they had been set to 111. This ensures that future uses of the other combinations on a SYN can rely on consistent behaviour from the installed base of AccECN servers.¶
For the avoidance of doubt, the behaviour described in the present specification applies whether or not the three remaining reserved TCP header flags are zero.¶
If the sender of an AccECN SYN times out before receiving the SYN/ACK, the sender SHOULD attempt to negotiate the use of AccECN at least one more time by continuing to set all three TCP ECN flags on the first retransmitted SYN (using the usual retransmission time-outs). If this first retransmission also fails to be acknowledged, the sender SHOULD send subsequent retransmissions of the SYN with the three TCP-ECN flags cleared (AE=CWR=ECE=0). A retransmitted SYN MUST use the same ISN as the original SYN.¶
Retrying once before fall-back adds delay in the case where a middlebox drops an AccECN (or ECN) SYN deliberately. However, current measurements imply that a drop is less likely to be due to middlebox interference than other intermittent causes of loss, e.g. congestion, wireless interference, etc.¶
Implementers MAY use other fall-back strategies if they are found to be more effective (e.g. attempting to negotiate AccECN on the SYN only once or more than twice (most appropriate during high levels of congestion). However, other fall-back strategies will need to follow all the rules in Section 3.1.5, which concern behaviour when SYNs or SYN/ACKs negotiating different types of feedback have been sent within the same connection.¶
Further it might make sense to also remove any other new or experimental fields or options on the SYN in case a middlebox might be blocking them, although the required behaviour will depend on the specification of the other option(s) and any attempt to co-ordinate fall-back between different modules of the stack.¶
Whichever fall-back strategy is used, the TCP initiator SHOULD cache failed connection attempts. If it does, it SHOULD NOT give up attempting to negotiate AccECN on the SYN of subsequent connection attempts until it is clear that the blockage is persistently and specifically due to AccECN. The cache needs to be arranged to expire so that the initiator will infrequently attempt to check whether the problem has been resolved.¶
The fall-back procedure if the TCP server receives no ACK to acknowledge a SYN/ACK that tried to negotiate AccECN is specified in Section 3.2.3.2.¶
Section 3.1.1 describes the only ways that a host can enter AccECN mode, whether as a client or as a server.¶
As a Data Sender, a host in AccECN mode has the rights and obligations concerning the use of ECN defined below, which build on those in [RFC3168] as updated by [RFC8311]:¶
Using ECT:¶
Switching feedback negotiation (e.g. fall-back):¶
The above rules are necessary because, if one peer were to negotiate the feedback mode in two different types of handshake, it would not be possible for the other peer to know for certain which handshake packet(s) the other end had eventually received or in which order it received them. So, in the absence of these rules, the two peers could end up using different feedback modes without knowing it.¶
Congestion response:¶
It is still obliged to respond appropriately to AccECN feedback that indicates there were ECN marks on packets it had previously sent, as defined in Section 6.1 of [RFC3168] and updated by Sections 2.1 and 4.1 of [RFC8311].¶
In general, it is obliged to respond to congestion feedback even when it is solely sending non-ECN-capable packets (for rationale, some examples and some exceptions see Section 3.2.2.3, Section 3.2.2.4).¶
As a Data Receiver:¶
Each Data Receiver of each half connection maintains four counters, r.cep, r.ceb, r.e0b and r.e1b:¶
Each Data Sender of each half connection maintains four counters, s.cep, s.ceb, s.e0b and s.e1b intended to track the equivalent counters at the Data Receiver.¶
A Data Receiver feeds back the CE packet counter using the Accurate ECN (ACE) field, as explained in Section 3.2.2. And it optionally feeds back all the byte counters using the AccECN TCP Option, as specified in Section 3.2.3.¶
Whenever a host feeds back the value of any counter, it MUST report the most recent value, no matter whether it is in a pure ACK, an ACK with new payload data or a retransmission. Therefore the feedback carried on a retransmitted packet is unlikely to be the same as the feedback on the original packet.¶
When a host first enters AccECN mode, in its role as a Data Receiver it initializes its counters to r.cep = 5, r.e0b = r.e1b = 1 and r.ceb = 0,¶
Non-zero initial values are used to support a stateless handshake (see Section 5.1) and to be distinct from cases where the fields are incorrectly zeroed (e.g. by middleboxes - see Section 3.2.3.2.4).¶
When a host enters AccECN mode, in its role as a Data Sender it initializes its counters to s.cep = 5, s.e0b = s.e1b = 1 and s.ceb = 0.¶
After AccECN has been negotiated on the SYN and SYN/ACK, both hosts overload the three TCP flags (AE, CWR and ECE) in the main TCP header as one 3-bit field. Then the field is given a new name, ACE, as shown in Figure 3.¶
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | | | | U | A | P | R | S | F | | Header Length | Reserved | ACE | R | C | S | S | Y | I | | | | | G | K | H | T | N | N | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
The original definition of these three flags in the TCP header, including the addition of support for the ECN Nonce, is shown for comparison in Figure 1. This specification does not rename these three TCP flags to ACE unconditionally; it merely overloads them with another name and definition once an AccECN connection has been established.¶
With one exception (Section 3.2.2.1), a host with both of its half-connections in AccECN mode MUST interpret the AE, CWR and ECE flags as the 3-bit ACE counter on a segment with the SYN flag cleared (SYN=0). On such a packet, a Data Receiver MUST encode the three least significant bits of its r.cep counter into the ACE field that it feeds back to the Data Sender. A host MUST NOT interpret the 3 flags as a 3-bit ACE field on any segment with SYN=1 (whether ACK is 0 or 1), or if AccECN negotiation is incomplete or has not succeeded.¶
Both parts of each of these conditions are equally important. For instance, even if AccECN negotiation has been successful, the ACE field is not defined on any segments with SYN=1 (e.g. a retransmission of an unacknowledged SYN/ACK, or when both ends send SYN/ACKs after AccECN support has been successfully negotiated during a simultaneous open).¶
A TCP client (A) in AccECN mode MUST feed back which of the 4 possible values of the IP-ECN field was on the SYN/ACK by writing it into the ACE field of a pure ACK with no SACK blocks using the binary encoding in Table 3 (which is the same as that used on the SYN/ACK in Table 2). This shall be called the handshake encoding of the ACE field, and it is the only exception to the rule that the ACE field carries the 3 least significant bits of the r.cep counter on packets with SYN=0.¶
Normally, a TCP client acknowledges a SYN/ACK with an ACK that satisfies the above conditions anyway (SYN=0, no data, no SACK blocks). If an AccECN TCP client intends to acknowledge the SYN/ACK with a packet that does not satisfy these conditions (e.g. it has data to include on the ACK), it SHOULD first send a pure ACK that does satisfy these conditions (see Section 5.2), so that it can feed back which of the four values of the IP-ECN field arrived on the SYN/ACK. A valid exception to this "SHOULD" would be where the implementation will only be used in an environment where mangling of the ECN field is unlikely.¶
| IP-ECN codepoint on SYN/ACK | ACE on pure ACK of SYN/ACK | r.cep of client in AccECN mode |
|---|---|---|
| Not-ECT | 0b010 | 5 |
| ECT(1) | 0b011 | 5 |
| ECT(0) | 0b100 | 5 |
| CE | 0b110 | 6 |
When an AccECN server in SYN-RCVD state receives a pure ACK with SYN=0 and no SACK blocks, instead of treating the ACE field as a counter, it MUST infer the meaning of each possible value of the ACE field from Table 4, which also shows the value that an AccECN server MUST set s.cep to as a result.¶
Given this encoding of the ACE field on the ACK of a SYN/ACK is exceptional, an AccECN server using large receive offload (LRO) might prefer to disable LRO until such an ACK has transitioned it out of SYN-RCVD state.¶
| ACE on ACK of SYN/ACK | IP-ECN codepoint on SYN/ACK inferred by server | s.cep of server in AccECN mode |
|---|---|---|
| 0b000 | {Notes 1, 3} | Disable ECN |
| 0b001 | {Notes 2, 3} | 5 |
| 0b010 | Not-ECT | 5 |
| 0b011 | ECT(1) | 5 |
| 0b100 | ECT(0) | 5 |
| 0b101 | Currently Unused {Note 2} | 5 |
| 0b110 | CE | 6 |
| 0b111 | Currently Unused {Note 2} | 5 |
{Note 1}: If the server is in AccECN mode, the value of zero raises suspicion of zeroing of the ACE field on the path (see Section 3.2.2.4).¶
{Note 2}: If the server is in AccECN mode, these values are Currently Unused but the AccECN server's behaviour is still defined for forward compatibility. Then the designer of a future protocol can know for certain what AccECN servers will do with these codepoints.¶
{Note 3}: In the case where a server that implements AccECN is also using a stateless handshake (termed a SYN cookie) it will not remember whether it entered AccECN mode. The values 0b000 or 0b001 will remind it that it did not enter AccECN mode, because AccECN does not use them (see Section 5.1 for details). If a stateless server that implements AccECN receives either of these two values in the ACK, its action is implementation-dependent and outside the scope of this spec, It will certainly not take the action in the third column because, after it receives either of these values, it is not in AccECN mode. I.e., it will not disable ECN (at least not just because ACE is 0b000) and it will not set s.cep.¶
