IAB workshop report: Measuring Network Quality for End-Users
draft-iab-mnqeu-report-01
This document is an Internet-Draft (I-D) that has been submitted to the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) stream.
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The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type |
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9318.
|
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|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Wes Hardaker , Omer Shapira | ||
| Last updated | 2022-03-07 | ||
| RFC stream | Internet Architecture Board (IAB) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | IAB state | Active IAB Document | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| IAB shepherd | (None) |
draft-iab-mnqeu-report-01
Network Working Group W. Hardaker
Internet-Draft USC/ISI
Intended status: Informational O. Shapira
Expires: 8 September 2022 Apple
7 March 2022
IAB workshop report: Measuring Network Quality for End-Users
draft-iab-mnqeu-report-01
Abstract
The Measuring Network Quality for End-Users workshop was held
virtually by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from September
14-16, 2021. This report summarizes the workshop, the topics
discussed, and some preliminary conclusions drawn at the end of the
workshop.
Status of This Memo
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provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 8 September 2022.
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Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Problem space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Workshop Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Position Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Workshop Topics and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Introduction and overviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1.1. Key points from the keynote by Vint Cerf . . . . . . 8
4.1.2. Introductory talks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1.3. Introductory talks - key points . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2. Metrics considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2.1. Common performance metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2.2. Availability metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.3. Capacity metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.4. Latency metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.5. Measurement case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.6. Metrics Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3. Cross-layer Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3.1. Separation of Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3.2. Security and Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . 21
4.3.3. Concrete Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.3.4. Towards Future Cross-layer Observability . . . . . . 22
4.3.5. Efficient Collaboration Between Hardware and Transport
Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.3.6. Cross-Layer Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.4. Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.4.1. Synthesis Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.1. General statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.2. Specific statements about detailed protocols/
techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.3. Problem statements and concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.4. No-consensus reached statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6. Follow-on work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Appendix A. Participants List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Appendix B. IAB Members at the Time of Approval . . . . . . . . 34
Appendix C. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
C.1. Draft contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
C.2. Workshop Chairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
C.3. Program Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Appendix D. Github Version of this document . . . . . . . . . . 35
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
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1. Introduction
The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) holds occasional workshops
designed to consider long-term issues and strategies for the
Internet, and to suggest future directions for the Internet
architecture. This long-term planning function of the IAB is
complementary to the ongoing engineering efforts performed by working
groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
The Measuring Network Quality for End-Users workshop [WORKSHOP] was
held virtually by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in September
14-16, 2021. This report summarizes the workshop, the topics
discussed, and some preliminary conclusions drawn at the end of the
workshop.
1.1. Problem space
The Internet in 2021 is quite different from what it was 10 years
ago. Today, it is a crucial part of everyone's daily life. People
use the Internet for their social life, for their daily jobs, for
routine shopping, and for keeping up with major events. An
increasing number of people can access a Gigabit connection, which
would be hard to imagine a decade ago. And, thanks to improvements
in security, people trust the Internet for financial banking
transactions, purchasing goods and everyday bill payments.
At the same time, some aspects of end-user experience have not
improved as much. Many users have typical connection latencies that
remain at decade-old levels. Despite significant reliability
improvements in data center environments, end users also still often
see interruptions in service. Despite algorithmic advances in the
field of control theory, one still finds that the queuing delays in
the last-mile equipment exceeds the accumulated transit delays.
Transport improvements, such as QUIC, Multipath TCP, and TCP Fast
Open are still not fully supported in some networks. Likewise,
various advances in the security and privacy of user data are not
widely supported, such as encrypted DNS to the local resolver.
Some of the major factors behind this lack of progress is the popular
perception that throughput is the often sole measure of the quality
of Internet connectivity. With such narrow focus, the Measuring
Network Quality for End-Users workshop aimed to discuss various
questions:
* What is user latency under typical working conditions?
* How reliable is connectivity across longer time periods?
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* Do networks allow the use of a broad range of protocols?
* What services can be run by network clients?
* What kind of IPv4, NAT, or IPv6 connectivity is offered, and are
there firewalls?
* What security mechanisms are available for local services, such as
DNS?
* To what degree are the privacy, confidentiality, integrity, and
authenticity of user communications guarded?
* Improving these aspects of network quality will likely depend on
measurement and exposing metrics in a meaningful way to all
involved parties, including to end users. Such measurement and
exposure of the right metrics will allow service providers and
network operators to concentrate focus on their users' experience
and will simultaneously empower users to choose the Internet
service providers that can deliver the best experience based on
their needs.
* What are the fundamental properties of a network that contributes
to a good user experience?
* What metrics quantify these properties, and how can we collect
such metrics in a practical way?
* What are the best practices for interpreting those metrics, and
incorporating those in a decision making process?
* What are the best ways to communicate these properties to service
providers and network operators?
* How can these metrics be displayed to users in a meaningful way?
2. Workshop Agenda
The Measuring Network Quality for End-Users workshop was divided into
the following main topic areas, further discussion in Section 4:
* Introduction overviews and a keynote by Vint Cerf
* Metrics considerations
* Cross-layer considerations
* Synthesis
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* Group conclusions
3. Position Papers
The following position papers were received for consideration by the
workshop attendees. The workshop's web-page [WORKSHOP] contains
archives of the papers, presentations and recorded videos.
* Ahmed Aldabbagh. "Regulatory perspective on measuring network
quality for end users" [Aldabbagh2021]
* Al Morton. "Dream-Pipe or Pipe-Dream: What Do Users Want (and how
can we assure it)?" [Morton2021]
* Alexander Kozlov . "The 2021 National Internet Segment Reliability
Research"
* Anna Brunstrom. "Measuring newtork quality - the MONROE
experience"
* Bob Briscoe, Greg White, Vidhi Goel and Koen De Schepper. "A
single common metric to characterize varying packet delay"
[Briscoe2021]
* Brandon Schlinker. "Internet's performance from Facebook's edge"
[Schlinker2019]
* Christoph Paasch, Kristen McIntyre, Randall Meyer, Stuart
Cheshire, Omer Shapira. "An end-user approach to the Internet
Score" [McIntyre2021]
* Christoph Paasch, Randall Meyer, Stuart Cheshire, Omer Shapira.
