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IETF RFC 8622
Last modified on Wednesday, June 19th, 2019
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Bless
Request for Comments: 8622 KIT
Obsoletes: 3662 June 2019
Updates: 4594, 8325
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721
A Lower-Effort Per-Hop Behavior (LE PHB) for Differentiated Services
 Abstract
This document specifies properties and characteristics of a Lower-
Effort Per-Hop Behavior (LE PHB). The primary objective of this LE
PHB is to protect Best-Effort (BE) traffic (packets forwarded with
the default PHB) from LE traffic in congestion situations, i.e., when
resources become scarce, BE traffic has precedence over LE traffic
and may preempt it. Alternatively, packets forwarded by the LE PHB
can be associated with a scavenger service class, i.e., they scavenge
otherwise-unused resources only. There are numerous uses for this
PHB, e.g., for background traffic of low precedence, such as bulk
data transfers with low priority in time, non-time-critical backups,
larger software updates, web search engines while gathering
information from web servers and so on. This document recommends a
standard Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) value for the LE
PHB.
This specification obsoletes RFC 3662 and updates the DSCP
recommended in RFCs 4594 and 8325 to use the DSCP assigned in this
specification.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8622.
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published or made publicly available before November
10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
than English.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3
2. Requirements Language ...........................................3
3. Applicability ...................................................3
4. PHB Description .................................................6
5. Traffic-Conditioning Actions ....................................7
6. Recommended DSCP ................................................7
7. Deployment Considerations .......................................8
8. Re-marking to Other DSCPs/PHBs ..................................9
9. Multicast Considerations .......................................10
10. The Updates to RFC 4594 .......................................11
11. The Updates to RFC 8325 .......................................12
12. IANA Considerations ...........................................13
13. Security Considerations .......................................14
14. References ....................................................15
14.1. Normative References .....................................15
14.2. Informative References ...................................15
Appendix A. History of the LE PHB .................................18
Acknowledgments ...................................................18
Author's Address ..................................................18
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
1. Introduction
This document defines a Differentiated Services (DS) per-hop behavior
[RFC 2474] called "Lower-Effort Per-Hop Behavior" (LE PHB), which is
intended for traffic of sufficiently low urgency that all other
traffic takes precedence over the LE traffic in consumption of
network link bandwidth. Low-urgency traffic has a low priority for
timely forwarding; note, however, that this does not necessarily
imply that it is generally of minor importance. From this viewpoint,
it can be considered as a network equivalent to a background priority
for processes in an operating system. There may or may not be memory
(buffer) resources allocated for this type of traffic.
Some networks carry packets that ought to consume network resources
only when no other traffic is demanding them. From this point of
view, packets forwarded by the LE PHB scavenge otherwise-unused
resources only; this led to the name "scavenger service" in early
Internet2 deployments (see Appendix A). Other commonly used names
for LE PHB types of services are "Lower than best effort"
[Carlberg-LBE-2001] or "Less than best effort" [Chown-LBE-2003]. In
summary, with the above-mentioned feature, the LE PHB has two
important properties: it should scavenge residual capacity, and it
must be preemptable by the default PHB (or other elevated PHBs) in
case they need more resources. Consequently, the effect of this type
of traffic on all other network traffic is strictly limited (the
"no harm" property). This is distinct from "Best-Effort" (BE)
traffic, since the network makes no commitment to deliver LE packets.
In contrast, BE traffic receives an implied "good faith" commitment
of at least some available network resources. This document proposes
an LE DS PHB for handling this "optional" traffic in a DS node.
2. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC 2119] [RFC 8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Applicability
An LE PHB is applicable for many applications that otherwise use BE
delivery. More specifically, it is suitable for traffic and services
that can tolerate strongly varying throughput for their data flows,
especially periods of very low throughput or even starvation (i.e.,
long interruptions due to significant or even complete packet loss).
Therefore, an application sending an LE-marked flow needs to be able
to tolerate short or (even very) long interruptions due to the
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
presence of severe congestion conditions during the transmission of
the flow. Thus, there ought to be an expectation that packets of the
LE PHB could be excessively delayed or dropped when any other traffic
is present. Whether or not a lack of progress is considered to be a
failure is application dependent (e.g., if a transport connection
fails due to timing out, the application may try several times to
reestablish the transport connection in order to resume the
application session before finally giving up). The LE PHB is
suitable for sending traffic of low urgency across a DS domain or DS
region.