Whenever the Data Receiver sends an ACK with SYN=0 (with or without data), unless the handshake encoding in Section 3.2.2.1 applies, the Data Receiver MUST encode the least significant 3 bits of its r.cep counter into the ACE field (see Appendix A.2).¶
Whenever the Data Sender receives an ACK with SYN=0 (with or without data), it first checks whether it has already been superseded by another ACK in which case it ignores the ECN feedback. If the ACK has not been superseded, and if the special handshake encoding in Section 3.2.2.1 does not apply, the Data Sender decodes the ACE field as follows (see Appendix A.2 for examples).¶
The encode/decode procedures during the three-way handshake are exceptions to the general rules given so far, so they are spelled out step by step below for clarity:¶
If a TCP server in AccECN mode receives a CE mark in the IP-ECN field of a SYN (SYN=1, ACK=0), it MUST NOT increment r.cep (it remains at its initial value of 5).¶
Reason: It would be redundant for the server to include CE-marked SYNs in its r.cep counter, because it already reliably delivers feedback of any CE marking using the encoding in Table 2 in the SYN/ACK. This also ensures that, when the server starts using the ACE field, it has not unnecessarily consumed more than one initial value, given they can be used to negotiate variants of the AccECN protocol (see Appendix B.3).¶
If a TCP client in AccECN mode receives a CE mark in the IP-ECN field of a SYN/ACK, it MUST increment r.cep, but no more than once no matter how many CE-marked SYN/ACKs it receives (i.e. incremented from 5 to 6, but no further).¶
Reason: Incrementing r.cep ensures the client will eventually deliver any CE marking to the server reliably when it starts using the ACE field. Even though the client also feeds back any CE marking on the ACK of the SYN/ACK using the encoding in Table 3, this ACK is not delivered reliably, so it can be considered as a timely notification that is redundant but unreliable. The client does not increment r.cep more than once, because the server can only increment s.cep once (see next bullet). Also, this limits the unnecessarily consumed initial values of the ACE field to two.¶
If a TCP server in AccECN mode and in SYN-RCVD state receives CE feedback in the TCP flags of a pure ACK with no SACK blocks, it MUST increment s.cep (from 5 to 6). The TCP server then triggers the congestion control actions necessary to respond to the CE feedback.¶
Reasoning: The TCP server can only increment s.cep once, because the first ACK it receives will cause it to transition out of SYN-RCVD state. The server's congestion response would be no different even if it could receive feedback of more than one CE-marked SYN/ACK.¶
Once the TCP server transitions to ESTABLISHED state, it might later receive other pure ACK(s) with the handshake encoding in the ACE field. A server MAY implement a test for such a case, but it is not required. Therefore, once in the ESTABLISHED state, it will be sufficient for the server to consider the ACE field to be encoded as the normal ACE counter on all packets with SYN=0.¶
Reasoning: Such ACKs will be quite unusual, e.g. a SYN/ACK (or ACK of the SYN/ACK) that is delayed for longer than the server's retransmission timeout; or packet duplication by the network. And the impact of any error in the feedback on such ACKs will only be temporary.¶
The value of the ACE field on the SYN/ACK indicates the value of the IP/ECN field when the SYN arrived at the server. The client can compare this with how it originally set the IP/ECN field on the SYN. If this comparison implies an invalid transition (defined below) of the IP/ECN field, for the remainder of the half-connection the client is advised to send non-ECN-capable packets, but it still ought to respond to any feedback of CE markings (explained below). However, the client MUST remain in the AccECN feedback mode and it MUST continue to feed back any ECN markings on arriving packets (in its role as Data Receiver).¶
The value of the ACE field on the last ACK of the 3WHS indicates the value of the IP/ECN field when the SYN/ACK arrived at the client. The server can compare this with how it originally set the IP/ECN field on the SYN/ACK. If this comparison implies an invalid transition of the IP/ECN field, for the remainder of the half-connection the server is advised to send non-ECN-capable packets, but it still ought to respond to any feedback of CE markings (explained below). However, the server MUST remain in the AccECN feedback mode and it MUST continue to feed back any ECN markings on arriving packets (in its role as Data Receiver).¶
If a Data Sender in AccECN mode starts sending non-ECN-capable packets because it has detected mangling, it is still advised to respond to CE feedback. Reason: any CE-marking arriving at the Data Receiver could be due to something early in the path mangling the non-ECN-capable IP/ECN field into an ECN-capable codepoint and then, later in the path, a network bottleneck might be applying CE-markings to indicate genuine congestion. This argument applies whether the handshake packet originally sent by the client or server was non-ECN-capable or ECN-capable because, in either case, an unsafe transition could imply that future non-ECN-capable packets might get mangled.¶
The above advice on switching to sending non-ECN-capable packets but still responding to CE-markings unless they become continuous is not stated normatively (in capitals), because the best strategy might depend on experience of the most likely types of mangling, which can only be known at the time of deployment.¶
The ACK of the SYN/ACK is not reliably delivered (nonetheless, the count of CE marks is still eventually delivered reliably). If this ACK does not arrive, the server is advised to continue to send ECN-capable packets without having tested for mangling of the IP/ECN field on the SYN/ACK.¶
Invalid transitions of the IP/ECN field are defined in section 18 of [RFC3168] and repeated here for convenience:¶
RFC 3168 says that a router that changes ECT to not-ECT is invalid but safe. However, from a host's viewpoint, this transition is unsafe because it could be the result of two transitions at different routers on the path: ECT to CE (safe) then CE to not-ECT (unsafe). This scenario could well happen where an ECN-enabled home router congests its upstream mobile broadband bottleneck link, then the ingress to the mobile network clears the ECN field [Mandalari18].¶
Once a Data Sender has entered AccECN mode it is advised to check whether it is receiving continuous CE marking. Specifying exactly how to do this is beyond the scope of the present specification, but the sender might check whether the feedback for every packet it sends for the first three or four rounds indicates CE-marking. If continuous CE-marking is detected, for the remainder of the half-connection, the Data Sender ought to send non-ECN-capable packets and it is advised not to respond to any feedback of CE markings. The Data Sender might occasionally test whether it can resume sending ECN-capable packets. As always, once a host has entered AccECN mode, it MUST remain in the same feedback mode and it MUST continue to feed back any ECN markings on arriving packets.¶
All the fall-back behaviours in this section are necessary in case mangling of the IP/ECN field is asymmetric, which is currently common over some mobile networks [Mandalari18]. Then one end might see no unsafe transition and continue sending ECN-capable packets, while the other end sees an unsafe transition and stops sending ECN-capable packets.¶
Section 3.2.2 required the Data Receiver to initialize the r.cep counter to a non-zero value. Therefore, in either direction the initial value of the ACE counter ought to be non-zero.¶
If AccECN has been successfully negotiated, the Data Sender SHOULD check the value of the ACE counter in the first packet (with or without data) that arrives with SYN=0. If the value of this ACE field is zero (0b000), for the remainder of the half-connection the Data Sender ought to send non-ECN-capable packets and it is advised not to respond to any feedback of CE markings. Reason: the symptoms imply either potential mangling of the ECN fields in both the IP and TCP headers, or a broken remote TCP implementation. This advice is not stated normatively (in capitals), because the best strategy might depend on experience of the most likely types of mangling, which can only be known at the time of deployment.¶
If reordering occurs, "the first packet ... that arrives" will not necessarily be the same as the first packet in sequence order. The test has been specified loosely like this to simplify implementation, and because it would not have been any more precise to have specified the first packet in sequence order, which would not necessarily be the first ACE counter that the Data Receiver fed back anyway, given it might have been a retransmission. Usually, the server checks the ACK of the SYN/ACK from the client, while the client checks the first data segment from the server.¶
The possibility of re-ordering means that there is a small chance that the ACE field on the first packet to arrive is genuinely zero (without middlebox interference). This would cause a host to unnecessarily disable ECN for a half connection. Therefore, in environments where there is no evidence of the ACE field being zeroed, implementations can skip this test.¶
Note that the Data Sender MUST NOT test whether the arriving counter in the initial ACE field has been initialized to a specific valid value - the above check solely tests whether the ACE fields have been incorrectly zeroed. This allows hosts to use different initial values as an additional signalling channel in future.¶
