Subject: [PCN] Draft Notes of IETF71 PCN w-g meeting PtII, Thu 13 Mar 08

From: Bob Briscoe <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:38:30 +0000

Steven, & PCN list,

Please check whether this represents a true reflection of your 
experience of the meeting...

Thanks to Kwok Ho Chan for his notes to help me compile these. I hope 
these notes help remote folks like Kwok who clearly had trouble 
following what was going on, what with last minute slide changes, and 
loss of audio, etc.

Bob

============================================================================
Congestion and Pre-Congestion Notification WG (pcn) Pt II
IETF71 Meeting Minutes (Draft)

THURSDAY, March 13, 2008
0900-1130 Morning Session I
Salon I Marriot Downtown, Philadelphia
Meeting materials: 
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/71/materials.html#wg-pcn>
Audio archive: 
<http://limestone.uoregon.edu/ftp/pub/videolab/media/ietf71/ietf71-ch7-thur-am-pcn.mp3>
====================================
CHAIRs: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]> (not present)
         Steven Blake  <[email-masked]>

o Administrivia                                                 chairs   5 min
   - Blue sheets
   - Scribe
   - Shuffled agenda relative to that uploaded

Initials:
[SB]:   Steven Blake (when not acting as chair)
[BB]:   Bob Briscoe
[ACh]:  Anna Charny
[PE]:   Phil Eardley
[LE]:   Lars Eggert
[RJ]:   Raj Jain
[GK]:   Georgios Karagiannis
[MM]:   Michael Menth
[TM]:   Toby Moncaster

Abbreviations used throughout (not incl those coined by individual presenters):
AC:     Admission control
FT:     Flow termination
CLE:    Congestion level estimate
ERM:    Excess rate marking
ThM:    Threshold marking
AfM:    Affected marking
NM:     PCN-capable but not marked
IEA:    Ingress-egress aggregate
CL:     Controlled load (refers to
         expired draft-briscoe-tsvwg-cl-architecture-04.txt and
         draft-briscoe-tsvwg-cl-phb-03.txt)
SM:     Single marking (draft-charny-pcn-single-marking-03)
LC-PCN: Load controlled PCN (draft-westberg-pcn-load-control-03)
3SM:    3-state marking (draft-babiarz-pcn-3sm-01)
ECMP:   Equal cost multi-path
PDP:    Policy Decision Point

o Performance of admission control methods              Michael Menth   20 min
   draft-menth-pcn-performance-02
====================================
Slides at <http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/08mar/slides/pcn-8.pdf>
Acknowledged Frank Lehrieder
Presentation summary:

Performance evaluation of:- Congestion level estimate-based AC 
(CLEBAC) = block if fraction marked/all exceeds a threshold
- Observation-based AC (OBBAC) = one marked packet switches IEA to 
block state, switch back to admit if no marked packets for a timeout

Simulation set-up
  - Single bottleneck link with n (~100) independent sources
  - Different size IEAs over this link (n or 10)

Metric used: fraction of time (flow blocking prob) when false AC decisions:
- False positive = admit when shouldn't
- False negative = block when shouldn't

Q. Anna Charny: Does 10 flows mean 10 in aggregate, or are there also 
only 10 on the link?
A. No, 10 in aggregate but 10% over-capacity means 110 flows on the 
bottleneck link.
Not saying SM (or ERM) is bad, just that it doesn't work well with 
small IEAs. It's not a property of the link aggregation. It's a 
property of the ingress-egress aggregation. This is just a property 
that we would have to live with.

   Results      false   false   parameter
   Summary      negt'vs post'vs sensitivity
__________________________________________
CLEBAC ThM     few     few     little
   OBAC ThM     many    few     little
CLEBAC ERM     few     many    little
   OBAC ERM     few     many    significant

With ERM, blocking ratio is still low with 10% more flows than 
intended, but with OBAC you can configure the detection algo to have 
a fairly high blocking ratio at 10% overload by requiring a long time 
without any marked packets in block state before returning to admit 
state. This says OBAC can give better AC in the cases we have 
investigated. Probably haven't done as many simulations as Anna, but 
there are cases where OBAC gives better results, essentially in small 
aggregates.
[ACh]: In SM presentation we'll try to quantify the excess capacity 
you need to avoid false positives. Will give quite precise numbers. 
But results broadly in agreement with more extensive simulations we did.

Summary
With ThM everything's fine.
With ERM many false positives if IEA small (10-30 flows)
Questions usefulness of AC based on ERM, but on other side can say it 
is useful but just need to know its limitations.
OBAC also not good in that case, but have seen it can be better than CLEBAC.
No figures available on the speed of admission control, but OBAC 
designed to react faster, which is important when we have a flash 
crowd, but with CLE-based, we have to wait until the end of a 
measurement period.

Questions?
[ACh]: Rather than saying ER marking is useless for small IEAs, a 
more accurate statement: If you used ER marking you would have to 
account for the relatively larger error that results which would 
translate into the appropriate capacity guidance. Certainly better 
than saying it doesn't work, but it is certainly more inaccurate with 
small aggregates than we would like to see.
[MM]: [Essentially agreeing] Don't say it doesn't work. We need to 
know: Do we have small IEAs? etc We need to know whether we have 
difficulties, and if so how do we deal with them.

o Edge-assisted marked flow termination (EMFT)          Michael Menth   30 min
   draft-menth-pcn-emft-00
====================================
Slides at: <http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/08mar/slides/pcn-9.pdf>
Summary of presentation:

Marked flow termination (MFT): terminates some flows that are marked. 
Better for ECMP because only flows marked are terminated.
Problem: too aggressive if terminate every flow with a marked packet.
Solutions: Marking frequency reduction:
- Core-assisted MFT (CMFT - same as 3SM): Modify excess rate marking 
to proprotionately mark
- Edge-assisted MFT (EMFT): Edges only terminate some flows that 
receive marked packets

EMFT, two options:
- Flow-based EMFT: Per flow credit counter initialised randomly; each 
marked byte reduces counter, when .le.0, terminate flow
- Aggregate-based EMFT: Per IEA credit counter initialised randomly; 
each marked packet reduces counter, when .le.0, terminate a flow 
picked from IEA; increase credit counter proportionately to rate of 
terminated flow
[BB]: Credit counter should be decremented by no. of marked bytes, 
not packets, to be fair to small-packet flows.
[MM]: Y [slide says bytes, incorrectly said packets]

Expt set-up: single bottleneck, termination rate at 100 flows. 100% 
overload. 200ms termination delay. No packet loss is a recognised limitation.