"Responsiveness under Working Conditions" [Paasch2021]
* Dave Reed, Levi Perigo. "Measuring ISP Performance in Broadband
America: a Study of Latency Under Load" [Reed2021]
* Eve M. Schooler, Rick Taylor. "Non-traditional Network Metrics"
* Gino Dion. "Focusing on latency, not throughput, to provide
better internet experience and network quality" [Dion2021]
* Gregory Mirsky, Xiao Min, Gyan Mishra, Liuyan Han. "Error
Performance Measurement in Packet-Switched Networks" [Mirsky2021]
* Jana Iyengar. "The Internet Exists In Its Use" [Iyengar2021]
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* Jari Arkko, Mirja Kuehlewind. "Observability is needed to improve
network quality" [Arkko2021]
* Joachim Fabini. "Objective and subjective network quality"
[Fabini2021]
* Jonathan Foulkes. "Metrics helpful in assessing Internet Quality"
[Foulkes2021]
* Kalevi Kilkki, Benajamin Finley. "In Search of Lost QoS"
[Kilkki2021]
* Karthik Sundaresan, Greg White, Steve Glennon . "Latency
Measurement: What is latency and how do we measure it?"
* Keith Winstein. "Five Observations on Measuring Network Quality
for Users of Real-Time Media Applications"
* Ken Kerpez, Jinous Shafiei, John Cioffi, Pete Chow, Djamel
Bousaber. "State of Wi-Fi Reporting" [Kerpez2021]
* Kenjiro Cho. "Access Network Quality as Fitness for Purpose"
* Koen De Schepper, Olivier Tilmans, Gino Dion. "Challenges and
opportunities of hardware support for Low Queuing Latency without
Packet Loss" [DeSchepper2021]
* Kyle MacMillian, Nick Feamster. "Beyond Speed Test: Measuring
Latency Under Load Across Different Speed Tiers" [MacMillian2021]
* Lucas Pardue, Sreeni Tellakula. "Lower layer performance not
indicative of upper layer success" [Pardue2021]
* Matt Mathis. "Preliminary Longitudinal Study of Internet
Responsiveness" [Mathis2021]
* Michael Welzl. "A Case for Long-Term Statistics" [Welzl2021]
* Mikhail Liubogoshchev. "Cross-layer Cooperation for Better
Network Service" [Liubogoshchev2021]
* Mingrui Zhang, Vidhi Goel, Lisong Xu. "User-Perceived Latency to
measure CCAs" [Zhang2021]
* Neil Davies, Peter Thompson. "Measuring Network Impact on
Application Outcomes using Quality Attenuation" [Davies2021]
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* Olivier Bonaventure, Francois Michel. "Packet delivery time as a
tie-breaker for assessing Wi-Fi access points" [Michel2021]
* Pedro Casas. "10 Years of Internet-QoE Measurements. Video,
Cloud, Conferencing, Web and Apps. What do we need from the
Network Side?" [Casas2021]
* Praveen Balasubramanian. "Transport Layer Statistics for Network
Quality" [Balasubramanian2021]
* Rajat Ghai. "Measuring & Improving QoE on the Xfinity Wi-Fi
Network" [Ghai2021]
* Robin Marx, Joris Herbots. "Merge Those Metrics: Towards Holistic
(Protocol) Logging" [Marx2021]
* Sandor Laki, Szilveszter Nadas, Balazs Varga, Luis M. Contreras.
"Incentive-Based Traffic Management and QoS Measurements"
[Laki2021]
* Satadal Sengupta, Hyojoon Kim, Jennifer Rexford. "Fine-Grained
RTT Monitoring Inside the Network" [Sengupta2021]
* Stuart Cheshire. "The Internet is a Shared Network"
[Cheshire2021]
* Toerless Eckert, Alex Clemm. "network-quality-eckert-clemm-00.4"
* Vijay Sivaraman, Sharat Madanapalli, Himal Kumar. "Measuring
Network Experience Meaningfully, Accurately, and Scalably"
[Sivaraman2021]
* Yaakov (J) Stein. "The Futility of QoS" [Stein2021]
4. Workshop Topics and Discussion
The three day workshop was broken into four separate sections,
including introductory material, that each played a role in framing
the discussions. This was followed by a discussion about conclusions
that could be agreed upon by workshop participants (Section 5).
4.1. Introduction and overviews
The workshop started with a broad focus on the state of user Quality
of Service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) the Internet today.
The goal of the introductory talks was to set the stage for the
workshop by describing both the problem space and the current
solutions in place and their limitations.
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The introduction presentations by participants provided views of
existing QoS and QoE measurements and their effectiveness. Also
discussed was the interaction between multiple users within the
network, as well as the interaction between multiple layers of the
OSI stack. Some existing measurement work was also presented. Vint
Cerf provided a key note describing the history and importance of the
topic.
4.1.1. Key points from the keynote by Vint Cerf
We may be operating in a networking space with dramatically different
parameters compared to 30 years ago. This differentiation justifies
re-considering not only the importance of one metric over the other,
but also re-considering the entire metaphor.
It is time for the experts to look at not only at adjusting TCP, but
also at exploring other protocols, such as QUIC and others as well.
It's important that we feel free to consider alternatives to TCP.
TCP is not a teddy bear, and one should not be afraid to replace it
with a transport later with better properties benefiting users.
A suggestion: we should consider desirable properties exercises. As
we are looking at the parametric spaces, one can identify "desirable
properties", as opposed to "fundamental properties". Among such
properties, there may be a low-latency property. An example coming
from ARPA: you want to know where the missile is now, not where it
was. Understanding what is driving the particular parameter in the
design space.
When the parameter values are changed in extreme, such as
connectiveness, some other designs will emerge. One case study is
the interplanetary protocol, where "ping" is no long indicative of
anything useful. While we look at responsiveness, we should not
ignore connectivity.
Unfortunately, maintaining backward compatibility is painful. The
work on designing IPv6 so as to transition from IPv4 could have been
done better if the backward compatibility was considered. This is
too late for IPv6, but this problem space is not too late for the
future laying problems.
IPv6 is still not implemented fully everywhere. It's been a long
road since starting work in 1996, and we are still not there. In
1996, the thinking was that it was quite easy to implement IPv6, but
that failed to hold true. In 1996 the dot-com boom started and lots
of money was spent quickly, and the moment was not caught in time
while the market expanded exponentially. This should serve as a
cautionary tale.
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One last point: consider performance across multiple hops in the
Internet. We've not seen many end-to-end metrics, as successfully
developing end-to-end measurements across different network and
business boundaries is quite hard to achieve. A good question to ask
when developing new protocols is "will the new protocol work across
multiple network hops?"