If too many CE-marked segments are acknowledged at once, or if a long run of ACKs is lost or thinned out, the 3-bit counter in the ACE field might have cycled between two ACKs arriving at the Data Sender. The following safety procedures minimize this ambiguity.¶
The following rules define when a Data Receiver in AccECN mode emits an ACK:¶
An AccECN Data Receiver SHOULD emit an ACK whenever a data packet marked CE arrives after the previous packet was not CE.¶
Even though this rule is stated as a "SHOULD", it is important for a transition to trigger an ACK if at all possible, The only valid exception to this rule is given below these bullets.¶
For the avoidance of doubt, this rule is deliberately worded to apply solely when data packets arrive, but the comparison with the previous packet includes any packet, not just data packets.¶
The above rules for when to send an ACK are designed to be complemented by those in Section 3.2.3.3, which concern whether the AccECN TCP Option ought to be included on ACKs.¶
If the arrivals of a number of data packets are all processed as one event, e.g. using large receive offload (LRO) or generic receive offload (GRO), both the above rules SHOULD be interpreted as requiring multiple ACKs to be emitted back-to-back (for each transition and for each repetition by 'n' CE marks). If this is problematic for high performance, either rule can be interpreted as requiring just a single ACK at the end of the whole receive event.¶
Even if a number of data packets do not arrive as one event, the 'Change-Triggered ACKs' rule could sometimes cause the ACK rate to be problematic for high performance (although high performance protocols such as DCTCP already successfully use change-triggered ACKs). The rationale for change-triggered ACKs is so that the Data Sender can rely on them to detect queue growth as soon as possible, particularly at the start of a flow. The approach can lead to some additional ACKs but it feeds back the timing and the order in which ECN marks are received with minimal additional complexity. If CE marks are infrequent, as is the case for most AQMs at the time of writing, or there are multiple marks in a row, the additional load will be low. However, marking patterns with numerous non-contiguous CE marks could increase the load significantly. One possible compromise would be for the receiver to heuristically detect whether the sender is in slow-start, then to implement change-triggered ACKs while the sender is in slow-start, and offload otherwise.¶
With ECN-capable pure ACKs [I-D.ietf-tcpm-generalized-ecn], the 'Increment-Triggered ACKs' rule could cause ECN-marked pure ACKs to trigger further ACKs. Although TCP normally only ACKs newly delivered data, in this case the ACKs of ACKs would feed back new congestion state. The minimum of 3 for 'n' in this case ensures that, even if there is pathological congestion in both directions, any resulting ping-pong of ACKs will be rapidly damped.¶
These ACKs of ACKs could be misidentified as duplicate ACKs in certain circumstances described below. Therefore, a host in AccECN mode that is sending ECN-capable pure ACKs SHOULD add one of the following additional checks when it tests whether an incoming pure ACK is a duplicate:¶
In the unlikely event that neither SACK nor timestamps are in use, or if the implementation has opted not to include either of the above two checks, it SHOULD NOT send ECN-capable pure ACKs. If it does, it could lead to false detection of duplicate ACKs, causing spurious retransmission(s) with a resulting unnecessary reduction in congestion window; but only in certain circumstances. Specifically, if TCP peer A has been sending data, then receiving, then within one round trip it starts sending again, and the ECN-capable pure ACKs it sent in the previous round encounter heavy enough congestion to trigger peer B to invoke the above 'n'-CE-mark rule. Also note that falsely considering these ACKs as duplicates would incorrectly imply that data left the network.¶
If the Data Sender has not received AccECN TCP Options to give it more dependable information, and it detects that the ACE field could have cycled, it SHOULD deem whether it cycled by taking the safest likely case under the prevailing conditions. It can detect if the counter could have cycled by using the jump in the acknowledgement number since the last ACK to calculate or estimate how many segments could have been acknowledged. An example algorithm to implement this policy is given in Appendix A.2. An implementer MAY develop an alternative algorithm as long as it satisfies these requirements.¶
If missing acknowledgement numbers arrive later (reordering) and prove that the counter did not cycle, the Data Sender MAY attempt to neutralize the effect of any action it took based on a conservative assumption that it later found to be incorrect.¶
The Data Sender can estimate how many packets (of any marking) an ACK acknowledges. If the ACE counter on an ACK seems to imply that the minimum number of newly CE-marked packets is greater that the number of newly acknowledged packets, the Data Sender SHOULD believe the ACE counter, unless it can be sure that it is counting all control packets correctly.¶
The AccECN Option is defined as shown in Figure 4. The initial 'E' of each field name stands for 'Echo'.¶
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Kind = TBD0 | Length = 11 | EE0B field | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | EE0B (cont'd) | ECEB field | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | EE1B field | Order 0 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Kind = TBD1 | Length = 11 | EE1B field | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | EE1B (cont'd) | ECEB field | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | EE0B field | Order 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 4 shows two option field orders; order 0 and order 1. They both consists of three 24-bit fields. Order 0 provides the 24 least significant bits of the r.e0b, r.ceb and r.e1b counters, respectively. Order 1 provides the same fields, but in the opposite order. On each packet, the Data Receiver can use whichever order is more efficient.¶
When a Data Receiver sends an AccECN Option, it MUST set the Kind field to TBD0 if using Order 0, or to TBD1 if using Order 1. These two new TCP Option Kinds are registered in Section 7 and called respectively AccECN0 and AccECN1.¶
Note that there is no field to feed back Not-ECT bytes. Nonetheless an algorithm for the Data Sender to calculate the number of payload bytes received as Not-ECT is given in Appendix A.4.¶
Whenever a Data Receiver sends an AccECN Option, the rules in Section 3.2.3.3 allow it to omit unchanged fields from the tail of the option, to help cope with option space limitations, as long as it preserves the order of the remaining fields and includes any field that has changed. The length field MUST indicate which fields are present as follows:¶
| Length | Type 0 | Type 1 |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | EE0B, ECEB, EE1B | EE1B, ECEB, EE0B |
| 8 | EE0B, ECEB | EE1B, ECEB |
| 5 | EE0B | EE1B |
| 2 | (empty) | (empty) |
The empty option of Length=2 is provided to allow for a case where an AccECN Option has to be sent (e.g. on the SYN/ACK to test the path), but there is very limited space for the option.¶
All implementations of a Data Sender that read any AccECN Option MUST be able to read in AccECN Options of any of the above lengths. For forward compatibility, if the AccECN Option is of any other length, implementations MUST use those whole 3-octet fields that fit within the length and ignore the remainder of the option, treating it as padding.¶
The AccECN Option has to be optional to implement, because both sender and receiver have to be able to cope without the option anyway - in cases where it does not traverse a network path. It is RECOMMENDED to implement both sending and receiving of the AccECN Option. Support for the AccECN Option is particularly valuable over paths that introduce a high degree of ACK filtering, where the 3-bit ACE counter alone might sometimes be insufficient, when it is ambiguous whether it has wrapped. If sending of the AccECN Option is implemented, the fall-backs described in this document will need to be implemented as well (unless solely for a controlled environment where path traversal is not considered a problem). Even if a developer does not implement sending of the AccECN Option, it is RECOMMENDED that they still implement logic to receive and understand any AccECN Options sent by remote peers.¶
If a Data Receiver intends to send the AccECN Option at any time during the rest of the connection it is strongly RECOMMENDED to also test path traversal of the AccECN Option as specified in Section 3.2.3.2.¶
Whenever the Data Receiver includes any of the counter fields (ECEB, EE0B, EE1B) in an AccECN Option, it MUST encode the 24 least significant bits of the current value of the associated counter into the field (respectively r.ceb, r.e0b, r.e1b).¶
Whenever the Data Sender receives ACK carrying an AccECN Option, it first checks whether the ACK has already been superseded by another ACK in which case it ignores the ECN feedback. If the ACK has not been superseded, the Data Sender normally decodes the fields in the AccECN Option as follows. For each field, it takes the least significant 24 bits of its associated local counter (s.ceb, s.e0b or s.e1b) and subtracts them from the counter in the associated field of the incoming AccECN Option (respectively ECEB, EE0B, EE1B), to work out the minimum positive increment it could apply to s.ceb, s.e0b or s.e1b (assuming the field in the option only wrapped at most once).¶
