Subject: December Intserv Meeting minutes

From: John Wroclawski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 02:54:25 -0500

Folks,

Enclosed below are minutes of the intserv WG meeting at the December IETF.
These minutes, as well as slides from the presentations given at the
meeting (in PDF, Postscript, and sometimes PowerPoint formats), are also
available at:

http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40

(as a side note, the problems that were making this webserver unreliable
should  be fixed now...)

cheers,
-john w.

Minutes of the INTSERV WG Meeting
40th IETF, Washington DC, USA
Monday 9:30-11:30

Meeting notes by Rob Cheng and Allison Mankin, thanks! Edited by John W.

John Wroclawski began the meeting with a brief presentation of the agenda
and proposed goals.

Goals of the meeting:

1) Understand what problem or problems each proposal is trying to solve.

   - Internal Class of Traffic preference within an ISP
   - Customer QoS Control (end-to-end, end-to-middle, access link)
   - Int-Serv/RSVP Aggregation & Scaling
   - Hierarchical Coding Support (audio/video)

2) Understand areas of commonality & disagreement in the proposals

3) Work towards agreement on a plan for moving forward

Agenda:
    - Presentations from:
        Dave Clark (for himself, Kathie Nichols, Lixia Zhang, and Van Jacobson)
        Paul Ferguson
        Juha Heinanen
        Jean-Yves Le Boudec
        Zheng Wang
        Kilkki Kalevi
        Steven Blake

	Speakers were asked to describe what they thought should be done
	now, what might be done later, and what was not necessary, as well
	as describing their own proposals.

    - Discussion

- Presentation by Dave Clark
  "A combined approach to Differential Service in the Internet"

Slides from Dave's presentation are available at

    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/ddc_is_dec97.pdf
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/ddc_is_dec97.ps
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/ddc_is_dec97.ppt

Notes from Dave's talk:

Goal of talk is to describe a framework that can help distinguish between
_mechanisms_ in the routers and the range of _application_services_ that
can be built from them.  Specifically, describe a combination of the two
schemes ("Van's" & "Dave's").  Bottom line: they can be used together.

Proposal for action:  Identify & agree on some _mechanism_ (routers & hosts)
   - criteria: general, implementable
   - specific proposals
   - standards track RFC
   - informational RFCs (illustrations)
   - how to use bits (standards)

Definitions:

What is inside the box (router/host) is called a _mechanism_; the mechanism
has a specific (hop-by-hop) _behavior_.  The user of the network (could be
an end-user or a subsidiary network) obtains an (end-to-end) _service_,
which can be obtained by using the mechanisms following certain _rules_.

Mechanisms can operate, and rules can apply, at several places within the
network:

1) router:  mechanism controls scheduling during congestion.
2) boundaries between networks: mechanism verifies usage patterns, tags,
   shapes, logs, enforces rules.
3) end nodes: generate/sink traffic, mark traffic according to profile

Two points:
1) The (hop-by-hop) _behavior_ of the mechanism is NOT the same as the
   (end-to-end)_service_ given to the user.
2) User-visible services are NOT the ONLY objective (e.g. network mgmt.)

Idea/concept:  Profile meters at the edge, inside a network cloud no checking.

Specifics - some examples of using mechanisms according to rules to obtain a
service:

Router		Profile Meter		Resulting Service

Q w/ higher	Token buffer w/		Emulate fixed capacity
priority	constant rate		circuit (not same as the
(Van)		output			mechanism)

Q w/ RIO	Tags packets		Allocated capacity profiles
dropper		In/Out based on
(Dave)		Profile

Same		Host tagging of		Application-controlled
		hierarchical video	drop preference

Same		Classification
		based on		Favoring of selected traffic
		addresses		during overloag (not e-2-e,
					but local intra-ISP management)

(note the last three service examples result from different use of the
 same mechanism)

Conclusion for mechanisms:
   - the two mechanisms can both be used to do useful things.
   - there is demand for services that can be built from either
   - so put in both

Point: Need to more tightly specify a per-hop mechanism, in order to build
a _range_ of services from it.  Might be able to be less specific if the
mechanism is only to be used to provide one service, but that is not
(Dave's) goal.

(ed: a later discussion spent some time on the distinction between
mechanism and behavior; and whether it was possible to sufficiently tightly
specify a behavior in a mechanism-independent way.)