Multi-hop networks are being gradually replaced by humongous flat
networks with sufficient connectivity between operators so that
systems become 1 hop or 2 hop at most away from each other (e.g.
Google, Facebook, Amazon). The fundamental architecture of the
Internet is changing.
4.1.2. Introductory talks
The Internet is a shared network, built on the IP protocols using
packet-switching to interconnect multiple autonomous networks. The
Internet's departure from circuit-switching technologies allowed it
to scale beyond any other known network. On the other hand, the lack
of in-network regulation made it difficult to ensure the best
experience for every user.
As the Internet use cases continue to expand, it becomes increasingly
more difficult to predict which network characteristics correlate
with better user experiences. Different application classes, e.g.,
video streaming and teleconferencing, can affect user experience in
complex, and difficult to measure ways. Internet utilization shifts
rapidly during the course of each day, week and year, which further
complicates identifying key metrics capable of predicting a good user
experience.
Quality of Service (QoS) initiatives attempted to overcome these
difficulties by strictly prioritizing different types of traffic.
However, QoS metrics do not always correlate with user experience.
The utility of the QoS metric is further limited by the difficulties
in building solutions with the desired QoS characteristics.
Quality of Experience (( QoE)) initiatives attempted to integrate the
psychological aspects of how quality is perceived, and created
statistical models designed to optimize the user experience. Despite
these high modeling efforts, the QoE approach proved beneficial in
certain application classes. Unfortunately, generalizing the models
proved to be difficult, and the question of how different
applications affect each other when sharing the same network remains
open.
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The industry's focus on giving the end-user more throughput/bandwidth
led to remarkable advances. In many places around the world, a home
user enjoys gigabit speeds to their Internet Service Provider. This
is so remarkable that it would have been brushed off as science
fiction a decade ago. However, the focus on increased capacity came
at the expense of neglecting the other important core metric:
latency. As a result, end-users whose experience is negatively
affected by high lateness were advised to upgrade their equipment to
get more throughput instead. [MacMillian2021] showed that sometimes
such an upgrade can lead to latency improvements, due to the
economical reasons of overselling the "value-priced" data plans.
As the industry continued to give the end user more throughput, while
neglecting the latency metric, application designs started to employ
various latency and short service disruption hiding techniques. For
example, user experience of web browser performance is closely tired
to the content in the local cache. While such techniques can clearly
improve the user experience when using stale data is acceptable, this
development is further decoupling user experience from the core
metrics.
In the most recent 10 years, efforts by Dave Taht and the bufferbloat
society had led to significant progress updating queuing algorithms
to reduce latencies under load compared to simipler FIFO queues.
Unfortunately, the home router industry has yet to implement these
algorithms, mostly due to marketing and cost reasons. Most home
router manufacturers depend on System on a Chip (SoC) acceleration to
to make products with a desired throughput. The SoC manufacturers
opt for simpler algorithms and aggressive aggregation, reasoning that
a higher-throughput chip will have guaranteed demand. Because
consumers are offered choices primarily between different high
throughput devices, the perception that a higher throughput leads to
higher a quality of service continues to strengthen.
The home router is not the only place that can benefit from clearer
indications of acceptable performance for users. Since users
perceive the Internet via the lens of applications, its important to
appeal to the application vendors that they should adopt solutions
that stress lower latencies. Unfortunately, while bandwidth is
straightforward to measure, responsiveness is trickier. Many
applications have found a set of metrics which are helpful to their
realm, but these are not generalizable and universally applicable.
Furthermore, due to the highly competitive application space, vendors
may have economic reasons to avoid sharing their most useful metrics.
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4.1.3. Introductory talks - key points
1. Measuring bandwidth is necessary, but is not alone sufficient.
2. In many cases, Internet users don't need more bandwidth, but
rather need "better bandwidth" - i.e., they need other
connectivity improvements.
3. The users perceive the quality of their Internet connection based
on the applications they use, which are affected by a combination
of factors. There's little value in exposing a typical user to
the entire spectrum of possible reasons for the poor performance
perceived in their application-centric view.
4. Many factors affecting user experience are outside the users'
sphere of control. It's unclear whether exposing the users to
these other factors will help user's understand their performance
state. In general, users prefer simple, categorical choices
(e.g. "good", "better", and "best" options).
5. The Internet content market is highly competitive, and many
applications develop their own "secret sauce."
4.2. Metrics considerations
The workshop continued to discuss various metrics that can be used
instead of or in addition to available bandwidth. Several workshop
attendees presented deep-dive studies on measurement methodology.
4.2.1. Common performance metrics
Losing Internet access is, of course, the worst user experience.
Unfortunately, unless rebooting the home router restores
connectivity, there is little a user can do other than contacting
their service provider. Nevertheless, there is value in the
systematic collection of availability metrics on the client side:
these can help the user's ISP localize and resolve issues faster,
while enabling users to better choose between ISPs. One can measure
the availability directly by simply attempting connections from the
client-side to locations of interest. For example,
[tools.ookla_speedtest] uses a large number of Android devices to
measure network and cellular availability around the globe. Ookla
collects hundreds of millions of data points per day, and uses these
for accurate availability reporting. An alternative approach is to
derive availability from the failure rates of other tests. For
example, [FCC_MBA] uses thousands of off-the shelf routers, called
"Whiteboxes", with measurement software developed by
[tools.samknows]. These Whiteboxes perform an array of network tests
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and report availability based whether test connections were
successful or not.
Measuring available capacity can be helpful to the end-users, but it
is even more valuable for service providers and application
developers. High-definition video streaming requires significantly
more capacity than any other type of traffic. At the time of the
workshop, video traffic constituted 90% of overall Internet traffic
and contributed to 95% of the revenues from monetization (via
subscriptions, fees, or ads). As a result, video streaming services,
such as Netflix, need to continuously cope with rapid changes in the
available capacity. The ability to measure available capacity in
real-time allows leveraging the different adaptive bitrate (ABR)
compression algorithms to ensure the best possible user experience.
Measuring the aggregated capacity demand allows Internet Service
Provider's to be ready for traffic spikes. For example, during the
end-of-year holiday season, the global demand for capacity has been
shown to be 5-7 times higher than other seasons. For end-users,
knowledge of their capacity needs can help them choose a data plan
best suited for them. In many cases, however, end-users have more
than enough capacity, and adding more bandwidth will not improve
their experience as after a point it is no longer the limiting factor
in user experience. Finally, the ability to differentiate between
the "throughput" and the "goodput" can be helpful in identifying when
the network is saturated.