[GK]: Suppose there is severe congestion somewhere, traffic going through
the congestion point will get rerouted to another route, then at
least one point in the new path will get congested and packets get
dropped.  At that point the terminate marked packets will never
get to the edge.  Then this will not work.

If have severe disaster, traffic going through the congestion point 
will get rerouted to another route, then at least one point in the 
new path will get congested and packets get dropped. If packets that 
would have been marked are dropped preferentially, may not get enough 
marked packets to trigger termination. May not get /any/ packets 
through for some flows. If this problem is not solved then we fail on 
getting a sufficient solution for flow termination.
[MM]: Will get enough, but yes, it will slow down termination. We 
solve this problem by ensuring the termination threshold is not too 
close to the link rate.

[GK]: Repeated point about possibly not getting /any/ marked packets 
in some flows with sever congestion of >100%.
[MM]: Not true, as long as termination threshold below link rate, 
then flows get termination marks.
[GK]: /Some/ flows.

[Chair]: Pls continue presenting (? inaudible?)

Flow termination delay is feedback time of system. The time between 
termination being triggered and no more packets from that flow 
arriving at the egress. Parameter we have to take into account: set 
to 200ms and did sensitivity studies.

Knob to control termination speed: Termination aggressiveness, alpha. 
Controls marking frequency reduction. Same alpha for core or edge 
solutions. Can control tradeoff betw speed of termination and 
over-termination. If too high, over-terminates. If too low, 
termination too slow but doesn't over-terminate.

All the approaches have similar mean termination curves with time, 
but the differences can be seen by plotting the 5th and 95th 
percentiles. Then flow-based EMFT has wider variance. Termination 
process still inreasonable, controllable, bounds.

For larger (double) overload, still get fast termination in one more 
cycle, because of exponential nature of termination curve. Packet 
loss not simulated would reduce termination speed (shortcoming of simulations).

Differences between variants. For all, flow termination delay affects 
termination speed. But not fairness - ie if long & short flow 
termination delay mixed in same network, they have the same flow 
termination probability.

Comparison:
* CMFT:
   - Termination
   - No termination priorities
   - allows anti-cheating for e2e PCN (no details - not in charter)
* EMFT
   - termination precedence possible
   - flow & aggregate both suitable, but richer policies with aggregates
   - per flow suitable for e2e (not chartered),
     per aggregate suitable for PCN domain

Summary:
Have added analysis of edge-based marking frequency reduction to 
previous work in 3SM on core-based marking frequency reduction. 
Marked-flow termination exactly same whether marking freq reduction 
at edge or core - same knob in both cases. Mechanism self-corrects so 
invariant to many system parameters (see papers for which parameters 
are important and have an impact). Severe overload and packet loss 
missing in this study, but important and needs quantifying.
[BB]: Important decision for group: Do we put marking freq reduction 
on core routers or at the edge. Did this study show there was any 
statistical difference?
[MM]: Managed to design system so termination behaviour is exactly 
the same. Pointed out differences: Core-based allows for 
anti-cheating control at the borders. However, edge better control on 
termination process because
- termination behaviour independent of different packet frequencies 
(packet sizes) so we get better fairness
- can apply policy control to flow termination.

[GK/MM]: Repeated exchange above about packet losses.
[GK]: Only 20% of the 110% over link usage, resulting in 10% of the 
re-routed flows will reach the termination decision point.  Hence the 
termination decision operation will be very slow.
[GK]: Could be a lot slower
[MM]: May be 2 s instead of 100ms
[GK]: 1 min
[MM]: no (chuckling)

o LC-PCN                                       Georgios Karagiannis   20 min
   draft-westberg-pcn-load-control-03
====================================
Slides: <http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/08mar/slides/pcn-1.pdf>
Acknowledged Lars Westberg, Anurag Bhargava, Attila Bader.
Load Controlled LC-PCN
Presentation summary:
LC-PCN provides solutions to the 3 main issues:
* AC
   - Data marking
   - Probing (solves ECMP during AC)
   - Combination of both
* Flow termination
   - Base mode
   - optimization mode
* ECMP solutions
   - AC - using probing
   - FT - using affected Marking

ECMP problem outlined (see slide)
ECMP AC solution:
- if interior node congested, then all probe packets must be marked
- problem: with ER marking not all packets marked
   - solution: use router alert option so interior nodes know it's a 
probe packet and mark it always if rate is above admission threshold

Raj Jain [RJ], Washington Uni: If probes special they could be small 
so many more could be handled than data packets. They need not have 
single bit, but could contain fields to carry more information from 
the congested nodes.
[GK]: next slide explains this.

Lars Eggert [LE]: Brought up on list: Because ECMP not standardised, 
don't know whether router alert will make probe could go through slow 
path and not see ECMP - we don't know. Might take a different path. 
Could work but we don't know that.
[GK]: That's True

Phil Eardley [PE]: Two points on one slide. Other point is correct 
(all probes must be marked). But an operator might just implement Ac 
and not FT and hence may not choose SM as the algo for 2 codepoint 
solution. May possibly do something else for Flow Termination.
[LE]: In that case, should use the SHOULD and not MUST words.

