One document matched: draft-geib-tsvwg-diffserv-intercon-00.xml


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<rfc category="info" docName="draft-geib-tsvwg-diffserv-intercon-00" ipr="pre5378Trust200902">
  <!-- category values: std, bcp, info, exp, and historic
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  <!-- ***** FRONT MATTER ***** -->

  <front>
    <!-- The abbreviated title is used in the page header - it is only necessary if the 
         full title is longer than 39 characters -->

    <title abbrev="Abbreviated Title">DiffServ interconnection classes and practice</title>

    <!-- add 'role="editor"' below for the editors if appropriate -->

    <!-- Another author who claims to be an editor -->

    <author fullname="Ruediger Geib" initials="R." role="editor"
            surname="Geib">
      <organization>Deutsche Telekom</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>Heinrich Hertz Str. 3-7</street>

          <!-- Reorder these if your country does things differently -->

          <city>Darmstdadt</city>

          <region></region>

          <code>64297</code>

          <country>Germany</country>
        </postal>

        <phone>+49 6151 5812747</phone>

        <email>Ruediger.Geib@telekom.de</email>

        <!-- uri and facsimile elements may also be added -->
      </address>
    </author>

    <date month="November" year="2012" />

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    <!-- Meta-data Declarations -->

    <area>Transport</area>

    <workgroup>TSVWG</workgroup>

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	 If this element is not present, the default is "Network Working Group",
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    <keyword>RFC5127, DiffServ, Interconnection</keyword>

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    <abstract>
      <t>This document proposes a limited set of interconnection QoS PHBs and 
      PHB groups. It further introduces some DiffServ deployment aspects. The proposals 
      made here should be integrated into a revised version of RFC5127.</t>
    </abstract>
  </front>

  <middle>

    <section title="Introduction">

      <t>This draft deals proposes a DiffServ interconnection class and 
      codepoint scheme. At least one party of an interconnection often is a 
      network provider. Aggregated DiffServ classes are often deployed 
      within provider networks. To respect this, this draft also contains 
      concepts and current practice relevant for a revised version of 
      <xref target="RFC5127">
      RFC5127</xref>. Its main purpose is to be considered as an input for the 
      latter task</t>

      <t>DiffServ sees deployment in many networks for the time being. As 
      described in the introduction of the <xref target="I-D.polk-tsvwg-diffserv-stds-problem-statement">
      draft diffserv problem statement</xref>, remarking of packets at domain 
      boundaries is a DiffServ feature. This draft proposes a set of standard 
      QoS classes and codepoints at interconnection points to which and from 
      which locally used classes and codepoints may be mapped. Such a scheme 
      simplifies interconnection negotiations and ensures that class properties 
      remain roughly the same, even if codepoints change.</t>

      <t>The proposed Interconnection class and codepoint scheme tries to 
      reflect and consolidate related DiffServ and QoS standardisation efforts 
      outside of the IETF, namely MEF, GSMA and ITU.</t>

      <t>IP Precedence has been depricated when DiffServ was standardised. It 
       is common practice today however to copy the DSCPs "IP Precedence Bits" 
       into MPLS TC or Ethernet P-Bits, whenever possible. This is reflected 
       by the DiffServ codepoint definitions of AF and EF. This practice and 
       it's limits deserve to be documented and disussed briefly.</t>

      <t>The draft further adds proposals by which philosophy to add or 
      pick aggregated DiffServ classes. The set of available router and traffic 
      management tools to configure and operate DiffServ classes is limited. 
      This should be reflected by class definitions, which may in the end more 
      strongly be related transport properties than application requirements. 
      Please read that "congestion aware" and "not congestion aware" rather 
      then TCP or UDP.</t>


      <t>Finally, this draft proposes to leave some MPLS TC codepoint space to 
      allow for future DiffServ extensions like ECN/PCN and domain internal 
      classes (network management traffic is a good example) </t>