Appendix A.1 gives an example algorithm for the Data Receiver to encode its byte counters into the AccECN Option, and for the Data Sender to decode the AccECN Option fields into its byte counters.¶
Note that, as specified in Section 3.2, any data on the SYN (SYN=1, ACK=0) is not included in any of the byte counters held locally for each ECN marking nor in the AccECN Option on the wire.¶
The TCP client MUST NOT include the AccECN TCP Option on the SYN. If there is somehow an AccECN Option on a SYN, it MUST be ignored when forwarded or received. (A fall-back strategy for the loss of the SYN, possibly due to middlebox interference, is specified in Section 3.1.4.)¶
A TCP server that confirms its support for AccECN (in response to an AccECN SYN from the client as described in Section 3.1) SHOULD include an AccECN TCP Option on the SYN/ACK.¶
A TCP client that has successfully negotiated AccECN SHOULD include an AccECN Option in the first ACK at the end of the 3WHS. However, this first ACK is not delivered reliably, so the TCP client SHOULD also include an AccECN Option on the first data segment it sends (if it ever sends one).¶
A host MAY omit the AccECN Option in any of the above three cases due to insufficient option space or if it has cached knowledge that the packet would be likely to be blocked on the path to the other host if it included an AccECN Option.¶
If after the normal TCP timeout the TCP server has not received an ACK to acknowledge its SYN/ACK, the SYN/ACK might just have been lost, e.g. due to congestion, or a middlebox might be blocking the AccECN Option. To expedite connection setup, the TCP server SHOULD retransmit the SYN/ACK repeating the same AE, CWR and ECE TCP flags as on the original SYN/ACK but with no AccECN Option. If this retransmission times out, to expedite connection setup, the TCP server SHOULD disable AccECN and ECN for this connection by retransmitting the SYN/ACK with AE=CWR=ECE=0 and no AccECN Option.¶
Implementers MAY use other fall-back strategies if they are found to be more effective (e.g. retrying the AccECN Option for a second time before fall-back - most appropriate during high levels of congestion). However, other fall-back strategies will need to follow all the rules in Section 3.1.5, which concern behaviour when SYNs or SYN/ACKs negotiating different types of feedback have been sent within the same connection.¶
If the TCP client detects that the first data segment it sent with the AccECN Option was lost, it SHOULD fall back to no AccECN Option on the retransmission. Again, implementers MAY use other fall-back strategies such as attempting to retransmit a second segment with the AccECN Option before fall-back, and/or caching whether the AccECN Option is blocked for subsequent connections. [RFC9040] further discusses caching of TCP parameters and status information.¶
If a host falls back to not sending the AccECN Option, it will continue to process any incoming AccECN Options as normal.¶
Either host MAY include the AccECN Option in a subsequent segment to retest whether the AccECN Option can traverse the path.¶
If the TCP server receives a second SYN with a request for AccECN support, it is advised to resend the SYN/ACK, again confirming its support for AccECN, but this time without the AccECN Option. This approach rules out any interference by middleboxes that might drop packets with unknown options, even though it is more likely that the SYN/ACK would have been lost due to congestion. The TCP server MAY try to send another packet with the AccECN Option at a later point during the connection but it ought to monitor if that packet got lost as well, in which case it SHOULD disable the sending of the AccECN Option for this half-connection.¶
Similarly, an AccECN end-point MAY separately memorize which data packets carried an AccECN Option and disable the sending of AccECN Options if the loss probability of those packets is significantly higher than that of all other data packets in the same connection.¶
If the TCP client has successfully negotiated AccECN but does not receive an AccECN Option on the SYN/ACK (e.g. because is has been stripped by a middlebox or not sent by the server), the client switches into a mode that assumes that the AccECN Option is not available for this half connection.¶
Similarly, if the TCP server has successfully negotiated AccECN but does not receive an AccECN Option on the first segment that acknowledges sequence space at least covering the ISN, it switches into a mode that assumes that the AccECN Option is not available for this half connection.¶
While a host is in this mode that assumes incoming AccECN Options are not available, it MUST adopt the conservative interpretation of the ACE field discussed in Section 3.2.2.5. However, it cannot make any assumption about support of outgoing AccECN Options on the other half connection, so it SHOULD continue to send the AccECN Option itself (unless it has established that sending the AccECN Option is causing packets to be blocked as in Section 3.2.3.2.2).¶
If a host is in the mode that assumes incoming AccECN Options are not available, but it receives an AccECN Option at any later point during the connection, this clearly indicates that the AccECN Option is not blocked on the respective path, and the AccECN endpoint MAY switch out of the mode that assumes the AccECN Option is not available for this half connection.¶
For a related test for invalid initialization of the ACE field, see Section 3.2.2.4¶
Section 3.2.1 required the Data Receiver to initialize the r.e0b and r.e1b counters to a non-zero value. Therefore, in either direction the initial value of the EE0B field or EE1B field in the AccECN Option (if one exists) ought to be non-zero. If AccECN has been negotiated:¶
While a host is in the mode that ignores the AccECN Option it MUST adopt the conservative interpretation of the ACE field discussed in Section 3.2.2.5.¶
Note that the Data Sender MUST NOT test whether the arriving byte counters in the initial AccECN Option have been initialized to specific valid values - the above checks solely test whether these fields have been incorrectly zeroed. This allows hosts to use different initial values as an additional signalling channel in future. Also note that the initial value of either field might be greater than its expected initial value, because the counters might already have been incremented. Nonetheless, the initial values of the counters have been chosen so that they cannot wrap to zero on these initial segments.¶
When the AccECN Option is available it ought to provide more unambiguous feedback. However, it supplements but does not replace the ACE field. An endpoint using AccECN feedback MUST always reconcile the information provided in the ACE field with that in any AccECN Option, so that the state of the ACE-related packet counter can be relied on if future feedback does not carry the AccECN Option.¶
If the AccECN option is present, the s.cep counter might increase more than expected from the increase of the s.ceb counter (e.g. due to a CE-marked control packet). The sender's response to such a situation is out of scope, and needs to be dealt with in a specification that uses ECN-capable control packets. Theoretically, this situation could also occur if a middlebox mangled the AccECN Option but not the ACE field. However, the Data Sender has to assume that the integrity of the AccECN Option is sound, based on the above test of the well-known initial values and optionally other integrity tests (Section 5.3).¶
If either end-point detects that the s.ceb counter has increased but the s.cep has not (and by testing ACK coverage it is certain how much the ACE field has wrapped), and if there is no explanation other than an invalid protocol transition due to some form of feedback mangling, the Data Sender MUST disable sending ECN-capable packets for the remainder of the half-connection by setting the IP/ECN field in all subsequent packets to Not-ECT.¶
If a Data Receiver in AccECN mode intends to use the AccECN TCP Option to provide feedback, the rules below determine when it includes an AccECN TCP Option, and which fields to include, given other options might be competing for limited option space:¶
AccECN is for congestion control, which SHOULD generally be considered important relative to other TCP options.¶
If SACK has been negotiated, and the smallest recommended AccECN Option would leave insufficient space for two SACK blocks on a particular ACK, the Data Receiver MUST give precedence to the SACK option (total 18 octets), because loss feedback is more critical.¶
The Data Receiver SHOULD include an AccECN TCP Option on every scheduled ACK if any byte counter has incremented since the last ACK. Whenever possible, it SHOULD include a field for every byte counter that has changed at some time during the connection (see examples later).¶
A scheduled ACK means an ACK that the Data Receiver would send by its regular delayed ACK rules. Recall that Section 1.3 defines an 'ACK' as either with data payload or without. But the above rule is worded so that, in the common case when most of the data is from a server to a client, the server only includes an AccECN TCP Option while it is acknowledging data from the client.¶
When available TCP option space is limited on particular packets, the recommended scheme will need to include compromises. To guide the implementer the rules below are ranked in order of importance, but the final decision has to be implementation-dependent, because tradeoffs will alter as new TCP options are defined and new use-cases arise.¶
If an arriving packet increments a different byte counter to that incremented by the previous packet, the Data Receiver SHOULD feed it back in an AccECN Option on the next scheduled ACK.¶
