[Ecn-sane] [Bloat] [iccrg] Fwd: [tcpPrague] Implementation and experimentation of TCP Prague/L4S hackaton at IETF104

Sebastian Moeller moeller0 at gmx.de
Fri Mar 15 13:45:00 EDT 2019



On March 15, 2019 6:01:23 PM GMT+01:00, "David P. Reed" <dpreed at deepplum.com> wrote:
>
>The absolute fundamental issue with diffserv, IMO, is that the carriers
>cannot agree on an actual specification of what routers and gateways
>are supposed to do, while being compatible with the core principle of
>the IP layer: do not hold packets if they cause increasing queueing
>delay. (this is in the Best Practices RFC)
> 

IMHO it is the Charme of the 2 times 3 bits approach, that carriers get 3 bits they can do with whatever they want. As VLAN tags and MPLS? only support 3 bit priorities this looks to me like a match made in heaven, and we get 3 bits with end to end guarantees. Not that rolling that out would ever work in reality....

Best Regards

Sebastian

And yes, this is not an idea I came up with, I just forgot who proposed that initially.


>And it's not for lack of trying. Dave Clark led a working group at the
>MIT communications futures program (where I was a principle) that
>included most major backbone providers' key folks that was specifically
>focused on getting a widespread agreement on what any of the code
>points might mean, not as bullshit English descriptions of what kind of
>traffic each one represented, but as an operational description of what
>should be done by a router to manage its queues.
> 
>They couldn't even agree (after about 18 months of meetings) about what
>the bullshit English intent was, much less what operational semantics
>in the packet forwarding network had to be.
> 
>So if the responsible network engineers in the carriers cannot agree on
>anything, IETF is wasting its time.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>-----Original Message-----
>From: "Sebastian Moeller" <moeller0 at gmx.de>
>Sent: Friday, March 15, 2019 11:52am
>To: "Dave Täht" <dave.taht at gmail.com>
>Cc: ecn-sane at lists.bufferbloat.net, "bloat"
><bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net>
>Subject: Re: [Ecn-sane] [Bloat] [iccrg] Fwd: [tcpPrague] Implementation
>and experimentation of TCP Prague/L4S hackaton at IETF104
>
>
>
>Hi Dave,
>
>
>> On Mar 15, 2019, at 15:06, Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I would really prefer to move this discussion to the ecn-sane mailing
>> list, as IMHO, ecn is generally such a tiny thing needed for good
>> congestion control compared to better transports like pacing + bbr,
>> and things like bql, fq, and aqm using drop.
>> 
>> I'm going to keep cc-ing that list in the hope that we can keep
>better
>> track of the discussion here.
>
>Ah, sure, I basically wanted to avoid annoying the ietf lists as I feel
>out of place there, having only had a cursory read of the relevant
>RFCs.
>
>
>> 
>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 6:01 AM Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de>
>wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Dave,
>>> 
>>> I pruned the CC list as I am out of my league here and want to
>restrict the radius of my embarrassment to those that already know my
>level of incompetence before hand.
>> 
>> IMHO, your work on educating the OpenWrt community over the years on
>> how to use sqm, makes you much more than "only a grasshopper". You
>> have a firm grip on what can be achieved in the real world.
>> 
>>> 
>>> That said, having read through the L4S architecture description and
>the related appendices of draft-ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id-05 I came to the
>conclusion, that this is a mess.
>> 
>> I am so glad someone other than I has now read it.
>> 
>>> The L4S project proposes a really wide-ranging change of basically
>the internet (but allow a concurrent operation with legacy probably to
>cater to the fact that an internet-wide flag-day seems daunting to
>organize). But then they chicken out when figuring out how to
>differentiate between their new and the old by proposing to use ECT(1)
>for a purpose outside of its nominal purpose namely explicit congestion
>notification, why not think bolder? If the plan is to change everything
>the feasibility can not hinge upon the ability to re-using one old
>legacy bit, can it...
>>> Conceptually it seems much cleaner to use ECT(1) for congestion
>notification directly (there are already proposals out there and SCE
>just added another fully back-ward compatible one) and find another way
>to mark l4s traffic, sure that is going to be hard and inconvenient,
>but if you set out to change the internet that is par for the course.
>>> IMHO they would do more good if they actually fought for a better
>use of the 6 DSCP bits instead. (say by splitting into two groups of 3
>bits, one group for reduced diffserv and one group for new features,
>that would even
>> 
>> The existing diffserv deployment is a failure.
