One document matched: draft-wei-tsvwg-tunnel-congestion-feedback-03.txt
Differences from draft-wei-tsvwg-tunnel-congestion-feedback-02.txt
Internet Engineering Task Force X. Wei
INTERNET-DRAFT L.Zhu
Intended Status: Standards Track Huawei Technologies
Expires: April 11, 2015 L.Deng
China Mobile
October 8, 2014
Tunnel Congestion Feedback
draft-wei-tsvwg-tunnel-congestion-feedback-03
Abstract
This document describes a mechanism to calculate congestion of a
tunnel segment based on RFC 6040 recommendations, and a feedback
protocol by which to send the measured congestion of the tunnel from
egress to ingress router. A basic model for measuring tunnel
congestion and feedback is described, and a protocol for carrying the
feedback data is outlined.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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Copyright and License Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1 Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1 3GPP network scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2 Network Function Virtualization Scenario . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3 Data Center Tenancy Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Congestion Control Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1 Congestion Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2 Data Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.3 Congestion Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.4 Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5. Congestion Feedback Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.1 Properties of Candidate Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.2 IPFIX Extensions for Congestion Feedback . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.3 Other Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6. Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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1. Introduction
In current practice of Internet protocol, encapsulation of IP headers
is always the technical proposal for overlay networking scenarios.
For example, mobile network are designed to encapsulate inner IP
header and application layer header chain through IP header, UDP
header and GTP-U header. It is also designed to fulfill the mobility,
QoS control, bearer management and other specific application of the
mobile network. Some organization's private network encrypt IP header
by Internet tunnel solutions with private key or certification
approaches to setup VPN (virtual private network) over WAN (wide area
network).
Congestion is the situation that traffic input exceeds throughput of
any segment of transmission path, which can result from
transportation constraints and interface/processor overload. In
general, congestion seen as the cause of packet loss or unexpected
delay to network end points. End to end congestion protocols (e.g.
ECN [RFC 3168] and ECN handling for tunneling scenario [RFC6040])
are discussed in IETF.
In IP header encapsulation cases, IP headers should be carried over
transportation protocol like TCP or UDP, which influents the explicit
congestion control feedback, since the receiver should mark ECN in
TCP acknowledgment. On the other hand, packet loss and performance
degradation should not be recognized by network elements, for
instance the tunnel ingress and egress entity, when network segment
is encapsulated by IP header and UDP header chain. That causes
management problem when tunnel segment is considered as an
independent administration domain, and network operator intents to
keep network operation reliable.
This document describes a mechanism for feedback of congestion
observed in IP tunnels usages. Common tunnel deployments such as
mobile backhaul networks, VPNs and other IP-in-IP tunnels can be
congested as a result of sustained high load.
Network providers use a number of methods to deal with high load
conditions including proper network dimensioning, policies for
preferential flow treatment and selective offloading among others.
The mechanism proposed in this document is expected to complement
them and provide congestion information that to allow making better,
policies and decisions.
The model and general solution proposed in chapter 4 consist of
identifying congestion marks set in the tunnel segment, and feeding
back the congestion information from the egress to the ingress of the
tunnel. Measuring congestion of a tunnel segment is based on counting
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outer packet CE marks for packets that have ECT marks in the inner
packet. This proposal depends on statistical marking of congestion
and uses the method described in RFC 6040 [RFC6040], Appendix C.
In chapter 5 the desired properties of the congestion information
conveying protocol are outlined, and IPFIX [RFC5101] as a candidate
protocol for these extensions is explored further.
2. Conventions and Terminology
2.1 Conventions
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 [RFC2119]
2.2 Terminology
Tunnel: A channel over which encapsulated packets traverse
across a network.
Encapsulation: The process of adding control information when it
passes through the layered model.
Encapsulator: The tunnel endpoint function that adds an outer IP
header to tunnel a packet, the encapsulator is
considered as the "ingress" of the tunnel.
Decapsulator: The tunnel endpoint function that removes an outer IP
header from a tunneled packet, the decapsulator is
considered as the "egress" of the tunnel.
Outer header: The header added to encapsulate a tunneled packet.
Inner header: The header encapsulated by the outer header.