      <section title="Requirements Language">
        <t>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 <xref
        target="RFC2119">RFC 2119</xref>.</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Terminology">
      
      <t>A later version of this draft needs to be clearer on that. The author 
      prefers to talk of QoS classes. PHB or PHB groups are not commonly used, 
      although they are better defined. An issue is, that PHB groups, which 
      e.g. allow to offer two or more different drop levels (PHB's) within 
      one PHB group , hardly saw commercial deployment. This may change 
      with more Ethernet services being offered.</t>

      <t>Some rather concept than terminology related real world issues are 
      additional motivations of this activity:</t>

      <t><list style="symbols">
          <t>Abstract class names like "EF" are preferrential over those 
          being close to an application, like "Voice". Unfortunately, 
          non QoS experts can't handle abstract class names. Hence and usually 
          sooner than later, classes are named for applications or groups 
          of them. One consequence however is, that people tend to combine 
          application group class names and SLA parameters and often decide, 
          based on a name and some numbers on a paper, that their application 
          needs separate QoS class.</t>

          <t>Worse than that, but very present in real life, is the class 
          abstraction level which is preferred by those dealing with QoS 
          (as experts or non experts): the DSCPs or the IP precedence. So 
          DSCPs or IP Precedence values are the commodity real life 
          abstractions applied for QoS classes. Most of these persons 
          hav fixed class to codepoint mappings in their 
          minds, which they can't easily adapt on a per customer and 
          interconnection partner basis. </t>
      </list> While these issues aren't to be solved by IETF (QoS experts 
      could and should of course teach staff to use proper Diffserv 
      terminology and concepts), a simple QoS interconnection scheme also 
      is helpful in this area. Those dealing with QoS on any level need 
      to understand the interconnection classes and their codepoints, and 
      they are able to deal with the mappings of those to their own networks 
      class and codepoint scheme. Simplicity is important, however.</t>
    </section>
      

    <section title="An Interconnection class and codepoint scheme">
      
      <t>DiffServ deployments mostly follow loose class specification schemes 
      (often one or two AF PHBs or PHB groups, EF and Best Effort). Especially 
      DSCP assignment for the AF classes varies between deployment, while 
      basic class defeinitions are often similar. This is in line with the 
      DiffServ architecture. This document doesn't propose to change that.</t>

      <t>Interconnecting parties usually face the problem of matching classes 
      to be interconnected and then to agree on codepoint mapping. As stated 
      by <xref target="I-D.polk-tsvwg-diffserv-stds-problem-statement">
      draft diffserv prolebm statement</xref>, remarking is a standard 
      behaviour at interconnection interfaces. This draft propses a set of 
      4 QoS classes with a set of well defined DSCPs as interconnection 
      codepoint scheme. As the idea is that a sending party remarks DSCPs 
      from internal schemes to the Interconnection codepoints and the 
      receiving party remarks to their internal scheme, the interconnection 
      codepoint scheme fully complies with the DiffServ architecture.</t>

      <t>While this may look like an additional step at first, there are 
      obvious benefits: each party sending or receiving traffic has to 
      specify the mapping from or to the interconnection class and codepoint 
      scheme only once. Without it, this is to be negotiated once per 
      interconnection party. Further, end-to-end QoS in terms of traffic 
      being classified for the same class in all passed domains is likely 
      to result if an interconnection codepoint scheme is used, while it 
      is not necessarily resulting from individual per network 
      interconnection negotiations.</t>