Just like BE traffic, LE traffic SHOULD be congestion controlled
(i.e., use a congestion controlled transport or implement an
appropriate congestion control method [RFC 2914] [RFC 8085]). Since LE
traffic could be starved completely for a longer period of time,
transport protocols or applications (and their related congestion
control mechanisms) SHOULD be able to detect and react to such a
starvation situation. An appropriate reaction would be to resume the
transfer instead of aborting it, i.e., an LE-optimized transport
ought to use appropriate retry strategies (e.g., exponential back-off
with an upper bound) as well as corresponding retry and timeout
limits in order to avoid the loss of the connection due to the
above-mentioned starvation periods. While it is desirable to achieve
a quick resumption of the transfer as soon as resources become
available again, it may be difficult to achieve this in practice. In
the case of a lack of a transport protocol and congestion control
that are adapted to LE, applications can also use existing common
transport protocols and implement session resumption by trying to
reestablish failed connections. Congestion control is not only
useful for letting the flows within the LE Behavior Aggregate (BA)
adapt to the available bandwidth, which may be highly fluctuating; it
is also essential if LE traffic is mapped to the default PHB in DS
domains that do not support LE. In this case, the use of background
transport protocols, e.g., similar to Low Extra Delay Background
Transport (LEDBAT) [RFC 6817], is expedient.
The use of the LE PHB might assist a network operator in moving
certain kinds of traffic or users to off-peak times. Furthermore,
packets can be designated for the LE PHB when the goal is to protect
all other packet traffic from competition with the LE aggregate while
not completely banning LE traffic from the network. An LE PHB
SHOULD NOT be used for a customer's "normal Internet" traffic and
packets SHOULD NOT be "downgraded" to the LE PHB instead of being
dropped, particularly when the packets are unauthorized traffic. The
LE PHB is expected to have applicability in networks that have at
least some unused capacity during certain periods.
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The LE PHB allows networks to protect themselves from selected types
of traffic as a complement to giving preferential treatment to other
selected traffic aggregates. LE ought not be used for the general
case of downgraded traffic, but it could be used by design, e.g., to
protect an internal network from untrusted external traffic sources.
In this case, there is no way for attackers to preempt internal
(non-LE) traffic by flooding. Another use case in this regard is the
forwarding of multicast traffic from untrusted sources. Multicast
forwarding is currently enabled within domains only for specific
sources within a domain -- not for sources from anywhere in the
Internet. One major problem is that multicast routing creates
traffic sources at (mostly) unpredictable branching points within a
domain, potentially leading to congestion and packet loss. In the
case where multicast traffic packets from untrusted sources are
forwarded as LE traffic, they will not harm traffic from non-LE BAs.
A further related use case is mentioned in [RFC 3754]: preliminary
forwarding of non-admitted multicast traffic.
There is no intrinsic reason to limit the applicability of the LE PHB
to any particular application or type of traffic. It is intended as
an additional traffic engineering tool for network administrators.
For instance, it can be used to fill protection capacity of
transmission links that is otherwise unused. Some network providers
keep link utilization below 50% to ensure that all traffic is
forwarded without loss after rerouting caused by a link failure (cf.
Section 6 of [RFC 3439]). LE-marked traffic can utilize the normally
unused capacity and will be preempted automatically in the case of
link failure when 100% of the link capacity is required for all other
traffic. Ideally, applications mark their packets as LE traffic,
because they know the urgency of flows. Since LE traffic may be
starved for longer periods of time, it is probably less suitable for
real-time and interactive applications.
Example uses for the LE PHB:
o For traffic caused by World Wide Web search engines while they
gather information from web servers.
o For software updates or dissemination of new releases of operating
systems.
o For reporting errors or telemetry data from operating systems or
applications.
o For backup traffic, non-time-critical synchronization, or
mirroring traffic.
o For content distribution transfers between caches.
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
o For preloading or prefetching objects from web sites.
o For network news and other "bulk mail" of the Internet.
o For "downgraded" traffic from some other PHB when this does not
violate the operational objectives of the other PHB.
o For multicast traffic from untrusted (e.g., non-local) sources.
