Applicability of the QUIC Transport Protocol
draft-ietf-quic-applicability-11
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (quic WG) | |
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| Authors | Mirja Kühlewind , Brian Trammell | ||
| Last updated | 2021-04-21 | ||
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draft-ietf-quic-applicability-11
Network Working Group M. Kuehlewind
Internet-Draft Ericsson
Intended status: Informational B. Trammell
Expires: 23 October 2021 Google
21 April 2021
Applicability of the QUIC Transport Protocol
draft-ietf-quic-applicability-11
Abstract
This document discusses the applicability of the QUIC transport
protocol, focusing on caveats impacting application protocol
development and deployment over QUIC. Its intended audience is
designers of application protocol mappings to QUIC, and implementors
of these application protocols.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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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."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 23 October 2021.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. The Necessity of Fallback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Zero RTT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Replay Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Session resumption versus Keep-alive . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Use of Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Stream versus Flow Multiplexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2. Prioritization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.3. Ordered and Reliable Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.4. Flow Control Deadlocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.5. Stream Limit Commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Packetization and Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. ACK-only packets on constrained links . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8. Port Selection and Application Endpoint Discovery . . . . . . 14
9. Connection Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
10. Connection Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
11. Information Exposure and the Connection ID . . . . . . . . . 16
11.1. Server-Generated Connection ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
11.2. Mitigating Timing Linkability with Connection ID
Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
11.3. Using Server Retry for Redirection . . . . . . . . . . . 18
12. Quality of Service (QoS) and DSCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
13. Use of Versions and Cryptographic Handshake . . . . . . . . . 19
14. Enabling New Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
15. Unreliable Datagram Service over QUIC . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
16. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
17. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
18. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
19. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
20. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
20.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
20.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1. Introduction
QUIC [QUIC] is a new transport protocol providing a number of
advanced features. While initially designed for the HTTP use case,
it provides capabilities that can be used with a much wider variety
of applications. QUIC is encapsulated in UDP. QUIC version 1
integrates TLS 1.3 [TLS13] to encrypt all payload data and most
control information. The version of HTTP that uses QUIC is known as
HTTP/3 [QUIC-HTTP].
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This document provides guidance for application developers that want
to use the QUIC protocol without implementing it on their own. This
includes general guidance for applications operating over HTTP/3 or
directly over QUIC.
In the following sections we discuss specific caveats to QUIC's
applicability, and issues that application developers must consider
when using QUIC as a transport for their application.
2. The Necessity of Fallback
QUIC uses UDP as a substrate. This enables userspace implementation
and permits traversal of network middleboxes (including NAT) without
requiring updates to existing network infrastructure.
While recent measurements have shown no evidence of a widespread,
systematic disadvantage of UDP traffic compared to TCP in the
Internet [Edeline16], somewhere between three [Trammell16] and five
[Swett16] percent of networks block all UDP traffic. All
applications running on top of QUIC must therefore either be prepared
to accept connectivity failure on such networks or be engineered to
fall back to some other transport protocol. In the case of HTTP,
this fallback is TLS over TCP.
The IETF TAPS specifications [I-D.ietf-taps-arch] describe a system
with a common API for multiple protocols and some of the implications
of fallback between these different protocols, specifically
precluding fallback to insecure protocols or to weaker versions of
secure protocols.
An application that implements fallback needs to consider the
security consequences. A fallback to TCP and TLS exposes control
information to modification and manipulation in the network. Further
downgrades to older TLS versions than used in QUIC, which is 1.3,
might result in significantly weaker cryptographic protection. For
example, the results of protocol negotiation [RFC7301] only have
confidentiality protection if TLS 1.3 is used.
These applications must operate, perhaps with impaired functionality,
in the absence of features provided by QUIC not present in the
fallback protocol. For fallback to TLS over TCP, the most obvious
difference is that TCP does not provide stream multiplexing and
therefore stream multiplexing would need to be implemented in the
application layer if needed. Further, TCP implementations and
network paths often do not support the Fast Open option [RFC7413],
which enables sending of payload data together with the first control
packet of a new connection as also provided by 0-RTT session
resumption in QUIC. Note that there is some evidence of middleboxes
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blocking SYN data even if TFO was successfully negotiated (see
[PaaschNanog]). And even if Fast Open successfully operates end-to-
end, it is limited to a single packet of TLS handshake and
application data, unlike QUIC 0-RTT.
Moreover, while encryption (in this case TLS) is inseparably
integrated with QUIC, TLS negotiation over TCP can be blocked. If
TLS over TCP cannot be supported, the connection should be aborted,
and the application then ought to present a suitable prompt to the
user that secure communication is unavailable.
In summary, any fallback mechanism is likely to impose a degradation
of performance and can degrade security; however, fallback must not
silently violate the application's expectation of confidentiality or
integrity of its payload data.
3. Zero RTT
QUIC provides for 0-RTT connection establishment. Though the same
facility exists in TLS 1.3 with TCP, 0-RTT presents opportunities and
challenges for applications using QUIC.