For the avoidance of doubt, this rule does not concern the arrival of control packets with no payload, because they cannot alter any byte counters.¶
Otherwise, if arriving packets continue to increment the same byte counter:¶
The above rules complement those in Section 3.2.2.5, which determine when to generate an ACK irrespective of whether an AccECN TCP Option is to be included.¶
The recommended scheme is intended as a simple way to ensure that all the relevant byte counters will be carried on any ACK that reaches the Data Sender, no matter how many pure ACKs are filtered or coalesced along the network path, and without consuming the space available for payload data with counter field(s) that have never changed.¶
As an example of the recommended scheme, if ECT(0) is the only codepoint that has ever arrived in the IP-ECN field, the Data Receiver will feed back an AccECN0 TCP Option with only the EE0B field on every packet. However, as soon as even one CE-marked packet arrives, on every packet that acknowledges new data it will start to include an option with two fields, EE0B and ECEB. As a second example, if the first packet to arrive happens to be CE-marked, the Data Receiver will have to arbitrarily choose whether to precede the ECEB field with an EE0B field or an EE1B field. If it chooses, say, EEB0 but it turns out never to receive ECT(0), it can start sending EE1B and ECEB instead - it does not have to include the EE0B field if the r.e0b counter has never changed during the connection.¶
With the recommended scheme, if the data sending direction switches during a connection, there can be cases where the AccECN TCP Option that is meant to feed back the counter values at the end of a volley in one direction never reaches the other peer, due to packet loss. ACE feedback ought to be sufficient to fill this gap, given accurate feedback becomes moot after data transmission has paused.¶
Appendix A.3 gives an example algorithm to estimate the number of marked bytes from the ACE field alone, if the AccECN Option is not available.¶
If a host has determined that segments with the AccECN Option always seem to be discarded somewhere along the path, it is no longer obliged to follow any of the rules in this section.¶
A large class of middleboxes split TCP connections. Such a middlebox would be compliant with the AccECN protocol if the TCP implementation on each side complied with the present AccECN specification and each side negotiated AccECN independently of the other side.¶
Another large class of middleboxes intervenes to some degree at the transport layer, but attempts to be transparent (invisible) to the end-to-end connection. A subset of this class of middleboxes attempts to `normalize' the TCP wire protocol by checking that all values in header fields comply with a rather narrow interpretation of the TCP specifications that is also not always up to date.¶
A middlebox that is not normalizing the TCP protocol and does not itself act as a back-to-back pair of TCP endpoints (i.e. a middlebox that intends to be transparent or invisible at the transport layer) ought to forward the AccECN TCP Option unaltered, whether or not the length value matches one of those specified in Section 3.2.3, and whether or not the initial values of the byte-counter fields match those in Section 3.2.1. This is because blocking apparently invalid values prevents the standardized set of values being extended in future (given outdated normalizers would block updated hosts from using the extended AccECN standard).¶
A TCP normalizer is likely to block or alter an AccECN TCP Option if the length value or the initial values of its byte-counter fields do not match one of those specified in Section 3.2.3 or Section 3.2.1. However, to comply with the present AccECN specification, a middlebox MUST NOT change the ACE field; or those fields of the AccECN Option that are currently specified in Section 3.2.3; or any AccECN field covered by integrity protection (e.g. [RFC5925]).¶
A node that implements ACK filtering (aka. thinning or coalescing) SHOULD determine if an ACK is part of a connection using AccECN and SHOULD then preserve the correct operation of AccECN feedback. The following notes might help with each part of this requirement:¶
Note that the present specification of AccECN in TCP does not presume to rely on any of the above ACK filtering behaviour in the network (hence the use of 'SHOULD' rather than 'MUST' above), because it has to be robust against pre-existing network nodes that do not distinguish AccECN ACKs, and robust against ACK loss during overload more generally.¶
Section 5.2.1 of BCP 69 [RFC3449] gives best current practice on pure TCP ACK filtering. It gives no advice on ACKs carrying ECN feedback, other than that filtering ought to preserve the correct operation of ECN feedback, because at the time it said that "SACK and ECN remain areas of ongoing research". This section updates that best current practice for a TCP connection that supports AccECN feedback.¶
Hardware to offload certain TCP processing represents another large class of middleboxes (even though it is often a function of a host's network interface and rarely in its own 'box').¶
The ACE field changes with every received CE marking, so today's receive offloading could lead to many interrupts in high congestion situations. Although that would be useful (because congestion information is received sooner), it could also significantly increase processor load, particularly in scenarios such as DCTCP or L4S where the marking rate is generally higher.¶
Current offload hardware ejects a segment from the coalescing process whenever the TCP ECN flags change. Thus Classic ECN causes offload to be inefficient. In data centres it has been fortunate for this offload hardware that DCTCP-style feedback changes less often when there are long sequences of CE marks, which is more common with a step marking threshold (but less likely the more short flows are in the mix). The ACE counter approach has been designed so that coalescing can continue over arbitrary patterns of marking and only needs to stop when the counter wraps. Nonetheless, until the particular offload hardware in use implements this more efficient approach, it is likely to be more efficient for AccECN connections to implement this counter-style logic using software segmentation offload.¶
ECN encodes a varying signal in the ACK stream, so it is inevitable that offload hardware will ultimately need to handle any form of ECN feedback exceptionally. The ACE field has been designed as a counter so that it is straightforward for offload hardware to pass on the highest counter, and to push a segment from its cache before the counter wraps. The purpose of working towards standardized TCP ECN feedback is to reduce the risk for hardware developers, who would otherwise have to guess which scheme is likely to become dominant.¶
The above process has been designed to enable a continuing incremental deployment path - to more highly dynamic congestion control. Once offload hardware supports AccECN, it will be able to coalesce efficiently for any sequence of marks, instead of relying for efficiency on the long marking sequences from step marking. In the next stage, marking can evolve from a step to a ramp function. That in turn will allow host congestion control algorithms to respond faster to dynamics, while being backwards compatible with existing host algorithms.¶
Normative statements in the following sections of RFC3168 are updated by the present AccECN specification:¶
In "6.1.2. The TCP Sender" of [RFC3168], all mentions of a congestion response to an ECN-Echo (ECE) ACK packet are updated by Section 3.2 of the present specification to mean an increment to the sender's count of CE-marked packets, s.cep. And the requirements to set the CWR flag no longer apply, as specified in Section 3.1.5 of the present specification. Otherwise, the remaining requirements in "6.1.2. The TCP Sender" still stand.¶
It will be noted that RFC 8311 already updates, or potentially updates, a number of the requirements in "6.1.2. The TCP Sender". Section 6.1.2 of RFC 3168 extended standard TCP congestion control [RFC5681] to cover ECN marking as well as packet drop. Whereas, RFC 8311 enables experimentation with alternative responses to ECN marking, if specified for instance by an experimental RFC on the IETF document stream. RFC 8311 also strengthened the statement that "ECT(0) SHOULD be used" to a "MUST" (see [RFC8311] for the details).¶
The following text within "6.1.5. Retransmitted TCP packets":¶
is updated by more stringent acceptability tests for any packet (not just data packets) in the present specification. Specifically, in the normative specification of AccECN (Section 3) only 'Acceptable' packets contribute to the ECN counters at the AccECN receiver and Section 1.3 defines an Acceptable packet as one that passes the acceptability tests in both [RFC0793] and [RFC5961].¶
This section is informative, not normative.¶
A TCP server can use SYN Cookies (see Appendix A of [RFC4987]) to protect itself from SYN flooding attacks. It places minimal commonly used connection state in the SYN/ACK, and deliberately does not hold any state while waiting for the subsequent ACK (e.g. it closes the thread). Therefore it cannot record the fact that it entered AccECN mode for both half-connections. Indeed, it cannot even remember whether it negotiated the use of classic ECN [RFC3168].¶
Nonetheless, such a server can determine that it negotiated AccECN as follows. If a TCP server using SYN Cookies supports AccECN and if it receives a pure ACK that acknowledges an ISN that is a valid SYN cookie, and if the ACK contains an ACE field with the value 0b010 to 0b111 (decimal 2 to 7), it can assume that:¶
Therefore the server can switch itself into AccECN mode, and continue as if it had never forgotten that it switched itself into AccECN mode earlier.¶