4. PHB Description
The LE PHB is defined in relation to the default PHB (BE). A packet
forwarded with the LE PHB SHOULD have lower precedence than packets
forwarded with the default PHB, i.e., in the case of congestion,
LE-marked traffic SHOULD be dropped prior to dropping any default PHB
traffic. Ideally, LE packets would be forwarded only when no packet
with any other PHB is awaiting transmission. This means that in the
case of link resource contention LE traffic can be starved
completely, which may not always be desired by the network operator's
policy. A scheduler used to implement the LE PHB may reflect this
policy accordingly.
A straightforward implementation could be a simple priority scheduler
serving the default PHB queue with higher priority than the LE PHB
queue. Alternative implementations may use scheduling algorithms
that assign a very small weight to the LE class. This, however,
could sometimes cause better service for LE packets compared to BE
packets in cases when the BE share is fully utilized and the LE share
is not.
If a dedicated LE queue is not available, an active queue management
mechanism within a common BE/LE queue could also be used. This could
drop all arriving LE packets as soon as certain queue length or
sojourn time thresholds are exceeded.
Since congestion control is also useful within the LE traffic class,
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) [RFC 3168] SHOULD be used for
LE packets, too. More specifically, an LE implementation SHOULD also
apply Congestion Experienced (CE) marking for ECT-marked packets
("ECT" stands for ECN-Capable Transport), and transport protocols
used for LE SHOULD support and employ ECN. For more information on
the benefits of using ECN, see [RFC 8087].
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5. Traffic-Conditioning Actions
If possible, packets SHOULD be pre-marked in DS-aware end systems by
applications due to their specific knowledge about the particular
precedence of packets. There is no incentive for DS domains to
distrust this initial marking, because letting LE traffic enter a DS
domain causes no harm. Thus, any policing, such as limiting the rate
of LE traffic, is not necessary at the DS boundary.
As for most other PHBs, an initial classification and marking can
also be performed at the first DS boundary node according to the DS
domain's own policies (e.g., as a protection measure against
untrusted sources). However, non-LE traffic (e.g., BE traffic)
SHOULD NOT be re-marked to LE. Re-marking traffic from another PHB
results in that traffic being "downgraded". This changes the way the
network treats this traffic, and it is important not to violate the
operational objectives of the original PHB. See Sections 3 and 8 for
notes related to downgrading.
6. Recommended DSCP
The RECOMMENDED codepoint for the LE PHB is '000001'.
Earlier specifications (e.g., [RFC 4594]) recommended the use of Class
Selector 1 (CS1) as the codepoint (as mentioned in [RFC 3662]). This
is problematic, since it may cause a priority inversion in Diffserv
domains that treat CS1 as originally proposed in [RFC 2474], resulting
in forwarding LE packets with higher precedence than BE packets.
Existing implementations SHOULD transition to use the unambiguous LE
codepoint '000001' whenever possible.
This particular codepoint was chosen due to measurements on the
currently observable Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP)
re-marking behavior in the Internet [IETF99-Secchi]. Since some
network domains set the former IP Precedence bits to zero, it is
possible that some other standardized DSCPs get mapped to the LE PHB
DSCP if it were taken from the DSCP Standards Action Pool 1 (xxxxx0)
[RFC 2474] [RFC 8436].
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
7. Deployment Considerations
In order to enable LE support, DS nodes typically only need
o A BA classifier (see [RFC 2475]) that classifies packets according
to the LE DSCP
o A dedicated LE queue
o A suitable scheduling discipline, e.g., simple priority queueing
Alternatively, implementations could use active queue management
mechanisms instead of a dedicated LE queue, e.g., dropping all
arriving LE packets when certain queue length or sojourn time
thresholds are exceeded.
Internet-wide deployment of the LE PHB is eased by the following
properties:
o No harm to other traffic: since the LE PHB has the lowest
forwarding priority, it does not consume resources from other
PHBs. Deployment across different provider domains with LE
support causes no trust issues or attack vectors to existing
(non-LE) traffic. Thus, providers can trust LE markings from
end systems, i.e., there is no need to police or re-mark incoming
LE traffic.
o No PHB parameters or configuration of traffic profiles: the LE PHB
itself possesses no parameters that need to be set or configured.
Similarly, since LE traffic requires no admission or policing, it
is not necessary to configure traffic profiles.
o No traffic-conditioning mechanisms: the LE PHB requires no traffic
meters, droppers, or shapers. See also Section 5 for further
discussion.
Operators of DS domains that cannot or do not want to implement the
LE PHB (e.g., because there is no separate LE queue available in the
corresponding nodes) SHOULD NOT drop packets marked with the LE DSCP.
