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IETF RFC 1263
TCP Extensions Considered Harmful
Last modified on Saturday, October 19th, 1991
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Network Working Group S. O'Malley
Request for Comments: 1263 L. Peterson
University of Arizona
October 1991
TCP EXTENSIONS CONSIDERED HARMFUL
 Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this document is
unlimited.
Abstract
This RFC comments on recent proposals to extend TCP. It argues that
the backward compatible extensions proposed in RFC's 1072 and 1185
should not be pursued, and proposes an alternative way to evolve the
Internet protocol suite. Its purpose is to stimulate discussion in
the Internet community.
1. Introduction
The rapid growth of the size, capacity, and complexity of the
Internet has led to the need to change the existing protocol suite.
For example, the maximum TCP window size is no longer sufficient to
efficiently support the high capacity links currently being planned
and constructed. One is then faced with the choice of either leaving
the protocol alone and accepting the fact that TCP will run no faster
on high capacity links than on low capacity links, or changing TCP.
This is not an isolated incident. We have counted at least eight
other proposed changes to TCP (some to be taken more seriously than
others), and the question is not whether to change the protocol
suite, but what is the most cost effective way to change it.
This RFC compares the costs and benefits of three approaches to
making these changes: the creation of new protocols, backward
compatible protocol extensions, and protocol evolution. The next
section introduces these three approaches and enumerates the
strengths and weaknesses of each. The following section describes
how we believe these three approaches are best applied to the many
proposed changes to TCP. Note that we have not written this RFC as an
academic exercise. It is our intent to argue against acceptance of
the various TCP extensions, most notably RFC's 1072 and 1185 [4,5],
by describing a more palatable alternative.
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RFC 1263 TCP Extensions Considered Harmful October 1991
2. Creation vs. Extension vs. Evolution
2.1. Protocol Creation
Protocol creation involves the design, implementation,
standardization, and distribution of an entirely new protocol. In
this context, there are two basic reasons for creating a new
protocol. The first is to replace an old protocol that is so outdated
that it can no longer be effectively extended to perform its original
function. The second is to add a new protocol because users are
making demands upon the original protocol that were not envisioned by
the designer and cannot be efficiently handled in terms of the
original protocol. For example, TCP was designed as a reliable
byte-stream protocol but is commonly used as both a reliable record-
stream protocol and a reliable request-reply protocol due to the lack
of such protocols in the Internet protocol suite. The performance
demands placed upon a byte-stream protocol in the new Internet
environment makes it difficult to extend TCP to meet these new
application demands.
The advantage of creating a new protocol is the ability to start with
a clean sheet of paper when attempting to solve a complex network
problem. The designer, free from the constraints of an existing
protocol, can take maximum advantage of modern network research in
the basic algorithms needed to solve the problem. Even more
importantly, the implementor is free to steal from a large number of
existing academic protocols that have been developed over the years.
In some cases, if truly new functionality is desired, creating a new
protocol is the only viable approach.
The most obvious disadvantage of this approach is the high cost of
standardizing and distributing an entirely new protocol. Second,
there is the issue of making the new protocol reliable. Since new
protocols have not undergone years of network stress testing, they
often contain bugs which require backward compatible fixes, and
hence, the designer is back where he or she started. A third
disadvantage of introducing new protocols is that they generally have
new interfaces which require significant effort on the part of the
Internet community to use. This alone is often enough to kill a new
protocol.
Finally, there is a subtle problem introduced by the very freedom
provided by this approach. Specifically, being able to introduce a
new protocol often results in protocols that go far beyond the basic
needs of the situation. New protocols resemble Senate appropriations
bills; they tend to accumulate many amendments that have nothing to
do with the original problem. A good example of this phenomena is the
attempt to standardize VMTP [1] as the Internet RPC protocol. While
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RFC 1263 TCP Extensions Considered Harmful October 1991
VMTP was a large protocol to begin with, the closer it got to
standardization the more features were added until it essentially
collapsed under its own weight. As we argue below, new protocols
should initially be minimal, and then evolve as the situation
dictates.
2.2. Backward Compatible Extensions
In a backward compatible extension, the protocol is modified in such
a fashion that the new version of the protocol can transparently
inter-operate with existing versions of the protocol. This generally
implies no changes to the protocol's header. TCP slow start [3] is an
example of such a change. In a slightly more relaxed version of
backward compatibility, no changes are made to the fixed part of a
protocol's header. Instead, either some fields are added to the
variable length options field found at the end of the header, or
existing header fields are overloaded (i.e., used for multiple
purposes). However, we can find no real advantage to this technique
over simply changing the protocol.