Multiple roles of traffic meters:
   - meter & router mechanisms work in concert to provide service
   - meters enforce rules (diff. rules at diff. parts of the network)
   - meters between providers may not need to care about appl. specific
        issues (edge will take care of it)

Two views of how to use bits in packet headers:
1) bits describe some end-to-end goal (e.g. "lower delay")
2) bits _select_ or _control_ per-hop mechanism(s) used as building
   blocks. (Dave's proposal)

   ADVANTAGES of 2)
   - many more possible end-to-end services than per-hop mechanisms -> it's
     more flexible if don't assign bits to services
   - new services implemented all the time; don't want to standardize each
   - don't want/need to know the service in the "middle" of the net if the
     mechanism is working properly

   DISADVANTAGES of 2)
   - if network is very heterogeneous, may want to build the e2e service
     using different mechanisms at different points (in which case it would
     be useful for arbitrary boxes in the middle of the network to know
     what -service- the packet was receiving, so it could choose the right
     mechanism.  Otherwise, service info must be carried some other way in
     this case.)
   - some end-to-end goals (services) may be so universal that it would
     be efficient/helpful to reserve a bit-pattern to identify them.

"Aggregate & Forward" instead of "Segregate & Bill" model.

Framework:
   - mechanism selection (priority queue, RIO queue, others)
     per-packet control over what mechanism does (priority routing for
     priority queue, appl. control (in-out bit) for RIO queue)
   - use TOS value to select mechanism; TOS bits _may_ change in the
     middle of the network
   - 1 level of descrimination (packet control of the mechanism) probably
     sufficient (In/Out); more bits may be useful in certain contexts, such
     as a military net where load could be shed in stages.

- Presentation by Paul Ferguson
  "Simple Differential Services: IP ToS and Precedence, Delay Indication,
   and Drop Preference"

Slides from Paul's presentation are available at

    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/pf_is_dec97.pdf
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/pf_is_dec97.ps
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/pf_is_dec97.ppt

Notes from Paul's Talk:

- High-level message is that we need something simple and easy to solve the
  near-term problem.

- we should focus on the _semantics_ of the TOS, IP Precendence fields.
  (implementation details at upper level - RIO, weighted RED, Flow Red,...
   should be saved for FUTURE discussion...maybe leave it to vendors?)

- existing semantics: RFCs 701(IP Prec), 1349(TOS)  (not used)
   - new semantics suggested in (Paul's) draft
     (draft-ferguson-delay-drop-00.txt)
   - IP Precedence: encodes packet's drop preference
   - TOS: encodes packet's delay sensitivity
   - Minimized encoding w/ 2 bits possible

- how drop preference might be used:
   - Pkt is marked (by either end system or 1st hop router)
   - Class granularity is fairly robust
   - actual implementation of preferential drop may be a done using a
     number of diff. mechanisms (work out implementation details later)

   Again, define the SEMANTICS, not the implementation details!

- how delay might be used:
   - Pkt is marked
   - Delay class -> CBQ queue
   - Delay indication provides NO a priori knowledge of e-2-e delay, jitter,
     etc.
   - soft suggestions on how to handle delay sensitive and non delay
     sensitive traffic at intermediate nodes.

- what problems should we be trying to solve?
   - SIMPLE traffic differentiation
   - SEMANTICS which interoperate even if different mechanisms are used to
     implement them in different routers, etc.
   - SCALEABLE mechanism

- work on NOW:
   - bit semantics (allow implementors to deal w/ mechanisms and mapping to
     service discipline)

- work on LATER:
   - explicit e-2-e signalling?
   - RSVP/Diffserv. internetworking?
   - Controlling non-adaptive flows

- OUT OF SCOPE:
   - "creeping featurism"
   - "convoluted complexity"
   - modification of existing transport protocols
   - explicit e-2-e signalling?

- Questions Paul would like to raise for discussion:
   - Does ECN really provide any intrinsic value?
   - is BW brokering worthwhile?  overly complex?  realistic in short-term?
   - will flow-based semantics scale?
   - is "lightweight" RSVP really needed?

- Presentation by Juha Heinanen
  "Use of the IPv4 ToS Octet to Support Differential Services"

Slides from Juha's presentation are available at

    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/jh_is_dec97.pdf
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/jh_is_dec97.ps
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/jh_is_dec97.ppt

Notes from Juha's Talk:

Problem:  ISP Requirements
   - provide customer some _minimum_guarantees_
      - delay insensitive
      - delay sensitive
   - customer should be able to indicate "importance" of packets, and, if
     available (net lightly loaded), get more than the minimum BW, BOTH
     for delay insensitive AND delay sensitive traffic.