They SHOULD map packets with this DSCP to the default PHB and SHOULD
preserve the LE DSCP marking. DS domain operators that do not
implement the LE PHB should be aware that they violate the "no harm"
property of LE. See also Section 8 for further discussion of
forwarding LE traffic with the default PHB instead of the LE PHB.
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8. Re-marking to Other DSCPs/PHBs
"DSCP bleaching", i.e., setting the DSCP to '000000' (default PHB) is
NOT RECOMMENDED for this PHB. This may cause effects that are in
contrast to the original intent to protect BE traffic from LE traffic
(the "no harm" property). In the case that a DS domain does not
support the LE PHB, its nodes SHOULD treat LE-marked packets with the
default PHB instead (by mapping the LE DSCP to the default PHB), but
they SHOULD do so without re-marking to DSCP '000000'. This is
because DS domains that are traversed later may then still have the
opportunity to treat such packets according to the LE PHB.
Operators of DS domains that forward LE traffic within the BE
aggregate need to be aware of the implications, i.e., induced
congestion situations and QoS degradation of the original BE traffic.
In this case, the LE property of not harming other traffic is no
longer fulfilled. To limit the impact in such cases, traffic
policing of the LE aggregate MAY be used.
In the case that LE-marked packets are effectively carried with the
default PHB (i.e., forwarded as BE traffic), they get a better
forwarding treatment than expected. For some applications and
services, it is favorable if the transmission is finished earlier
than expected. However, in some cases, it may be against the
original intention of the LE PHB user to strictly send the traffic
only if otherwise-unused resources are available. In the case that
LE traffic is mapped to the default PHB, LE traffic may compete with
BE traffic for the same resources and thus adversely affect the
original BE aggregate. Applications that want to ensure the lower
precedence compared to BE traffic even in such cases SHOULD
additionally use a corresponding lower-than-BE transport protocol
[RFC 6297], e.g., LEDBAT [RFC 6817].
A DS domain that still uses DSCP CS1 for marking LE traffic
(including Low-Priority Data as defined in [RFC 4594] or the old
definition in [RFC 3662]) SHOULD re-mark traffic to the LE DSCP
'000001' at the egress to the next DS domain. This increases the
probability that the DSCP is preserved end to end, whereas a
CS1-marked packet may be re-marked by the default DSCP if the next
domain is applying Diffserv-Interconnection [RFC 8100].
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
9. Multicast Considerations
Basically, the multicast considerations in [RFC 3754] apply. However,
using the LE PHB for multicast requires paying special attention to
how packets get replicated inside routers. Due to multicast packet
replication, resource contention may actually occur even before a
packet is forwarded to its output port. In the worst case, these
forwarding resources are missing for higher-priority multicast or
even unicast packets.
Several forward error correction coding schemes, such as fountain
codes (e.g., [RFC 5053]), allow reliable data delivery even in
environments with a potentially high amount of packet loss in
transmission. When used, for example, over satellite links or other
broadcast media, this means that receivers that lose 80% of packets
in transmission simply need five times longer to receive the complete
data than those receivers experiencing no loss (without any receiver
feedback required).
Superficially viewed, it may sound very attractive to use IP
multicast with the LE PHB to build this type of opportunistic
reliable distribution in IP networks, but it can only be usefully
deployed with routers that do not experience forwarding/replication
resource starvation when a large amount of packets (virtually) need
to be replicated to links where the LE queue is full.
Thus, a packet replication mechanism for LE-marked packets should
consider the situation at the respective output links: it is a waste
of internal forwarding resources if a packet is replicated to output
links that have no resources left for LE forwarding. In those cases,
a packet would have been replicated just to be dropped immediately
after finding a filled LE queue at the respective output port. Such
behavior could be avoided -- for example, by using a conditional
internal packet replication: a packet would then only be replicated
in cases where the output link is not fully used. This conditional
replication, however, is probably not widely implemented.
While the resource contention problem caused by multicast packet
replication is also true for other Diffserv PHBs, LE forwarding is
special, because often it is assumed that LE packets only get
forwarded in the case of available resources at the output ports.
The previously mentioned redundancy data traffic could suitably use
the varying available residual bandwidth being utilized by the LE
PHB, but only if the specific requirements stated above for
conditional replication in the internal implementation of the network
devices are considered.