Backward compatible extensions are widely used to modify protocols
because there is no need to synchronize the distribution of the new
version of the protocol. The new version is essentially allowed to
diffuse through the Internet at its own pace, and at least in theory,
the Internet will continue to function as before. Thus, the explicit
distribution costs are limited. Backward compatible extensions also
avoid the bureaucratic costs of standardizing a new protocol. TCP is
still TCP and the approval cost of a modification to an existing
protocol is much less than that of a new protocol. Finally, the very
difficulty of making such changes tends to restrict the changes to
the minimal set needed to solve the current problem. Thus, it is rare
to see unneeded changes made when using this technique.
Unfortunately, this approach has several drawbacks. First, the time
to distribute the new version of the protocol to all hosts can be
quite long (forever in fact). This leaves the network in a
heterogeneous state for long periods of time. If there is the
slightest incompatibly between old and new versions, chaos can
result. Thus, the implicit cost of this type of distribution can be
quite high. Second, designing a backward compatible change to a new
protocol is extremely difficult, and the implementations "tend toward
complexity and ugliness" [5]. The need for backward compatibility
ensures that no code can every really be eliminated from the
protocol, and since such vestigial code is rarely executed, it is
often wrong. Finally, most protocols have limits, based upon the
design decisions of it inventors, that simply cannot be side-stepped
in this fashion.
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2.3. Protocol Evolution
Protocol evolution is an approach to protocol change that attempts to
escape the limits of backward compatibility without incurring all of
the costs of creating new protocols. The basic idea is for the
protocol designer to take an existing protocol that requires
modification and make the desired changes without maintaining
backward compatibility. This drastically simplifies the job of the
protocol designer. For example, the limited TCP window size could be
fixed by changing the definition of the window size in the header
from 16-bits to 32-bits, and re-compiling the protocol. The effect of
backward compatibility would be ensured by simply keeping both the
new and old version of the protocol running until most machines use
the new version. Since the change is small and invisible to the user
interface, it is a trivial problem to dynamically select the correct
TCP version at runtime. How this is done is discussed in the next
section.
Protocol evolution has several advantages. First, it is by far the
simplest type of modification to make to a protocol, and hence, the
modifications can be made faster and are less likely to contain bugs.
There is no need to worry about the effects of the change on all
previous versions of the protocol. Also, most of the protocol is
carried over into the new version unchanged, thus avoiding the design
and debugging cost of creating an entirely new protocol. Second,
there is no artificial limit to the amount of change that can be made
to a protocol, and as a consequence, its useful lifetime can be
extended indefinitely. In a series of evolutionary steps, it is
possible to make fairly radical changes to a protocol without
upsetting the Internet community greatly. Specifically, it is
possible to both add new features and remove features that are no
longer required for the current environment. Thus, the protocol is
not condemned to grow without bound. Finally, by keeping the old
version of the protocol around, backward compatibility is guaranteed.
The old code will work as well as it ever did.
Assuming the infrastructure described in the following subsection,
the only real disadvantage of protocol evolution is the amount of
memory required to run several versions of the same protocol.
Fortunately, memory is not the scarcest resource in modern
workstations (it may, however, be at a premium in the BSD kernel and
its derivatives). Since old versions may rarely if ever be executed,
the old versions can be swapped out to disk with little performance
loss. Finally, since this cost is explicit, there is a huge incentive
to eliminate old protocol versions from the network.
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2.4. Infrastructure Support for Protocol Evolution
The effective use of protocol evolution implies that each protocol is
considered a vector of implementations which share the same top level
interface, and perhaps not much else. TCP[0] is the current
implementation of TCP and exists to provide backward compatibility
with all existing machines. TCP[1] is a version of TCP that is
optimized for high-speed networks. TCP[0] is always present; TCP[1]
may or may not be. Treating TCP as a vector of protocols requires
only three changes to the way protocols are designed and implemented.
First, each version of TCP is assigned a unique id, but this id is
not given as an IP protocol number. (This is because IP's protocol
number field is only 8 bits long and could easily be exhausted.) The
"obvious" solution to this limitation is to increase IP's protocol
number field to 32 bits. In this case, however, the obvious solution
is wrong, not because of the difficultly of changing IP, but simply
because there is a better approach. The best way to deal with this
problem is to increase the IP protocol number field to 32 bits and
move it to the very end of the IP header (i.e., the first four bytes
of the TCP header). A backward compatible modification would be made
to IP such that for all packets with a special protocol number, say
77, IP would look into the four bytes following its header for its
de-multiplexing information. On systems which do not support a
modified IP, an actual protocol 77 would be used to perform the de-
multiplexing to the correct TCP version.