E2E: End to End.
VPN: Virtual Private Network is a technology for using the
Internet or another intermediate network to connect
computers to isolated remote computer networks that
would otherwise be inaccessible.
GRE: Generic Routing Encapsulation.
IPFIX IP Flow Information Export. An IETF protocol to export
flow information from routers and other devices.
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RED Random Early Detection
NFV Network Functions Virtualization is an alternative design
approach for building complex IT applications,
particularly in the telecommunications and service
provider industries, that virtualizes entire classes
of function into building blocks that may be
connected, or chained, together to create services.
VNF Virtualized Network Function may consist of one or more virtual
machines running different software and processes,
which form the building blocks for NFV.
SFC Service Function Chain is a group of connected VNF in a specific
sequence/map using NFV approach, in order to deliver a
specific service.
3. Problem Statement
Network traffic congestion control plays a significant role in
network performance management, and sustaining congestion could
impact subscriber's experience. Currently the solution of network
congestion problem mainly focuses on end-to-end method, i.e. ECN
[RFC3168], and the traffic sender are in charge of reducing traffic
rates in case of network congested. But sometimes it's not always
reliable to dependent on end hosts to solve the congestion situation,
because some end hosts may not support ECN, or even ECN is supported
by end hosts some traffics, e.g. UDP-based traffic, may not support
ECN.
Though the congestion happens in operator's network, in case that the
congestion information is transparent to operator, network
administration would be hard to take action to control the network
traffic of reason to network congestion. To improve the performance
of the network, it's better for operator to take network congestion
situation into network traffic management.
Many kinds of tunnels are widely deployed in current networks, even
in some scenarios all traffics transmitted through designated
tunnel(s).
Because the ingress and egress of tunnel are usually deployed by
operator, so it's easy for operator to execute operator's policy, for
example gating, flow control and dropping. The tunnel feedback
mechanism should be feasible for operator to collect network
congestion information in encapsulation segment. After obtaining
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congestion information, operator could make policy at tunnel ingress
for traffic management taking these information into consideration.
ECN handling mechanisms in RFC 6040 specifies how ECN should be
handled for tunneling. In addition, RFC 6040, Appendix C provides
guidance to calculate congestion experienced in the tunnel itself.
However, there is no standardized mechanism by which the congestion
information inside the tunnel can be fed back from egress to ingress
router.
In the following sub-sections, some network tunnel scenarios are
discussed.
3.1 3GPP network scenario
Tunnels, including GRE [RFC2784], GTP [TS29.060], IP-in-IP [RFC2003]
or IPSec [RFC4301] etc, are widely deployed in 3GPP networks. And in
3GPP network tunnels are used to carry end user flows within the
backhaul network such as shown in Figure 1.
IP backhaul networks such as those of mobile networks are provisioned
and managed to provide the subscribed levels of end user service.
These networks are traffic engineered, and have defined mechanisms
for providing differentiated services and QoS per user or flow.
Policy to configure per user flow attributes in these networks have
traditionally been based on monitoring and static configuration.
Currently, these networks are increasingly used for applications that
demand high bandwidth. The nature of the flows and length of end user
sessions can lead to significant variability in aggregate bandwidth
demands and latency. In such cases, it would be useful to have a more
dynamic feedback of congestion information. In addition, eNB, SGW and
PGW are administrated by one mobile operator, mobile backhaul to
carry IP/UDP/GTP encapsulation is regally administrated by back haul
service operator. This aggregate congestion feedback could be used to
determine flow handling and admission control.
\|/
|
|
+-|---+ +------+ +------+
+--+ | | Tunnel1 | | Tunnel2 | | Ext
|UE|-(RAN)-| eNB |===========| S-GW |=========| P-GW |--------
+--+ | | RAN | | Core | |Network
+-+---+ Backhaul +---+--+ Network +---+--+
Figure 1: Example - Mobile Network and Tunnels
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3.2 Network Function Virtualization Scenario
Telecoms networks contain an increasing variety of proprietary
hardware appliances, leading to increasing difficulty in lauching new
network services, as well as the complexity of integrating and
deploying these appliances in a network.
Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) aims to address these problems
by decoupling the software from dedicated hardware platforms to a
range of industry standard server hardware for various network
services, through IT virtualization technology that can be moved to,
or instantiated in, various locations in the network as required. In
this way, it is expected to provide significant benefits for network
operators (reduced expenditures for network construction and
maintenance) and their customers (shortened time-to-market for new
network services).
Furthermore, service functions are preferred to be deployed and
managed in a data center manner, rather than being inserted on the
data-forwarding path between communicating peers as today. SFC WG is
currently working on a new framework to cope with this highly dynamic
routing problem for a network service, which requires that the
relevant data traffic be traversing a group of virtualized network
function nodes (VNFs), each of which could be applied at any layer
within the network protocol stack (network layer, transport layer,
application layer, etc.). [SFC]
As shown in Figure 2, in a SFC-enabled domain (e.g. with or across
network operator's deployed data centers), a PDP (Policy Decision
Point) is the central entity which is responsible for maintaining SFC
Policy Tables (rules for the boundary nodes on deciding which IP flow
to traverse which service function path), and enforcing appropriate
policies in SF Nodes and SFC Boundary Nodes. Beginning at the Ingress
node, at each hop of a given service function path (as decided by a
matched SFC policy rule/map), if the next function node is not an
immediate (L3) neighbor, packet are encapsulated and forwarded to
correspondent downstream function node, as shown in Figure 3.
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. SFC Policy Enforcement .
. +-------+ .
. | |-----------------+ .
. +-------| PDP | | .
. | | |-------+ | .
. | +-------+ | | .
. . . | . . . . . | . . . . . | . . . . | . . . .
. . . | . . . . . | . . . . . | . . . . | . . . .
. | | | | .
. v v v v .
. +---------+ +---------+ +-------+ +-------+ .
. |SFC_BN_1 | |SFC_BN_n | | SF_1 | | SF_m | .
. +---------+ +---------+ +-------+ +-------+ .
. SFC-enabled Domain .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Figure 2: SFC Policy Enforcement Scheme
Network Service
+----------+ +----------+ +----------+
| VNF#1 | tunnel#1 | VNF#2 | tunnels | VNF#n |
| Instance |-----------| Instance |- ... ... -| Instance |
+----------+ +----------+ +----------+
^
| Virtualization
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Virtualization Platform |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
Figure 3: Example - Mobile Network service chaining and Tunnels
However, using VNFs running commodity platforms can introduce
additional points of failure beyond those inherent in a single
specialized server, and therefore poses additional challenges on
reliability. [VNFPOOL] proposes using pooling techniques in response,
which requires maintaining a backup mapping among running VNF
instances for a given service function, and choosing from them for a
specific data flow. It is clear that it would be helpful to make more
efficient use of network capacity in case of local congestion, if the
choice is based on the ECN feedback as well as the running status
and/or physical resources accommodation of a candidate VNF instance.
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3.3 Data Center Tenancy Scenario
In the scenario of data center of multi-tenant, network resource
would be shared between more than one tenants, and in order to
provide functional isolation and at the same time guarantee
scalability for tenants, the tunnel based isolation mechanisms, e.g.
VxLAN and STT etc, are provided.
In the scenario described above, hypervisor or vSwitch would act as
tunnel endpoint for the traffic between VMs, and tunnels are agnostic
to VMs, in other words, the congestion indication information such as
ECN flag marked by network entity of data center are agnostic to VMs.
To deal with this situation, two solutions could be used:
Solution 1: Using tunnel translation, hypervisor or vSwitch marks the
inner IP header according to ECN flag in outer IP header before
transmits packets to VM.
Solution 2: Using the congestion control mechanism provided in this
document between hypervisors or vSwitchs to do congestion control for
VMs' traffic.
4. Congestion Control Model
In this section, the basic congestion control model will be provided,
and each detailed aspect of this model will also be introduced in the
following subsection.
The congestion control model provides network administrator with a
method to manage the data traffic in its network domain. The basic
model consists of the following components: Ingress, Egress,
Feedback, Meter, Collector and Manager.
