One document matched: draft-morton-ippm-2680-bis-03.xml


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<rfc category="std" docName="draft-morton-ippm-2680-bis-03" ipr="trust200902"
     obsoletes="2680">
  <front>
    <title abbrev="A One-Way Loss Metric for IPPM">A One-Way Loss Metric for
    IPPM</title>

    <author fullname="Guy Almes" initials="G." surname="Almes">
      <organization>Texas A&M</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street/>

          <city/>

          <region/>

          <code/>

          <country/>
        </postal>

        <phone/>

        <facsimile/>

        <email/>

        <uri/>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Sunil Kalidindi" initials="S." surname="Kalidindi">
      <organization>Ixia</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street/>

          <city/>

          <region/>

          <code/>

          <country/>
        </postal>

        <phone/>

        <facsimile/>

        <email/>

        <uri/>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Matt Zekauskas" initials="M." surname="Zekauskas">
      <organization>Internet2</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street/>

          <city/>

          <region/>

          <code/>

          <country/>
        </postal>

        <phone/>

        <facsimile/>

        <email>matt@internet2.edu</email>

        <uri/>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Al Morton" initials="A." role="editor" surname="Morton">
      <organization>AT&T Labs</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>200 Laurel Avenue South</street>

          <city>Middletown</city>

          <region>NJ</region>

          <code>07748</code>

          <country>USA</country>
        </postal>

        <phone>+1 732 420 1571</phone>

        <facsimile>+1 732 368 1192</facsimile>

        <email>acmorton@att.com</email>

        <uri>http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/</uri>
      </address>
    </author>

    <date day="4" month="July" year="2014"/>

    <abstract>
      <t>This memo (RFC 2680 bis) defines a metric for one-way loss of packets
      across Internet paths. It builds on notions introduced and discussed in
      the IPPM Framework document, RFC 2330; the reader is assumed to be
      familiar with that document.</t>
    </abstract>

    <note 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>
    </note>
  </front>

  <middle>
    <section title="Introduction">
      <t>This memo defines a metric for one-way packet loss across Internet
      paths. It builds on notions introduced and discussed in the IPPM
      Framework document, RFC 2330 [1]; the reader is assumed to be familiar
      with that document.</t>

      <t>This memo is intended to be parallel in structure to a companion
      document for One-way Delay ("A One-way Delay Metric for IPPM") [2]; the
      reader is assumed to be familiar with that document.</t>

      <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 RFC 2119 [5]. Although
      RFC 2119 was written with protocols in mind, the key words are used in
      this document for similar reasons. They are used to ensure the results
      of measurements from two different implementations are comparable, and
      to note instances when an implementation could perturb the network.</t>

      <t>The structure of the memo is as follows:</t>

      <t>+ A 'singleton' analytic metric, called Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss,
      is introduced to measure a single observation of packet transmission or
      loss.</t>

      <t>+ Using this singleton metric, a 'sample', called
      Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss-Poisson-Stream, is introduced to measure a
      sequence of singleton transmissions and/or losses measured at times
      taken from a Poisson process.</t>

      <t>+ Using this sample, several 'statistics' of the sample are defined
      and discussed.</t>

      <t>This progression from singleton to sample to statistics, with clear
      separation among them, is important.</t>

      <t>Whenever a technical term from the IPPM Framework document is first
      used in this memo, it will be tagged with a trailing asterisk. For
      example, "term*" indicates that "term" is defined in the Framework.</t>

      <section title="Motivation">
        <t>Understanding one-way packet loss of Type-P* packets from a source
        host* to a destination host is useful for several reasons:</t>

        <t>+ Some applications do not perform well (or at all) if end-to-end
        loss between hosts is large relative to some threshold value.</t>

        <t>+ Excessive packet loss may make it difficult to support certain
        real-time applications (where the precise threshold of "excessive"
        depends on the application).</t>

        <t>+ The larger the value of packet loss, the more difficult it is for
        transport-layer protocols to sustain high bandwidths.</t>

        <t>+ The sensitivity of real-time applications and of transport-layer
        protocols to loss become especially important when very large
        delay-bandwidth products must be supported.</t>

        <t>The measurement of one-way loss instead of round-trip loss is
        motivated by the following factors:</t>