Second, a version control protocol, called VTCP, is used to select
the appropriate version of TCP for a particular connection. VTCP is
an example of a virtual protocol as introduced in [2]. Application
programs access the various versions of TCP through VTCP. When a TCP
connection is opened to a specific machine, VTCP checks its local
cache to determine the highest common version shared by the two
machines. If the target machine is in the cache, it opens that
version of TCP and returns the connection to the protocol above and
does not effect performance. If the target machine is not found in
the cache, VTCP sends a UDP packet to the other machine asking what
versions of TCP that machine supports. If it receives a response, it
uses that information to select a version and puts the information in
the cache. If no reply is forthcoming, it assumes that the other
machine does not support VTCP and attempts to open a TCP[0]
connection. VTCP's cache is flushed occasionally to ensure that its
information is current.
Note that this is only one possible way for VTCP to decide the right
version of TCP to use. Another possibility is for VTCP to learn the
right version for a particular host when it resolves the host's name.
That is, version information could be stored in the Domain Name
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System. It is also possible that VTCP might take the performance
characteristics of the network into consideration when selecting a
version; TCP[0] may in fact turn out to be the correct choice for a
low-bandwidth network.
Third, because our proposal would lead to a more dynamically changing
network architecture, a mechanism for distributing new versions will
need to be developed. This is clearly the hardest requirement of the
infrastructure, but we believe that it can be addressed in stages.
More importantly, we believe this problem can be addressed after the
decision has been made to go the protocol evolution route. In the
short term, we are considering only a single new version of TCP---
TCP[1]. This version can be distributed in the same ad hoc way, and
at exactly the same cost, as the backward compatible changes
suggested in RFC's 1072 and 1185.
In the medium term, we envision the IAB approving new versions of TCP
every year or so. Given this scenario, a simple distribution
mechanism can be designed based on software distribution mechanisms
that have be developed for other environments; e.g., Unix RDIST and
Mach SUP. Such a mechanism need not be available on all hosts.
Instead, hosts will be divided into two sets, those that can quickly
be updated with new protocols and those that cannot. High
performance machines that can use high performance networks will need
the most current version of TCP as soon as it is available, thus they
have incentive to change. Old machines which are too slow to drive a
high capacity lines can be ignored, and probably should be ignored.
In the long term, we envision protocols being designed on an
application by application basis, without the need for central
approval. In such a world, a common protocol implementation
environment---a protocol backplane---is the right way to go. Given
such a backplane, protocols can be automatically installed over the
network. While we claim to know how to build such an environment,
such a discussion is beyond the scope of this paper.
2.5. Remarks
Each of these three methods has its advantages. When used in
combination, the result is better protocols at a lower overall cost.
Backward compatible changes are best reserved for changes that do not
affect the protocol's header, and do not require that the instance
running on the other end of the connection also be changed. Protocol
evolution should be the primary way of dealing with header fields
that are no longer large enough, or when one algorithm is substituted
directly for another. New protocols should be written to off load
unexpected user demands on existing protocols, or better yet, to
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catch them before they start.
There are also synergistic effects. First, since we know it is
possible to evolve a newly created protocol once it has been put in
place, the pressure to add unnecessary features should be reduced.
Second, the ability to create new protocols removes the pressure to
overextend a given protocol. Finally, the ability to evolve a
protocol removes the pressure to maintain backward compatibility
where it is really not possible.
3. TCP Extensions: A Case Study
This section examines the effects of using our proposed methodology
to implement changes to TCP. We will begin by analyzing the backward
compatible extensions defined in RFC's 1072 and 1185, and proposing a
set of much simpler evolutionary modifications. We also analyze
several more problematical extensions to TCP, such as Transactional
TCP. Finally, we point our some areas of TCP which may require
changes in the future.
The evolutionary modification to TCP that we propose includes all of
the functionality described in RFC's 1072 and 1185, but does not
preserve the header format. At the risk of being misunderstood as
believing backward compatibility is a good idea, we also show how our
proposed changes to TCP can be folded into a backward compatible
implementation of TCP. We do this as a courtesy for those readers
that cannot accept the possibility of multiple versions of TCP.
3.1. RFC's 1072 and 1185
3.1.1. Round Trip Timing
In RFC 1072, a new ECHO option is proposed that allows each TCP
packet to carry a timestamp in its header. This timestamp is used to
keep a more accurate estimate of the RTT (round trip time) used to
decide when to re-transmit segments. In the original TCP algorithm,
the sender manually times a small number of sends. The resulting
algorithm was quite complex and does not produce an accurate enough
RTT for high capacity networks. The inclusion of a timestamp in every
header both simplifies the code needed to calculate the RTT and
improves the accuracy and robustness of the algorithm.
The new algorithm as proposed in RFC 1072 does not appear to have any
serious problems. However, the authors of RFC 1072 go to great
lengths in an attempt to keep this modification backward compatible
with the previous version of TCP. They place an ECHO option in the
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SYN segment and state, "It is likely that most implementations will
properly ignore any options in the SYN segment that they do not
understand, so new initial options should not cause problems" [4].