If the pure ACK that acknowledges a SYN cookie contains an ACE field with the value 0b000 or 0b001, these values indicate that the client did not request support for AccECN and therefore the server does not enter AccECN mode for this connection. Further, 0b001 on the ACK implies that the server sent an ECN-capable SYN/ACK, which was marked CE in the network, and the non-AccECN client fed this back by setting ECE on the ACK of the SYN/ACK.¶
AccECN is compatible (at least on paper) with the most commonly used TCP options: MSS, time-stamp, window scaling, SACK and TCP-AO. It is also compatible with the recent promising experimental TCP options TCP Fast Open (TFO [RFC7413]) and Multipath TCP (MPTCP [RFC6824]). AccECN is friendly to all these protocols, because space for TCP options is particularly scarce on the SYN, where AccECN consumes zero additional header space.¶
When option space is under pressure from other options, Section 3.2.3.3 provides guidance on how important it is to send an AccECN Option relative to other options, and which fields are more important to include.¶
Implementers of TFO need to take careful note of the recommendation in Section 3.2.2.1. That section recommends that, if the client has successfully negotiated AccECN, when acknowledging the SYN/ACK, even if it has data to send, it sends a pure ACK immediately before the data. Then it can reflect the IP-ECN field of the SYN/ACK on this pure ACK, which allows the server to detect ECN mangling. Note that, as specified in Section 3.2, any data on the SYN (SYN=1, ACK=0) is not included in any of the byte counters held locally for each ECN marking, nor in the AccECN Option on the wire.¶
Three alternative mechanisms are available to assure the integrity of ECN and/or loss signals. AccECN is compatible with any of these approaches:¶
Networks generate congestion signals when they are becoming congested, so networks are more likely than Data Senders to be concerned about the integrity of the receiver's feedback of these signals. A network can enforce a congestion response to its ECN markings (or packet losses) using congestion exposure (ConEx) audit [RFC7713]. Whether the receiver or a downstream network is suppressing congestion feedback or the sender is unresponsive to the feedback, or both, ConEx audit can neutralize any advantage that any of these three parties would otherwise gain.¶
ConEx is an experimental change to the Data Sender that would be most useful when combined with AccECN. Without AccECN, the ConEx behaviour of a Data Sender would have to be more conservative than would be necessary if it had the accurate feedback of AccECN.¶
Originally the ECN Nonce [RFC3540] was proposed to ensure integrity of congestion feedback. With minor changes AccECN could be optimized for the possibility that the ECT(1) codepoint might be used as an ECN Nonce. However, given RFC 3540 has been reclassified as historic, the AccECN design has been generalized so that it ought to be able to support other possible uses of the ECT(1) codepoint, such as a lower severity or a more instant congestion signal than CE.¶
This section is informative not normative. It describes how well the protocol satisfies the agreed requirements for a more accurate ECN feedback protocol [RFC7560].¶
This document reassigns bit 7 of the TCP header flags to the AccECN protocol. This bit was previously called the Nonce Sum (NS) flag [RFC3540], but RFC 3540 has been reclassified as historic [RFC8311]. The flag will now be defined as:¶
| Bit | Name | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | AE (Accurate ECN) | RFC XXXX |
[TO BE REMOVED: IANA is requested to update the existing entry in the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Header Flags registration (https://www.iana.org/assignments/tcp-header-flags/tcp-header-flags.xhtml#tcp-header-flags-1) for Bit 7 to "AE (Accurate ECN), previously used as NS (Nonce Sum) by [RFC3540], which is now Historic [RFC8311]" and change the reference to this RFC-to-be instead of RFC8311.]¶
This document also defines two new TCP options for AccECN, assigned values of TBD0 and TBD1 (decimal) from the TCP option space. These values are defined as:¶
| Kind | Length | Meaning | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| TBD0 | N | Accurate ECN Order 0 (AccECN0) | RFC XXXX |
| TBD1 | N | Accurate ECN Order 1 (AccECN1) | RFC XXXX |
[TO BE REMOVED: This registration should take place at the following location: http://www.iana.org/assignments/tcp-parameters/tcp-parameters.xhtml#tcp-parameters-1 ]¶
Early implementations using experimental option 254 per [RFC6994] with the single magic number 0xACCE (16 bits), as allocated in the IANA "TCP Experimental Option Experiment Identifiers (TCP ExIDs)" registry, SHOULD migrate to use these new option kinds (TBD0 & TBD1).¶
[TO BE REMOVED: The description of the 0xACCE value in the TCP ExIDs registry should be changed to "AccECN (current and new implementations SHOULD use option kinds TBD0 and TBD1)" at the following location: https://www.iana.org/assignments/tcp-parameters/tcp-parameters.xhtml#tcp-exids ]¶
If ever the supplementary part of AccECN based on the new AccECN TCP Option is unusable (due for example to middlebox interference) the essential part of AccECN's congestion feedback offers only limited resilience to long runs of ACK loss (see Section 3.2.2.5). These problems are unlikely to be due to malicious intervention (because if an attacker could strip a TCP option or discard a long run of ACKs it could wreak other arbitrary havoc). However, it would be of concern if AccECN's resilience could be indirectly compromised during a flooding attack. AccECN is still considered safe though, because if the option is not present, the AccECN Data Sender is then required to switch to more conservative assumptions about wrap of congestion indication counters (see Section 3.2.2.5 and Appendix A.2).¶
Section 5.1 describes how a TCP server can negotiate AccECN and use the SYN cookie method for mitigating SYN flooding attacks.¶
There is concern that ECN feedback could be altered or suppressed, particularly because a misbehaving Data Receiver could increase its own throughput at the expense of others. AccECN is compatible with the three schemes known to assure the integrity of ECN feedback (see Section 5.3 for details). If the AccECN Option is stripped by an incorrectly implemented middlebox, the resolution of the feedback will be degraded, but the integrity of this degraded information can still be assured. Assuring that Data Senders respond appropriately to ECN feedback is possible, but the scope of the present document is confined to the feedback protocol, and excludes the response to this feedback.¶
In Section 3.2.3 a Data Sender is allowed to ignore an unrecognized TCP AccECN Option length and read as many whole 3-octet fields from it as possible up to a maximum of 3, treating the remainder as padding. This opens up a potential covert channel of up to 29B (40 - (2+3*3))B. However, it is really an overt channel (not hidden) and it is no different to the use of unknown TCP options with unknown option lengths in general. Therefore, where this is of concern, it can already be adequately mitigated by regular TCP normalizer technology (see Section 3.3.2).¶
The AccECN protocol is not believed to introduce any new privacy concerns, because it merely counts and feeds back signals at the transport layer that had already been visible at the IP layer. A covert channel can be used to compromise privacy. However, as explained above, undefined TCP options in general open up such channels and common techniques are available to close them off.¶
There is a potential concern that a Data Receiver could deliberately omit the AccECN Option pretending that it had been stripped by a middlebox. No known way can yet be contrived for a receiver to take advantage of this behaviour, which seems to always degrade its own performance. However, the concern is mentioned here for completeness.¶
We want to thank Koen De Schepper, Praveen Balasubramanian, Michael Welzl, Gorry Fairhurst, David Black, Spencer Dawkins, Michael Scharf, Michael Tuexen, Yuchung Cheng, Kenjiro Cho, Olivier Tilmans, Ilpo Jaervinen, Neal Cardwell, Yoshifumi Nishida, Martin Duke and Jonathan Morton for their input and discussion. The idea of using the three ECN-related TCP flags as one field for more accurate TCP-ECN feedback was first introduced in the re-ECN protocol that was the ancestor of ConEx.¶
Bob Briscoe was part-funded by the Comcast Innovation Fund, the European Community under its Seventh Framework Programme through the Reducing Internet Transport Latency (RITE) project (ICT-317700) and through the Trilogy 2 project (ICT-317756), and the Research Council of Norway through the TimeIn project. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors.¶
Mirja Kuehlewind was partly supported by the European Commission under Horizon 2020 grant agreement no. 688421 Measurement and Architecture for a Middleboxed Internet (MAMI), and by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation under contract no. 15.0268. This support does not imply endorsement.¶
Comments and questions are encouraged and very welcome. They can be addressed to the IETF TCP maintenance and minor modifications working group mailing list <tcpm@ietf.org>, and/or to the authors.¶
This appendix is informative, not normative. It gives example algorithms that would satisfy the normative requirements of the AccECN protocol. However, implementers are free to choose other ways to implement the requirements.¶
The example algorithms below show how a Data Receiver in AccECN mode could encode its CE byte counter r.ceb into the ECEB field within the AccECN TCP Option, and how a Data Sender in AccECN mode could decode the ECEB field into its byte counter s.ceb. The other counters for bytes marked ECT(0) and ECT(1) in the AccECN Option would be similarly encoded and decoded.¶