>
> Which is a shame, but one RFC's failure is another one's opportunity.
>
>
>> I have another ID
>> cooking that suggests a better way, going forward, to use them, but I
>> do not feel at this time it would be useful to present. One big
>battle
>> at a time.
>
>:)
>
>> That ID is very simple, it basically proposes that all
>> diffserv codepoints be passed through ISPs and transit providers
>> unchanged, and if any given codepoint must be changed, the only
>> permissible change is to 0 (BE), and MUST be not be remarked to
>> anything else, especially not CS1.
>
>I like the simplicity, but I also like the split into two groups of 3
>bits, say "active bit pattern" (for transport purposes) and "intenden
>bit pattern" for the sender to transmit intent, which than can be
>conveyed lossless to the receiver; my gut feeling is that throwing the
>transport people a bone here might work better, as in the end they are
>the one that will carry the "burden" of the change. IMHO this has the
>additional advantage that it will make "tabula rasa" of the existing
>distict set of bit patterns used in the real world. Which in turn
>probably is this ideas downfall...
>
>
>> 
>>> allow for concurrent use of the inevitable L5S and L6S ;) ).
>Especially since as far as I can understand l4s actually would like to
>have a more gradual congestion information stream than classic ECN, and
>since they need to modify DCTCP anyway to make it save for the wider
>internet, replacing its ECN response should be well inside the scope of
>work they already have on their list.
>> 
>> Next up for sce was going to be to find if dctcp could be modified to
>> use it. Also, bittorrent.
>
> YES! I endorse this message.
>
>> 
>>> If I sound a bit miffed, it is because after reading
>https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch-03 I do not have
>the feeling they are trying to build abetter internet, but rather that
>they are building an internet where I can be a better "product" and
>customer of newfangled services, and I do not look forward to such a
>facebooky future with much enthusiasm.
>> 
>> I have rigorously tried to keep the network neutrality debate out of
>> this.
>
>And I really do not want to start this here, as I agree that this is
>about a technical question. That said, I had hoped more out of the l4s
>promises from an end-user perspective. Then again, it if this is going
>to happen it needs the ISPs buy-in so it might be politically wise to
>emphasize the advantages for ISPs.
>
>
>> dualpi is just another aqm that needs the same thorough
>> technical and public evaluation done to it that pie, codel, fq_codel
>> were subjected to.
>
>+1, I note that the main argument against fq is "we can do it with two"
>without a convincing argument why two is better than the few 100s you
>realistically will never need for fq even on an busy core router.
>
>> The use of ect_1 in dualpi for it is nuts IMHO,
>
> At least it is unclean...
>
>> and
>> I'd vastly prefer that another L4S codepoint be added to make it
>work,
>> but any attempt to do so would also require industry consolidation on
>> that ID and that would be distracting at this time.
>
> But as I said, L4S aims to change everything so why stop there ;)
>
>> 
>> It appears, also, ironically, (I have confirmation from several
>> sources now) that cake, fq_codel and dualpi are now illegal for an
>ISP
>> to use in their provided equipment under california law.
>
>I will happily look at specific sections of code if pointed to, but I
>will not actively search for. At least the European net neutrality
>rules do not make any of these illegal, as the rules allow for traffic
>management (and special services at extra cost as long as these are not
>built be restricting the best-effort net, no idea how that should be
>poiced) (and in the end the rules only apply for ISPs in one's own
>network one can DPI to a far greater extent if one is such inclined).
>
>
>> The idea of
>> one day having to appear in court to defend our key algorithms
>reminds
>> me of the famous john fogerty case where he demonstrated how blues
>> music was made.
>
> I see a nice art-house movie coming up.
>
>
>> 
>> I wish I knew a lawyer willing to take on "bufferbloat.net vs the
>> state of california", though, as it may come down to that.
>> 
>> I blew up on this part of the issue here:
>> http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/net_neutrality_customers/
>
>I read that, but it does not reflect to well on the situation this side
>of the pond. We had situations where ISPs worked hard (but without
>success) to switch from their flat-rate access to introduce volume
>caps, that served a dual purpose, a) extracting more revenue from
>customers and b) allowing to make "zero-rating" deals with
>content-providers (which in the end are also payed for by the
>end-users, indirectly). Sure, this is all normal in business, but that