What should be standardized?
   - what _Types of Service_ are to be supported?
   - how many levels of drop preference are needed to indicate
     packet importance within a Type of Service

Proposal:
   - 2 TOS's:
      - assured normal delay (Dave's)
      - assured low delay (Van's)
   - start with 2 levels of drop preference (In/Out)

Possible Extensions:
   - more Types of Service (premium? network control?)
   - relationship between low delay assured service and premium service?
   - mechanism vs. services?
   - more levels of drop pref?
   - other uses of the TOS octet are OUT OF SCOPE.
     (e.g., ECN is a transport issue)

- Presentation by Jean-Yves Le Boudec
  "Scalable Reservation Protocol"

Slides from Jean-Yves' presentation are available at

    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/jyb_is_dec97.pdf
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/jyb_is_dec97.ps

Notes from Jean-Yves' talk:

OBJECTIVE: _Scaleable_ Reservations (no per-flow state info. in routers)

SRP offers "sticky network" service, best effort -> reservations may fail

Four key technical features:
1) routers keep track of _total resources reserved_ only.
2) routers learn about reservations "on the fly"
3) *end systems cooperate*
4) no out-of-band signalling

Protocol uses packets of 3 types (2 bits needed in header):
   - REQUEST
   - RESERVED
   - BEST-EFFORT

How does it work?
   - sources of reserved-resource traffic can send REQ pkts to request
     reservation or RES packets if reservation is in place. Source learns
	 that reservation is in place from destination; see below.
   - routers may discard/downgrade REQ but not RES pkts
   - receiver observes sucessful transmission rate, reports to source
   - source can then send RESERVED packets at rate given by receiver.
     (may use traffic shaping to do this)
   - routers, etc use measurement based admission control.

- Estimation method for resource usage given in slides

- SRP Requires trusted end-system behavior (but is first-hop router policing
  and verification possible?)

- Presentation by Zheng Wang
  "Scaleable Service Allocation for the Internet"

Slides from Zheng's presentation are available at

    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/zw_is_dec97.pdf
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/zw_is_dec97.ps

Problems with current Internet:
   - Best Effort
   - No isolation
   - Encourages greedy behavior
   - Difficult to quantify services

Problems w/ per-session reservations
- accounting and inter-ISP settlements not ready yet
- per-session reservation not useful/practical for all apps
- traffic characterization is HARD
- administrative overhead is important
- fine granularity (RSVP 5-tuple) means complexity

diff-serv "in between" best effort and per-session reservations
(BE: no isolation, DS: aggregated resource management,
Per-session reservation: per flow isolation)

What are we trying to achieve?
- traffic isolation at a scaleable granularity
- long-term service allocation for aggregated traffic
- start with intra-domain protocols/mechanisms, expand to interdomain

Important Questions:
- diff-services over single path (specific endpoints), or anywhere in ISP?
- strict or adaptive profile?
- edge or bottleneck profile? (control resource usage at edge or
bottleneck?)

Problems w/ single profile-based tagging:  edge control
- don't know where the flow is going - what if many go to the same place?
- what about reverse-path traffic (destination based control)

Zheng's proposal: User-Share Based Differential service
    You can buy
       - a slice of a link
       - a virtual ISP
	You get (contract)
	   - Guaranteed minimum bw over a specific path or anywhere within ISP.
	   - Proportional sharing of excess bw.
    System considers two things:
       - ID of user (who)
       - Size of slice

    Application/user can select policy, packet preference within share

    Deployment
       - proportional share scheduling: Deficit round-robin or similar
	     mechanism: O(1) Complexity, well understood
       - distribution of user share information (static, long-time-scale)
	     use SNMP or other network management capability, at least to
start.
       - fully incremental deployment is practical

- Presentation by Kilkki Kalevi
  "Why Should we Reserve Three Bits for Drop Preference"

Slides from Killki's presentation are available at

    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/kk_is_dec97.pdf
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/kk_is_dec97.ps
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/kk_is_dec97.ppt

Notes from Killki's talk:

Goals of Diffserv work:
    - avoid resource reservation
    - scalable (but he said speed, not size)
    - support range of services
      best effort, guaranteed, realtime, not, connectionless and
      connectionoriented flows
    - smooth evolution

Why 3-bits for drop preference?
3 DP bits
   - Is NOT an appendage to system w/ RSVP, guaranteed, controlled load, and
     Best Effort
   - Does not directly map into packet loss priorities. (Does NOT mean
     that ISP tries to offer 8 different services with different loss
	 probabilities).

   - is instead a TOOL for network operator to implement featuers
      (lower level mechanisms)
        - no need to keep trak of flows in network node, becuase
information is
          in every packet
        - with delay bits, makes it possible to integrate real-time
		  and non-real-time services.
        - more dynamics for traffic variation than one DP bit.