        <t>+ In today's Internet, the path from a source to a destination may
        be different than the path from the destination back to the source
        ("asymmetric paths"), such that different sequences of routers are
        used for the forward and reverse paths. Therefore round-trip
        measurements actually measure the performance of two distinct paths
        together. Measuring each path independently highlights the performance
        difference between the two paths which may traverse different Internet
        service providers, and even radically different types of networks (for
        example, research versus commodity networks, or ATM versus
        packet-over-SONET).</t>

        <t>+ Even when the two paths are symmetric, they may have radically
        different performance characteristics due to asymmetric queueing.</t>

        <t>+ Performance of an application may depend mostly on the
        performance in one direction. For example, a file transfer using TCP
        may depend more on the performance in the direction that data flows,
        rather than the direction in which acknowledgements travel.</t>

        <t>+ In quality-of-service (QoS) enabled networks, provisioning in one
        direction may be radically different than provisioning in the reverse
        direction, and thus the QoS guarantees differ. Measuring the paths
        independently allows the verification of both guarantees.</t>

        <t>It is outside the scope of this document to say precisely how loss
        metrics would be applied to specific problems.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="General Issues Regarding Time">
        <t>{Comment: the terminology below differs from that defined by ITU-T
        documents (e.g., G.810, "Definitions and terminology for
        synchronization networks" and I.356, "B-ISDN ATM layer cell transfer
        performance"), but is consistent with the IPPM Framework document. In
        general, these differences derive from the different backgrounds; the
        ITU-T documents historically have a telephony origin, while the
        authors of this document (and the Framework) have a computer systems
        background. Although the terms defined below have no direct equivalent
        in the ITU-T definitions, after our definitions we will provide a
        rough mapping. However, note one potential confusion: our definition
        of "clock" is the computer operating systems definition denoting a
        time-of-day clock, while the ITU-T definition of clock denotes a
        frequency reference.}</t>

        <t>Whenever a time (i.e., a moment in history) is mentioned here, it
        is understood to be measured in seconds (and fractions) relative to
        UTC.</t>

        <t>As described more fully in the Framework document, there are four
        distinct, but related notions of clock uncertainty:</t>

        <t>synchronization*</t>

        <t>measures the extent to which two clocks agree on what time it is.
        For example, the clock on one host might be 5.4 msec ahead of the
        clock on a second host. {Comment: A rough ITU-T equivalent is "time
        error".}</t>

        <t>accuracy*</t>

        <t>measures the extent to which a given clock agrees with UTC. For
        example, the clock on a host might be 27.1 msec behind UTC. {Comment:
        A rough ITU-T equivalent is "time error from UTC".}</t>

        <t>resolution*</t>

        <t>measures the precision of a given clock. For example, the clock on
        an old Unix host might tick only once every 10 msec, and thus have a
        resolution of only 10 msec. {Comment: A very rough ITU-T equivalent is
        "sampling period".}</t>

        <t>skew*</t>

        <t>measures the change of accuracy, or of synchronization, with time.
        For example, the clock on a given host might gain 1.3 msec per hour
        and thus be 27.1 msec behind UTC at one time and only 25.8 msec an
        hour later. In this case, we say that the clock of the given host has
        a skew of 1.3 msec per hour relative to UTC, which threatens accuracy.
        We might also speak of the skew of one clock relative to another
        clock, which threatens synchronization. {Comment: A rough ITU-T
        equivalent is "time drift".}</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="A Singleton Definition for One-way Packet Loss">
      <t/>

      <section title="Metric Name:">
        <t>Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Metric Parameters:">
        <t>+ Src, the IP address of a host</t>

        <t>+ Dst, the IP address of a host</t>

        <t>+ T, a time</t>

        <t>+ Tmax, a loss threshold waiting time</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Metric Units:">
        <t>The value of a Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss is either a zero
        (signifying successful transmission of the packet) or a one
        (signifying loss).</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Definition:">
        <t>>>The *Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss* from Src to Dst at T is
        0<< means that Src sent the first bit of a Type-P packet to Dst
        at wire-time* T and that Dst received that packet.</t>

        <t>>>The *Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss* from Src to Dst at T is
        1<< means that Src sent the first bit of a type-P packet to Dst
        at wire-time T and that Dst did not receive that packet (within the
        loss threshold waiting time, Tmax).</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Discussion:">
        <t>Thus, Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss is 0 exactly when Type-P-One-way-
        Delay is a finite value, and it is 1 exactly when Type-P-One-way-
        Delay is undefined.</t>