In measuring network quality, latency is the time that it takes a
network packet to traverse the path from one end to the other through
the network. At the time of this report, users in many places
worldwide can enjoy Internet access that has adequately high capacity
and availability for their current needs. For these users, latency
improvements, rather than bandwidth improvements, can lead to the
most significant improvements in the quality of experience. The
established latency metric is a round-trip time (RTT), commonly
measured in milliseconds. However, users often find the RTT
unintuitive since, unlike other performance metrics, high RTT values
indicate poor latency. [Paasch2021] and [Mathis2021] presented an
inverse metric, called "Round-trips per minute" (RPM).
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There is an essential distinction between the "idle latency" and
"latency under working conditions." The former is measured when the
network is not used and reflects the best-case scenario. The latter
is measured when the network is under a typical workload. Until
recently, the typical case was to present the idle latency. However,
these numbers can be misleading. For example, data presented at the
workshop shows that the idle latency can be up to 25 times lower than
the latency under typical working conditions. Because of that, when
presenting latency to the end-user, it is essential to make a clear
distinction between the two.
Data shows that rapid changes in capacity affect latency.
[Foulkes2021] attempts to quantify how often a rapid change in
capacity can cause connectivity to become "unstable", i.e., having
high latency but very little throughput. Such changes in capacity
can be caused by infrastructure failures, but are much more often
caused by in-network phenomena, such changing traffic engineering
policies, or rapid changes in cross-traffic.
Data presented at the workshop shows that 36% of measured lines have
capacity metrics that vary by more than 10% throughout the day and
across multiple days. These differences are caused by many
variables, including local connectivity methods (WiFi vs. Ethernet),
competing LAN traffic, device load/configuration, time of day and
local loop/backhaul capacity. These factors make measuring capacity
only using an end-user device or network difficult. A network router
that sees aggregated traffic from multiple devices provides a better
vantage point for capacity measurements. Such a test can account for
the totality of local traffic and perform an independent capacity
test. And even then, various factors might limit the accuracy of
said test. Accurate capacity measurement requires a multiple
samples.
As users perceive the Internet through the lens of applications, it
may be difficult to correlate changes in capacity and latency with
the quality of the end-user experience. For example, web browsers
rely on cached page versions to shorten page load times and mitigate
connectivity losses. In addition, social networking applications
often rely on pre-fetching their "feed" items. These techniques make
the core in-network metrics less indicative of the users' experience
and necessitates collecting data in-application.
It is helpful to distinguish between applications that operate on a
"fixed latency budget" from those that have more tolerance to latency
variance. Cloud gaming serves as an example application that
requires a "fixed latency budget", as a sudden latency spike can
decide the "win/lose" ratio for a player. Companies that compete in
the lucrative cloud gaming market make significant infrastructure
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investments, such as buiding entire datacenters closer to their
users. These data centers highlight the economic benefits that
having fewer latency spikes outweigh the associated deployment cost.
On the other hand, applications that are more tolerant to latency
spikes can sometimes operate reasonably well through short spikes.
Yet even those applications can benefit from consistently low
latency. For example, Video-on-Demand (VOD) apps can work reasonably
well when the video is consumed linearly, but once the user tries to
"switch a channel", or to "skip ahead", the user experience suffers
unless the latency is sufficiently low.
Finally, as the applications continue to evolve, in-application
metrics are gaining in importance. Using VOD as an example, one can
assess the quality of experience by checking whether the video player
can use the highest possible resolution, whether the video is smooth
or freezing, and other similar metrics. Then, the application
developer can effectively use these metrics to prioritize future
work. All popular video platforms (Youtube, Instagram, Netflix, and
others) have developed frameworks to collect and analyze such metrics
at scale. One example is the Scuba framework used by Meta
[FB_Scuba].
Unfortunately, the in-application metrics can be challenging to use
for comparative research purposes. Firstly, different applications
often use different metrics to measure the same phenomena. For
example, application A can measure the smoothness of video via "mean
time to re-buffer." In contrast, application B can rely on the
"probability of re-buffering per second" for the same purpose. A
different challenge with using in-application metrics is that at the
time of the workshop, VOD is a significant source of revenue for
companies such as YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix, which places
proprietary incentives against exchanging the in-application data.
Finally, in-application metrics can also accurately describe the
activities and preferences of an individual end-user, leading to
privacy infringements.
4.2.2. Availability metrics
Availability is simply defined as whether or not a packet can be sent
and then received by its intended recipient. Availability is naively
thought to be the simplest to measure, but is more complex when
considering that continual, instantaneous measurements would be
needed to detect the smallest of outages. Also difficult is
determining the root cause of infallibility: was the user's line
down, something in the middle of the network or was it the service
with which the user was attempting to communicate.
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4.2.3. Capacity metrics
If the network capacity does not meet the user demands, the network
quality will be impacted. Once the capacity meets the demands,
increasing capacity won't lead to further quality improvements.
The actual network connection capacity is determined by the equipment
and the lines along the network path, and it varies throughout the
day and across multiple days. Studies involving DSL lines in North
America indicate that over 30% of the DSL lines have capacity metrics
that vary by more than 10% throughout the day and accross multiple
days.
Some factors that affect the actual capacity are:
1. Presence of a competing traffic, either in the LAN or in the WAN
environments. In the LAN setting, the competing traffic reflects
the multiple devices that share the Internet connection. In the
WAN setting the competing traffic often originates from the
unrelated network flows that happen to share the same network
path.
2. Capabilities of the equipment along the path of the network
connection, including the data transfer rate and the amount of
memory used for buffering.
3. Active traffic management measures, such as traffic shapers and
policers that are often used by the network providers.
There are other factors that can negatively affect the actual line
capacities.
The user demands of the traffic follow the usage patterns and
preferences of the particular users. For example, large data
transfers can use any available capacity, while the media streaming
applicaitons require limited capacity to function correclty. Video-
conferencing applications typically need less capacity than high-
definition video streaming.
4.2.4. Latency metrics
End-to-end latency is the time that a particular packet takes to
traverse the network path from the user to their destination and
back. The end-to-end latency comprises several components:
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1. The propagation delay, which reflects the path distance and the
individual link technologies (e.g. fibre vs satellite). The
propagation doesn't depend on the utilization of the network, to
the extent that the network path remains constant.