As shown in Figure 4, network traffic enters the tunnel through
tunnel ingress, passing through en-route routers, which will mark
packets according to ECN mechanism as specified in RFC3168, to tunnel
egress; the egress collects the congestion level information
encountered in tunnel and feeds back it to the corresponding ingress;
after receiving congestion information, the ingress takes actions to
control the traffic that passing through the path between the ingress
and egress to reduce the congestion level in the tunnel.
At egress, a module named Meter is used to estimate the congestion
level in the tunnel as described in the section above. A congestion
information feedback module, called Feedback, is used to control the
congestion information feedback procedure.
The metering module named Meter in the Egress node accounts the
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congestion marks it receives. The Feedback module calculates the
amount of congestion and feeds back the congestion information to the
Ingress node. The Collector at the Ingress receives the congestion
information which is fed back from the Feedback module. The Manager
implements functions such as admission control and traffic
engineering according to the congestion level experienced in tunnel
to control the traffic to reduce the congestion level, the detailed
actions taken by the Manager are out of the scope of current
document.
congestion feedback signal
#########################################
+-----#-------+ +------#----+
| # | | # |
| # | | # |
| V | | # |
| +---------+ | +--------------+ | +--------+|
| |Collector| | | | | |Meter ||
traffic| +---------+ | | | | +-----+--+|traffic
======>| |Manager | |======================> | |Feedback||======>
| +---------+ | | Routers | | +--------+|
| | | (ECN-enabled)| | |
+-------------+ +--------------+ +-----------+
Figure 4: Basic Feedback Model
To support traffic management and congestion information feedback in
tunnel, there are mainly three issues that this document discusses:
calculation of congestion level information, feeding back the
congestion information from egress to ingress, and implementation of
congestion control. The tunnel ingress/egress are assumed to be
compliant with RFC6040 and the tunnel interior routers are compliant
with RFC3168.
In addition, it should be noted that these tunnels may carry ECT or
Not-ECT traffic. A well defined mechanism for aggregate congestion
calculation should be able to work in the presence of all kinds of
traffic and would benefit from a common feedback mechanism and
protocol.
4.1 Congestion Calculation
This section discusses how to calculate congestion level experienced
in the tunnel, an example of how to calculate congestion level is
provided. In this document calculation of congestion in the tunnel is
based on the method described in RFC 6040, Appendix C.
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The egress can calculate congestion using moving averages. The
proportion of packets not marked in the inner header that have a CE
marking in the outer header is considered to have experienced
congestion in the tunnel. Note that the packets are ECN capable and
not congestion-marked before tunnel. Since routers implementing RED
randomly select a percentage of packets to mark, this method can be
effectively used to expose congestion in the tunnel.
When the ingress is RFC6040 compliant, the packets collected by
egress can be divided into to 4 categories, shown in figure 5. The
tag before "|" stands for ECN field in outer header; and the tag
after "|" stands for ECN field in inner header.
"Not-ECN|Not-ECN" indicates traffic that does not support ECN, for
example UDP and Not-ECT marked TCP; "CE|CE" indicates ECN capable
packets that have CE-mark before entering the tunnel; "CE|ECT"
indicates ECN capable packets that are CE-marked in the tunnel;
"ECT|ECT" indicates ECN capable packets that have not experienced
congested in tunnel (or outside the tunnel).
+--------------------------+
| Not-ECN|Not-ECN |
+--------------------------+
| CE|CE |
+--------------------------+
| CE|ECT |
+--------------------------+
| ECT|ECT |
+--------------------------+
Figure 5: ECN marking categories by outer/inner packet
Out of the total number of packets, if the quantity of CE|ECT packets
is A, the quantity of ECT|ECT packets is B, then the congestion level
(C) can be calculated as follows:
C=A/(A+B)
As an example, consider 100 packets to calculate the moving average
as shown in RFC 6040, Appendix C. Say that there are 12 packets that
have CE|ECT marks indicating that they have experienced congestion in
the tunnel. And, there are 58 packets that have ECT|ECT marks
indicating that there was no congestion in either the tunnel or
elsewhere. The egress can calculate congestions as:
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C = 12/ (12 + 58)
= 12/70 (17% congestion)
4.2 Data Information
This section discusses congestion-related information that should be
conveyed from egress to ingress.