        <t>The following issues are likely to come up in practice:</t>

        <t>+ A given methodology will have to include a way to distinguish
        between a packet loss and a very large (but finite) delay. As noted by
        Mahdavi and Paxson [3], simple upper bounds (such as the 255 seconds
        theoretical upper bound on the lifetimes of IP packets [4]) could be
        used, but good engineering, including an understanding of packet
        lifetimes, will be needed in practice. {Comment: Note that, for many
        applications of these metrics, there may be no harm in treating a
        large delay as packet loss. An audio playback packet, for example,
        that arrives only after the playback point may as well have been
        lost.}</t>

        <t>+ If the packet arrives, but is corrupted, then it is counted as
        lost. {Comment: one is tempted to count the packet as received since
        corruption and packet loss are related but distinct phenomena. If the
        IP header is corrupted, however, one cannot be sure about the source
        or destination IP addresses and is thus on shaky grounds about knowing
        that the corrupted received packet corresponds to a given sent test
        packet. Similarly, if other parts of the packet needed by the
        methodology to know that the corrupted received packet corresponds to
        a given sent test packet, then such a packet would have to be counted
        as lost. Counting these packets as lost but packet with corruption in
        other parts of the packet as not lost would be inconsistent.}</t>

        <t>+ If the packet is duplicated along the path (or paths) so that
        multiple non-corrupt copies arrive at the destination, then the packet
        is counted as received.</t>

        <t>+ If the packet is fragmented and if, for whatever reason,
        reassembly does not occur, then the packet will be deemed lost.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Methodologies:">
        <t>As with other Type-P-* metrics, the detailed methodology will
        depend on the Type-P (e.g., protocol number, UDP/TCP port number,
        size, precedence).</t>

        <t>Generally, for a given Type-P, one possible methodology would
        proceed as follows:</t>

        <t>+ Arrange that Src and Dst have clocks that are synchronized with
        each other. The degree of synchronization is a parameter of the
        methodology, and depends on the threshold used to determine loss (see
        below).</t>

        <t>+ At the Src host, select Src and Dst IP addresses, and form a test
        packet of Type-P with these addresses.</t>

        <t>+ At the Dst host, arrange to receive the packet.</t>

        <t>+ At the Src host, place a timestamp in the prepared Type-P packet,
        and send it towards Dst.</t>

        <t>+ If the packet arrives within a reasonable period of time, the
        one- way packet-loss is taken to be zero.</t>

        <t>+ If the packet fails to arrive within a reasonable period of time,
        the one-way packet-loss is taken to be one. Note that the threshold of
        "reasonable" here is a parameter of the methodology.</t>

        <t>{Comment: The definition of reasonable is intentionally vague, and
        is intended to indicate a value "Th" so large that any value in the
        closed interval [Th-delta, Th+delta] is an equivalent threshold for
        loss. Here, delta encompasses all error in clock synchronization along
        the measured path. If there is a single value after which the packet
        must be counted as lost, then we reintroduce the need for a degree of
        clock synchronization similar to that needed for one-way delay.
        Therefore, if a measure of packet loss parameterized by a specific
        non-huge "reasonable" time-out value is needed, one can always measure
        one-way delay and see what percentage of packets from a given stream
        exceed a given time-out value. This point is examined in detail in
        <xref target="RFC6703"/>, including analysis preferences to assign
        undefined delay to packets that fail to arrive with the difficulties
        emerging from the informal "infinite delay" assignment, and an
        estimation of an upper bound on waiting time for packets in transit.
        Further, enforcing a specific constant waiting time on stored
        singletons of one-way delay is compliant with this specification and
        may allow the results to serve more than one reporting audience.}</t>

        <t>Issues such as the packet format, the means by which Dst knows when
        to expect the test packet, and the means by which Src and Dst are
        synchronized are outside the scope of this document. {Comment: We plan
        to document elsewhere our own work in describing such more detailed
        implementation techniques and we encourage others to as well.}</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Errors and Uncertainties:">
        <t>The description of any specific measurement method should include
        an accounting and analysis of various sources of error or uncertainty.
        The Framework document provides general guidance on this point.</t>

        <t>For loss, there are three sources of error:</t>

        <t>+ Synchronization between clocks on Src and Dst.</t>

        <t>+ The packet-loss threshold (which is related to the
        synchronization between clocks).</t>