[GK (realising answer to Raj's question is not on next slide, but continued)]:
Probes must have same flow ID as user packets so they will be treated 
same as user packets.
[LE]: But you don't know that (repeating point above) so can't depend 
on this behaviour.
[GK]: This could be different for RFC3175 where e2e RSVP path is used 
with a different protocol ID and aggregation level 0. I'm not sure 
how it works but it might be that the RSVP path is not taken out of 
the fast path.
[LE]: Problem: no standard that says router alert packets must take 
same path as normal packets.
[SB]: Isn't it a problem is RSVP PATH messages (and the reserve state 
they pin in the other direction) aren't on the same path as the data flow?
[BB]: I thought, if PCN being used, RSVP turned off on interior 
nodes, so RSVP would just be treated as data
[GK]: True
[BB]: (but may have different addresses)
[ACh]: At least two reasons that might make this not work: i) Router 
alert as we've heard. ii) If probes have different protocol ID, ECMP 
will likely treat them different to data
[KG]: Might work if RSVP run on top of UDP, otherwise a problem.

ECMP & flow termination
-----------------------
Aim: Only flows passing thru congested nodes marked for termination

When PCN interior node in flow termination state, all packets not 
marked for termination are marked as AfM. Need extra encoding state 
with ECMP: AfM
Egress can only select flows marked for termination or AfM

Parameters globally equal across PCN domain U,N .ge. 1 (see draft)
N is proportionality between measured and marked excess rate. N can 
be used to solve the previously mentioned problem (loss of marked 
packets), when node congested, can mark all the rate that is 
congested, even the rate that will be dropped. When ECMP isn't 
supported only uses one encoding state. But for optimisation 
accuracy, some things have to be changed. Eg. marked excess rate = 
measured excess rate / N. Measured before dropping, marked after 
dropping. And PCN mark-encoded packets should not be preferentially dropped.

[ACh]: LC-PCN identical to SM, but with one big, important exception. 
SM looks at unmarked packet at edge, LC looks at marked packets, so 
dropping preference for marked packets has to be reversed.
[GK]: Yup

Flow termination
- Basic mode as described
- Optimization mode: uses sliding window to allow for delays between 
measurements on egress & ingress nodes,

Optimization mode on interior nodes (see slides or draft for state 
diagram & state change events, & algos)
[BB]: Are you saying this would need to be standardised, or that this 
is something people can choose to do?
[GK]: That the algorithm works and accuracy can be improved.

Detection of AC identical to SM draft
AC with probing at egress based deterministically on marking of 
probes (to solve ECMP)

Flow termination identical to SM
Egress node state diag & state change events (see slide)

Ingress nodes easy (obvious)

Probes can be user or signalling. Repeated other previous facts about probes.

Summary
LC-PCN at ingress:
- Different to SM
LC-PCN at interior:
- Admission control with data marking:
   - Same as SM draft, but to increase accuracy small modifications needed
   - Admission control with probing (additional option to solve ECMP)
- Flow termination:
   - Base mode, same as features used in admission control with data marking
   - Optimization mode (optional feature that is required in order 
toincrease accuracy of algorithm)
   - ECMP solution (additional and optional feature that requires a 
flow termination state and additional encoding state)
LC-PCN at Egress:
- Admission control with data marking: identical to SM
- Admission control with probing (additional option used to solve ECMP problem)
- Flow termination:
   - Detection feature: identical to SM
   - Selection of the flows to be terminated: different than SM
   - Feedback to ingress: different than SM
   - ECMP solution (additional and optional feature)

Why is this presentation done here?
Insight into solutions provided by LC-PCN
Show how close LC-PCN is to SM

o Discuss encoding options                                   Moncaster  40 min
   (Carried forward from Tuesday session)
====================================
Slides not yet available on the meeting materials site, but the 
attachment to Toby's posting to the PCN list should be useful:
<http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/pcn/current/msg01285.html>
(Windows users will have to force a .bin file to be read by their 
Acrobat Reader)

Intent: Wrap up encoding discussion from previous mtg (bumped from 
Tuesday's agenda) trying to reach consensus on encoding questions. 
Need to have been following list - moving rapidly this week.

Two basic options:
2-state solution for single marking

Proposal: standardise 2-state solution and simultaneously produce 
experimental extension scheme providing for a 3-state solution. If 
expt successful and lots of operators require it, then we'll come 
back with the aim of standardising a 3-state solution.

Constraints
- need to minimise no's of standards space DSCPs
- avoid interactions with tunnels
- comply with relevant RFCs

Probably got agreement from Fred Baker that it would be appropriate 
for PCN to use the VOICE-ADMIT DSCP he has in tsvwg last call 
(draft-ietf-tsvwg-admitted-dscp-03) - may or may not be standardised 
(with that name).

New scheme on list from Toby & Bob Briscoe - v young
* Basic scheme using one DSCP (Fred's VOICE-ADMIT)
   - Not-ECT     = Not-PCN, ie treat as for Fred's draft,
           and not a candidate for PCN-marking
   - ECT         = PCN-capable but Not Marked (NM)
   - CE  = PCN-capable and Excess-rate marked (ERM)
* Extended scheme to allow experiments with 3 marking states and e2e ECN
   - Any packet with VOICE-ADMIT DSCP would mean the same as the basic scheme,
     except:
     o ECT       = PCN-capable but NM
                   and originally ECT before entering this PCN domain
   - Another DSCP (initially from the LU/EXP range) would be give 3 
extra states
     o Not-ECT   = PCN-capable but NM
                   and originally Not-ECT before entering this PCN domain
     o ECT       = PCN-capable but NM
                   and originally CE before entering the PCN domain
     o CE        = PCN-capable and Threshold marked

