Subject: Re: [aqm] Please review: Benefits and Pitfalls of using ECN

From: Greg Skinner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 00:38:11 +0000 (GMT)

I noticed that the RFC 2119 boilerplate text (Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels such as "MUST") is missing.  IMO, several issues in Section 6 (and possibly Section 7) should have the uncapitalized text replaced with the requirement levels.  (For example, the beginning of the last paragraph of Section 6.1 would start with "A network device MUST NOT change a packet with a CE mark to a zero codepoint ...")

Removing "pitfalls" in the title, and replacing its use in the draft with "operational difficulties", or words to that effect, seems reasonable to me.

Greg

On Mar 17, 2015, at 11:46 AM, Gorry Fairhurst <[email-masked]> wrote:

On 17/03/2015 15:11, Wesley Eddy wrote:
On 3/11/2015 4:10 PM, [email-masked] wrote:

Alas, due to a slight technical mistake by me, we missed the ID deadline.
So I have posted an interim version here:

http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry/ietf/AQM/draft-ietf-aqm-ecn-benefits-01.txt
http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry/ietf/AQM/draft-ietf-aqm-ecn-benefits-01.xml

I've reviewed this copy and have some comments, one larger and
the rest smaller.

Large comment:

I (personally) really do not like using the word "pitfall" in this
document, given that we want people to use ECN, and not scare them
about this list of pitfalls that await them the day they start using
it.

We could call these "operational difficulties that have been
encountered" or "challenges due to misbehaving network devices and
endpoints".

I worry about someone that doesn't have time to carefully read and
consider all the benefits and whether they outweigh the "pitfalls",
and may not fully grok that the pitfalls have known mitigations and
will hopefully go away over time.

We *should* be more clear that there are mitigations and that plenty of
nodes are able to use ECN happily today because it is implemented in
the major OSes and network devices.

See below.

For instance, there is no mention of things like ECN blackhole
detection, and measurements of this, such as:
http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2011/docs/p171.pdf

OK - Happy to cite this.

We *definitely* need to stress that bleaching, lying, and cheating
behaviors are non-conformant, in some cases may be from legacy code,
and should be expected to go away over time rather than proliferate,
because these behaviors will cause problems for the growing critical
mass of conforming nodes.

Agree, we can emphasise this.

So, in summary, I would really suggest that we go through the document
searching for every instance of "pitfall" and try to be more gentle,
and even change the title just to "The Benefits of Using Explicit
Congestion Notification (ECN)". There is way more text in the document
about benefits than pitfalls anyways, and I think we could consider the
section discussing pitfalls as just fairly presenting possible
challenges to successfully using ECN.

That's just my opinion ... I'd be curious what others think.

Personally, I'd be really happy to do rework this language.

I would also like to revert the title (to just say "benefits", as in the 
original Individual ID submission), I believe we changed the title in 
response to comments from the group, but this was at a time when we had 
not describe some of the realities of deploying ECN. I'd like to think 
these have been addressed, and revert to the original title.

Note: If any people prefer to keep the "pitfall" word, then send an 
email asap - and give me some advice, otherwise I'll likely follow the 
edits suggested above.

Small comments:
- In section 1, paragraph 3, I suggest changing the text:
"where the exact combination of AQM/ECN algorithms is generally
not known by the transport endpoints."
to:
"where the exact combination of AQM/ECN algorithms does not need
to be known by the transport endpoints."

Agree.

Since the document is for people that might not be familiar with
this, it seems worth rewording so they don't think it's somehow
bad or suboptimal that the endpoints don't know if AQM or ECN is
supported within the network.

- section 1, paragraph 4, I suggest changing:
"that would otherwise have been dropped"
to:
"that would otherwise have been dropped if the application or
transport did not support ECN"

Agree.

I think this kind of wording will emphasize that they need to
make sure they're enabling it at the endpoint.

- section 2, paragraph 3 should be changed:
"Applications that experience congestion in such endpoints"
to:
"Applications that experience congestion in such network devices"

Oh dear, yes will fix -- or we could just say "experience congestion"?

Even smaller comments:
- section 1, paragraph 2, "forward" -> "forwards"
- section 1, paragraph 2, "this packet" -> "packets"
- section 1, paragraph 3,
"The focus of this document is on usage of ECN"
to:
"The focus of this document is on usage of ECN by transport and
application flows"
- section 2, paragraph 2, I think the ECN RFC (3168) could also be cited
in addition to 2309bis for the recommended behavior for network
devices

I'll also fix these in the draft before we upload.

Gorry

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From: Gorry Fairhurst <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:43:39 +0000

Thanks for getting back with comments.

On 18/03/2015 00:38, Greg Skinner wrote:
> I noticed that the RFC 2119 boilerplate text (Key words for use in RFCs
> to Indicate Requirement Levels such as "MUST") is missing.  IMO, several
> issues in Section 6 (and possibly Section 7) should have the
> uncapitalized text replaced with the requirement levels.  (For example,
> the beginning of the last paragraph of Section 6.1 would start with "A
> network device MUST NOT change a packet with a CE mark to a zero
> codepoint ...")
>
That's actually a question for our WG Chairs. The original idea was this 
that this draft simply restated or clarified recommendations already 
made. There could be some cases where this is no longer the case - and 
some where we have yet to cite the appropriate reference.

> Removing "pitfalls" in the title, and replacing its use in the draft
> with "operational difficulties", or words to that effect, seems
> reasonable to me.
>
Thanks, this is something I think we can propose to the WG at the Dallas 
meeting. Thoughts from others welcome.

Gorry

>>> On 3/11/2015 4:10 PM, [email-masked]
>>> <mailto:[email-masked]> wrote:
>>>>
>> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>

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From: Mikael Abrahamsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 14:58:21 +0100 (CET)

> meeting. Thoughts from others welcome.

I have read the draft. It makes sense. I have no objections or comments on 
the content apart from agreeing that using the word "pitfall" is something 
that would be best avoided.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: [email-masked]