        <t>+ Resource limits in the network interface or software on the
        receiving instrument.</t>

        <t>The first two sources are interrelated and could result in a test
        packet with finite delay being reported as lost. Type-P-One-way-
        Packet-Loss is 1 if the test packet does not arrive, or if it does
        arrive and the difference between Src timestamp and Dst timestamp is
        greater than the "reasonable period of time", or loss threshold. If
        the clocks are not sufficiently synchronized, the loss threshold may
        not be "reasonable" - the packet may take much less time to arrive
        than its Src timestamp indicates. Similarly, if the loss threshold is
        set too low, then many packets may be counted as lost. The loss
        threshold must be high enough, and the clocks synchronized well enough
        so that a packet that arrives is rarely counted as lost. (See the
        discussions in the previous two sections.)</t>

        <t>Since the sensitivity of packet loss measurement to lack of clock
        synchronization is less than for delay, we refer the reader to the
        treatment of synchronization errors in the One-way Delay metric [2]
        for more details.</t>

        <t>The last source of error, resource limits, cause the packet to be
        dropped by the measurement instrument, and counted as lost when in
        fact the network delivered the packet in reasonable time.</t>

        <t>The measurement instruments should be calibrated such that the loss
        threshold is reasonable for application of the metrics and the clocks
        are synchronized enough so the loss threshold remains reasonable.</t>

        <t>In addition, the instruments should be checked to ensure the that
        the possibility a packet arrives at the network interface, but is lost
        due to congestion on the interface or to other resource exhaustion
        (e.g., buffers) on the instrument is low.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Reporting the metric:">
        <t>The calibration and context in which the metric is measured MUST be
        carefully considered, and SHOULD always be reported along with metric
        results. We now present four items to consider: Type-P of the test
        packets, the loss threshold, instrument calibration, and the path
        traversed by the test packets. This list is not exhaustive; any
        additional information that could be useful in interpreting
        applications of the metrics should also be reported (see <xref
        target="RFC6703"/> for extensive discussion of reporting
        considerations for different audiences).</t>

        <section title="Type-P">
          <t>As noted in the Framework document [1], the value of the metric
          may depend on the type of IP packets used to make the measurement,
          or "Type-P". The value of Type-P-One-way-Delay could change if the
          protocol (UDP or TCP), port number, size, or arrangement for special
          treatment (e.g., IP precedence or RSVP) changes. The exact Type-P
          used to make the measurements MUST be accurately reported.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Loss Threshold">
          <t>The threshold, Tmax, (or methodology to distinguish) between a
          large finite delay and loss MUST be reported.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Calibration Results">
          <t>The degree of synchronization between the Src and Dst clocks MUST
          be reported. If possible, possibility that a test packet that
          arrives at the Dst network interface is reported as lost due to
          resource exhaustion on Dst SHOULD be reported.</t>
        </section>

        <section title="Path">
          <t>Finally, the path traversed by the packet SHOULD be reported, if
          possible. In general it is impractical to know the precise path a
          given packet takes through the network. The precise path may be
          known for certain Type-P on short or stable paths. If Type-P
          includes the record route (or loose-source route) option in the IP
          header, and the path is short enough, and all routers* on the path
          support record (or loose-source) route, then the path will be
          precisely recorded. This is impractical because the route must be
          short enough, many routers do not support (or are not configured
          for) record route, and use of this feature would often artificially
          worsen the performance observed by removing the packet from
          common-case processing. However, partial information is still
          valuable context. For example, if a host can choose between two
          links* (and hence two separate routes from Src to Dst), then the
          initial link used is valuable context. {Comment: For example, with
          Merit's NetNow setup, a Src on one NAP can reach a Dst on another
          NAP by either of several different backbone networks.}</t>
        </section>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="A Definition for Samples of One-way Packet Loss">
      <t>Given the singleton metric Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss, we now define
      one particular sample of such singletons. The idea of the sample is to
      select a particular binding of the parameters Src, Dst, and Type- P,
      then define a sample of values of parameter T. The means for defining
      the values of T is to select a beginning time T0, a final time Tf, and
      an average rate lambda, then define a pseudo-random Poisson process of
      rate lambda, whose values fall between T0 and Tf. The time interval
      between successive values of T will then average 1/lambda.</t>

