Network Working Group K. Nichols
Request for Comments: 2474 Cisco Systems
Obsoletes: 1455, 1349 S. Blake
Category: Standards Track Torrent Networking Technologies
F. Baker
Cisco Systems
D. Black
EMC Corporation
December 1998
Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS Field)
in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
Differentiated services enhancements to the Internet protocol are
intended to enable scalable service discrimination in the Internet
without the need for per-flow state and signaling at every hop. A
variety of services may be built from a small, well-defined set of
building blocks which are deployed in network nodes. The services
may be either end-to-end or intra-domain; they include both those
that can satisfy quantitative performance requirements (e.g., peak
bandwidth) and those based on relative performance (e.g., "class"
differentiation). Services can be constructed by a combination of:
- setting bits in an IP header field at network boundaries
(autonomous system boundaries, internal administrative boundaries,
or hosts),
- using those bits to determine how packets are forwarded by the
nodes inside the network, and
- conditioning the marked packets at network boundaries in accordance
with the requirements or rules of each service.
Nichols, et. al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 2474 Differentiated Services Field December 1998
The requirements or rules of each service must be set through
administrative policy mechanisms which are outside the scope of this
document. A differentiated services-compliant network node includes
a classifier that selects packets based on the value of the DS field,
along with buffer management and packet scheduling mechanisms capable
of delivering the specific packet forwarding treatment indicated by
the DS field value. Setting of the DS field and conditioning of the
temporal behavior of marked packets need only be performed at network
boundaries and may vary in complexity.
This document defines the IP header field, called the DS (for
differentiated services) field. In IPv4, it defines the layout of
the TOS octet; in IPv6, the Traffic Class octet. In addition, a base
set of packet forwarding treatments, or per-hop behaviors, is
defined.
For a more complete understanding of differentiated services, see
also the differentiated services architecture [ARCH].
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................. 3
2. Terminology Used in This Document ............................ 5
3. Differentiated Services Field Definition ..................... 7
4. Historical Codepoint Definitions and PHB Requirements ........ 9
4.1 A Default PHB ............................................. 9
4.2 Once and Future IP Precedence Field Use ................... 10
4.2.1 IP Precedence History and Evolution in Brief .......... 10
4.2.2 Subsuming IP Precedence into Class Selector .......... 11
Codepoints
4.2.2.1 The Class Selector Codepoints ..................... 11
4.2.2.2 The Class Selector PHB Requirements ............... 11
4.2.2.3 Using the Class Selector PHB Requirements ......... 12
for IP Precedence Compatibility
4.2.2.4 Example Mechanisms for Implementing Class ......... 12
Selector Compliant PHB Groups
4.3 Summary ................................................... 13
5. Per-Hop Behavior Standardization Guidelines .................. 13
6. IANA Considerations .......................................... 14
7. Security Considerations ...................................... 15
7.1 Theft and Denial of Service ............................... 15
7.2 IPsec and Tunneling Interactions .......................... 16
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