3 bits: granularity, flexibility, dynamics, scalability
        avoids need for signalling/reservations

- Presentation by Steven Blake
  "Packet Marking"

Slides from Steven's presentation are available at

    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/sb_is_dec97.pdf
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/sb_is_dec97.ps
    http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/IETF40/sb_is_dec97.ppt

Notes from Steven's talk:

Model is services implemented by components:
    - traffic profile (profile meter)
    - router mechanisms
    - admission control (for diffserv, must consider -scope- of assurance)
    - host congestion control

Intserv and Diffserv differ in service allocation policy:
    Intserv/RSVP
        dynamic
        immediate
        hop-by-hop
    Diffserv
        static
        long-term
        domain-wide

   (sees this as an artifact of lack of customer signalling, not necessariliy
    need for aggregation of state.)

Service assurance
    level of assurance possible is dependent on stat-mux gain that allocator
	is trying to achieve
        - dependent on timescale
        - dependent on space scale (explicit path vs domain-wide)

    Static, domain-wide services must be conservatively allocated (for high
    assurance) because of lack of knowledge

    Dynamic or destination specific services can be allocated more agressively

	Level/degree of connectivity/service for NON assured/premium traffic
	important (deliver user's expectation for BE service)

Evolution
    hypothesis 1 - wide range of allocation time/space scales will be
    needed, offered)

    hypothesis 2 - packing efficiency can be imprioved if resources are
    explicitly provisioned for each time-pace allocation (i think this
    means that if you use whatever detailed information is available you
    can pack better)

    conclusion - router differentation model should evolve to a variant of
    class-based queueing.
      - hierarchy of bandwidth and sharing models
      - providing minimal assured resources for each tier.

This was the last presentation. The meeting moved to discussion. As a
discussion starter, John Wroclawski presented a strawman proposal for a
work plan and timeline for moving forward:

++ Now)

Start work from the model of bits in the packet header selecting a queueing
mechanism (or "action" or "behavior") taken at a router and a parameter or
argument to the action.

Begin writing a framework document:
   - description of problems different people are trying to address
   - examples showing how approach can solve these problems
   - description of components (router functions, traffic meters, etc.)
     to be developed now
   - description of components of interest but not considered for first
     round of work.

++ ~Late Feb. 98)

Framework document nearing completion.  Hold an interim meeting to discuss
the framework document, and to begin work in two technical areas:

1) Begin considering details of bit allocation for diffserv within the TOS
byte.
   Need to consider:
   - number of router actions to support and number of bits for an action
     parameter or argument (is one enough?)
   - Which header bits can be changed in the middle of the network.
   - deployment problems caused by current uses of these bits.

2) Begin selection and description of a small number of initial standard
   router actions
   - Priority queueing, RIO, Weighted queues, etc.
   - need to reach some agreement on how and how precisely these actions
     should be described.

++ April 1998 IETF

Present and discuss work in progress in the two areas above.

++ August 1998 IETF

Present and discuss documents resulting from work in the two areas above.
Goal is that initial versions of these documents be nearing publication.

++ ~August/September 1998

Review status of longer-range diffserv research and implementation outside
the IETF, and consider whether IETF WG should do something more based on
that research.

Examples of topics that might be appropriate to take on at this time include

- Interdomain diffserv and needed protocols
   * Bandwidth Brokers
   * RSVP Aggregation and diffserv/intserv relationship

- Receiver control of differential service
   * Use of ECN bits in diffserv

++ December, 1998 IETF

Present initial work on any new topics taken on by the WG as a result of
the August work review.

A general discussion then began.

(ed: I tried to mark the start of a thread with a Q and the followon
comments with A's even though the discussion wasn't strictly
question-and-answer...)

Q (Mark Garrett): What's the service model: are concrete mechanism mapped
to the concrete applications they are to support?

Q (Jim Boyle): Are you talking about standardizing queueing algorithms?

A (Dave Clark): There's a spectrum.  Intserv specified hop-by-hop router
behaviors that provided a single end-to-end service, kept spec as loose as
possible.  Here I'm suggesting specifying a set of building blocks that can
be used for new purposes over time - may need tighter spec.

 an algorithm in C code-------------------------very loose specification
                            |                   (like controlled load)
                            |
                      somewhere in the middle
                      here (like TCP congestion control algorithm
                      development - )

A (Paul Ferguson):
I disagree with this standardization; keep it SIMPLE!
- don't need to solve all the problems of the word
- don't tell vendors how to do queueing/routing implementation
- define a few mechanisms LOOSELY
- do we really want to standardize the mechanisms?