      <t>{Comment: Note that Poisson sampling is only one way of defining a
      sample. Poisson has the advantage of limiting bias, but other methods of
      sampling might be appropriate for different situations. We encourage
      others who find such appropriate cases to use this general framework and
      submit their sampling method for standardization.}</t>

      <t>>>> Editor proposal: Add ref to RFC 3432 Periodic sampling
      above.</t>

      <section title="Metric Name:">
        <t>Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss-Poisson-Stream</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Metric Parameters:">
        <t>+ Src, the IP address of a host</t>

        <t>+ Dst, the IP address of a host</t>

        <t>+ T0, a time</t>

        <t>+ Tf, a time</t>

        <t>+ Tmax, a loss threshold waiting time</t>

        <t>+ lambda, a rate in reciprocal seconds</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Metric Units:">
        <t>A sequence of pairs; the elements of each pair are:</t>

        <t>+ T, a time, and</t>

        <t>+ L, either a zero or a one</t>

        <t>The values of T in the sequence are monotonic increasing. Note that
        T would be a valid parameter to Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss, and that L
        would be a valid value of Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Definition:">
        <t>Given T0, Tf, and lambda, we compute a pseudo-random Poisson
        process beginning at or before T0, with average arrival rate lambda,
        and ending at or after Tf. Those time values greater than or equal to
        T0 and less than or equal to Tf are then selected. At each of the
        times in this process, we obtain the value of
        Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss at this time. The value of the sample is
        the sequence made up of the resulting <time, loss> pairs. If
        there are no such pairs, the sequence is of length zero and the sample
        is said to be empty.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Discussion:">
        <t>The reader should be familiar with the in-depth discussion of
        Poisson sampling in the Framework document [1], which includes methods
        to compute and verify the pseudo-random Poisson process.</t>

        <t>We specifically do not constrain the value of lambda, except to
        note the extremes. If the rate is too large, then the measurement
        traffic will perturb the network, and itself cause congestion. If the
        rate is too small, then you might not capture interesting network
        behavior. {Comment: We expect to document our experiences with, and
        suggestions for, lambda elsewhere, culminating in a "best current
        practices" document.}</t>

        <t>Since a pseudo-random number sequence is employed, the sequence of
        times, and hence the value of the sample, is not fully specified.
        Pseudo-random number generators of good quality will be needed to
        achieve the desired qualities.</t>

        <t>The sample is defined in terms of a Poisson process both to avoid
        the effects of self-synchronization and also capture a sample that is
        statistically as unbiased as possible. The Poisson process is used to
        schedule the delay measurements. The test packets will generally not
        arrive at Dst according to a Poisson distribution, since they are
        influenced by the network.</t>

        <t>{Comment: there is, of course, no claim that real Internet traffic
        arrives according to a Poisson arrival process.</t>

        <t>It is important to note that, in contrast to this metric, loss
        rates observed by transport connections do not reflect unbiased
        samples. For example, TCP transmissions both (1) occur in bursts,
        which can induce loss due to the burst volume that would not otherwise
        have been observed, and (2) adapt their transmission rate in an
        attempt to minimize the loss rate observed by the connection.}</t>

        <t>All the singleton Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss metrics in the
        sequence will have the same values of Src, Dst, and Type-P.</t>

        <t>Note also that, given one sample that runs from T0 to Tf, and given
        new time values T0' and Tf' such that T0 <= T0' <= Tf' <= Tf,
        the subsequence of the given sample whose time values fall between T0'
        and Tf' are also a valid Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss-Poisson-Stream
        sample.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Methodologies:">
        <t>The methodologies follow directly from:</t>

        <t>+ the selection of specific times, using the specified Poisson
        arrival process, and</t>

        <t>+ the methodologies discussion already given for the singleton
        Type- P-One-way-Packet-Loss metric.</t>

        <t>Care must be given to correctly handle out-of-order arrival of test
        packets; it is possible that the Src could send one test packet at
        TS[i], then send a second one (later) at TS[i+1], while the Dst could
        receive the second test packet at TR[i+1], and then receive the first
        one (later) at TR[i].</t>