It is assumed that each local byte counter is an unsigned integer greater than 24b (probably 32b), and that the following constant has been assigned:¶
Every time a CE marked data segment arrives, the Data Receiver increments its local value of r.ceb by the size of the TCP Data. Whenever it sends an ACK with the AccECN Option, the value it writes into the ECEB field is¶
where '%' is the remainder operator.¶
On the arrival of an AccECN Option, the Data Sender first makes sure the ACK has not been superseded in order to avoid winding the s.ceb counter backwards. It uses the TCP acknowledgement number and any SACK options to calculate newlyAckedB, the amount of new data that the ACK acknowledges in bytes (newlyAckedB can be zero but not negative). If newlyAckedB is zero, either the ACK has been superseded or CE-marked packet(s) without data could have arrived. To break the tie for the latter case, the Data Sender could use timestamps (if present) to work out newlyAckedT, the amount of new time that the ACK acknowledges. If the Data Sender determines that the ACK has been superseded it ignores the AccECN Option. Otherwise, the Data Sender calculates the minimum non-negative difference d.ceb between the ECEB field and its local s.ceb counter, using modulo arithmetic as follows:¶
if ((newlyAckedB > 0) || (newlyAckedT > 0)) {
d.ceb = (ECEB + DIVOPT - (s.ceb % DIVOPT)) % DIVOPT
s.ceb += d.ceb
}
¶
For example, if s.ceb is 33,554,433 and ECEB is 1461 (both decimal), then¶
s.ceb % DIVOPT = 1
d.ceb = (1461 + 2^24 - 1) % 2^24
= 1460
s.ceb = 33,554,433 + 1460
= 33,555,893
¶
In practice an implementation might use heuristics to guess the feedback in missing ACKs, then when it subsequently receives feedback it might find that it needs to correct its earlier heuristics as part of the decoding process. The above decoding process does not include any such heuristics.¶
The example algorithms below show how a Data Receiver in AccECN mode could encode its CE packet counter r.cep into the ACE field, and how the Data Sender in AccECN mode could decode the ACE field into its s.cep counter. The Data Sender's algorithm includes code to heuristically detect a long enough unbroken string of ACK losses that could have concealed a cycle of the congestion counter in the ACE field of the next ACK to arrive.¶
Two variants of the algorithm are given: i) a more conservative variant for a Data Sender to use if it detects that the AccECN Option is not available (see Section 3.2.2.5 and Section 3.2.3.2); and ii) a less conservative variant that is feasible when complementary information is available from the AccECN Option.¶
It is assumed that each local packet counter is a sufficiently sized unsigned integer (probably 32b) and that the following constant has been assigned:¶
Every time an Acceptable CE marked packet arrives (Section 3.2.2.2), the Data Receiver increments its local value of r.cep by 1. It repeats the same value of ACE in every subsequent ACK until the next CE marking arrives, where¶
If the Data Sender received an earlier value of the counter that had been delayed due to ACK reordering, it might incorrectly calculate that the ACE field had wrapped. Therefore, on the arrival of every ACK, the Data Sender ensures the ACK has not been superseded using the TCP acknowledgement number, any SACK options and timestamps (if available) to calculate newlyAckedB, as in Appendix A.1. If the ACK has not been superseded, the Data Sender calculates the minimum difference d.cep between the ACE field and its local s.cep counter, using modulo arithmetic as follows:¶
if ((newlyAckedB > 0) || (newlyAckedT > 0))
d.cep = (ACE + DIVACE - (s.cep % DIVACE)) % DIVACE
¶
Section 3.2.2.5 expects the Data Sender to assume that the ACE field cycled if it is the safest likely case under prevailing conditions. The 3-bit ACE field in an arriving ACK could have cycled and become ambiguous to the Data Sender if a sequence of ACKs goes missing that covers a stream of data long enough to contain 8 or more CE marks. We use the word `missing' rather than `lost', because some or all the missing ACKs might arrive eventually, but out of order. Even if some of the missing ACKs were piggy-backed on data (i.e. not pure ACKs) retransmissions will not repair the lost AccECN information, because AccECN requires retransmissions to carry the latest AccECN counters, not the original ones.¶
The phrase `under prevailing conditions' allows for implementation-dependent interpretation. A Data Sender might take account of the prevailing size of data segments and the prevailing CE marking rate just before the sequence of missing ACKs. However, we shall start with the simplest algorithm, which assumes segments are all full-sized and ultra-conservatively it assumes that ECN marking was 100% on the forward path when ACKs on the reverse path started to all be dropped. Specifically, if newlyAckedB is the amount of data that an ACK acknowledges since the previous ACK, then the Data Sender could assume that this acknowledges newlyAckedPkt full-sized segments, where newlyAckedPkt = newlyAckedB/MSS. Then it could assume that the ACE field incremented by¶
dSafer.cep = newlyAckedPkt - ((newlyAckedPkt - d.cep) % DIVACE),¶
For example, imagine an ACK acknowledges newlyAckedPkt=9 more full-size segments than any previous ACK, and that ACE increments by a minimum of 2 CE marks (d.cep=2). The above formula works out that it would still be safe to assume 2 CE marks (because 9 - ((9-2) % 8) = 2). However, if ACE increases by a minimum of 2 but acknowledges 10 full-sized segments, then it would be necessary to assume that there could have been 10 CE marks (because 10 - ((10-2) % 8) = 10).¶
Note that checks would need to be added to the above pseudocode for (d.cep > newlyAckedPkt), which could occur if newlyAckedPkt had been wrongly estimated using an inappropriate packet size.¶
ACKs that acknowledge a large stretch of packets might be common in data centres to achieve a high packet rate or might be due to ACK thinning by a middlebox. In these cases, cycling of the ACE field would often appear to have been possible, so the above algorithm would be over-conservative, leading to a false high marking rate and poor performance. Therefore it would be reasonable to only use dSafer.cep rather than d.cep if the moving average of newlyAckedPkt was well below 8.¶
Implementers could build in more heuristics to estimate prevailing average segment size and prevailing ECN marking. For instance, newlyAckedPkt in the above formula could be replaced with newlyAckedPktHeur = newlyAckedPkt*p*MSS/s, where s is the prevailing segment size and p is the prevailing ECN marking probability. However, ultimately, if TCP's ECN feedback becomes inaccurate it still has loss detection to fall back on. Therefore, it would seem safe to implement a simple algorithm, rather than a perfect one.¶
The simple algorithm for dSafer.cep above requires no monitoring of prevailing conditions and it would still be safe if, for example, segments were on average at least 5% of full-sized as long as ECN marking was 5% or less. Assuming it was used, the Data Sender would increment its packet counter as follows:¶
If missing acknowledgement numbers arrive later (due to reordering), Section 3.2.2.5 says "the Data Sender MAY attempt to neutralize the effect of any action it took based on a conservative assumption that it later found to be incorrect". To do this, the Data Sender would have to store the values of all the relevant variables whenever it made assumptions, so that it could re-evaluate them later. Given this could become complex and it is not required, we do not attempt to provide an example of how to do this.¶
When the AccECN Option is available on the ACKs before and after the possible sequence of ACK losses, if the Data Sender only needs CE-marked bytes, it will have sufficient information in the AccECN Option without needing to process the ACE field. If for some reason it needs CE-marked packets, if dSafer.cep is different from d.cep, it can determine whether d.cep is likely to be a safe enough estimate by checking whether the average marked segment size (s = d.ceb/d.cep) is less than the MSS (where d.ceb is the amount of newly CE-marked bytes - see Appendix A.1). Specifically, it could use the following algorithm:¶
SAFETY_FACTOR = 2
if (dSafer.cep > d.cep) {
if (d.ceb <= MSS * d.cep) { % Same as (s <= MSS), but no DBZ
sSafer = d.ceb/dSafer.cep
if (sSafer < MSS/SAFETY_FACTOR)
dSafer.cep = d.cep % d.cep is a safe enough estimate
} % else
% No need for else; dSafer.cep is already correct,
% because d.cep must have been too small
}
¶
The chart below shows when the above algorithm will consider d.cep can replace dSafer.cep as a safe enough estimate of the number of CE-marked packets:¶
^
sSafer|
|
MSS+
|
| dSafer.cep
| is
MSS/SAFETY_FACTOR+--------------+ safest
| |
| d.cep is safe|
| enough |
+-------------------->
MSS s
¶
The following examples give the reasoning behind the algorithm, assuming MSS=1460 [B]:¶
if d.cep=0, dSafer.cep=8 and d.ceb=1460, then s=infinity and sSafer=182.5.¶
Therefore even though the average size of 8 data segments is unlikely to have been as small as MSS/8, d.cep cannot have been correct, because it would imply an average segment size greater than the MSS.¶
if d.cep=2, dSafer.cep=10 and d.ceb=1460, then s=730 and sSafer=146.¶
Therefore d.cep is safe enough, because the average size of 10 data segments is unlikely to have been as small as MSS/10.¶
if d.cep=7, dSafer.cep=15 and d.ceb=10200, then s=1457 and sSafer=680.¶
Therefore d.cep is safe enough, because the average data segment size is more likely to have been just less than one MSS, rather than below MSS/2.¶