2. The buffering delay, which reflects the time segments spend in
the memory of the network equipment that connect the individual
network links, as well as in the memory of the transmitting
endpoint. The buffering delay depends on the network
utilization, as well as on the algorithms that govern the queued
segments.
3. The transport protocol delays, which reflects the time spent in
retransmission and reassembly, as well as the time spent when the
transport is "head-of-line blocked."
4. Some of the workshop sumbissions have explicitly called out the
application delay, which reflects the inefficiencies in the
application layer.
Traditionally, end-to-end latency is measured when the network is
idle. Results of such measurements reflect mostly the propagation
delay, but not other kinds of delay. This report uses the term "idle
latency" to refer to results achieved under idle network conditions.
Alternatively, if the latency is measured when the network is under
its typical working conditions, the results reflect multiple types of
delays. This report uses the term "working latency" to refer to such
results. Other sources use the term "latency under load" (LUL) as a
synonym.
Data presented at the workshop reveals a substantial difference
between the idle latency and the working latency. Depending on the
traffic direciton and the technology type, the working latency is
between 6 to 25 times higher than the idle latency:
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+============+============+========+=========+============+=========+
| Direction | Technology |Working | Idle | Working - |Working /|
| | type |latency | latency | Idle |Idle |
| | | | | difference |ratio |
+============+============+========+=========+============+=========+
| Downstream | FTTH |148 | 10 | 138 |15 |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+---------+
| Dowstream | Cable |103 | 13 | 90 |8 |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+---------+
| Downstream | DSL |194 | 10 | 184 |19 |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+---------+
| Upstream | FTTH |207 | 12 | 195 |17 |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+---------+
| Upstream | Cable |176 | 27 | 149 |6 |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+---------+
| Upstream | DSL |686 | 27 | 659 |25 |
+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+---------+
Table 1
While historically the tooling available for measuring latency
focused on measuring the idle latency, there is a trend in the
industry to start measuring the working latency as well, e.g.
[tools.apple_networkQuality].
4.2.5. Measurement case studies
The participants have proposed several concrete methodologies for
measuring the network quality for the end users.
[Paasch2021] introduced a methodology for measuring working latency
from the end-user vantage point. The suggested method incrementally
adds network flows between the user device and a server endpoint
until a bottleneck capacity is reached. From these measurements, a
round trip latency is measured and reported to the end-user. The
authors chose to report results with the RPM metric. The methodology
had been implemented in Apple Monterey OS.
[Mathis2021] have applied the RPM metric to the results of more than
4 billion download tests that M-Lab performed in 2010-2021. During
this time frame, the M-Lab measurement platform underwent several
upgrades which allowed the research team to compare the effect of
different TCP congestion control algorithms (CCAs) on the measured
end-to-end latency. The study showed that the use Cubic CCA leads to
increased working latency, which is attributed to its use of larger
queues.
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[Schlinker2019] presented a large-scale study that aimed to establish
a correlation between goodput and quality of experience on a large
social network. The authors performed the measurements at multiple
data centers from which video segments of set sizes were streamed to
a large number of end users. The authors used the goodput and
throughput metrics to determine whether particular paths were
congested.
[Reed2021] presented the analysis of working latency measurements
collected as part of the FCC's "Measuring Broadband America" (MBA)
program. The FCC does not include working latency in its yearly
report, but does offer it in the raw data files. The authors used a
subset of the raw data to identify important differences in the
working latencies across different ISPs.
[MacMillian2021] presented analysis of working latency across
multiple service tiers. They found that, unsurprisingly, "premium"
tier users experienced lower working latency compared to a "value"
tier. The data demonstrated that working latency varies
significantly within each tier; one possible explanation is the
difference in equipment deployed in the homes.
These studies have stressed the importance of measurement of the
working latency. At the time of this report, many home router
manufacturers relied on hardware-accelerated routing which used FIFO
queues. Focusing the working latency measurements on those devices,
and making the consumer aware of the effect of chosing one
manufacturer vs. other can help improving the home router situation.
The ideal test would be able to identify the working latency, and to
pinpoint to the source of delay (home router, ISP, server side, or
some network node in between).
Another source of high working latency comes from network routers
that are exposed to cross-traffic. As [Schlinker2019] indicated,
these can become saturated during the peak hours of the day.
Systematic testing of the working latency in routers under load can
help improve the infrastructure.
4.2.6. Metrics Key Points
The metrics for network quality can be roughly grouped into:
1. Availability metrics, which indicate whether the user can access
the network at all.
2. Capacity metrics, which indicate whether the actual line capacity
is sufficient to meet the user's demands.
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3. Latency metrics, indicating if the user gets the data in a timely
fashion.
4. Higher-order metrics, which include both the network metrics,
such as inter-packet arrival time, and the applicaiton metrics,
such as the mean time between rebuffering for video streaming.
The availabiltiy metrics can be seen as derivative of either the
capacity (zero capacity leading to zero availability) or the latency
(infinite latency leading to zero availability).
Key points from the presentations and discussions included:
1. Availability and capacity are "hygienic factors" - unless an
application is capable of using extra capacity, end-users will
see little benefit from using overprovisioned lines.
2. The working latency has stronger correlation with user experience
than latency under an idle network load. The working latency can
exceed the idle latency by order of magnitude.
3. The RPM metric is a stable metric, with positive values being
better, that can be effective to communicate latency to the end-
users.
4. The relationship between throughput and goodput can be effective
in finding the saturation points, both in client-side
[Paasch2021] and server-side [Schlinker2019] settings.
5. Working latency depends on algorithm choice for addressing
endpoint congestion control and router queuing.
Finally, it was commonly agreed to that the best metrics are those
that are actionable.
4.3. Cross-layer Considerations
In the Cross-layer section participants presented material and
discussed how to accurately measure exactly where problems occur.
The discussion showed how difficult it is to achieve accuracy when
many components of a network connection affects the measurements.
Discussion centered especially on the differences between physically
wired and wireless connections and the difficulties of accurately
determining problem spots when multiple different network types are
responsible for the quality. As an example, [Kerpez2021] showed that
as Internet access becomes the norm, the limited bandwidth of 2.4Ghz
wifi is most frequently the bottleneck. In comparison, the wider
bandwidth of the 5Ghz WiFi have only been the bottleneck in 20% of
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the observations.
The participants agreed that no single component of a network
connection has all the data required to measure the effects of the
network performance on the quality of the end user experience.
* The applications that are running on the end-user devices have the
best insight into their respective performance, but have limited
visibility into the behavior of the network, and are not able to
act on the limited information about the network performance.