(1)Congestion volume. The information indicating the how much
congestion has been experienced in the tunnel by traffic passing
through the tunnel. Because there are both ECT packets and Not-ECT
packets passing through the tunnel network, and in case of
congestion, the ECT packets would be CE-marked instead of dropped and
tunnel egress can be aware of these CE-marked packets; but Not-ECT
packets would be dropped and tunnel egress cannot be aware of these
dropped packets, so it's hard for egress to calculate the precise
number of congested packets. According to the analysis in subclause
4.1, the congestion volume is preferred in the form of percentage,
e.g. 17.14%.
(2)Egress identifier. To control the traffic congestion in certain
tunnel, the ingress needs to have the knowledge of which traffic
should be controlled, especially for the case that the ingress
establishes tunnels with different egresses. So the egress identifier
should be transmitted together with congestion volume to ingress.
This identifier is usually the identifier of the tunnel or the
address of tunnel egress.
4.3 Congestion Feedback
This sub-section focuses on the discussion of feedback procedure. The
congestion feedback procedure conveys congestion status from egress
to ingress. The discussion of feedback protocol will be discussed in
the next section.
To reduce the overload, caused by this procedure, on network
especially in case the feedback signal goes through the same path as
data traffic, the feedback will only occur when congestion happens.
In other words, egress doesn't send feedback signal if there is no
congestion happens. Also egress will ignore ephemeral congestion and
only feed back congestion information if the congestion level goes
higher than a specified threshold (TH1) and/or lasts for a specified
period of time (T1).
When egress detects congestion level higher than TH1 and for a period
of T1, it sends feedback signal to ingress periodically (T2) until
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the congestion level is lower than TH1.
4.4 Congestion Control
After ingress receives congestion information from egress, it will
take actions to try to reduce the congestion. For example, ingress
could choose to drop some packets or do certain traffic engineering
etc.
Usually, network policy would have impact on what action is to be
taken. For example, which packets to drop may be decided by the
agreement between subscriber and network administrator. The specific
choice of congestion alleviation measures taken by the ingress is out
of scope of this document.
The ingress will continue to implement control actions until there is
no congestion feedback from the egress.
5. Congestion Feedback Protocol
In different networks, there are always different tunnel protocols
deployed. For instance, the congestion feedback can be done either by
utilizing the existing tunnel protocol or using an alternative
protocol. For example, in 3GPP network GTP (GPRS Tunnel
Protocol)[TS29.060] is used as tunnel protocol to transmit traffic
between network entities. And because GTP protocol is easy to be
extended for additional information element, GTP itself would be a
good choice for congestion feedback. In some other networks an
independent protocol could be used for congestion feedback, for
example the network using tunnel protocols such as IP-in-IP
[RFC2003], GRE [RFC2784].
Currently, this section mainly focuses on the discussion of
independent protocols for congestion feedback. There are two choices
for such an independent protocol, one is define as a new dedicated
protocol from scratch, the other one is meant to evaluate and reuse
the existing protocol(s).
5.1 Properties of Candidate Protocol
To feedback congestion efficiently there are some properties that are
desirable in the feedback protocol.
1. Congestion friendliness. The feeding back traffics are coexistence
with other traffics, so when congestion happens in the network,
the feeding back traffic should be reduced, So that feedback
itself will not congest the network further when the network is
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already getting congested. In other words, feedback frequency
should adjust to network's congestion level.
2. Extensibility. The authors consider that using an existing
protocol, or extensions to an existing protocol is preferable. The
ability of a protocol to support modular extensions to report
congestion level as feedback is a key attribute of the protocol
under consideration.
3. Compactness. In different situations, there may be different
congestion information to be conveyed, and in order to reduce
network load, the information to be conveyed should be selectable,
i.e. only the required information should be possible to convey.
4. In/Out of band signal. The feedback message could be along the
same path with network data traffic, referred as in band signal;
or go through a different path with network data traffic, referred
as out of band signal.
5.2 IPFIX Extensions for Congestion Feedback
This section outlines IPFIX extensions for feedback of congestion.