This statement does not exactly inspire confidence, and we consider
the addition of an optional field to any protocol to be a de-facto,
if not a de-jure, example of an evolutionary change. Optional fields
simply attempt to hide the basic incompatibility inside the protocol,
it does not eliminate it. Therefore, since we are making an
evolutionary change anyway, the only modification to the proposed
algorithm is to move the fields into the header proper. Thus, each
header will contain 32-bit echo and echo reply fields. Two fields are
needed to handle bi-directional data streams.
3.1.2. Window Size and Sequence Number Space
Long Fat Networks (LFN's), networks which contain very high capacity
lines with very high latency, introduce the possibility that the
number of bits in transit (the bandwidth-delay product) could exceed
the TCP window size, thus making TCP the limiting factor in network
performance. Worse yet, the time it takes the sequence numbers to
wrap around could be reduced to a point below the MSL (maximum
segment lifetime), introducing the possibility of old packets being
mistakenly accepted as new.
RFC 1072 extends the window size through the use of an implicit
constant scaling factor. The window size in the TCP header is
multiplied by this factor to get the true window size. This
algorithm has three problems. First, one must prove that at all times
the implicit scaling factor used by the sender is the same as the
receiver. The proposed algorithm appears to do so, but the
complexity of the algorithm creates the opportunity for poor
implementations to affect the correctness of TCP. Second, the use of
a scaling factor complicates the TCP implementation in general, and
can have serious effects on other parts of the protocol.
A final problem is what we characterize as the "quantum window
sizing" problem. Assuming that the scaling factors will be powers of
two, the algorithm right shifts the receiver's window before sending
it. This effectively rounds the window size down to the nearest
multiple of the scaling factor. For large scaling factors, say 64k,
this implies that window values are all multiples of 64k and the
minimum window size is 64k; advertising a smaller window is
impossible. While this is not necessarily a problem (and it seems to
be an extreme solution to the silly window syndrome) what effect this
will have on the performance of high-speed network links is anyone's
guess. We can imagine this extension leading to future papers
entitled "A Quantum Mechanical Approach to Network Performance".
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RFC 1263 TCP Extensions Considered Harmful October 1991
RFC 1185 is an attempt to get around the problem of the window
wrapping too quickly without explicitly increasing the sequence
number space. Instead, the RFC proposes to use the timestamp used in
the ECHO option to weed out old duplicate messages. The algorithm
presented in RFC 1185 is complex and has been shown to be seriously
flawed at a recent End-to-End Research Group meeting. Attempts are
currently underway to fix the algorithm presented in the RFC. We
believe that this is a serious mistake.
We see two problems with this approach on a very fundamental level.
First, we believe that making TCP depend on accurate clocks for
correctness to be a mistake. The Internet community has NO experience
with transport protocols that depend on clocks for correctness.
Second, the proposal uses two distinct schemes to deal with old
duplicate packets: the sliding window algorithm takes care of "new"
old packets (packets from the current sequence number epoch) and the
timestamp algorithm deals with "old" old packets (packets from
previous sequence number epochs). It is hard enough getting one of
these schemes to work much less to get two to work and ensure that
they do not interfere with one another.
In RFC 1185, the statement is made that "An obvious fix for the
problem of cycling the sequence number space is to increase the size
of the TCP sequence number field." Using protocol evolution, the
obvious fix is also the correct one. The window size can be increased
to 32 bits by simply changing a short to a long in the definition of
the TCP header. At the same time, the sequence number and
acknowledgment fields can be increased to 64 bits. This change is
the minimum complexity modification to get the job done and requires
little or no analysis to be shown to work correctly.
On machines that do not support 64-bit integers, increasing the
sequence number size is not as trivial as increasing the window size.
However, it is identical in cost to the modification proposed in RFC
1185; the high order bits can be thought of as an optimal clock that
ticks only when it has to. Also, because we are not dealing with
real time, the problems with unreliable system clocks is avoided. On
machines that support 64-bit integers, the original TCP code may be
reused. Since only very high performance machines can hope to drive
a communications network at the rates this modification is designed
to support, and the new generation of RISC microprocessors (e.g.,
MIPS R4000 and PA-RISC) do support 64-bit integers, the assumption of
64-bit arithmetic may be more of an advantage than a liability.
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RFC 1263 TCP Extensions Considered Harmful October 1991
3.1.3. Selective Retransmission
Another problem with TCP's support for LFN's is that the sliding
window algorithm used by TCP does not support any form of selective
acknowledgment. Thus, if a segment is lost, the total amount of data
that must be re-transmitted is some constant times the bandwidth-
delay product, despite the fact that most of the segments have in
fact arrived at the receiver. RFC 1072 proposes to extend TCP to
allow the receiver to return partial acknowledgments to the sender in
the hope that the sender will use that information to avoid
unnecessary re-transmissions.