Possible state transitions are given in the slide

Two possible consensus questions

Q. Can you live with only standardising a 2 codepoint solution?
[BB]: I assume you mean initially standardising, not for ever?
Q. Can you live with only initially standardising a 2 encoding state solution?
[Chair]: encoding states not codepoints
Q. Can you live with only initially standardising a 2 encoding state solution?
[LE?]: (inaudible)

[Chair]: As an initial standardisation effort for PCN, will people be 
not violently unhappy if we only pursue to standardising a solution 
that uses 2 encoding state solution
[Chair]: Show of hands

[Chair]: 8 for - 0 against - rough consensus

Q. Do you agree that we should simulataneously aim to produce a 3 
encoding state solution as an experimental extension

[GK]: I don't understand what exactly the experimental extension includes?
[LE]: Motivation: Feedback from some operators says minimising DSCPs 
is a must. But some of the schemes have a creative interpretation of 
what a codepoint means. Some do hop-by-hop marking, which some people 
say is outside what Diffserv would allow you to do, while others say 
that's not the case. but it appears better to consume fewer 
codepoints. There is also this range, not only experimental but local 
use (EXP/LU) that are defined by the Diffserv RFC. So the proposal is 
that if a standards track codepoint is used to provide a minimum set 
of PCN functionality, especially if we use the codepoint being 
defined in tsvwg, which you've called VOICE-ADMIT but the title is 
actually Capacity Admitted traffic. So the experiment will be to see 
if operators would rather make the tradeoff of consuming an extra 
codepoint to get an accurate solution, or whether they be willing to 
have a less accurate solution so they could use the codepoint for 
something else.
Later on, if we've gotten some deployment experience, if many 
operators have shown they want the more accurate PCN scheme, we've 
then got stronger argument to take to the wider community to get an 
extra codepoint for PCN.
[GK]: OK
[GK]: Another question that would arise: where detection and handling 
functionalities could be located (ingress or egress)
[TM]: That is irrelevant to this question (interrupted)...
[Chair]: Not trying to rule out any particular edge arrangement, not 
deciding which of the 3-state schemes we might use
[GK]: Do you agree that another question would be should we have two 
3-state solutions?
[Chair]: True
[GK]: A third question could be whether we optimise ingress-based 
functions and another question could be whether we optimise 
egress-based functions
[PE]: Clarifying question: Do you mean you want a question on whether 
we have 2 experimental DSCPs?
[GK]: That's not how I understand it
[Chair]: I'm trying to avoid the ambiguous term codepoint and use 
only encoding states

Q2: Do we agree that we should do some work to produce at least one 
experimental extension that will use at least three encoding states?
[Chair]: Show of hands (some confusion broke out)
[Chair]: Before we call it again, any questions on that question

[BB]: To clarify what Lars said, rather than getting another DSCP, we 
might instead have enough weight to go to the Security area and get 
the ECN tunnelling behaviour fixed to give us more encoding states in 
the ECN field.

[Chair]: Let's just stick with encoding states and leave the details out.
Q. Do we agree as a w-g, that we should do work on experimental 
extensions that would utilise at least 3 encoding states?
[Chair]: Show of hands

[Chair]: 9 for - 0 against

[SB]: Think phrased it vaguely enough to not preclude what you, 
Georgios, are suggesting. Are you happy with that?
[GK]: (interrupted...)
[LE]: Let me summarise consensus in a different way to see if you 
still agree with it:
[Chair]: OK
[LE]: As I understand it, the consensus is there will be a stds track 
RFC with an encoding state that PCN compliant implementations MUST 
use. There'll be a 2nd document that is likely going to be an 
experimental document (sorry, one or more experimental documents but 
at least one), that uses another encoding state that is optional to 
implement. That means that if an operator decides to deploy the 
experiment, they need to purchase equipment that implements that extension.
[PE]: You've only talked about encoding states, not the marking 
behaviours they imply. I agree when you're just talking about 
encoding states, but if you also link that into saying something 
about marking behaviours, then I'm not sure I would agree.
[Chair]: Anna's next presentation will talk about an emerging 
consensus amopngst propoers on core marking behaviours, so can we 
defer that discussion until after her presentation?
[LE]: OK

[Chair]: Anyone object to Lars's restatement of the consensus?
(no-one)

o PCN Comparison draft-charny-pcn-comparison-00            Anna Charny  20 min
====================================
Slides: <http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/08mar/slides/pcn-6.pdf>

Presentation summary:

Comparison draft - slides not really going to describe that - 
describe emerging consensus.
Work not just of comparison draft authors but most of proposal authors
Comparison draft created for last IETF. Functional comparison. 
Simulations comparing proposals. Included pseudo-code monstrosity 
encompassing all core marking proposals (CL, SM & 3SM). Some now obsolete.

Developments since: MM's edge-based marked flow termination
LC-PCN clarification and evolution - essentially we have another 
proposal - also described.

Given the drastic reduction in encoding states due to tunnelling, I 
will try to reflect emerging consensus.
Try to describe what will be lost with only SM.
Will not compare proposals, which is what the comparison draft is 
supposed to be about. See inidividual drafts and the comparison draft itself.

If we assume we have only 2 encoding states, we have 3 options: only 
admission, only termination or both.
If we allow option of both, then whatever proposal is put forward for 
standard marking, we must support SM. Not strictly correct, because 
LC-PCN also only uses 2 states but the point is SM is the core of 
both proposals. So, given it looks like we will go forward with more 
sophisticated proposals as an experimental track, as a result, any 
proposal to go forward must support SM.
We must describe the boundary behaviours for whatever solution comes 
up, but, although we'll try not to constrain anything too much, 
whatever we describe must not break SM, unless or until other better 
schemes can be offered. However, we want to try to keep door open as 
possible, given constraints to other proposals

If we only have 2 encoding states, what is lost if we have AC only, 
or termination only? Obviously the other.
Also need to add configuration about which one you are using. Need to 
support SM as the core.