The authors consider that IPFIX is a suitable protocol that is
reasonably easy to extend to carry tunnel congestion reporting. The
Feedback module acts as IPFIX exporter, and Collector module acts as
IPFIX Collector.
Since IPFIX is preferred to use SCTP as transport, it has the
foundation for congestion-friendly behavior, and because SCTP allows
partially reliable delivery [RFC3758] - IPFIX message channels can be
tagged so that SCTP does not retransmit certain losses. This makes it
safe during high levels of congestion in the reverse direction, to
avoid a congestion collapse.. When congestion occurs in the network,
the Exporter (Egress) can reduce the IPFIX traffic. Thus the feedback
itself will not congest the network further when the network is
already getting congested. When the Exporter detects network
congestion, it can also reduce IPFIX traffic frequency to avoid more
congestion in network while being able to sufficiently convey
congestion status.
Because the template mechanism in IPFIX is flexible, it allows the
export of only the required information. Sending only the required
information can also reduce network load.
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The basic procedure for feedback using IPFIX is as follows:
(1)The exporter inform the collector how to interpret the IEs in
IPFIX message using template. Collector just accepts template
passively; which IEs to send is configured by other means that not
included in IPFIX specification.
(2)The exporter meters the traffic and sends the congestion level to
collector.
Congestion feedback using IPFIX is shown in the figures below. There
are two variations to congestion feedback model using IPFIX. In the
first one shown in Figure 6(a), congestion information is sent
directly from egress to ingress and ingress makes decisions according
this information. In the second case shown in Figure 6(b), congestion
information is sent to a mediation controller instead of tunnel
ingress; the controller is in charge of making decisions according to
network congestion and control the behavior of ingress node, for
example, reducing traffic or forbidding new traffic flows. In this
model the congestion information from egress to controller is
conveyed by IPFIX, but how controller controls the behavior of
ingress is out of scope of this document.
IPFIX
|-----------------------------------------|
| |
| |
| V
+----------+ tunnel +-----------+
|Egress |========================== |Inress |
|(Exporter)| |(Collector)|
+----------+ +-----------+
(a) Direct Feedback.
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IPFIX +-----------+
--------->|Controller |#####################
| |(Collector)| #
| +-----------+ #
| #
+----------+ tunnel +-----V-+
|Egress | ===========================|Ingress|
|(Exporter)| +-------+
+----------+
(b) Mediated Feedback.
Figure 6: IPFIX Congestion Feedback Models
To support feeding back congestion information, some extensions to
the IPFIX protocol are necessary. According to the definition of
congestion-related information defined in "Data Mode" section, new
IEs conveying congestion level is defined for IPFIX.
Definition of new IE indicating congestion level.
Description:
The congestion level calculated by exporter.
Abstract Data Type: float32
Data Type Semantics: quantity
ElementId: TBD.
Status: current
The example below shows how IPFIX can be used for congestion
feedback.
(1) Sending Template Set The exporter use Template Set to inform the
collector how to interpret the IEs in the following Data Set.
+------------------------+--------------------+
|Set ID=2 |Length=n |
+------------------------+--------------------+
|Template ID=257 |Field Count=m |
+------------------------+--------------------+
|exporterIPv4Address=130 |Field Length=4 |
+------------------------+--------------------+
|collectorIPv4Address=211|Field Length=4 |
+------------------------+--------------------+
|CongestionLevel=TBD1 |Field Length=2 |
+---------------------------------------------+
|Enterprise Number=TBD2 |
+---------------------------------------------+
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(2) Sending Data Set The exporter meters the traffic and sends the
congestion information to collector by Data Set.
+------------------+-------------------+
|Set ID=257 |Length=n |
+--------------------------------------+
|192.0.2.12 |
+--------------------------------------+
|192.0.2.34 |
+--------------------------------------+
|0.1714 |
+--------------------------------------+
+--------+ +---------+
|Exporter| |Collector|
+--------+ +---------+
| |
| |
| (1)Sending Template Set |
|------------------------------------->|
| |
+--------+ |
|metering| |
+--------+ |
| (2)Sending Data Set |
|------------------------------------->|
| . |
| . |
| . |
| |
| |
Figure 7: IPFIX Congestion Flow
Before sending congestion information to collector, the exporter
sends a Template set to Collector. The Template set specifies the
structure and semantics of the subsequent Data Set containing
congestion-related information. The Collector understands the Data
Sets that follow according to Template Set that was sent previously.