It has been our experience on predictable local area networks that
the performance of partial re-transmission strategies is highly non-
obvious, and it generally requires more than one iteration to find a
decent algorithm. It is therefore not surprising that the algorithm
proposed in RFC 1072 has some problems. The proposed TCP extension
allows the receiver to include a short list of received fragments
with every ACK. The idea being that when the receiver sends back a
normal ACK, it checks its queue of segments that have been received
out of order and sends the relative sequence numbers of contiguous
blocks of segments back to the sender. The sender then uses this
information to re-transmit the segments transmitted but not listed in
the ACK.
As specified, this algorithm has two related problems: (1) it ignores
the relative frequencies of delivered and dropped packets, and (2)
the list provided in the option field is probably too short to do
much good on networks with large bandwidth-delay products. In every
model of high bandwidth networks that we have seen, the packet loss
rate is very low, and thus, the ratio of dropped packets to delivered
packets is very low. An algorithm that returns ACKs as proposed is
simply going to have to send more information than one in which the
receiver returns NAKs.
This problem is compounded by the short size of the TCP option field
(44 bytes). In theory, since we are only worried about high bandwidth
networks, returning ACKs instead of NAKs is not really a problem; the
bandwidth is available to send any information that's needed. The
problem comes when trying to compress the ACK information into the 44
bytes allowed. The proposed extensions effectively compresses the
ACK information by allowing the receiver to ACK byte ranges rather
than segments, and scaling the relative sequence numbers of the re-
transmitted segments. This makes it much more difficult for the
sender to tell which segments should be re-transmitted, and
complicates the re-transmission code. More importantly, one should
never compress small amounts of data being sent over a high bandwidth
network; it trades a scarce resource for an abundant resource. On
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RFC 1263 TCP Extensions Considered Harmful October 1991
low bandwidth networks, selective retransmission is not needed and
the SACK option should be disabled.
We propose two solutions to this problem. First, the receiver can
examine its list of out-of-order packets and guess which segments
have been dropped, and NAK those segments back to the sender. The
number of NAKs should be low enough that one per TCP packet should be
sufficient. Note that the receiver has just as much information as
the sender about what packets should be retransmitted, and in any
case, the NAKs are simply suggestions which have no effect on
correctness.
Our second proposed modification is to increase the offset field in
the TCP header from 4 bits to 16 bits. This allows 64k-bytes of TCP
header, which allows us to radically simplify the selective re-
transmission algorithm proposed in RFC 1072. The receiver can now
simply send a list of 64-bit sequence numbers for the out-of-order
segments to the sender. The sender can then use this information to
do a partial retransmission without needing an ouji board to
translate ACKs into segments. With the new header size, it may be
faster for the receiver to send a large list than to attempt to
aggregate segments into larger blocks.
3.1.4. Header Modifications
The modifications proposed above drastically change the size and
structure of the TCP header. This makes it a good time to re-think
the structure of the proposed TCP header. The primary goal of the
current TCP header is to save bits in the output stream. When TCP was
developed, a high bandwidth network was 56kbps, and the key use for
TCP was terminal I/O. In both situations, minimal header size was
important. Unfortunately, while the network has drastically
increased in performance and the usage pattern of the network is now
vastly different, most protocol designers still consider saving a few
bits in the header to be worth almost any price. Our basic goal is
different: to improve performance by eliminating the need to extract
information packed into odd length bit fields in the header. Below
is our first cut at such a modification.
The protocol id field is there to make further evolutionary
modifications to TCP easier. This field basically subsumes the
protocol number field contained in the IP header with a version
number. Each distinct TCP version has a different protocol id and
this field ensures that the right code is looking at the right
header. The offset field has been increased to 16 bits to support
the larger header size required, and to simplify header processing.
The code field has been extended to 16 bits to support more options.
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The source port and destination port are unchanged. The size of both
the sequence number and ACK fields have been increased to 64 bits.
The open window field has been increased to 32 bits. The checksum and
urgent data pointer fields are unchanged. The echo and echo reply
fields are added. The option field remains but can be much larger
than in the old TCP. All headers are padded out to 32 bit
boundaries. Note that these changes increase the minimum header size
from 24 bytes (actually 36 bytes if the ECHO and ECHO reply options
defined in RFC 1072 are included on every packet) to 48 bytes. The
maximum header size has been increased to the maximum segment size.