* Internet service providers have good insight into QoS
considerations, but are not able to infer the effect of the QoS
metrics on the quality of end user experiences.
* Content providers have good insight into the aggregated behavior
of the end users, but lack the insight on what aspects of the
network performance are leading indicators of user behavior.
The workshop had identified the need for a standard and extensible
way to exchange network performance characteristics. Such an
exchange standard should address (at least) the following:
* A scalable way to capture the performance of multiple (potentially
thousands of) endpoints.
* The need for an accompanying set of tools to analyze the data.
* A transparent model for giving the different actors on the network
connection an incentive to share the performance data they
collect.
* Preservation of end-user privacy. In particular, federated
learning approaches, where no centralized entity has the access to
the whole picture, should be preferred.
* The data exchange format should include precautions against data
manipulations, so that the different actors won't be tempted to
game the mechanism.
4.3.1. Separation of Concerns
Commonly, there's a tight coupling between
1. collecting performance metrics,
2. interpreting those metrics and
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3. and acting upon the intrepretation of the metrics.
Unfortunately, such model is not the best for successfully exchanging
cross-layer data:
* The actors that have the ability to collect particular performance
metrics (e.g. the TCP RTT) do not necessarily have the context
necessary for a meaningful interpretation.
* The actors that have the context and the computational/storage
capacity for the interpretation do not necessarily have the abilty
to control the behavior of network / application.
* The actors that can control the behavior of network / application
typically do not have access to the data.
The participants agreed that it is important to separate the above
three aspects, so that:
* The different actors that have the data but not the ability to
interpret / act upon should publish their measured data.
* The actors that have the expertise in interpreting and
synthesizing the performance data will be able to publish the
results of any interpretation.
4.3.2. Security and Privacy Considerations
Preserving the privacy of the end users is a difficult requirement to
meet when addressing this problem space. There is an intrinsic
trade-off between collecting more data about user activities, and
infringing their privacy in doing so.
Participants agreed that observability across multiple layers is
necessary for an accurate measurement of the network quality.
4.3.3. Concrete Suggestions
* The TCP protocol makes several metrics available for passive
measurement, and the following metrics have been found to be
effective:
- TCP connection latency measured using SACK/ACK timing, as well
as the timing between TCP retransmission events, are good
proxies for end-to-end RTT measurements.
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- On the Linux platform, the tcp_info structure is the de-facto
standard for an application to introspect the performance of
kernel-space networking. However, there is no equivalent de-
facto standard for the user-space networking.
* The QUIC and MASQUE protocols make passive performance
measurements more challenging.
- An approach that uses federated measurement / hierarchical
aggregation appears more valuable for these protocols.
- The QLOG format seems to be the most mature candidate for such
an exchange.
4.3.4. Towards Future Cross-layer Observability
The ownership of the Internet is spread across multiple
administrative domains, making measuring performance data difficult.
Furthermore, the immense scale of the Internet makes aggregation and
analysis of such data difficult. [Marx2021] presented a simple
logging format that could potentially be used to collect and
aggregate data from different layers.
Another aspect of cross-layer collaboration hampering measurement is
that the majority of current algorithms do not explicitly provide
performance data that can be used in cross-layer analysis. The IETF
community can be more diligent in identifying a protocol's key
performance indicators, and exposing those as part of the protocol
specification.
Despite all the challenges, it should still be possible to perform
limited-scope studies in order to have a better understanding of how
user quality is affected by the interaction of the different
components that constitute the Internet. Recent development of
federated learning algorithms suggests that it might be possible to
perform cross-layer performance measurements while preserving user
privacy.
4.3.5. Efficient Collaboration Between Hardware and Transport Protocols
With the advent of the L4S congestion notification and control, there
is an even higher need for the transport protocols and the underlying
hardware to work in unison.
At the time of the workshop, the typical home router used a single
FIFO queue, large enough to allow amortizing the lower-layer header
overhead across multiple transport PDUs. These designs worked well
with the Cubic congestion control algorithm, yet the newer generation
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of CCAs can operate on much smaller queues. To fully support
latencies less than 1ms, the home router needs to work efficiently on
sequential transmissions of just a few segments vs. being optimized
for large packet bursts.
Another design trait that's common in home routers is the use of
packet aggregation to further amortize the overhead added by the
lower-layer headers. Specifically, multiple IP datagrams are
combined into a single large tranfer frame. However, this
aggregation can add up to 10ms to the packet sojourn delay.
Following the famous "you can't improve what you don't measure"
adage, it is important to expose these aggregation delays in a way
that would allow identifying the source of the bottlenecks, and
making hardware more suitable for the next generation transport
protocols.
4.3.6. Cross-Layer Key Points
TBD
4.4. Synthesis
Finally, in the Synthesis section presentations and discussions
concentrated on the next steps likely needed to make forward
progress. Of particular concern is how to bring forward measurements
that can make sense to end users trying to make subscription
decisions.
(this section is TBD)
4.4.1. Synthesis Key Points
(this section is TBD)
5. Conclusions
During the final hour of the workshop we gathered statements that the
group thought were summary statements from the 3 day event. We later
discarded any that were in contention (listed further below for
completeness). For this document, the editor took the original list
and divided it into rough categories, applied some suggested edits
discussed on the mailing list and further edited for clarity and to
provide context.
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5.1. General statements
1. Bandwidth is necessary but not alone sufficient.
2. In many cases, Internet users don't need more bandwidth, but
rather need "better bandwidth" - i.e., they need other
improvements to their connectivity.
3. We need both active and passive measurements - passive
measurements can provide historical debugging.
4. We need passive measurements to be continuous and archivable and
queriable - include reliability/connectivity measurements.
5. A really meaningful metric for users is whether their application
will work properly or fail because of a lack of a network with
sufficient characteristics.
6. A useful metric for goodness must actually incentive goodness -
good metrics should be actionable to help drive industries toward
improvement.
7. A lower latency Internet, however achieved would benefit all end
users.
5.2. Specific statements about detailed protocols/techniques
1. Round trips Per Minute (RPM) is a useful, consumable metric.
2. We need a usable tool that fills the current gap between network
reachability, latency, and speed tests.
3. End-users that want to be involved in QoS decisions should be
able to voice their needs and desires.
4. Applications are needed that can perform and report good quality
measurements in order to identify insufficient points in network
access.