If pure ACKs were allowed to be ECN-capable, missing ACKs would be far less likely. However, because [RFC3168] currently precludes this, the above algorithm assumes that pure ACKs are not ECN-capable.¶
If the AccECN Option is not available, the Data Sender can only decode CE-marking from the ACE field in packets. Every time an ACK arrives, to convert this into an estimate of CE-marked bytes, it needs an average of the segment size, s_ave. Then it can add or subtract s_ave from the value of d.ceb as the value of d.cep increments or decrements. Some possible ways to calculate s_ave are outlined below. The precise details will depend on why an estimate of marked bytes is needed.¶
The implementation could keep a record of the byte numbers of all the boundaries between packets in flight (including control packets), and recalculate s_ave on every ACK. However it would be simpler to merely maintain a counter packets_in_flight for the number of packets in flight (including control packets), which is reset once per RTT. Either way, it would estimate s_ave as:¶
where flightsize is the variable that TCP already maintains for the number of bytes in flight. To avoid floating point arithmetic, it could right-bit-shift by lg(packets_in_flight), where lg() means log base 2.¶
An alternative would be to maintain an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) of the segment size:¶
where a is the decay constant for the EWMA. However, then it is necessary to choose a good value for this constant, which ought to depend on the number of packets in flight. Also the decay constant needs to be power of two to avoid floating point arithmetic.¶
A Data Sender in AccECN mode can infer the amount of TCP payload data arriving at the receiver marked Not-ECT from the difference between the amount of newly ACKed data and the sum of the bytes with the other three markings, d.ceb, d.e0b and d.e1b.¶
For this approach to be precise, it has to be assumed that spurious (unnecessary) retransmissions do not lead to double counting. This assumption is currently correct, given that RFC 3168 requires that the Data Sender marks retransmitted segments as Not-ECT. However, the converse is not true; necessary retransmissions will result in under-counting.¶
However, such precision is unlikely to be necessary. The only known use of a count of Not-ECT marked bytes is to test whether equipment on the path is clearing the ECN field (perhaps due to an out-dated attempt to clear, or bleach, what used to be the ToS field). To detect bleaching it will be sufficient to detect whether nearly all bytes arrive marked as Not-ECT. Therefore there ought to be no need to keep track of the details of retransmissions.¶
AccECN uses a rather unorthodox approach to negotiate the highest version TCP ECN feedback scheme that both ends support, as justified below. It follows from the original TCP ECN capability negotiation [RFC3168], in which the client set the 2 least significant of the original reserved flags in the TCP header, and fell back to no ECN support if the server responded with the 2 flags cleared, which had previously been the default.¶
ECN originally used header flags rather than a TCP option because it was considered more efficient to use a header flag for 1 bit of feedback per ACK, and this bit could be overloaded to indicate support for ECN during the handshake. During the development of ECN, 1 bit crept up to 2, in order to deliver the feedback reliably and to work round some broken hosts that reflected the reserved flags during the handshake.¶
In order to be backward compatible with RFC 3168, AccECN continues this approach, using the 3rd least significant TCP header flag that had previously been allocated for the ECN nonce (now historic). Then, whatever form of server an AccECN client encounters, the connection can fall back to the highest version of feedback protocol that both ends support, as explained in Section 3.1.¶
If AccECN had used the more orthodox approach of a TCP option, it would still have had to set the two ECN flags in the main TCP header, in order to be able to fall back to Classic RFC 3168 ECN, or to disable ECN support, without another round of negotiation. Then AccECN would also have had to handle all the different ways that servers currently respond to settings of the ECN flags in the main TCP header, including all the conflicting cases where a server might have said it supported one approach in the flags and another approach in the new TCP option. And AccECN would have had to deal with all the additional possibilities where a middlebox might have mangled the ECN flags, or removed the TCP option. Thus, usage of the 3rd reserved TCP header flag simplified the protocol.¶
The third flag was used in a way that could be distinguished from the ECN nonce, in case any nonce deployment was encountered. Previous usage of this flag for the ECN nonce was integrated into the original ECN negotiation. This further justified the 3rd flag's use for AccECN, because a non-ECN usage of this flag would have had to use it as a separate single bit, rather than in combination with the other 2 ECN flags.¶
Indeed, having overloaded the original uses of these three flags for its handshake, AccECN overloads all three bits again as a 3-bit counter.¶
Of the 8 possible codepoints that the 3 TCP header flags can indicate on the SYN/ACK, 4 already indicated earlier (or broken) versions of ECN support. In the early design of AccECN, an AccECN server could use only 2 of the 4 remaining codepoints. They both indicated AccECN support, but one fed back that the SYN had arrived marked as CE. Even though ECN support on a SYN is not yet on the standards track, the idea is for either end to act as a dumb reflector, so that future capabilities can be unilaterally deployed without requiring 2-ended deployment (justified in Section 2.5).¶
During traversal testing it was discovered that the ECN field in the SYN was mangled on a non-negligible proportion of paths. Therefore it was necessary to allow the SYN/ACK to feed all four IP/ECN codepoints that the SYN could arrive with back to the client. Without this, the client could not know whether to disable ECN for the connection due to mangling of the IP/ECN field (also explained in Section 2.5). This development consumed the remaining 2 codepoints on the SYN/ACK that had been reserved for future use by AccECN in earlier versions.¶
Despite availability of usable TCP header space being extremely scarce, the AccECN protocol has taken all possible steps to ensure that there is space to negotiate possible future variants of the protocol, either if a variant of AccECN is required, or if a completely different ECN feedback approach is needed:¶
When the AccECN capability is negotiated during TCP's 3WHS, the rows in Table 2 tagged as 'Nonce' and 'Broken' in the column for the capability of node B are unused by any current protocol in the RFC series. These could be used by TCP servers in future to indicate a variant of the AccECN protocol. In recent measurement studies in which the response of large numbers of servers to an AccECN SYN has been tested, e.g. [Mandalari18], a very small number of SYN/ACKs arrive with the pattern tagged as 'Nonce', and a small but more significant number arrive with the pattern tagged as 'Broken'. The 'Nonce' pattern could be a sign that a few servers have implemented the ECN Nonce [RFC3540], which has now been reclassified as historic [RFC8311], or it could be the random result of some unknown middlebox behaviour. The greater prevalence of the 'Broken' pattern suggests that some instances still exist of the broken code that reflects the reserved flags on the SYN.¶
The requirement not to reject unexpected initial values of the ACE counter (in the main TCP header) in the last para of Section 3.2.2.4 ensures that 3 unused codepoints on the ACK of the SYN/ACK, 6 unused values on the first SYN=0 data packet from the client and 7 unused values on the first SYN=0 data packet from the server could be used to declare future variants of the AccECN protocol. The word 'declare' is used rather than 'negotiate' because, at this late stage in the 3WHS, it would be too late for a negotiation between the endpoints to be completed. A similar requirement not to reject unexpected initial values in the TCP option (Section 3.2.3.2.4) is for the same purpose. If traversal of the TCP option were reliable, this would have enabled a far wider range of future variation of the whole AccECN protocol. Nonetheless, it could be used to reliably negotiate a wide range of variation in the semantics of the AccECN Option.¶
Five codepoints out of the 8 possible in the 3 TCP header flags used by AccECN are unused on the initial SYN (in the order AE,CWR,ECE): 001, 010, 100, 101, 110. Section 3.1.3 ensures that the installed base of AccECN servers will all assume these are equivalent to AccECN negotiation with 111 on the SYN. These codepoints would not allow fall-back to Classic ECN support for a server that did not understand them, but this approach ensures they are available in future, perhaps for uses other than ECN alongside the AccECN scheme. All possible combinations of SYN/ACK could be used in response except either 000 or reflection of the same values sent on the SYN.¶
Of course, other ways could be resorted to in order to extend AccECN or ECN in future, although their traversal properties are likely to be inferior. They include a new TCP option; using the remaining reserved flags in the main TCP header (preferably extending the 3-bit combinations used by AccECN to 4-bit combinations, rather than burning one bit for just one state); a non-zero urgent pointer in combination with the URG flag cleared; or some other unexpected combination of fields yet to be invented.¶