Not clear to me that anything else is lost if we did just termination 
or just admission.
[PE]: In your phrase "If we want both", does 'we' mean an operator, 
it doesn't mean the w-g?
[ACh]: Whatever the w-g does, it needs to know which of the two options to go.

[LE]: Also, if we do only either one, losing some ability to control 
each function: e.g might get into termination state more often if 
don't do admission
[ACh]: Right.
Implicit assumption that there is enough interest in having both AC & 
FT. If that's not the case, a lot of the things I'm going to say will 
become irrelevant.

Assuming SM must be supported, must have ER metering & marking

[GK]: I'd like to allow optimisation just presented
[ACh]: Slides assume not, but will talk about that later

Other things core node should do
- if arriving packet already excess-rate marked, then don't meter
- any arriving packets already excess-rate marked should be 
preferentially dropped if drop required
- if metered packet is dropped, don't excess rate meter it

Other things that must be defined
- egress to ingress (& possibly PDP) messages contain:
   - CLE
   - sustainable rate
   - (optional) rate to terminate
   - (optional) ingress sending rate
- Boundary node behaviours to be specified
   - implicit assumption SM will be the initial behaviour, but more 
may be defined

What has been lost?
- Req of pref dropping excess-marked packet is problematic for 3SM, 
EMFT & PC-PCN
   - Limits possibility of defining simpler edge behaviours.
   - And very suboptimal for LC-PCN
- This proposal limits possibilities of optimisations at core nodes, 
effectively ignoring all of those in LC-PCN. That needs to be 
discussed whether this is alright. Reasons:
- Requires core complexity
- Insufficient simulation evidence of benefit of these core optimisations

[GK]: Would like option of including that later
[ACh]: Stds track marking behaviour can't have a SHOULD, must have a 
MUST. So need evidence that optimisation necessary
[GK]: Evidence is there in papers
[ACh]: Evidence you're referring to is for a diff algo
[GK]: But similar, the way it terminates flows is exactly the same
[ACh]: Need stronger evidence for a MUST, not a SHOULD
[GK]: Well I do not agree with that (shrug)

Other sacrifice is performance:
- small no. of flows per IEA - not an infrequent case at all
- some perf degradation for multiple bottlenecks on path
   - see following presentation
- No ECMP solution (needs a further encoding state), so only way to 
deal with ECMP is probing. But we don't know how to do probing well. 
SM suboptimal for support of probing because it needs more probes 
than other methods
- For termination, SM doesn't have enough hooks to stop some flows on 
path being terminated that are above their admission but below 
termination theshold
- doesn't allow simpler edge implementations possibly afforded by 3SM 
& EMFT solutions

[LE]: Clarification question: Which of these limitations cannot be 
addressed by some amount of over-provisioning?
[ACh]: None cannot be addressed by some amount of over-provisioning, 
will be addressed in SM presentation

[MM]: Probing to find edge nodes - hard to do admission control 
without it - cannot be solved
[ACh]: Are you saying probing is needed for address discovery?
[MM]: N
[Ach]: OK
[MM]: Other methods are required
[ACh]: Probing never been assumed to be that method
[GK]: egress behaviour not good for LC-PCN - extensibility is 
important, eg end-edge or centralised scenarios
[ACh]: Two things that prevent PC-PCN solution: i) absence of core 
optimisation. Dropping of SM not good for LC-PCN
[GK]: Also not good for SM
[AC]: What?
[GK]: Repeated point about dropped packets from previous presentations
[ACh]: No. See email I sent this morning - two examples you gave are 
not correct for SM
Chair: Take that offline
Chair: You're going to say what you don't get with SM, so we won't 
have consensus calls until after that
[BB]: To answer Lars's question:
       - ECMP problems of SM wouldn't be solved by overprovisioning
       - We don't have a way to go to multiple non-trusting domains 
with SM, which wouldn't be solved by overprovisioning either

Previous slide said core must do ER marking. Where does that leave ThM marking?
Core MUST do threshold marking if want to expt with 3 states
or if we want to allow just admission - the 2 state solution no 
longer allows doing just AC with ThM. So this proposal eliminates that option.

[PE]: Uncomfortable about operator not being able to do AC with PCN 
and termination with something else. And to be able to do that with 
just the 2 encoding states.
[ACh]: If wanted to do only AC, would either have to i) say MUST do 
both marking behaviours, or allow a SHOULD, which we've previously 
said was not OK for LC_PCN or iii) we can say EITHER/OR at which 
point we have an interoperability (?) problem. So we have to decide.
[LE]: We can't have a SHOULD. Need to have 2 MUSTS, otherwise 
equipment can't interoperate in one domain. While if you have 
equipment that implements the two MUSTS you can configure it to do either one.

[GK]: Repeated 2 things Anna stated this proposal ignores.
[ACh]: Agreed. These this proposal ignores these two things so there 
would obviously need to be consensus to do that.
[GK]: If these two are ignored, then an egress-based solution will 
not be possible.
[ACh]: Correct. It will require another standard to do that. it will 
not be possible if we go with any of the three proposals we just 
discussed, whether we do a MUST to both ThM & ERM then (interrupted...)
[GK]: Yes, but 3SM and flow marked solution do not work
[ACh]: That was in the previous slide (interrupted...)
[GK]: Does this mean the egress-based solutions are excluded from now?
[ACh]: No what it means (interrupted...)
[??]: No, that's what it means
[ACh]: So, what it means (interrupted...)
[GK]: It indirectly means egress-based solutions are excluded
[ACh]: No.
[GK]: Why not?
[ACh]: What it means is any egress-based solution that would work 
with egress-based termination would work
[GK]: But doesn't work well.
[ACh]: I think we're in agreement, that some of the schemes that do 
egress-rate termination do not work well. So in order to reach 
consensus we need to make some sacrifices (interrupted...)
[GK]: Yes, but in order to do sacrifices (interrupted...)
[ACh]: I'm trying to simply say what the sacrifices are (interrupted...)
[GK]: Yes, but in order to do sacrifices we have to have the right 
information, and if we don't have the right information we should get 
it. If we take a wrong decision now then we'll have to change a lot 
of things later.
[ACh]: You're point is taken, there are some solutions that are 
precluded by this proposal.