5. Research done by regulators indicate that users/consumers prefer
a simple metric per application, which frequently resolves to
whether the application will work properly or not.
6. New measurements and QoS or QoE techniques should not rely only
or depend on reading TCP headers.
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7. It is clear from developers of interactive applications and from
network operators that lower latency is a strong factor in user
QoE. However, metrics are lacking to support this statement
directly.
5.3. Problem statements and concerns
1. Latency mean and medians are distractions from better
measurements.
2. It is frustrating to only measure network services without
simultaneously improving those services.
3. Stakeholder incentives aren't aligned for easy wins in this
space. Incentives are needed to motivate improvements in public
network access. Measurements may be one step toward driving
competitive market incentive.
4. For future-proof networking, it is important to measure the
ecological impact of material and energy usage.
5. We do not have incontrovertible evidence that any one metric
(e.g., latency or speed) is more important than others to
persuade device vendors to concentrate on any one optimization.
5.4. No-consensus reached statements
Additional statements were recorded that did not have consensus of
the group at the time, but we list them here for completeness about
the fact they were discussed:
1. We do not have incontrovertible evidence that buffer bloat is a
prevalent problem.
2. The measurement needs to support reporting localization in order
to find problems. Specifically:
* Detecting a problem is not sufficient if you can't find the
location.
* Need more than just English - different localization concerns.
3. Stakeholder incentives aren't aligned for easy wins in this
space.
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6. Follow-on work
There was discussion during the workshop about where future work
should be performed. The group agreed that some work could be done
more immediately within existing IETF working groups (e.g. IPPM,
DetNet and RAW), while other longer-term research may be needed in
IRTF groups.
7. Security considerations
A few security relevant topics were discussed at the workshop,
including but not limited to:
* What prioritization techniques can work without invading the
privacy of the communicating parties.
* How oversubscribed networks can essentially be viewed as a DDoS
attack.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC4035] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security
Extensions", RFC 4035, DOI 10.17487/RFC4035, March 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4035>.
[RFC5155] Laurie, B., Sisson, G., Arends, R., and D. Blacka, "DNS
Security (DNSSEC) Hashed Authenticated Denial of
Existence", RFC 5155, DOI 10.17487/RFC5155, March 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5155>.
8.2. Informative References
[Aldabbagh2021]
Aldabbagh, A., "Regulatory perspective on measuring
network quality for end users", https://www.iab.org/wp-
content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/2021-09-07-Aldabbagh-Ofcom-
presentationt-to-IAB-1v00-1.pdf , September 2021.
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[Arkko2021]
Arkko, J. and M. Kühlewind, "Observability is needed to
improve network quality", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/
IAB-uploads/2021/09/iab-position-paper-observability.pdf ,
August 2021.
[Balasubramanian2021]
Balasubramanian, P., "Transport Layer Statistics for
Network Quality", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/transportstatsquality.pdf , February 2021.
[Briscoe2021]
Briscoe, B., White, G., Goel, V., and K. De Schepper, "A
Single Common Metric to Characterize Varying Packet
Delay", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/single-delay-metric-1.pdf , September
2021.
[Casas2021]
Casas, P., "10 Years of Internet-QoE Measurements. Video,
Cloud, Conferencing, Web and Apps. What do we need from
the Network Side?", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/net_quality_internet_qoe_CASAS.pdf ,
August 2021.
[Cheshire2021]
Cheshire, S., "The Internet is a Shared Network",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/draft-
cheshire-internet-is-shared-00b.pdf , February 2021.
[Davies2021]
Davies, N. and P. Thompson, "Measuring Network Impact on
Application Outcomes using Quality Attenuation",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/PNSol-
et-al-Submission-to-Measuring-Network-Quality-for-End-
Users-1.pdf , September 2021.
[DeSchepper2021]
De Schepper, K., Tilmans, O., and G. Dion, "Challenges and
opportunities of hardware support for Low Queuing Latency
without Packet Loss", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/Nokia-IAB-Measuring-Network-Quality-Low-
Latency-measurement-workshop-20210802.pdf , February 2021.
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[Dion2021] Dion, G., "Focusing on latency, not throughput, to provide
a better internet experience and network quality",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/Nokia-
IAB-Measuring-Network-Quality-Improving-and-focusing-on-
latency-.pdf , August 2021.
[Fabini2021]
Fabini, J., "Network Quality from an End User
Perspective", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/Fabini-IAB-NetworkQuality.txt , February
2021.
[FB_Scuba] "Facebook Scuba", n.d.,
<https://research.facebook.com/publications/scuba-diving-
into-data-at-facebook/>.
[FCC_MBA] "Measuring Broadband America",
https://www.fcc.gov/general/measuring-broadband-america ,
n.d..
[FCC_MBA.methodology]
"Measuring Broadband America - Open Methodology",
https://www.fcc.gov/general/measuring-broadband-america-
open-methodology , n.d..
[Foulkes2021]
Foulkes, J., "Metrics helpful in assessing Internet
Quality", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/
IAB_Metrics_helpful_in_assessing_Internet_Quality.pdf ,
September 2021.
[Ghai2021] Ghai, R., "Using TCP Connect Latency for Measuring CX and
Network Optimization", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/xfinity-wifi-ietf-iab-v2-1.pdf , February
2021.
[Iyengar2021]
Iyengar, J., "The Internet Exists In Its Use",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/The-
Internet-Exists-In-Its-Use.pdf , August 2021.
[Kerpez2021]
Shafiei, J., Kerpez, K., Cioffi, J., Chow, P., and D.
Bousaber, "Wi-Fi and Broadband Data", https://www.iab.org/
wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/Wi-Fi-Report-ASSIA.pdf ,
September 2021.
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[Kilkki2021]
Kilkki, K. and B. Finley, "In Search of Lost QoS",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/Kilkki-
In-Search-of-Lost-QoS.pdf , February 2021.
[Laki2021] Nadas, S., Varga, B., Contreras, L.M., and S. Laki,
"Incentive-Based Traffic Management and QoS Measurements",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/11/CamRdy-
IAB_user_meas_WS_Nadas_et_al_IncentiveBasedTMwQoS.pdf ,
February 2021.
[Liubogoshchev2021]
Liubogoshchev, M., "Cross-layer cooperation for Better
Network Service", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/Cross-layer-Cooperation-for-Better-
Network-Service-2.pdf , February 2021.
[MacMillian2021]
MacMillian, K. and N. Feamster, "Beyond Speed Test:
Measuring Latency Under Load Across Different Speed
Tiers", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/2021_nqw_lul.pdf , February 2021.