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
10. The Updates to RFC 4594
[RFC 4594] recommended the use of CS1 as the codepoint in its
Section 4.10, whereas CS1 was defined in [RFC 2474] to have a higher
precedence than CS0, i.e., the default PHB. Consequently, Diffserv
domains implementing CS1 according to [RFC 2474] will cause a priority
inversion for LE packets that contradicts the original purpose of LE.
Therefore, every occurrence of the CS1 DSCP is replaced by the
LE DSCP.
Changes:
o This update to RFC 4594 removes the following entry from its
Figure 3:
|---------------+---------+-------------+--------------------------|
| Low-Priority | CS1 | 001000 | Any flow that has no BW |
| Data | | | assurance |
------------------------------------------------------------------
and replaces it with the following entry:
|---------------+---------+-------------+--------------------------|
| Low-Priority | LE | 000001 | Any flow that has no BW |
| Data | | | assurance |
------------------------------------------------------------------
o This update to RFC 4594 extends the Notes text below Figure 3 that
currently states "Notes for Figure 3: Default Forwarding (DF) and
Class Selector 0 (CS0) provide equivalent behavior and use the
same DS codepoint, '000000'." to state "Notes for Figure 3:
Default Forwarding (DF) and Class Selector 0 (CS0) provide
equivalent behavior and use the same DSCP, '000000'. The prior
recommendation to use the CS1 DSCP for Low-Priority Data has been
replaced by the current recommendation to use the LE DSCP,
'000001'."
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
o This update to RFC 4594 removes the following entry from its
Figure 4:
|---------------+------+-------------------+---------+--------+----|
| Low-Priority | CS1 | Not applicable | RFC 3662 | Rate | Yes|
| Data | | | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------
and replaces it with the following entry:
|---------------+------+-------------------+----------+--------+----|
| Low-Priority | LE | Not applicable | RFC 8622 | Rate | Yes|
| Data | | | | | |
-------------------------------------------------------------------
o Section 2.3 of [RFC 4594] specifies the following: "In network
segments that use IP precedence marking, only one of the two
service classes can be supported, High-Throughput Data or
Low-Priority Data. We RECOMMEND that the DSCP value(s) of the
unsupported service class be changed to 000xx1 on ingress and
changed back to original value(s) on egress of the network segment
that uses precedence marking. For example, if Low-Priority Data
is mapped to Standard service class, then 000001 DSCP marking MAY
be used to distinguish it from Standard marked packets on egress."
This document removes this recommendation, because by using the LE
DSCP defined herein, such re-marking is not necessary. So, even
if Low-Priority Data is unsupported (i.e., mapped to the default
PHB), the LE DSCP should be kept across the domain as RECOMMENDED
in Section 8. That removed text is replaced by the following: "In
network segments that use IP Precedence marking, the Low-Priority
Data service class receives the same Diffserv QoS as the Standard
service class when the LE DSCP is used for Low-Priority Data
traffic. This is acceptable behavior for the Low-Priority Data
service class, although it is not the preferred behavior."
o This document removes the following line in Section 4.10 of
RFC 4594: "The RECOMMENDED DSCP marking is CS1 (Class
Selector 1)." and replaces it with the following text:
"The RECOMMENDED DSCP marking is LE (Lower Effort), which replaces
the prior recommendation for CS1 (Class Selector 1) marking."
11. The Updates to RFC 8325
Section 4.2.10 of RFC 8325 [RFC 8325] specifies that "[RFC 3662] and
[RFC 4594] both recommend Low-Priority Data be marked CS1 DSCP." This
is updated to "[RFC 3662] recommends that Low-Priority Data be marked
CS1 DSCP. [RFC 4594], as updated by RFC 8622, recommends that
Low-Priority Data be marked LE DSCP."
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
This document removes the following paragraph in Section 4.2.10 of
[RFC 8325], because this document makes the anticipated change: "Note:
This marking recommendation may change in the future, as [LE-PHB]
defines a Lower Effort (LE) PHB for Low-Priority Data traffic and
recommends an additional DSCP for this traffic."
Section 4.2.10 of RFC 8325 [RFC 8325] specifies that "therefore, it is
RECOMMENDED to map Low-Priority Data traffic marked CS1 DSCP to
UP 1", which is updated to "therefore, it is RECOMMENDED to map
Low-Priority Data traffic marked with LE DSCP or legacy CS1 DSCP
to UP 1".
