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Internet Engineering Task Force RSVP WG
INTERNET-DRAFT L. Breslau/S. Shenker
draft-ietf-rsvp-partial-service-00.txt Xerox PARC
April 23, 1997
Expires: 10/23/97
Partial Service Deployment in the Integrated Services Architecture
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
"1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe),
munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or
ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).
Abstract
Specifications for providing enhanced qualities of service in the
Internet have been defined in [2,4]. Technical and administrative
concerns may prevent a network element from offering one or more of
these services. In this document, we present a mechanism for dealing
with heterogeneity in the set of services offered by different
network elements. This approach enables end-to-end service to be
composed of different per-hop services while not requiring end
systems to be aware of the details of the service provided at each
hop.
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Introduction
The Integrated Services Working Group has produced specifications for
new types of service[2,4]. These services will provide enhanced
qualities of service to applications that use them. Such services
will be most useful when they are provided at all network elements
along a data distribution path. However, because these services
impose stricter requirements on the network elements than traditional
best-effort service, it may not be practical to provide these
services on some subnet technologies. Furthermore, the ultimate
decision to implement and deploy a particular service belongs to
vendors and network service providers, respectively. A vendor may
choose not to implement a service, or network service provider may
choose not to offer a service (e.g., for administrative reasons),
even if the underlying technology is able to support the service.
Therefore, newly defined services will not always be available end-
to-end along a data distribution path. In this document we describe
a strategy for coping with this heterogeneity in the set of services
offered in a network.
Replacement Services
The mechanism for addressing the problem of service heterogeneity is
built on the concept of "replacement" services. When a network
element does not offer a service, it can offer a replacement service
for it. Under circumstances described below, when a network element
receives a request for a service it does not offer, it treats the
request as if it were for the replacement service. A replacement
service can be one of the other real-time services, best-effort
service, or a non-compliant implementation of the original service.
Decisions about the use of replacement services are a local matter.
Replacement services are characterized as either "reliable" or
"unreliable". A reliable replacement is one that is expected to meet
the requirements of the service being replaced a large majority of
the time (e.g., over 95%). No assurance is given about the resulting
quality of an unreliable replacement. Since best effort service
qualifies as an unreliable replacement in all circumstances, network
elements are always able to at least offer unreliable replacements
for every service.
When a network element offers a reliable replacement it MUST also
export meaningful values for any characterization parameters required
by the original service. (See [1] and [3] for a discussion of
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characterization parameters.) These parameters must accurately
characterize the replacement service, and when composed end-to-end
with parameters from other network elements they must provide
applications with a valid characterization of the end-to-end service.
When a network element offers an unreliable replacement it MAY export
values for any characterization parameters of the original service if
it is able to accurately characterize the service. However, given
that an unreliable replacement may be arbitrarily bad, the network
element may instead set the value of all characterization parameters
to the "invalid" values defined for those parameters.
We provide the following guidelines for determining whether a network
element offers an actual service, a reliable replacement, or an
unreliable replacement.
Offered Service: In order to claim to offer a service, a network
element's implementation of the service must conform to the service
specification. Specific conformance requirements are included in the
service specification documents (e.g., [2,4]). Some knowledge about
the environment in which an implementation is deployed can be used in
making this determination. For example, an implementation of
Controlled-Load in a router attached to an ethernet may be compliant
if all routers and hosts attached to the network participate in a
distributed admission control process to reserve resources on the
ethernet. However, the same implementation may not be compliant if
there are hosts attached to the ethernet that do not participate in
the bandwidth allocation procedure. Knowledge of link bandwidth can
also be used to determine service compliance. For example, a router
may be able to offer a service on an interface using FIFO scheduling
and no admission control if the bandwidth on the link exceeds the sum
of the input bandwidths on all other links. On the other hand,
knowledge about average levels of offered load cannot be used to
claim compliance with the currently defined service specifications;
the offered service must comply with the service specifications
independent of ambient loading.
Reliable Replacement: A network element can claim to offer a
reliable replacement if it does not offer the actual service but the
service it provides is expected to adhere to the specification of the
original service a large majority of the time. This determination
can take local conditions, including expected load, into account.
However, since the semantics of a reliable replacement are that it
emulates very closely the actual service, applications using reliable
replacements will expect to receive service that is in general not
significantly different than the original service. Therefore, the
reliable replacement label should be applied to service replacements
with caution. Furthermore, since a reliable replacement will often
depend on local conditions, and conditions may change over time,
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network operators should monitor these conditions and continually
reassess the suitability of reliable replacements. Finally, note that
the ability to provide a reliable replacement may also depend on the
availability of appropriate invocation parameters for the replacement
service.
We offer two examples of reliable replacements. First, a router on a
vastly underutilized point-to-point link, which rarely experiences
persistent congestion, may offer best effort service as a reliable
replacement for Controlled Load service. Second, a router attached
to an ethernet that has an otherwise compliant implementation of
Controlled Load but has no means to control the load generated by
other stations attached to the ethernet may claim to offer a reliable
replacement for Controlled Load if the ethernet is not in general
highly loaded.