>does not necessarily mean that I do need to like being a pawn in a
>business transaction between global corporations. (I consider this to
>be at least somewhat related to the net neutrality debate).
>
>Best Regards
> Sebastian
>
>
>>> 
>>> I hope that the discussion in Prague go well and a
>compromise/consense can be hashed out as I see different
>implementations duking it out here, but the overall goal of the
>competitors seems quite compatible, improving the internet by focussing
>on latency.
>>> 
>>> Best Regards
>>> Sebastian
>>> 
>>>> On Mar 15, 2019, at 11:46, Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Bufferbloat.net's ecn-sane working group members have a
>co-ordinated response to your efforts brewing but it's not ready yet.
>We have a worldwide team of linux and freebsd developers co-ordinating
>on landing code for our competing proposal "Some Congestion
>Experienced", which we submitted to tsvwg last sunday.
>>>> 
>>>> That draft is under continuous revision, here:
>>>> 
>>>>
>https://github.com/dtaht/bufferbloat-rfcs/blob/master/sce/draft-morton-taht-tsvwg-sce.txt
>>>> 
>>>> Our Linux and FreeBSD team is also flying into prague for SCE
>presentations at netdevconf and ietf.
>>>> 
>>>> Some background to this: after the L4S/TCP Prague/and dualpi
>experiments appeared stalled out indefinitely in the IETF, and with our
>own frustration with IETF processes, bufferbloat.net project members
>publicly formed our own working group to look into the problems with
>ecn, back in august of last year.
>>>> 
>>>> Its charter is here:
>https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/ecn-sane/wiki/
>>>> 
>>>> We were unaware, until last month, that the cable industry had 16
>months back gone and formed its own private working group also, and was
>intending to turn the tcp prague/l4s/dualpi IETF "experiments" into an
>actual DOCSIS standard.
>>>> 
>>>> Our SCE proposal appears to be backward compatible with the
>existing 10s-100s of millions of ecn-enabled fq_codel[1] and
>sch_cake[2] deployments, and doesn't require any changes to any RFC3168
>tcps (or any tcp-friendly congestion control) at all in order to
>basically work. tcp-prague is subtly incompatible with that, and
>dualpi, more so. Our proposal is different also, it proposes some
>receiver side changes in order to get the full benefit of SCE while
>remaining backward compatible with the existing meaning of the CE
>codepoint.
>>>> 
>>>> In either case, either approach essentially permanently redefines
>the ECT_1 codepoint incompatibly, once and for all, and for all time.
>This is a final battle over the meaning of a single bit in IP, and I
>expect the debates to be as difficult as the ones described in
>https://www.ietf.org/rfc/ien/ien137.txt - I would really, really,
>really prefer that they stay technical and not veer into politics, but
>I have little hope for that.
>>>> 
>>>> The members of the ecn-sane working group are delighted to finally
>hear that running code for tcp-prague might land this ietf, and look
>forward to finally testing the whole l4s/tcpprague/dualpi architecture
>in conjunction with the flent.org 's and irtt's exhaustive suite of
>tests and servers in the cloud in the coming months, both against our
>existing, deployed, fq_codel, fq_pie, cake and pie derived solutions
>and our new SCE proposal. We hope to finally be able to write new tests
>for flent in particular, that can show tcpprague off in the ways that
>are important to those developing it. Flent has some basic dctcp tests,
>but nothing that can get down below a 20ms sample rate on modern
>hardware. (currently. It's easy to add tests, flent is written in
>python)
>>>> 
>>>> We also hope that more test tools and implementations in ns2 and
>ns3 show up for tcpprauge and dualpi show up soon also, from members of
>those projects.
>>>> 
>>>> Note: sunday's dual-pi linux submission was kicked back from the
>linux networking developers due to some technical and legal problems
>with linux net-next HEAD ( https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/1054521/
>) , and I do hope that a corrected version lands soon, so we can safely
>test it with current versions of OpenWrt, etc.
>>>> 
>>>> Finally, running code. Will we find consensus?
>>>> 
>>>> Thx!
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8290
>>>> [2] sch_cake was available for 3 years out of tree and was
>mainlined last august, in linux 4.19. It is partially described by
>"Piece of CAKE: A Comprehensive Queue Management Solution for Home
>Gateways" "https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.07617.pdf
>>>> 
>>>> A second paper describing its fq_codel-derived "cobalt" AQM
>algorithm is awaiting publication in a peer reviewed journal. It has
>been part of openwrt and the related sqm-scripts for many years and is
>widely deployed on multiple commercial products, such as those from
>eero and evenroute.
>>>> 
>>>> Cake has a docsis specific mode which we longed for cablelabs to