We do not believe that the the increased header size will have a
measurable effect on protocol performance.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Protocol ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Offset | Code |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source | Dest |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Seq |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Ack |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Window |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Checksum | Urgent |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Echo |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Echo Reply |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Options | Pad |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
3.1.5. Backward Compatibility
The most likely objection to the proposed TCP extension is that it is
not backward compatible with the current version of TCP, and most
importantly, TCP's header. In this section we will present three
versions of the proposed extension with increasing degrees of
backward compatibility. The final version will combine the same
degree of backward compatibility found in the protocol described in
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RFC's 1072/1185, with the much simpler semantics described in this
RFC.
We believe that the best way to preserve backward compatibility is to
leave all of TCP alone and support the transparent use of a new
protocol when and where it is needed. The basic scheme is the one
described in section 2.4. Those machines and operating systems that
need to support high speed connections should implement some general
protocol infrastructure that allows them to rapidly evolve protocols.
Machines that do not require such service simply keep using the
existing version of TCP. A virtual protocol is used to manage the use
of multiple TCP versions.
This approach has several advantages. First, it guarantees backward
compatibility with ALL existing TCP versions because such
implementations will never see strange packets with new options.
Second, it supports further modification of TCP with little
additional costs. Finally, since our version of TCP will more closely
resemble the existing TCP protocol than that proposed in RFC's
1072/1185, the cost of maintaining two simple protocols will probably
be lower than maintaining one complex protocol. (Note that with high
probability you still have to maintain two versions of TCP in any
case.) The only additional cost is the memory required for keeping
around two copies of TCP.
For those that insist that the only efficient way to implement TCP
modifications is in a single monolithic protocol, or those that
believe that the space requirements of two protocols would be too
great, we simply migrate the virtual protocol into TCP. TCP is
modified so that when opening a connection, the sender uses the TCP
VERSION option attached to the SYN packet to request using the new
version. The receiver responds with a TCP VERSION ACK in the SYN ACK
packet, after which point, the new header format described in Section
3.1.4 is used. Thus, there is only one version of TCP, but that
version supports multiple header formats. The complexity of such a
protocol would be no worse than the protocol described in RFC
1072/1185. It does, however, make it more difficult to make
additional changes to TCP.
Finally, for those that believe that the preservation of the TCP's
header format has any intrinsic value (e.g., for those that don't
want to re-program their ethernet monitors), a header compatible
version of our proposal is possible. One simply takes all of the
additional information contained in the header given in Section 3.1.4
and places it into a single optional field. Thus, one could define a
new TCP option which consists of the top 32 bits of the sequence and
ack fields, the echo and echo_reply fields, and the top 16 bits of
the window field. This modification makes it more difficult to take
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advantage of machines with 64-bit address spaces, but at a minimum
will be just as easy to process as the protocol described in RFC
1072/1185. The only restriction is that the size of the header
option field is still limited to 44 bytes, and thus, selective
retransmission using NAKs rather than ACKs will probably be required.
The key observation is that one should make a protocol extension
correct and simple before trying to make it backward compatible. As
far as we can tell, the only advantages possessed by the protocol
described in RFC 1072/1185 is that its typical header, size including
options, is 8 to 10 bytes shorter. The price for this "advantage" is
a protocol of such complexity that it may prove impossible for normal
humans to implement. Trying to maintain backward compatibility at
every stage of the protocol design process is a serious mistake.
3.2. TCP Over Extension
Another potential problem with TCP that has been discussed recently,
but has not yet resulted in the generation of an RFC, is the
potential for TCP to grab and hold all 2**16 port numbers on a given
machine. This problem is caused by short port numbers, long MSLs,
and the misuse of TCP as a request-reply protocol. TCP must hold onto
each port after a close until all possible messages to that port have
died, about 240 seconds. Even worse, this time is not decreasing with
increase network performance. With new fast hardware, it is possible
for an application to open a TCP connection, send data, get a reply,
and close the connection at a rate fast enough to use up all the
ports in less than 240 seconds. This usage pattern is generated by
people using TCP for something it was never intended to do---
guaranteeing at-most-once semantics for remote procedure calls.
The proposed solution is to embed an RPC protocol into TCP while
preserving backward compatibility. This is done by piggybacking the
request message on the SYN packet and the reply message on the SYN-
ACK packet. This approach suffers from one key problem: it reduces
the probability of a correct TCP implementation to near 0. The basic
problem has nothing to do with TCP, rather it is the lack of an
Internet request-reply protocol that guarantees at-most-once
semantics.
We propose to solve this problem by the creation of a new protocol.
This has already been attempted with VMTP, but the size and
complexity of VMTP, coupled with the process currently required to
standardize a new protocol doomed it from the start. Instead of
solving the general problem, we propose to use Sprite RPC [7], a much
simpler protocol, as a means of off-loading inappropriate users from
TCP.