[Chair]: OK
[ACh]: What do we need to do?
- Which 2 state solution to pursue (3 options)?
- Agree on specific encoding - not the point of this presentation
- Once agree, need to write draft
- Need to specify the signalling requirements for whatever we agree on
- Write boundary behaviour

o Single Marking                                          Anna Charny   20 min
   draft-charny-pcn-single-marking-03
   draft-zhang-pcn-performance-evaluation-02
====================================
Slides: <http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/08mar/slides/pcn-7.pdf>
Acknowledged Joy Zhang
Presentation summary:
Single marking poor compared to CL for small aggregates, wrt 
admission but particularly termination. Also somewhat worse than CL 
terminating in the presence of overload at multiple bottlenecks in series.

Single marking generally comparable with CL for large IEAs
Of course, can never check every case no matter how many simulations, 
but some comfort in that these simulations were run to find how bad 
SM was relative to CL, not how good it is.
* AC: SM has significant AC error only when IEA v low < 10 flow/IEA 
due to synch effects with CBR. Effect disappears with enough 
randomization of CBR

[BB]: When BT put a typical distribution of sizes of aggregates for 
their UK core network on the list, a very large proportion of 
aggregates were small, because, with 100 edge nodes, there are 10,000 
possible aggregates and the distribution is long tailed with most 
aggregates empty.
Is it any different to the 'low' figure you have mentioned here, 
where your 'low' means <10 flow/IEA.
[ACh]: Answer not from simulations, but from intuition gained from 
simulations. If all of these little aggregates take a relatively 
small proportion of your bottleneck link, that actually will not be a 
big deal. However, if these small aggregates take a large proportion 
of the aggregate link, then this problem well become (significant). 
But I don't know which of the cases will be more reasonable.
[BB]: So what if IEA was 2, which it was in a many, many cases?
[ACh]: The rightmost side of the plot is where there are as many 
flows as aggregates, so that's the case you're concerned about.
[BB]: Where the black (CBR) plot goes off the (over-admission) scale?
[ACh]: Y.

* FT: Again, over-termination with SM, again, due to uneven marking 
across flows which is noticeable when there are few flows per IEA. 
Degree of IE aggregation SM needs for < 10% over-termination is ~50 
to ~150 Flow/IE, whereas CL is generally always within 10% for any size IEA.
Emphasise that these are truly the worst of the simulations we could find.
Can fix by smoothing FT signal, but trades off reaction time. 
Simulation did not assume smoothing.

* Multi-bottlenecks in series problem:
   - FT: Charts represent average of many thousands of simulations. 
CL stays within 10% (and most below 4% error), while SM has a good 
proportion still in the 10-20% error range.
   - AC: SM & CL fairly equivalent in this respect. Fairness slightly 
worse with SM, but not at all significant.

Summary:
SM comparable to CL for aggregates of sufficient no. of flows, 
sufficient meaning:
   - ~10 or more flows wrt AC
   - 10-100 flows wrt FT.
- At low ingress-egress aggregation, Single-Marking is less accurate 
(over-admission & over-termination)
- In the presence of multiple bottleneck, Single-Markingtermination 
performs worse than CL-PHB

[GK]: Before freezing the behaviour of the core node I'd like to have 
the possibility to prove the the LC-PCN mechanism works.
[ACh]: So what are you asking? To delay the decision? The only 
decision is what exactly the core node function includes.
[GK]: The decision is single marking, that is already taken.
[ACh]: That's a decision for the chairs.
[GK]: If the LC-PCN optimisation is included, the SM functionality 
will not be affected by it.

[Chair]: I'm in process of formulating a question for the w-g. 
Something I omitted to say earlier. There may be IPR on some of the 
proposals before this w-g, and I encourage you to go look at the IETF 
IPR pages and review those IPR disclosures. Is this a satisfactory 
statement for the ADs?
[LE]: Y

[BB]: Coming back on what Georgios said, the longer there's delay 
less chance of implementers still being around. The whole thing 
requires doing in a finite amount of time otherwise it will never 
happen. We're already 6 months late, so we need to be aware that if 
we delay it may never happen.
[GK]: The delay will only be 2 months. And the delay will not be a 
delay, because we already have made the decision to use single 
marking. The only decision is if the MUST should be a SHOULD or not. 
I'm not asking for another option. If I can prove the LC-PCN 
mechanism works then the egress-based functionality could work, then 
we can set the SHOULD to a MUST. Then if it doesn't let it stay as SHOULD.
[ACh]: This proposal has been made in view of the fact that there 
seems ot be no more time doing the research in this group. We need to 
look at the existing proposal today to have a chance of anything 
happening. The reason this proposal came about was so that something 
was available now.
[PE]: My view would be that we go forward, then in 2 months time if 
you bring evidence that yor idea brings us loads, 2 months is not 
going to be too late to say we gain all this by doing your proposal. 
But I think we've got ample evidence now to know what direction we 
should take now. The problem of waiting 2 months is that we will 
still be arguing at that point whether we have enough evidence on 
your proposal to make a decision.
[GK]: I think I've been misunderstood. We have made certain decisions 
(interrupted...)
[ACh]: We haven't made any decisions (interrupted...)
[Chair]: Reiterate that we've only made 2 decisions on encoding state 
aspects so far
[LE]: We haven't reached consensus on router behaviour, how exactly 
it marks packets which is still open, which is what we're discussing that now.
[GK]: We have the single marking behaviour
[PE]: We haven't had a consensus call on the single marking behaviour
[GK]: Yes, I know. But this has not to do with gain, it has to do 
with extensibility.
[ACh]: I would propose to delay the discussion until there is 
evidence, and when there is evidence we can revisit the decisions. 
Today there is no evidence and we are running out of time.
[GK]: In the formulation of the question can we have this opening?