      <t>The Interconnection scheme is supporting aggregated DiffServ 
      classes, as proposed by <xref target="RFC5127">RFC 5127</xref>. Note that <xref target="I-D.polk-tsvwg-rfc4594-update">
      draft RFC 4597 update</xref> 
      doesn't expect any network to deploy all possible QoS classes (and 
      proposes to standardise DSCPs for all while maintaining deployment 
      of classes a network specific issue). RFC2597 does not allow to 
      aggregate separate <xref target="RFC2597">AF classes</xref>. Hence a low number of interconnection 
      classes on aggregated level makes sense, as some codepoint space for 
      carrier internal services and future features like ECN should be 
      left also for aggregatd classes. MPLS and Ethernet only support up 
      to 8 QoS classes. IP over Ethernet and / or MPLS is acommodity in
      todays operational environments, and inter layer QoS likely will 
      be a commodity too.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Consolidation of QoS standards by the interconnection codepoint scheme">
      
      <t>The interconnection class and codepoint scheme proposed by Y.1566 also 
      tries to consolidate related DiffServ and QoS standardisation efforts 
      outside of <xref target="Y.1566">
      the IETF</xref>. MEF 23.1 specifies 3 aggregated classes, 
      consuming up to 5 bit codepoints (EF, two AF classes and Best Effort) 
      and <xref target="MEF23.1">
      8 DSCPs</xref>. GSMA IR.34 proposes four aggregated DiffServ classes, 
      EF, 2 AF and Best Effort with <xref target="IR.34">
      7 DSCPs (PHBs) in sum</xref>. Consolidation may be 
      reached for EF, one AF class and Best Effort, meaning three aggregated 
      or 5 DSCPs. Consolidation here aims on similar class definitions 
      and DiffServ codepoints in all standards, MEF23.1, GSMA IR.34 and 
      Y.1566. This will again simplify product design and interconnection 
      negotiations for customers and parties following these standards.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="MPLS, Ethernet and IP Precedence for aggregated classes">      

      <t>IP Precedence has been depricated when DiffServ was standardised. 
      Ethernet and MPLS support 3 bit codepoint fields to differntiate service 
      quality. Mapping of the IP precedence to these 3 Bit fields has been 
      a configuration restriction in the early days of DiffServ. The concept
      of paying attention to the three most significant bits of a DSCP has 
      however been part of Diffserv from start on (EF's IP Precedence is 5, 
      that of AF4 is 4 and so on). The interconnection class and codepoint 
      scheme respects this in different ways:</t>

      <t><list style="symbols">
          <t>it allows to classify four aggregated classes based on IP 
             precedence.</t>

          <t>It supports a single PHB group (AF3), which may be mapped to up to
          three different MPLS TC's or Ethernet P-Bits. Note that the 
          author doesn's favour or recommend doing that, but it is possible. 
          The author isn't aware of deployed service offers with 3 different 
          drop levels in a single class.</t>
      </list> </t>


      <t>This is of course no requirement to depricate any DSCP to MPLS TC 
      or Ethernet P-Bit mapping functionality. This functionalities are very 
      important as well.</t>
     </section>

     <section title="QoS class name selection">   

      <t>This is more of an informational discussion, proposed best practice, and 
      mainly relates to human behviour (including QoS experts) rather than 
      technical issues. Above the human preference for conceivable class names 
      has been mentioned. Network engineers (including the former Diffserv WG 
      authors) recommend to avoid application related QoS class names. Focus 
      should be put on class properties. But these can be irritating again, as 
      just looking at a few SLA numbers doesn't tell the reader, which 
      engineering assumptions resulted in the scheduler configurations of 
      a class. A router produces QoS with a scheduling mechanism, a settable 
      queue depth and optional active queue management (including ECN), and may 
      be a policer. Some kind of resource management may be presendt (also in 
      Diffserv domains). It's beyond the imagination of the author how one 
      would engineer more than half a dozen classes with distinguishable 
      properties with this set of tools.</t>