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The basic design would attempt to preserve as much of the TCP
interface as possible in order that current TCP (mis)users could be
switched to Sprite RPC without requiring code modification on their
part. A virtual protocol could be used to select the correct protocol
TCP or Sprite RPC if it exists on the other machine. A backward
compatible modification to TCP could be made which would simply
prevent it from grabbing all of the ports by refusing connections.
This would encourage TCP abusers to use the new protocol.
Sprite RPC, which is designed for a local area network, has two
problems when extended into the Internet. First, it does not have a
usefully flow control algorithm. Second, it lacks the necessary
semantics to reliably tear down connections. The lack of a tear down
mechanism needs to be solved, but the flow control problem could be
dealt with in later iterations of the protocol as Internet blast
protocols are not yet well understood; for now, we could simple limit
the size of each message to 16k or 32k bytes. This might also be a
good place to use a decomposed version of Sprite RPC [2], which
exposes each of these features as separate protocols. This would
permit the quick change of algorithms, and once the protocol had
stabilized, a monolithic version could be constructed and distributed
to replace the decomposed version.
In other words, the basic strategy is to introduce as simple of RPC
protocol as possible today, and later evolve this protocol to address
the known limitations.
3.3. Future Modifications
The header prediction algorithm should be generalized so as to be
less sensitive to changes in the protocols header and algorithm.
There almost seems to be as much effort to make all modifications to
TCP backward compatible with header prediction as there is to make
them backward compatible with TCP. The question that needs to be
answered is: are there any changes we can made to TCP to make header
prediction easier, including the addition of information into the
header. In [6], the authors showed how one might generalize
optimistic blast from VMTP to almost any protocol that performs
fragmentation and reassembly. Generalizing header prediction so that
it scales with TCP modification would be step in the right direction.
It is clear that an evolutionary change to increase the size of the
source and destination ports in the TCP header will eventually be
necessary. We also believe that TCP could be made significantly
simpler and more flexible through the elimination of the pseudo-
header. The solution to this problem is to simply add a length field
and the IP address of the destination to the TCP header. It has also
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been mentioned that better and simpler TCP connection establishment
algorithms would be useful. Some form of reliable record stream
protocol should be developed. Performing sliding window and flow
control over records rather than bytes would provide numerous
opportunities for optimizations and allow TCP to return to its
original purpose as a byte-stream protocol. Finally, it has become
clear to us that the current Internet congestion control strategy is
to use TCP for everything since it is the only protocol that supports
congestion control. One of the primary reasons many "new protocols"
are proposed as TCP options is that it is the only way to get at
TCP's congestion control. At some point, a TCP-independent congestion
control scheme must be implemented and one might then be able to
remove the existing congestion control from TCP and radically
simplify the protocol.
4. Discussion
One obvious side effect of the changes we propose is to increase the
size of the TCP header. In some sense, this is inevitable; just about
every field in the header has been pushed to its limit by the radical
growth of the network. However, we have made very little effort to
make the minimal changes to solve the current problem. In fact, we
have tended to sacrifice header size in order to defer future changes
as long as possible. The problem with this is that one of TCP's
claims to fame is its efficiency at sending small one byte packets
over slow networks. Increasing the size of the TCP header will
inevitably result in some increase in overhead on small packets on
slow networks. Clark among others have stated that they see no
fundamental performance limitations that would prevent TCP from
supporting very high speed networks. This is true as far as it goes;
there seems to be a direct trade-off between TCP performance on high
speed networks and TCP performance on slow speed networks. The
dynamic range is simply too great to be optimally supported by one
protocol. Hence, in keeping around the old version of TCP we have
effectively split TCP into two protocols, one for high bandwidth
lines and the other for low bandwidth lines.
Another potential argument is that all of the changes mentioned above
should be packaged together as a new version of TCP. This version
could be standardized and we could all go back to the status quo of
stable unchanging protocols. While to a certain extent this is
inevitable---there is a backlog of necessary TCP changes because of
the current logistical problems in modifying protocols---it is only
begs the question. The status quo is simply unacceptably static;
there will always be future changes to TCP. Evolutionary change will
also result in a better and more reliable TCP. Making small changes
and distributing them at regular intervals ensures that one change
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has actually been stabilized before the next has been made. It also
presents a more balanced workload to the protocol designer; rather
than designing one new protocol every 10 years he makes annual
protocol extensions. It will also eventually make protocol
distribution easier: the basic problem with protocol distribution now
is that it is done so rarely that no one knows how to do it and there
is no incentive to develop the infrastructure needed to perform the
task efficiently. While the first protocol distribution is almost
guaranteed to be a disaster, the problem will get easier with each
additional one. Finally, such a new TCP would have the same problems
as VMTP did; a radically new protocol presents a bigger target.