Chair: Does w-g feel they have enough info to come to some conclusion 
about a way forward here at this time?
[Chair]: Show of hands

[Chair]: 6 for - 1 against

[Chair]: Proposal by Anna for a 2 encoding state solution that we 
could move to standardise thats based on a type of excess-rate marking

[ACh]: To be clear, the proposal is that the core does excess rate 
marking (interrupted...)
[Chair]: In a particular way...
[ACh]: No, just using a standard token bucket, but with the specific 
additions of how already marked packets are handled
[Chair]: Right
[PE]: Pls clarify exactly what the question.

[Chair]: There is a proposal on the table for excess rate marking 
which has specifics about how previoiusly marked packets and dropped 
packets are handled. And the question is, who in the w-g believes 
that is a reasonable path to move forward on, so that we can empower 
a design team to go write that up in the direction of becoming a w-g 
doc for a standardised solution? ... I probably should re-phrase that 
a little bit

[PE]: I'm very comfortable with having that in std as a MUST. My 
question will be then whether there will be an opportunity for 
anything else to be in the std as a MUST, ie threshold marking. Or 
whether, in that question you're saying that would be in an 
experimental RFC or if that is also in the stds RFC, and then you 
have this configuration thing.

[LE]: Let me try to rephrase the options. Earlier we had a call on 
whether we have a two state standards option with a three state 
experimental extension. Now we're talking about how these bits get set.
- One algorithm option: Single MUST algo to do excess rate marking 
and that is the only thing that a router needs to implement to be a 
PCN-compatible router.
- Other algorithm option: Add another MUST that say eg. you can 
configure router to set those same bits
Keeping in mind that having a long shopping list of options on 
marking schemes in a router defeats the purpose of standardising PCN, 
because it allows the space to fragment and everyone gets their own 
scheme again, which is something we wanted to avoid.
- One scheme we thrashed out this morning was that the router MUST 
implement ThM as well as ERM, and it can be configured for AC without 
FT, so for a deployment scenario you use the ThM to set the two 
encoding states rather than the ERM. That's one option. That seems 
relatively simple, but it's already twice as complex as having one 
mandatory to implement scheme.
[ACh]: That would mean that each router that claims compatibility 
with PCN and is used in the single marking case is actually required 
to implement something else - just to clarify?
[LE]: Would need to implement two marking algorithms. Yes. That would 
be one proposal.  Rationale: All expt schemes need ThM of some type, 
so could have 2 MUSTs. However that's up for discussion.
[ACh]: The drawback would be that fewer vendors would be interested 
in implementing that.
[LE]: Sure. It's a tradeoff
[GK]: Could the optional points related to egress-based termination 
also be included in an extension draft?
[LE]: Personal (hat off) interpretation. When we chartered PCN, there 
were multiple solutions that all required different marking schemes. 
Not good, as a vendor it required you to implement multiple things. 4 
schemes instead of one. Or 5 or 6. For interior we wanted one 
solution that allowed multiple ingress-egress behaviours. With 
informational documents that might discuss how you implement 
different ingress-egress schemes using the one interior behaviour. If 
we talk about many interior schemes, especially many schemes with 
interior complexity, we would be in effect standardising multiple 
solutions here. That I would personally like to avoid because then, 
why do we have the w-g? There would be no need to standardise 
anything if you have could have had all the options long before with 
proprietary solutions.
[ACh]: Propose a sequence of questions to get us out of this.
What if we ask whether: There is consensus that this kind of marking 
is required for PCN first.
Then we can ask whether, at a later point, if there is evidence that 
hte additional enhancements that Georgios is proposing are beneficial 
then we'll revisit that.
Third question: Must we also require implementation of threshold 
marking initially.
[LE]: THe beginning questions are good. I'd like to caution that the 
motivation for allowing multiple schemes must be more than that you 
don't want to see your baby die.
[GK]: But it's about where the flow termination is actually handled
[ACh]: But we're not discussing that.
[GK]: No, but it's related to what Lars just said.
[ACh]: This has nothing to do with the core behaviour.
[GK]: The difference is not about performance, because I think the SM 
performance (interrupted...)
[LE]: If performance is not the reason, why does it matter where 
functionality sits?
[GK]: It has to do with deployment scenarios - if we want to deploy 
FT at the egress, because there are some scenarios e.g. centralised 
node that is using using the information from only one point. And the 
other scenario where you have end-edge, if we close it now then if we 
recharter there will be no chance to work on these things.
[ACh]: Georgios, there is no evidence today for what you're saying 
right now. If this evidence comes up, can we revisit then? if you 
want the centralised node case, that still doesn't matter if you make 
the decision at the ingress. I don't know about the end-edge case 
because we haven't discussed that. This might come up in the future.
[GK]: That's why it's called extensibility, no?