>evaluate.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 2:33 AM Bob Briscoe <ietf at bobbriscoe.net>
>wrote:
>>>> Forwarding to tcpm & iccrg - apologies if you were already on one
>of the lists that received this.
>>>> 
>>>> Olivier has been working hard on integrating the pieces of a Linux
>implementation of TCP Prague, and is close to having a version ported
>against the tip of the Linux mainline tree. This is his request for
>more people to get involved.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Bob
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>>>> Subject: [tcpPrague] Implementation and experimentation of TCP
>Prague/L4S hackaton at IETF104
>>>> Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2019 10:26:05 +0000
>>>> From: Tilmans, Olivier (Nokia - BE/Antwerp)
><olivier.tilmans at nokia-bell-labs.com>
>>>> To: hackathon at ietf.org <hackathon at ietf.org>, tcpprague at ietf.org
><tcpprague at ietf.org>
>>>> CC: dlebrun at google.com <dlebrun at google.com>, Joakim Misund
><joakim.misund at gmail.com>, Bob Briscoe <research at bobbriscoe.net>,
>Quentin De Coninck <quentin.deconinck at uclouvain.be>, François Michel
><francois.michel at uclouvain.be>, Mirja Kuehlewind
><mirja.kuehlewind at tik.ee.ethz.ch>, Maxime Piraux
><maxime.piraux at uclouvain.be>, Olga Albisser <olga at albisser.org>, Fabien
>Duchêne <fabien.duchene at uclouvain.be>, De Schepper, Koen (Nokia -
>BE/Antwerp) <koen.de_schepper at nokia-bell-labs.com>
>>>> 
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> 
>>>> We'll be working on the "TCP Prague" congestion control/L4S
>architecture during the IETF-104 hackaton.
>>>> This topics aims at accelerating the work that started during the
>IETF93 (coincidentally also in Prague), in order to get TCP Prague to
>an 'usable' state—i.e., meet the safety requirements and have
>supporting materials (e.g., VMs, labs) to let people experiment with
>it. Depending on people's interest, prototyping something similar for
>QUIC is another possible output.
>>>> 
>>>> Details and links to resources/supporting drafts are available at
>https://trac.ietf.org/trac/ietf/meeting/wiki/104hackathon#tcp-prague
>and copied below.
>>>> Additionally, few topics will presented during netdev 0x13 the week
>before.
>>>> 
>>>> See you in Prague.
>>>> 
>>>> Best,
>>>> Olivier
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Implementation and experimentation of TCP Prague/L4S
>>>> 
>>>> * Champion
>>>> * Olivier Tilmans <olivier.tilmans at nokia-bell-labs.com>
>>>> * Projects
>>>> * Prototype the "TCP Prague" congestion control on Linux
>>>> * Finalize the implementation of accurate ECN (draft conformance),
>and port it on Linux v5.x * Build tooling around L4S to let people
>experiment with the technology (e.g., virtual machine, or mininet labs)
>>>> * Work towards "QUIC Prague"
>>>> * Resources
>>>> * TCP Prague
>>>> * Repository — https://github.com/L4STeam/tcp-prague
>>>> * Requirements —
>https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id-05#page-21
>>>> * Upcoming netdev talk —
>https://netdevconf.org/0x13/session.html?talk-tcp-prague-l4s
>>>> * Accurate ECN
>>>> * Specs —
>https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-accurate-ecn-07
>>>> * Implementation for Linux v4.17 —
>https://github.com/mirjak/linux-accecn
>>>> * Past netdev talk —
>https://www.netdevconf.org/2.2/session.html?kuhlewind-accecn-talk
>>>> * Paced Chirping * Repository —
>https://github.com/JoakimMisund/PacedChirping
>>>> * Upcoming netdev talk —
>https://netdevconf.org/0x13/session.html?talk-chirp
>>>> * L4S architecture
>>>> * Specs — https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch-03
>>>> * DualPI2 AQM
>>>> * Specs —
>https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled-08
>>>> * Repository — https://github.com/L4STeam/sch_dualpi2_upstream
>>>> * Upcoming netdev talk —
>https://netdevconf.org/0x13/session.html?talk-DUALPI2-AQM
>>>> * RITE Project — https://riteproject.eu/dctth/#code
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> tcpPrague mailing list
>>>> tcpPrague at ietf.org
>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tcpprague
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> iccrg mailing list
>>>> iccrg at irtf.org
>>>> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/iccrg
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> 
>>>> Dave Täht
>>>> CTO, TekLibre, LLC
>>>> http://www.teklibre.com
>>>> Tel: 1-831-205-9740
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Bloat mailing list
>>>> Bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Dave Täht
>> CTO, TekLibre, LLC
>> http://www.teklibre.com
>> Tel: 1-831-205-9740
>
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>Ecn-sane mailing list
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>https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/ecn-sane

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