Unreliable Replacement: Since unreliable replacements make no
assurances about the service they provide, any service qualifies as
an unreliable replacement for any other service. Hence, when the
actual service or a reliable replacement is not offered, an
unreliable replacement can always be offered. For example, best
effort service on a congested link qualifies as an unreliable
replacement for any real-time service. Applications should have no
expectations about the resulting service when they use an unreliable
replacement. Finally, additional real-time services may be defined
after a particular implementation is deployed. Hence, a network
element may not even know about a requested service, so it cannot
make an informed decision about the suitability of its offered
services (other than best effort) to act as replacements. In such
cases, the router can always use best effort as an unreliable
replacement.
Characterizing Service Offerings
Each network element must export characterization parameters
describing the various services and replacements that it offers. An
example format and composition rules for these characterization
parameters are described in the Appendix to this document.
Service Handling Flags
When characterization parameters are provided end-to-end by a setup
protocol, an application will know before issuing a service request
whether any replacement services will be substituted for its request.
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Applications that would be dissatisfied with the level of assurance
provided by the resulting service should refrain from issuing service
requests when such substitutions would be made.
The Integrated Services architecture is intended to allow services to
be invoked by more than one setup protocol or by network management
functions. Therefore, we cannot assume that end-to-end
characterizations of service offerings will always be available to
the applications. When they are not, mechanisms are needed so that
applications can express to the network elements their willingness to
accept replacement services.
We propose that application preferences be expressed in a new object
that we refer to as the Service Handling Flags, which is optionally
included in service requests. These flags are associated with
service requests in general, and not with specific services, so they
are associated with service_name 0 (just like general
characterization parameters). The parameter is a 16-bit value. The
most significant bit is set to 1 if service replacements are *not*
allowed and 0 if replacements are allowed. The remaining 15 bits are
currently unused.
Hence, the default router action is to perform replacements when a
requested service is not available. In environments where end-to-end
characterizations are available (e.g., as with RSVP) the Service
Handling Flags are not needed. When end-to-end characterizations are
not available, an end system must include the Service Handling Flags
with the most significant bit set in order to prevent the use of
replacement services.
Security Considerations
Security considerations are not discussed in this memo.
Appendix -- Service Availability Characterization Parameters
The following is an example format for characterization parameters
describing service availability.
An integrated services aware router exports a general
characterization parameter for each service that it knows about
indicating whether it offers the service, a reliable replacement for
the service, or an unreliable replacement for the service. These
parameters, when composed end-to-end, inform the endpoints about the
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end-to-end availability of services.
The parameter_name for the local parameter is N. A single router can
export multiple characterization parameters with parameter_name N,
each corresponding to a different service. The specific service
referenced by a particular parameter is identified by a field within
the parameter itself.
Each local parameter is represented by a sequence of 4 16-bit
unsigned integers in network byte order. The first is the
service_name for the service referenced by the parameter. The
service_name is defined within the service specification for each
service (e.g., see [2,4]). The second has the value 1 if the router
offers the indicated service and 0 if the router does not offer the
service. The third field has the value 1 if the router offers a
reliable replacement for the service and 0 if the router does not
offer a reliable replacement for the service. The fourth field has
the value 1 if the router offers an unreliable replacement for the
service and 0 if the router does not offer an unreliable replacement
for the service. A router must assign a value of 1 to exactly one of
the latter three fields. Guidelines for offering reliable
replacements and unreliable replacements are specified earlier in
this document.
The parameter_name for the composed end-to-end parameter is N+1. The
specific service referenced by a particular parameter is specified by
a field inside the parameter itself.
Each composed parameter is represented by a sequence of 4 16-bit
unsigned integers in network byte order. The first is the
service_name for the service characterized by the parameter. The
second is the number of routers that offer the service. The third is
the number of routers that offer reliable replacements for the
service. The fourth is the number of routers that offer unreliable
replacements for the service.
The composition rule for composing a local parameter with a composed
parameter is to add the i_th value of the local parameter to the i_th
value of the composed parameter, for i = {2,3,4}. Two parameters can
be composed only if the first field in each parameter (the
service_name) is the same.
References
[1] S. Shenker and J. Wroclawski. "Specification of General
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Characterization Parameters", Internet Draft, October 1996, <draft-
ietf-intserv-charac-02.txt>.
[2] S. Shenker, C. Partridge and R. Guerin. "Specification of
Guaranteed Quality of Service", Internet Draft, February 1997,
<draft-ietf-intserv-guaranteed-svc-07.txt>.
[3] S. Shenker and J. Wroclawski. "Network Element Service
Specification Template", Internet Draft, November 1996, <draft-ietf-
intserv-svc-template-03.txt>.
[4] J. Wroclawski. "Specification of Controlled-Load Network Element
Service", Internet Draft, November 1996, <draft-ietf-intserv-ctrl-
load-svc-04.txt>.
Authors' Addresses:
Lee Breslau
Xerox PARC
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1314
breslau@parc.xerox.com
415-812-4402
415-812-4471 (FAX)
Scott Shenker
Xerox PARC
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1314
shenker@parc.xerox.com
415-812-4840
415-812-4471 (FAX)
Breslau/Shenker Expires 10/23/97 [Page 7]