The exporting Process transmits the Template Set in advance of any
Data Sets that use that Template ID, to help ensure that the
Collector has the Template Record before receiving the first Data
Record. Data Records that correspond to a Template Record may appear
in the same and/or subsequent IPFIX Message(s).
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The Exporter meters the traffic passing through it and generates flow
records. At this point, the Exporter may cache the records and then
send congestion cumulative information to the collector. When
Exporter detects that the network is heavily congested, it can change
the feedback frequency to avoid adding more congestion to network.
When receiving congestion related information, the Collector will
make decisions to control the traffic entering the tunnel to reduce
tunnel congestion.
5.3 Other Protocols
A thorough evaluation of other protocols have not been performed at
this time.
6. Benefits
This section provides a short discussion about what benefits the
tunnel congestion control would bring.
Tunnel congestion control is a kind of local congestion control,
where each tunnel is treated as an independent administrative domain
in terms of congestion feedback and control, and it only responds to
the congestion happened in the tunnel. The tunnel congestion control
is complementary with e2e ECN control.
The tunnel congestion feedback provides the network administrator
with network congestion level information that can be used as an
input for it local network management rather than relying solely on
the e2e congestion control or blind traffic throttling. If the tunnel
is congested it will be a waste of resource to allow new traffic to
enter, because they may eventually get dropped in the tunnel. It's
more efficient to have a control on new traffic at ingress.
7. Security Considerations
This document describes the tunnel congestion calculation and
feedback. For feeding back congestion, security mechanisms of IPFIX
are expected to be sufficient. No additional security concerns are
expected.
8. IANA Considerations
IANA assignment of parameters for IPFIX extension may need to be
considered in this document.
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9. References
9.1 Normative References
[RFC2003] Perkins, C., "IP Encapsulation within IP", RFC 2003,
October 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2784] Farinacci, D., Li, T., Hanks, S., Meyer, D., and P.
Traina, "Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)", RFC 2784,
March 2000.
[RFC3168] Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S., and D. Black, "The Addition
of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP",
RFC 3168, September 2001.
[RFC3758] Stewart, R., Ramalho, M., Xie, Q., Tuexen, M., and P.
Conrad, "Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
Partial Reliability Extension", RFC 3758, May 2004.
[RFC4301] Kent, S. and K. Seo, "Security Architecture for the
Internet Protocol", RFC 4301, December 2005.
[RFC5101] Claise, B., Ed., "Specification of the IP Flow Information
Export (IPFIX) Protocol for the Exchange of IP Traffic
Flow Information", RFC 5101, January 2008.
[RFC6040] Briscoe, B., "Tunnelling of Explicit Congestion
Notification", RFC 6040, November 2010.
[I-D.boucadair-sfc-framework] Boucadair, M. etc, "Service Function
Chaining: Framework & Architecture", draft-boucadair-sfc-
framework-00(work in progress), October 2013.
[I-D.zong-vnfpool-problem-statement] Zong, N. etc, "Virtualized
Network Function (VNF) Pool Problem Statement", draft-
zong-vnfpool-problem-statement-02(work in progress),
January 2014.
9.2 Informative References
[TS29.060]3GPP TS 29.060: "General Packet Radio Service (GPRS); GPRS
Tunnelling Protocol (GTP) across the Gn and Gp interface".
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Authors' Addresses
Xinpeng Wei
Beiqing Rd. Z-park No.156, Haidian District,
Beijing, 100095, P. R. China
E-mail: weixinpeng@huawei.com
Zhu Lei
Beiqing Rd. Z-park No.156, Haidian District,
Beijing, 100095, P. R. China
E-mail:lei.zhu@huawei.com
Lingli Deng
Beijing, 100095, P. R. China
E-mail: denglingli@gmail.com
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