A (Dave Clark): It's easy to say simple-sounding things, like "a drop-level
corresponds to a particular queue threshhold to start dropping", and find
underconstrained specification results in wildly unworkable behaviors.
"Simple" arguement is important but should not go to the point of making
Building Blocks useless. The hard question for me is
- how much must we constrain semantics?  -> get the right BEHAVIOR

Q (Christian Huitema): We should not assume that once we write a spec that
people will do the right thing, and therefore it is going to go right out
there.  Need market forces to make it work!
What is in interfaces that market forces can play on:
 1. bits
 2. contract types
NOT the queues,interior of routers....
WG needs to find technical mechanisms that allow market forces to play.

A (Jon Crowcroft) difference between intserv and diffserv is that diffserv is
after we got smarter about pricing.  Result of Brian's BOF. Other part of
the diffserv origins is the aggregation problem, and we use the bits there
again, though it's very different.  Details might be wanted at edges
[+ cloud borders] only.

A (Ed Elleson): diffserv already in commercial nets (SNA) - priority and bw
allocation to prevent starvation.  Consider deployment of diffserv a
migration problem, and include customer bw alloc, which Dave has done but
some others not.  Use mechanisms already in routers for both edges and cores,
because networks won't have profile meters around them everywhere quickly.
Review what we can do now and make a migration part of our thinking.

Q (Matt Mathis) I question the use of the word "mechanism" Do you really mean
"a specific implementation/algorithm" or "a detailed behavior spec"?  I
think we'd really like a hop-by-hop _behavior_ spec for routers and traffic
meters, but we don't quite know how to do it: thus we will spec mechanisms.
- hop-by-hop behavior spec hard -> cheat by using implementation
- fine line between mech. and services, but don't have the luxury of
  ignoring services <- they must be USEFUL so that you can charge
  extra for them.

A [ Many nods of agreement]

A (Jim Boyle) Hard to look at services directly, only examples.

Q (Yoram Bernet, Microsoft): background points for emphasis - don't lose
sight the value of RSVP as a signaling protocol from applications.  Large
numbers of hosts will be able to do this [RSVP is big in WinNT 5.0].  Hosts
might also set diffserv bits based on feedback from RSVP.

Q (Mike O'Dell): as a person building net services, not thinking about how
to think about doing it, I have several points: nothing about what's inside
the net makes sense.  I want two things:
 - Grade of service, with small number of gradesT
 - Traffic type, early in packet, for a small number of application notions,
   such as Packet Voice.

Don't tell me what to do, instead tell me what the user in some broad
simple sense is looking for!  Mental image is like a mime-type and a
graded service within the type, 2 bits worth would be useful.  Traffic
types: probably need 16 bits.  Use flow-id in IPv6 or reencapsulate in
IPv4.  Apps can easily say these categories.

A (Allyn Romanow): grade of service _and_ type, why?

A (Mike O'Dell) because they're orthogonal.  E.g., highly important 6.9K voice
versus don't care 6.9K voice.

A (Dave Clark): I'm uncomfortable w/ the bits in header that specify
application classes:
- open-ended, unbounded classes?  always new ones, how do you keep up?
- what happens if I lie to get better performance?  (call e-mail video).
Is there a contract or pricing scheme that makes me set them to what I'm
really doing?
- Do you really want content identification in packets?  Many in business
land do want the packet type, so that tariffs can be charged by price.
Usage fees for various materials being sent across the net, ISPs having to
give accounting.

A (Mike O'Dell): turning knobs to get your behavior...some of them will
make your $ signs bigger, so that's OK. Sensitive to DDC's second concern,
but it's a very limited subcase of the general problem.  It doesn't go away
if you don't type packets.

Q (Wil Leland): multiple models in play here.  Need some commonality
enhancement.

Q (Jack Houldsworth): ISO ECTS joint-authoring work on similar problems
with ITU-T. Will send pointer to list, but it's an ID. Feel free to ignore
its mcast contents.

Q (Yoram Bernet): (to DDC) Don't assume end-systems are trusted.
End-systems knowing/saying packet (application?)  type is not what I had in
mind either.  I want something more abstract than a type tag.

Q (Sally Floyd): Could talk about mechanism or whatever for some time.
Propose to ratify John's schedule and milestones.  We may have more common
agreement than the last 1/2 hour might suggest.

At this point the meeting was past closing time.  The IESG Area Director
asked for a closing comment:

(Scott Bradner): We need help in deciding how this goes next.  We have a
number of mechanistic ways to proceed, from declaring it out of IETF
bounds, to charting a new WG, to rechartering this one, to baying at the
moon...Please catch Scott as the AD and give your opinions.

[end]