        <t>>>> Editor proposal: Add ref to RFC 4737 Reordering metric
        above.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Errors and Uncertainties:">
        <t>In addition to sources of errors and uncertainties associated with
        methods employed to measure the singleton values that make up the
        sample, care must be given to analyze the accuracy of the Poisson
        arrival process of the wire-times of the sending of the test packets.
        Problems with this process could be caused by several things,
        including problems with the pseudo-random number techniques used to
        generate the Poisson arrival process. The Framework document shows how
        to use the Anderson-Darling test verify the accuracy of the Poisson
        process over small time frames. {Comment: The goal is to ensure that
        the test packets are sent "close enough" to a Poisson schedule, and
        avoid periodic behavior.}</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Reporting the metric:">
        <t>The calibration and context for the underlying singletons MUST be
        reported along with the stream. (See "Reporting the metric" for
        Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss.)</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Some Statistics Definitions for One-way Packet Loss">
      <t>Given the sample metric Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss-Poisson-Stream, we
      now offer several statistics of that sample. These statistics are
      offered mostly to be illustrative of what could be done. See <xref
      target="RFC6703"/> for additional discussion of statistics that are
      relevant to different audiences.</t>

      <section title="Type-P-One-way-Packet Loss-Average">
        <t>Given a Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss-Poisson-Stream, the average of
        all the L values in the Stream. In addition, the
        Type-P-One-way-Packet- Loss-Average is undefined if the sample is
        empty.</t>

        <t>Example: suppose we take a sample and the results are:</t>

        <t>Stream1 = <</t>

        <t><T1, 0></t>

        <t><T2, 0></t>

        <t><T3, 1></t>

        <t><T4, 0></t>

        <t><T5, 0></t>

        <t>></t>

        <t>Then the average would be 0.2.</t>

        <t>Note that, since healthy Internet paths should be operating at loss
        rates below 1% (particularly if high delay-bandwidth products are to
        be sustained), the sample sizes needed might be larger than one would
        like. Thus, for example, if one wants to discriminate between various
        fractions of 1% over one-minute periods, then several hundred samples
        per minute might be needed. This would result in larger values of
        lambda than one would ordinarily want.</t>

        <t>Note that although the loss threshold should be set such that any
        errors in loss are not significant, if the possibility that a packet
        which arrived is counted as lost due to resource exhaustion is
        significant compared to the loss rate of interest,
        Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss-Average will be meaningless.</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section anchor="Security" title="Security Considerations">
      <t>Conducting Internet measurements raises both security and privacy
      concerns. This memo does not specify an implementation of the metrics,
      so it does not directly affect the security of the Internet nor of
      applications which run on the Internet. However, implementations of
      these metrics must be mindful of security and privacy concerns.</t>

      <t>There are two types of security concerns: potential harm caused by
      the measurements, and potential harm to the measurements. The
      measurements could cause harm because they are active, and inject
      packets into the network. The measurement parameters MUST be carefully
      selected so that the measurements inject trivial amounts of additional
      traffic into the networks they measure. If they inject "too much"
      traffic, they can skew the results of the measurement, and in extreme
      cases cause congestion and denial of service.</t>

      <t>The measurements themselves could be harmed by routers giving
      measurement traffic a different priority than "normal" traffic, or by an
      attacker injecting artificial measurement traffic. If routers can
      recognize measurement traffic and treat it separately, the measurements
      will not reflect actual user traffic. If an attacker injects artificial
      traffic that is accepted as legitimate, the loss rate will be
      artificially lowered. Therefore, the measurement methodologies SHOULD
      include appropriate techniques to reduce the probability measurement
      traffic can be distinguished from "normal" traffic. Authentication
      techniques, such as digital signatures, may be used where appropriate to
      guard against injected traffic attacks.</t>

      <t>The privacy concerns of network measurement are limited by the active
      measurements described in this memo. Unlike passive measurements, there
      can be no release of existing user data.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Acknowledgements">
      <t>Thanks are due to Matt Mathis for encouraging this work and for
      calling attention on so many occasions to the significance of packet
      loss.</t>

      <t>Thanks are due also to Vern Paxson for his valuable comments on early
      drafts, and to Garry Couch and Will Leland for several useful
      suggestions.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="RFC 2680 bis">
      <t>The text above constitutes RFC 2680 bis proposed for advancement on
      the IETF Standards Track.</t>

      <t><xref target="I-D.ietf-ippm-testplan-rfc2680"/> provides the test
      plan and results supporting <xref target="RFC2680"/> advancement along
      the standards track, according to the process in <xref
      target="RFC6576"/>. The conclusions of <xref
      target="I-D.ietf-ippm-testplan-rfc2680"/> list four minor modifications
      for inclusion:</t>

