Reviewer: Al Morton
Review result: Has Issues
Hi Mirja and Brian,
This is the OPSDIR review of
Manageability of the QUIC Transport Protocol
draft-ietf-quic-manageability-14
Thanks for preparing this draft. I think it will succeed to inform your
intended audience. I found that it filled-in some gaps for me.
Likewise, I found some areas where I make suggestions or comment. I would be
happy to discuss any of these areas further. Your familarity with
related-work/papers-to-cite could minimize your efforts in response. Protocols
are evolving, and so are Networks.
Editorially, the doc is in great shape, except for the use of different terms
for when TCP takes-over: fail over, fallback, and fail-over are all used.
regards,
Al
Abstract
This document discusses manageability of the QUIC transport protocol,
focusing on the implications of QUIC's design and wire image on
network operations involving QUIC traffic. It is intended as a
"user's manual" for the wire image, providing guidance for network
operators and equipment vendors who rely on the use of transport-
aware network functions.
...
2.4. The QUIC Handshake
...
Client Server
| |
+----Client Initial----------------------->|
+----(zero or more 0RTT)------------------>|
| |
|<-----------------------Server Initial----+
|<---------(1RTT encrypted data starts)----+
| |
+----Client Completion-------------------->|
+----(1RTT encrypted data starts)--------->|
| |
|<--------------------Server Completion----+
| |
Figure 1: General communication pattern visible in the QUIC handshake
As shown here, the client can send 0-RTT data as soon as it has sent
its Client Hello, and the server can send 1-RTT data as soon as it
has sent its Server Hello. The Client Completion flight contains at
least one Handshake packet and could also include an Initial packet.
QUIC packets in separate contexts during the handshake can be
coalesced (see Section 2.2) in order to reduce the number of UDP
datagrams sent during the handshake. QUIC packets can be lost and
reordered, so packets within a flight might not be sent close in
time, though the sequence of the flights will not change, because one
flight depends upon the peer's previous flight.
[acm]
It's great to add some Not-Sunny-Day info in the description, thanks!
But can you add a little more? For example:
Is it possible that network reordering can cause the handshake to fail?
What rerodering extent (yes, that's a metric) would be required to cause
failure or unnecessary retransmission? Lost packets would result in time-outs
and retransmission, so what are the default time-outs? Is there a paper where
some/all of the above have been investigated, that you could reference to save
some work?
...
2.8. Version Negotiation and Greasing
...
QUIC is expected to evolve rapidly, so new versions, both
experimental and IETF standard versions, will be deployed on the
Internet more often than with traditional Internet- and transport-
layer protocols. Using a particular version number to recognize
valid QUIC traffic is likely to persistently miss a fraction of QUIC
flows and completely fail in the near future, and is therefore not
recommended.
[acm] Where "valid traffic" is the focus, I agree, let it flow.
But the Operator's focus may instead be "admissible traffic", where
experimental traffic is not wanted or allowed. IOW, only traffic that is
understood to conform to <RFC list> shall pass, because "Active Attacks are
also Pervasive", to put a different spin on 7258. [acm] See also the comment in
3.4.1.
In addition, due to the speed of evolution of the
protocol, devices that attempt to distinguish QUIC traffic from non-
QUIC traffic for purposes of network admission control should admit
all QUIC traffic regardless of version.
[acm] I was hoping to see a description of fallback to TCP (I see that fallback
is mentioned briefly at the end of section 4.2., and later, fail over and
failover. pick one...)
How can Network Operators observe when a QUIC setup has failed, and the
corresponding TCP fallback connection(s) succeeded?
Is there a reference available with this info, to save effort here?
...
3.4.1. Extracting Server Name Indication (SNI) Information
...
Note that proprietary QUIC versions, that have been deployed before
standardization, might not set the first bit in a QUIC long header
packet to 1. However, it is expected that these versions will
gradually disappear over time.
[acm]
And some networks may prefer not to admit experimental traffic. The goal of the
experiment may be problematic for the network operator and/or their
subscribers. I think this is legitimate operator behavior, and worth a few more
words in the draft.
...
3.8.1. Measuring Initial RTT
...
Handshake RTT can be measured by adding the client-to-observer and
observer-to-server RTT components together. This measurement
necessarily includes any transport- and application-layer delay at
both endpoints.
[acm] suggest s/any/all/
3.8.2. Using the Spin Bit for Passive RTT Measurement
...
Note that this measurement, as with passive RTT measurement for TCP,
includes any transport protocol delay (e.g., delayed sending of
[acm] suggest s/any/all/
...
Since the spin bit logic at each endpoint considers only samples from
packets that advance the largest packet number, signal generation
itself is resistant to reordering. However, reordering can cause
problems at an observer by causing spurious edge detection and
therefore inaccurate (i.e., lower) RTT estimates, if reordering
occurs across a spin-bit flip in the stream.