      <t>There's no perfect solution to the problem, as scheduler configurations 
      are not comprehensible to most readers, even if they were communicated 
      (they are operational secrets of course). There are (or should be) 
      engineering assumptions, when designing QoS schedulers. But they closer 
      relate to layer 3 or layer 4 level properties than to specific 
      applications. In general, an application responds to congestion by 
      reducing traffic, or it ignores congestion. Active queue management 
      doesn't help to avoid congestion in the latter case, only resource 
      management does. EF may be a special case. If the EF traffic is not 
      responsive to congestion, and packets are assumed to be short, rather 
      small jitter values can be reached if enginieering ensures that the 
      packet arrival rate never exceeds the transmision rate of that queue 
      (see <xref target="RFC3246">RFC 3246</xref>). There's other non congestion-responsive traffic, for 
      which the EF engineering assumptions may not fit. So a second class 
      with EF like properties (but a different engineering) may be present.</t>

      <t>Active queue management may be deployed for QoS classes, 
      which are designed to transport traffic responding to congestion by 
      traffic reduction.</t>

      <t>The author couldn't yet find conceivable class names. TCP_optimised 
      and especially UDP_optimised are inappropriate, as some UDP based 
      application are or may be expected to become TCP friendly.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Allow for DiffServ extendability on MPLS and Ethernet level">   

      <t>Any aggregated Diffserv deployment faces codepoint depletion issues 
      rather soon, if deployed on MPLS or Ethernet. Coding space should be 
      left for new features, like ECN, PCN or Conex. In addition to carrying 
      customer traffic, internal routing and network management 
      traffic may be protected by using a separate class. offering 
      interconnection with up to four classes and 4 - 6 MPLS TC's (or 
      Ethernet P-bits) to that respect is probably at least a 
      fair compromise. </t> 
    </section>


    <section anchor="IANA" title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>This memo includes no request to IANA.</t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="Security" title="Security Considerations">
      <t>This document does not introduce new features, it 
      describes how to use existing ones. The security section of 
      <xref target="RFC4597">RFC 4597</xref> applies.</t>
     </section>

  </middle>

  <!--  *****BACK MATTER ***** -->

  <back>
    <!-- References split into informative and normative -->

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        <front>
          <title>Minimal Reference</title>

          <author initials="authInitials" surname="authSurName">
            <organization></organization>
          </author>

          <date year="2006" />
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    </references>

    <references title="Informative References">
      <!-- Here we use entities that we defined at the beginning. -->
      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.2119'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.5127'?>
      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.4597'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.I-D.polk-tsvwg-diffserv-stds-problem-statement'?>
      <?rfc include='reference.I-D.polk-tsvwg-rfc4594-update'?>
      <!-- A reference written by by an organization not a person. -->

      <reference anchor="IR.34">
        <front>
          <title>IR.34 Inter-Service Provider IP Backbone Guidelines Version 7.0
          </title>

          <author>
            <organization>GSMA Association</organization>
          </author>
          <date year="2012" />
        </front>
      <seriesInfo name="GSMA, "  value="GSMA IR.34 http://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ir.34.pdf"/>
      </reference>

      <reference anchor="MEF23.1">
        <front>
          <title>Implementation Agreement MEF 23.1 Carrier Ethernet Class of Service Phase 2
          </title>

          <author>
            <organization>MEF</organization>
          </author>
          <date year="2012"/>
        </front>
      <seriesInfo name="MEF, "  value="MEF23.1 http://metroethernetforum.org/PDF_Documents/technical-specifications/MEF_23.1.pdf"/>
      </reference>

      <reference anchor="Y.1566">
        <front>
          <title>Quality of service mapping and interconnection between Ethernet, IP and multiprotocol label switching networks
          </title>

          <author>
            <organization>ITU-T</organization>
          </author>
          <date year="2012"/>
        </front>
      <seriesInfo name="ITU, "  value="draft Y.QoSmap (now Y.61566)  https://datatracker.ietf.org/documents/LIAISON/liaison-2012-07-03-itu-t-sg-12-tsvwg-development-of-informative-codepoint-mapping-in-itu-t-study-group-12-attachment-1.zip"/>

      </reference>


    </references>


    <!-- Change Log

v01 2012-10-26  RG   Initial version

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