[Marx2021] Marx, R. and J. Herbots, "Merge Those Metrics: Towards
Holistic (Protocol) Logging", https://www.iab.org/wp-
content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/
MergeThoseMetrics_Marx_Jul2021.pdf , February 2021.
[Mathis2021]
Mathis, M., "Preliminary Longitudinal Study of Internet
Responsiveness", https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-
uploads/2021/09/Preliminary-Longitudinal-Study-of-
Internet-Responsiveness-1.pdf , August 2021.
[McIntyre2021]
Paasch, C., McIntyre, K., Shapira, O., Meyer, R., and S.
Cheshire, "An end-user approach to an Internet Score",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/
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[Michel2021]
Michel, F. and O. Bonaventure, "Packet delivery time as a
tie-breaker for assessing Wi-Fi access points",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/camera_
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Wi_Fi_access_points.pdf , February 2021.
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[Mirsky2021]
Mirsky, G., Min, X., Mishra, G., and L. Han, "The Error
Performance Metric in a Packet-Switched Network",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/IAB-
worshop-Error-performance-measurement-in-packet-switched-
networks.pdf , February 2021.
[Morton2021]
Morton, A., "Dream-Pipe or Pipe-Dream: What Do Users Want
(and how can we assure it)?", https://www.iab.org/wp-
content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/draft-morton-ippm-pipe-dream-
01.pdf , September 2021.
[Paasch2021]
Paasch, C., Meyer, R., Cheshire, S., and O. Shapira,
"Responsiveness under Working Conditions",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/draft-
cpaasch-ippm-responsiveness-1-1.pdf , February 2021.
[Pardue2021]
Pardue, L. and S. Tellakula, "Lower-layer performance is
not indicative of upper-layer success",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/Lower-
layer-performance-is-not-indicative-of-upper-layer-
success-20210906-00-1.pdf , February 2021.
[Reed2021] Reed, D.P. and L. Perigo, "Measuring IKSP Performance in
Broadband America: A Study of Latency Under Load",
https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2021/09/
Camera_Ready_-Measuring-ISP-Performance-in-Broadband-
America.pdf , February 2021.
[RFC1111] Postel, J., "Request for comments on Request for Comments:
Instructions to RFC authors", RFC 1111,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1111, August 1989,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1111>.
[RFC1436] McCahill, M., Lindner, P., Johnson, D., and B. Alberti,
"Internet Gopher Protocol",
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1436 , March
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[RFC1945] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and H. Frystyk, "Hypertext
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https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1945 , May 1996.
[RFC765] Postel, Jonathan B., "FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL",
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc765 , June 1980.
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[tools.ookla_speedtest]
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[tools.ping]
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[tools.samknows]
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Appendix A. Participants List
The following is a list of participants who attended the workshop
over a remote connection:
Ahmed Aldabbagh
Jari Arkko
Praveen Balasubramanian
Olivier Bonaventure
Djamel Bousaber
Bob Briscoe
Rich Brown
Anna Brunstrom
Pedro Casas
Vint Cerf
Stuart Cheshire
Kenjiro Cho
Steve Christianson
John Cioffi
Alexander Clemm
Luis M. Contreras
Sam Crawford
Neil Davies
Gino Dion
Toerless Eckert
Lars Eggert
Joachim Fabini
Gorry Fairhurst
Nick Feamster
Mat Ford
Jonathan Foulkes
Jim Gettys
Rajat Ghai
Vidhi Goel
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Wes Hardaker
Joris Herbots
Geoff Huston
Toke Høiland-Jørgensen
Jana Iyengar
Cullen Jennings
Ken Kerpez
Evgeny Khorov
Kalevi Kilkki
Joon Kim
Zhenbin Li
Mikhail Liubogoshchev
Jason Livingood
Kyle MacMillan
Sharat Madanapalli
Vesna Manojlovic
Robin Marx
Matt Mathis
Jared Mauch
Kristen McIntyre
Randall Meyer
François Michel
Greg Mirsky
Cindy Morgan
Al Morton
Szilveszter Nadas
Kathleen Nichols
Lai Yi Ohlsen
Christoph Paasch
Lucas Pardue
Tommy Pauly
Levi Perigo
David Reed
Alvaro Retana
Roberto
Koen De Schepper
David Schinazi
Brandon Schlinker
Eve Schooler
Satadal Sengupta
Jinous Shafiei
Shapelez
Omer Shapira
Dan Siemon
Vijay Sivaraman
Karthik Sundaresan
Dave Taht
Rick Taylor
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Bjørn Ivar Teigen
Nicolas Tessares
Peter Thompson
Balazs Varga
Bren Tully Walsh
Michael Welzl
Greg White
Russ White
Keith Winstein
Lisong Xu
Jiankang Yao
Gavin Young
Mingrui Zhang
Appendix B. IAB Members at the Time of Approval
Internet Architecture Board members at the time this document was
approved for publication were:
Jari Arkko
Deborah Brungard
Ben Campbell
Lars Eggert
Wes Hardaker
Cullen Jennings
Mirja Kühlewind
Zhenbin Li
Jared Mauch
Tommy Pauly
Colin Perkins
David Schinazi
Russ White
Jiankang Yao
Appendix C. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the workshop participants, the
members of the IAB, and the program committee for creating and
participating in many interesting discussions.
C.1. Draft contributors
Thank you to the people that contributed edits to this draft:
Erik Auerswald
Simon Leinen
Brian Trammell
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C.2. Workshop Chairs
The workshop chairs consisted of:
Wes Hardaker
Evgeny Khorov
Omer Shapira
C.3. Program Committee
The program committee consisted of:
Jari Arkko
Olivier Bonaventure
Vint Cerf
Stuart Cheshire
Sam Crowford
Nick Feamster
Jim Gettys
Toke Hoiland-Jorgensen
Geoff Huston
Cullen Jennings
Katarzyna Kosek-Szott
Mirja Kuehlewind
Jason Livingood
Matt Mathis
Randall Meyer
Kathleen Nichols
Christoph Paasch
Tommy Pauly
Greg White
Keith Winstein
Appendix D. Github Version of this document
While this document is under development, it can be viewed and
tracked here:
https://github.com/intarchboard/network-quality-workshop-report
Authors' Addresses
Wes Hardaker
USC/ISI
Email: ietf@hardakers.net
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Omer Shapira
Apple
Email: omer_shapira@apple.com
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