[LE?]: You (Anna) were going to ask a question.
[ACh]: So I'm going to ask a question. Does the w-g agree that the 
core behaviour described today which is essentially 
token-bucket-based excess rate marking with additional handling of 
excess-rate marked packets is a MUST for the PCN core node behaviour?
[PE]: That depends whether by saying that, that's it.
[ACh]: other question that could be asked first: Does the w-g believe 
that the equipment must be forced to implement two types of markings today?
[MM]: I think it is a must for preferential treatment and single 
marking to work properly. Iit would be a good to have an option, not 
to require, preferential marking for experimental development.
[ACh]: If a SHOULD were allowed in the standard, I would be happy to 
have a SHOULD for this preferential treatment, but I don't know 
whether we're allowed to put a SHOULD in.
[LE]: I would really like the option space to be very, very small 
here, because we can't have 20 different marking schemes.
[ACh]: Actually the SHOULD in this case (interrupted...)
[LE]: Actually you're second question is imprecise, because two 
doesn't say what the other one is.
[ACh]: Threshold marking, as defined by Phil in his presentation 
yesterday, which means roughly virtual-queue based marking.

[LE]: Q1 Do people agree whether ERM is a MUST
[ACh]: And the 2nd question is whether ThM is also a MUST. But Phil 
wants the 2nd question asked first.
[PE]: I don't mind as long as (interrupted...)

[BB]: I want to put my dilemma to the w-g, because I don't how to 
answer these questions because neither give what I'm looking for but 
I can't think of another way of doing it. The problem is all these 
schemes eventually will need two sorts of marking, given the evidence 
shows SM has problems, but I'd like there to be two MUSTs. But I 
don't want that to mean an implementer has to say, I can't sell a 
machine that does PCN now because it won't comply with the standard, 
because I can only do SM now with my current hardware.
[ACh]: So the tradeoff again is if we ask both now, we have immediate 
capability to do experimentation with any PCN implentation, but it 
then requires every router to implement this functionality, even 
though the use of this extra marking is experimental.
[BB]: It doesn't require every router to do it. It requires every 
router to do it to be PCN-compatible.
[ACh]: Right, right, right. Every router that is required to do 
anything for PCN would be required to do something that is 
experimental and not standard. To me that's a bit of a problem. I 
would prefer that all the MUSTs for the experimental scheme would go 
into the experimental standard.
[BB]: But then you've got configuration complexity later.
[ACh]: Right, right, right.
[LE]: When we say MUST, we mean must implement to be be minimally 
PCN-compliant.
[ACh]: Yes, that's the proposal.

[GK]: I didn't see the third question.
[Chair]: I'll let you ask the question

[Chair]: Questions will be about Excess rate, then the 2 MUSTs, then 
Georgios's question.

[ACh]: Does the w-g agree that a PCN-compatible node must implement 
excess-rate marking with additional handling of previoiusly marked 
packets as described in this presentation?
[Chair]: Show of hands

8 for - 0 against

[ACh]: Does the w-g think that a minimal PCN-compatibility statement 
will say you must also implement threshold marking?
[Chair]: Show of hands

6 for - 1 against

[GK]: Actually it's the first question but having some time to bring 
some evidence to show whether LC-PCN is able to perform well in an 
egress-based scenario.
[Chair]: I don't understand - would that preclude doing ERM in the core?
[GK]: I'm not sure if the question included the exact description of 
how it was done here in the slides.
[Chair]: Of how excess rate marking is performed?
[GK]: How the token bucket is implemented

[LE]: (to GK) assuming you get time, what is the question you will ask then?

(Audio recording terminated)

[GK]: Is it reasonable to include the additional optimisations of 
excess-rate marking in the standard?
[BB]: Will it interwork with the details we have just agreed to?
[GK]: Not sure.
[LE?]: If evidence is produced before IETF-72 that there is an 
improved way, would w-g entertain replacing our standards work on the algo?
[Chair]: Show of hands

2 for - 0 against

o A Simple Analytical Model for Pre-Congestion Notification  Raj Jain   20 min
====================================
Slides: <http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/08mar/slides/pcn-2.pdf>
Acknowledged Jin Jiang
Summary of presentation:

Simulation set-up using single bottleneck. See slides for further details.

Flow acceptance probability still significant when 10% over theshold
If Admission & termination thresholds close enough, termination 
probability 5% when admission probability is also 5%: leads to thrashing.

Propose thrashing index based on max product of probabiltity of 
admission and of simultaneous termination.
[BB]: indices are oft-quoted, so need to get them right. Shouldn't it 
be area, not just height of the product of probabilities curve?
[RJ]: Could have another index

Using x% termination threshold (over admission threshold), makes 
significant difference to thrashing index
Log curve of thrashing index shows highly significant drop in 
thrashing as thresholds moved apart (see slides).
If flows are on more often, then have to set termination threshold 
higher (see slide)
For larger capacity links, termination threshold can be set closer

Summary
1. A closed form expression for flow rejection probability and flow 
termination probability for single marker case
2. The model explains the thrashing behaviour when the system reaches 
rejection /termination threshold region
3. Thrashing Index = Max{P(Acceptance)xP(Termination)}
4. The termination threshold should be set 10-15% above rejection 
theshold to avoid thrashing
5. The difference can be less if the number of flows is larger (large 
capacity links) or if the flow on probability is smaller (inactive flows).

[BB]: Suggested 6th summary point: criterion for judging Th marking 
algos, how tightly they approach a step to reduce thrashing index.

W-g meeting closed (20-odd mins late)

Scribe: Bob Briscoe
20 Mar 2008

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---

From: Bob Briscoe <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:11:34 +0000

Folks,

Update to draft minutes below:

Extract from old draft minutes:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>   (Carried forward from Tuesday session)

Replace with:
+++++++++++++
o Discuss encoding options                                   Moncaster  40 min
   (Carried forward from Tuesday session)
====================================
Slides: <http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/08mar/slides/pcn-11.pdf>

____________________________________________________________________________
Bob Briscoe, <[email-masked]>      Networks Research Centre, BT Research
B54/77 Adastral Park,Martlesham Heath,Ipswich,IP5 3RE,UK.    +44 1473 645196