This update to RFC 8325 replaces the following entry from its
Figure 1:
+---------------+------+----------+------------+--------------------+
| Low-Priority | CS1 | RFC 3662 | 1 | AC_BK (Background) |
| Data | | | | |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
with the following entries:
+---------------+------+----------+------------+--------------------+
| Low-Priority | LE | RFC 8622 | 1 | AC_BK (Background) |
| Data | | | | |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Low-Priority | CS1 | RFC 3662 | 1 | AC_BK (Background) |
| Data (legacy) | | | | |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
12. IANA Considerations
This document assigns the Differentiated Services Field Codepoint
(DSCP) '000001' from the "Differentiated Services Field Codepoints
(DSCP)" registry (https://www.iana.org/assignments/dscp-registry/)
("DSCP Pool 3 Codepoints", Codepoint Space xxxx01, Standards Action)
[RFC 8126] to the LE PHB. This document uses a DSCP from Pool 3 in
order to avoid problems for other PHB-marked flows, where they could
become accidentally re-marked as LE PHB, e.g., due to partial DSCP
bleaching. See [RFC 8436] regarding reclassifying Pool 3 for
Standards Action.
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IANA has updated this registry as follows:
o Name: LE
o Value (Binary): 000001
o Value (Decimal): 1
o Reference: RFC 8622
13. Security Considerations
There are no specific security exposures for this PHB. Since it
defines a new class that is of low forwarding priority, re-marking
other traffic as LE traffic may lead to QoS degradation of such
traffic. Thus, any attacker that is able to modify the DSCP of a
packet to LE may carry out a downgrade attack. See the general
security considerations in [RFC 2474] and [RFC 2475].
With respect to privacy, an attacker could use the information from
the DSCP to infer that the transferred (probably even encrypted)
content is considered of low priority or low urgency by a user if the
DSCP was set per the user's request. On the one hand, this disclosed
information is useful only if correlation with metadata (such as the
user's IP address) and/or other flows reveal a user's identity. On
the other hand, it might help an observer (e.g., a state-level actor)
who is interested in learning about the user's behavior from observed
traffic: LE-marked background traffic (such as software downloads,
operating system updates, or telemetry data) may be less interesting
for surveillance than general web traffic. Therefore, the LE marking
may help the observer to focus on potentially more interesting
traffic (however, the user may exploit this particular assumption and
deliberately hide interesting traffic in the LE aggregate). Apart
from such considerations, the impact of disclosed information by the
LE DSCP is likely negligible in most cases, given the numerous
traffic analysis possibilities and general privacy threats (e.g., see
[RFC 6973]).
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14. References
14.1. Normative References
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2119>.
[RFC 2474] Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black,
"Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2474, December 1998,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2474>.
[RFC 2475] Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.,
and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
Services", RFC 2475, DOI 10.17487/RFC 2475, December 1998,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2475>.
[RFC 8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in
RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8174, May 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8174>.
14.2. Informative References
[Carlberg-LBE-2001]
Carlberg, K., Gevros, P., and J. Crowcroft, "Lower than
best effort: a design and implementation", ACM SIGCOMM
Computer Communication Review, Volume 31 Issue 2
supplement, DOI 10.1145/844193.844208, April 2001,
<https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=844193.844208>.
[Chown-LBE-2003]
Chown, T., Ferrari, T., Leinen, S., Sabatino, R., Simar,
N., and S. Venaas, "Less than Best Effort: Application
Scenarios and Experimental Results", Proceedings of the
Second International Workshop on Quality of Service in
Multiservice IP Networks (QoS-IP 2003), Lecture Notes in
Computer Science, vol 2601, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg,
Pages 131-144, DOI 10.1007/3-540-36480-3_10,
February 2003, <https://link.springer.com/chapter/
10.1007%2F3-540-36480-3_10>.
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
[Diffserv-LBE-PHB]
Bless, R. and K. Wehrle, "A Lower Than Best-Effort
Per-Hop Behavior", Work in Progress,
draft-bless-diffserv-lbe-phb-00, September 1999.
[IETF99-Secchi]
Secchi, R., Venne, A., and A. Custura, "Measurements
concerning the DSCP for a LE PHB", Presentation held at
the 99th IETF Meeting, TSVWG, Prague, July 2017,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/99/materials/
slides-99-tsvwg-sessb-31measurements-concerning-
the-dscp-for-a-le-phb-00>.