[acm] thanks for mentioning this!
...
Raw RTT samples generated using these techniques can be processed in
various ways to generate useful network performance metrics. A
simple linear smoothing or moving minimum filter can be applied to
the stream of RTT samples to get a more stable estimate of
application-experienced RTT. RTT samples measured from the spin bit
can also be used to generate RTT distribution information, including
minimum RTT (which approximates network RTT over longer time windows)
and RTT variance (which approximates jitter as seen by the
application).
[acm] (let's avoid the clocky term "jitter", and clarify)
Suggest: (which over-estimates one-way packet delay variance as seen by an
application end-point).
4. Specific Network Management Tasks
...
4.2. Stateful Treatment of QUIC Traffic
Stateful treatment of QUIC traffic (e.g., at a firewall or NAT
middlebox) is possible through QUIC traffic and version
identification (Section 3.1) and observation of the handshake for
connection confirmation (Section 3.2). The lack of any visible end-
of-flow signal (Section 3.6) means that this state must be purged
either through timers or through least-recently-used eviction,
depending on application requirements.
[acm] Comment: It suddenly struck me that this might be similar to the scenario
that dkg frequently cited during QUIC development: His ISP would terminate idle
TCP connections after many hours. See the citation of RFC5382 below. Don't
expect QUIC connections to stay-up forever! The next Purge will occur in 3, 2,
1, ...
While QUIC has no clear network-visible end-of-flow signal and
therefore does require timer-based state removal, the QUIC handshake
indicates confirmation by both ends of a valid bidirectional
transmission. As soon as the handshake completed, timers should be
set long enough to also allow for short idle time during a valid
transmission.
[RFC4787] requires a network state timeout that is not less than 2
minutes for most UDP traffic. However, in practice, a QUIC endpoint
can experience lower timeouts, in the range of 30 to 60 seconds
[QUIC-TIMEOUT].
In contrast, [RFC5382] recommends a state timeout of more than 2
hours for TCP, given that TCP is a connection-oriented protocol with
well- defined closure semantics. Even though QUIC has explicitly
been designed to tolerate NAT rebindings, decreasing the NAT timeout
is not recommended, as it may negatively impact application
performance or incentivize endpoints to send very frequent keep-alive
packets.
The recommendation is therefore that, even when lower state timeouts
are used for other UDP traffic, a state timeout of at least two
minutes ought to be used for QUIC traffic.
[acm]
2 minutes, not hours. got it.
...
4.5. Filtering Behavior
[RFC4787] describes possible packet filtering behaviors that relate
to NATs but is often also used is other scenarios where packet
filtering is desired. Though the guidance there holds, a
particularly unwise behavior admits a handful of UDP packets and then
makes a decision to whether or not filter later packets in the same
connection. QUIC applications are encouraged to fail over to TCP if
[acm]
is "fail over" or "fallback" the preferred term?
(using only one will help)
early packets do not arrive at their destination
[QUIC-APPLICABILITY], as QUIC is based on UDP and there are known
blocks of UDP traffic (see Section 4.6). Admitting a few packets
allows the QUIC endpoint to determine that the path accepts QUIC.
Sudden drops afterwards will result in slow and costly timeouts
before abandoning the connection.
4.6. UDP Blocking, Throttling, and NAT Binding
...
Further, if UDP traffic is desired to be throttled, it is recommended
to block individual QUIC flows entirely rather than dropping packets
indiscriminately. When the handshake is blocked, QUIC-capable
applications may fail over to TCP. However, blocking a random
[acm]
is "fail over" or "fallback" the preferred term?
(using only one will help)
fraction of QUIC packets across 4-tuples will allow many QUIC
handshakes to complete, preventing a TCP failover, but these
[acm] ... or "failover" preferred?
connections will suffer from severe packet loss (see also
Section 4.5). Therefore, UDP throttling should be realized by per-
flow policing, as opposed to per-packet policing. Note that this
per-flow policing should be stateless to avoid problems with stateful
treatment of QUIC flows (see Section 4.2), for example blocking a
portion of the space of values of a hash function over the addresses
and ports in the UDP datagram. While QUIC endpoints are often able
to survive address changes, e.g. by NAT rebindings, blocking a
portion of the traffic based on 5-tuple hashing increases the risk of
black-holing an active connection when the address changes.
...
4.8. Quality of Service Handling and ECMP Routing
It is expected that any QoS handling in the network, e.g. based on
use of DiffServ Code Points (DSCPs) [RFC2475] as well as Equal-Cost
Multi-Path (ECMP) routing, is applied on a per flow-basis (and not
per-packet) and as such that all packets belonging to the same active
QUIC connection get uniform treatment.
[acm] Comment: so networks should continue their *extra* efforts for datagrams,
like maintaining order, while the datagram streams take away as much info as
they can. got it...
Done.