      <t><list style="numbers">
          <t>Section 6.2.3 of <xref target="I-D.ietf-ippm-testplan-rfc2680"/>
          asserts that the assumption of post-processing to enforce a constant
          waiting time threshold is compliant, and that the text of the RFC
          should be revised slightly to include this point (see the last list
          item of section 2.6, above).</t>

          <t>Section 6.5 of <xref target="I-D.ietf-ippm-testplan-rfc2680"/>
          indicates that Type-P-One-way-Packet-Loss-Average statistic is more
          commonly called Packet Loss Ratio, so it is re-named in RFC2680bis
          (this small discrepancy does not affect candidacy for advancement)
          (see section 4.1, above).</t>

          <t>The IETF has reached consensus on guidance for reporting metrics
          in <xref target="RFC6703"/>, and this memo should be referenced in
          RFC2680bis to incorporate recent experience where appropriate (see
          the last list item of section 2.6, section 2.8, and section 4
          above).</t>

          <t>There are currently two errata with status "Verified" and "Held
          for document update" for <xref target="RFC2680"/>, and it appears
          these minor revisions should be incorporated in RFC2680bis (see
          section 1 and section 2.7).</t>
        </list>A small number of updates to the <xref target="RFC2680"/> text
      have been proposed (by the current Editor) in the text, principally to
      reference key IPPM RFCs that were approved after <xref
      target="RFC2680"/> (see sections 3 and 3.6, above).</t>

      <t>Section 5.4.4 of <xref target="RFC6390"/> suggests a common template
      for performance metrics partially derived from previous IPPM and BMWG
      RFCs, but also some new items. All of the RFC 6390 Normative points are
      covered, but not quite in the same section names or orientation. Several
      of the Informative points are covered. It is proposed to
      "grandfather-in" bis RFCs w.r.t. RFC 6390 (keeping the familiar outline
      and minimizing unnecessary differences), and consider applying the
      template with new metric memos instead.</t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="IANA" title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>This memo makes no requests of IANA.</t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="Acknowledgements" title="Acknowledgements">
      <t>Special thanks are due to Vern Paxson of Lawrence Berkeley Labs for
      his helpful comments on issues of clock uncertainty and statistics.
      Thanks also to Garry Couch, Will Leland, Andy Scherrer, Sean Shapira,
      and Roland Wittig for several useful suggestions.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="References (temporary)">
      <t>[1] Paxson, V., Almes,G., Mahdavi, J. and M. Mathis, "Framework for
      IP Performance Metrics", RFC 2330, May 1998.</t>

      <t>[2] Almes, G., Kalidindi, S. and M. Zekauskas, "A One-way Delay
      Metric for IPPM", RFC 2679, September 1999.</t>

      <t>[3] Mahdavi, J. and V. Paxson, "IPPM Metrics for Measuring
      Connectivity", RFC 2678, September 1999.</t>

      <t>[4] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, September
      1981.</t>

      <t>[5] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
      Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.</t>

      <t>[6] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP
      9, RFC 2026, October 1996.</t>
    </section>
  </middle>

  <back>
    <references title="Normative References">
      <?rfc include="reference.RFC.2119"?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.2026'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.2330'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.2679'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.2680'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.3432'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.4656'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.6049'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.5835'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.5357'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.5657'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.6576'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.6703'?>
    </references>

    <references title="Informative References">
      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.6390'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.I-D.ietf-ippm-testplan-rfc2680'?>

      <?rfc include='reference.RFC.3931'?>

      <reference anchor="ADK">
        <front>
          <title>K-sample Anderson-Darling Tests of fit, for continuous and
          discrete cases</title>

          <author fullname="Fred Scholz" initials="F.W." surname="Scholz">
            <!-- fullname="F.W. Scholz" -->

            <organization abbrev="Boeing">Boeing Computer
            Services</organization>
          </author>

          <author initials="M.A." surname="Stephens">
            <!-- fullname="M.A. Stephens" -->

            <organization>Simon Fraser University</organization>
          </author>

          <date month="May" year="1986"/>
        </front>

        <seriesInfo name="University of Washington, Technical Report"
                    value="No. 81"/>
      </reference>
    </references>
  </back>
</rfc>

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