The violation of backward compatibility in systems as complex as the
Internet is always a serious step. However, backward compatibility is
a technique, not a religion. Two facts are often overlooked when
backward compatibility gets out of hand. First, violating backward
compatibility is always a big win when you can get away with it. One
of the key advantages of RISC chips over CISC chips is simply that
they were not backward compatible with anything. Thus, they were not
bound by design decisions made when compilers were stupid and real
men programmed in assembler. Second, one is going to have to break
backward compatibility at some point anyway. Every system has some
headroom limitations which result in either stagnation (IBM mainframe
software) or even worse, accidental violations of backward
compatibility.
Of course, the biggest problem with our approach is that it is not
compatible with the existing standardization process. We hope to be
able to design and distribute protocols in less time than it takes a
standards committee to agree on an acceptable meeting time. This is
inevitable because the basic problem with networking is the
standardization process. Over the last several years, there has been
a push in the research community for lightweight protocols, when in
fact what is needed are lightweight standards. Also note that we
have not proposed to implement some entirely new set of "superior"
communications protocols, we have simply proposed a system for making
necessary changes to the existing protocol suites fast enough to keep
up with the underlying change in the network. In fact, the first
standards organization that realizes that the primary impediment to
standardization is poor logistical support will probably win.
5. Conclusions
The most important conclusion of this RFC is that protocol change
happens and is currently happening at a very respectable clip. While
all of the changes given as example in this document are from TCP,
there are many other protocols that require modification. In a more
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prosaic domain, the telephone company is running out of phone
numbers; they are being overrun by fax machines, modems, and cars.
The underlying cause of these problems seems to be an consistent
exponential increase almost all network metrics: number of hosts,
bandwidth, host performance, applications, and so on, combined with
an attempt to run the network with a static set of unchanging network
protocols. This has been shown to be impossible and one can almost
feel the pressure for protocol change building. We simply propose to
explicitly deal with the changes rather keep trying to hold back the
flood.
Of almost equal importance is the observation that TCP is a protocol
and not a platform for implementing other protocols. Because of a
lack of any alternatives, TCP has become a de-facto platform for
implementing other protocols. It provides a vague standard interface
with the kernel, it runs on many machines, and has a well defined
distribution path. Otherwise sane people have proposed Bounded Time
TCP (an unreliable byte stream protocol), Simplex TCP (which supports
data in only one direction) and Multi-cast TCP (too horrible to even
consider). All of these protocols probably have their uses, but not
as TCP options. The fact that a large number of people are willing to
use TCP as a protocol implementation platform points to the desperate
need for a protocol independent platform.
Finally, we point out that in our research we have found very little
difference in the actual technical work involved with the three
proposed methods of protocol modification. The amount of work
involved in a backward compatible change is often more than that
required for an evolutionary change or the creation of a new
protocol. Even the distribution costs seem to be identical. The
primary cost difference between the three approaches is the cost of
getting the modification approved. A protocol modification, no matter
how extensive or bizarre, seems to incur much less cost and risk. It
is time to stop changing the protocols to fit our current way of
thinking, and start changing our way of thinking to fit the
protocols.
6. References
[1] Cheriton D., "VMTP: Versatile Message Transaction Protocol", RFC
1045, Stanford University, February 1988.
[2] Hutchinson, N., Peterson, L., Abbott, M., and S. O'Malley, "RPC in
the x-Kernel: Evaluating New Design Techniques", Proceedings of the
12th Symposium on Operating System Principles, Pgs. 91-101,
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RFC 1263 TCP Extensions Considered Harmful October 1991
December 1989.
[3] Jacobson, V., "Congestion Avoidance and Control", SIGCOMM '88,
August 1988.
[4] Jacobson, V., and R. Braden, "TCP Extensions for Long-Delay Paths",
RFC 1072, LBL, ISI, October 1988.
[5] Jacobson, V., Braden, R., and L. Zhang, "TCP Extensions for High-
Speed Paths", RFC 1185, LBL, ISI, PARC, October 1990.
[6] O'Malley, S., Abbott, M., Hutchinson, N., and L. Peterson, "A Tran-
sparent Blast Facility", Journal of Internetworking, Vol. 1, No.
2, Pgs. 57-75, December 1990.
[7] Welch, B., "The Sprite Remote Procedure Call System", UCB/CSD
86/302, University of California at Berkeley, June 1988.
7. Security Considerations
Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
8. Authors' Addresses
Larry L. Peterson
University of Arizona
Department of Computer Sciences
Tucson, AZ 85721
Phone: (602) 621-4231
EMail: llp@cs.arizona.edu
Sean O'Malley
University of Arizona
Department of Computer Sciences
Tucson, AZ 85721
Phone: 602-621-8373
EMail: sean@cs.arizona.edu
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RFC TOTAL SIZE: 54078 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Saturday, October 19th, 1991
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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