[RFC 2914] Floyd, S., "Congestion Control Principles", BCP 41,
RFC 2914, DOI 10.17487/RFC 2914, September 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2914>.
[RFC 3168] Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S., and D. Black, "The Addition
of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP",
RFC 3168, DOI 10.17487/RFC 3168, September 2001,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3168>.
[RFC 3439] Bush, R. and D. Meyer, "Some Internet Architectural
Guidelines and Philosophy", RFC 3439,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 3439, December 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3439>.
[RFC 3662] Bless, R., Nichols, K., and K. Wehrle, "A Lower Effort
Per-Domain Behavior (PDB) for Differentiated Services",
RFC 3662, DOI 10.17487/RFC 3662, December 2003,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3662>.
[RFC 3754] Bless, R. and K. Wehrle, "IP Multicast in Differentiated
Services (DS) Networks", RFC 3754, DOI 10.17487/RFC 3754,
April 2004, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3754>.
[RFC 4594] Babiarz, J., Chan, K., and F. Baker, "Configuration
Guidelines for DiffServ Service Classes", RFC 4594,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 4594, August 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 4594>.
[RFC 5053] Luby, M., Shokrollahi, A., Watson, M., and T. Stockhammer,
"Raptor Forward Error Correction Scheme for Object
Delivery", RFC 5053, DOI 10.17487/RFC 5053, October 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5053>.
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
[RFC 6297] Welzl, M. and D. Ros, "A Survey of Lower-than-Best-Effort
Transport Protocols", RFC 6297, DOI 10.17487/RFC 6297,
June 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6297>.
[RFC 6817] Shalunov, S., Hazel, G., Iyengar, J., and M. Kuehlewind,
"Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT)", RFC 6817,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6817, December 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6817>.
[RFC 6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6973, July 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6973>.
[RFC 8085] Eggert, L., Fairhurst, G., and G. Shepherd, "UDP Usage
Guidelines", BCP 145, RFC 8085, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8085,
March 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8085>.
[RFC 8087] Fairhurst, G. and M. Welzl, "The Benefits of Using
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)", RFC 8087,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8087, March 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8087>.
[RFC 8100] Geib, R., Ed. and D. Black, "Diffserv-Interconnection
Classes and Practice", RFC 8100, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8100,
March 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8100>.
[RFC 8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8126>.
[RFC 8325] Szigeti, T., Henry, J., and F. Baker, "Mapping Diffserv to
IEEE 802.11", RFC 8325, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8325,
February 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8325>.
[RFC 8436] Fairhurst, G., "Update to IANA Registration Procedures for
Pool 3 Values in the Differentiated Services Field
Codepoints (DSCP) Registry", RFC 8436,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8436, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8436>.
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RFC 8622 Lower-Effort PHB June 2019
Appendix A. History of the LE PHB
A first draft version of this PHB was suggested by Roland Bless and
Klaus Wehrle in September 1999 [Diffserv-LBE-PHB], named "A Lower
Than Best-Effort Per-Hop Behavior". After some discussion in the
Diffserv Working Group, Brian Carpenter and Kathie Nichols proposed a
"bulk handling" per-domain behavior and believed a PHB was not
necessary. Eventually, "Lower Effort" was specified as per-domain
behavior and finally became [RFC 3662]. More detailed information
about its history can be found in Section 10 of [RFC 3662].
There are several other names in use for this type of PHB or
associated service classes. Well known is the QBone Scavenger
Service (QBSS) that was proposed in March 2001 within the Internet2
QoS Working Group. Alternative names are "Lower than best effort"
[Carlberg-LBE-2001] or "Less than best effort" [Chown-LBE-2003].
Acknowledgments
Since text is partially borrowed from earlier Internet-Drafts and
RFCs, the coauthors of previous specifications are acknowledged here:
Kathie Nichols and Klaus Wehrle. David Black, Olivier Bonaventure,
Spencer Dawkins, Toerless Eckert, Gorry Fairhurst, Ruediger Geib, and
Kyle Rose provided helpful comments and (partially also text)
suggestions.
Author's Address
Roland Bless
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Institute of Telematics (TM)
Kaiserstr. 12
Karlsruhe 76131
Germany
Phone: +49 721 608 46413
Email: roland.bless@kit.edu
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RFC TOTAL SIZE: 43548 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Wednesday, June 19th, 2019
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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