A transport protocol that provides 0-RTT connection establishment is
qualitatively different than one that does not from the point of view
of the application using it. Relative trade-offs between the cost of
closing and reopening a connection and trying to keep it open are
different; see Section 3.2.
An application needs to deliberately choose to use 0-RTT, as 0-RTT
carries a risk of replay attack. Application protocols that use
0-RTT require a profile that describes the types of information that
can be safely sent. For HTTP, this profile is described in
[HTTP-REPLAY].
3.1. Replay Attacks
Retransmission or (malicious) replay of data contained in 0-RTT
packets could cause the server side to receive two copies of the same
data.
Application data sent by the client in 0-RTT packets could be
processed more than once if it is replayed. Applications need to be
aware of what is safe to send in 0-RTT. Application protocols that
seek to enable the use of 0-RTT need a careful analysis and a
description of what can be sent in 0-RTT; see Section 5.6 of
[QUIC-TLS].
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In some cases, it might be sufficient to limit application data sent
in 0-RTT to that which only causes actions at a server that are known
to be free of lasting effect. Initiating data retrieval or
establishing configuration are examples of actions that could be
safe. Idempotent operations - those for which repetition has the
same net effect as a single operation - might be safe. However, it
is also possible to combine individually idempotent operations into a
non-idempotent sequence of operations.
Once a server accepts 0-RTT data there is no means of selectively
discarding data that is received. However, protocols can define ways
to reject individual actions that might be unsafe if replayed.
Some TLS implementations and deployments might be able to provide
partial or even complete replay protection, which could be used to
manage replay risk.
3.2. Session resumption versus Keep-alive
Because QUIC is encapsulated in UDP, applications using QUIC must
deal with short network idle timeouts. Deployed stateful middleboxes
will generally establish state for UDP flows on the first packet
sent, and keep state for much shorter idle periods than for TCP.
[RFC5382] suggests a TCP idle period of at least 124 minutes, though
there is not evidence of widespread implementation of this guideline
in the literature. Short network timeout for UDP, however, is well-
documented. According to a 2010 study ([Hatonen10]), UDP
applications can assume that any NAT binding or other state entry can
expire after just thirty seconds of inactivity. Section 3.5 of
[RFC8085] further discusses keep-alive intervals for UDP: it requires
a minimum value of 15 seconds, but recommends larger values, or
omitting keep-alive entirely.
By using a connection ID, QUIC is designed to be robust to NAT
address rebinding after a timeout. However, this only helps if one
endpoint maintains availability at the address its peer uses, and the
peer is the one to send after the timeout occurs.
Some QUIC connections might not be robust to NAT rebinding because
the routing infrastructure (in particular, load balancers) uses the
address/port four-tuple to direct traffic. Furthermore, middleboxes
with functions other than address translation could still affect the
path. In particular, some firewalls do not admit server traffic for
which the firewall has no recent state for a corresponding packet
sent from the client.
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QUIC applications can adjust idle periods to manage the risk of
timeout. Idle periods and the network idle timeout are distinct from
the connection idle timeout, which is defined as the minimum of
either endpoint's idle timeout parameter; see Section 10.1 of
[QUIC]). There are three options:
* Ignore the issue, if the application-layer protocol consists only
of interactions with no or very short idle periods, or the
protocol's resistance to NAT rebinding is sufficient.
* Ensure there are no long idle periods.
* Resume the session after a long idle period, using 0-RTT
resumption when appropriate.
The first strategy is the easiest, but it only applies to certain
applications.
Either the server or the client in a QUIC application can send PING
frames as keep-alives, to prevent the connection and any on-path
state from timing out. Recommendations for the use of keep-alives
are application-specific, mainly depending on the latency
requirements and message frequency of the application. In this case,
the application mapping must specify whether the client or server is
responsible for keeping the application alive. While [Hatonen10]
suggests that 30 seconds might be a suitable value for the public
Internet when a NAT is on path, larger values are preferable if the
deployment can consistently survive NAT rebinding or is known to be
in a controlled environment (e.g. data centres) in order to lower
network and computational load.
Sending PING frames more frequently than every 30 seconds over long
idle periods may result in excessive unproductive traffic in some
situations, and to unacceptable power usage for power-constrained
(mobile) devices. Additionally, timeouts shorter than 30 seconds can
make it harder to handle transient network interruptions, such as VM
migration or coverage loss during mobilty. See [RFC8085], especially
Section 3.5.
Alternatively, the client (but not the server) can use session
resumption instead of sending keepalive traffic. In this case, a
client that wants to send data to a server over a connection idle
longer than the server's idle timeout (available from the
idle_timeout transport parameter) can simply reconnect. When
possible, this reconnection can use 0-RTT session resumption,
reducing the latency involved with restarting the connection. Of
course, this approach is only valid in cases in which 0-RTT data is
safe, when the client is the restarting peer, and when the data to be
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sent is idempotent. It is also not applicable when the application
binds external state to the connection, as this state cannot reliably
be transferred to a resumed connection.
The tradeoffs between resumption and keep-alives need to be evaluated
on a per-application basis. In general, applications should use
keep-alives only in circumstances where continued communication is
highly likely; [QUIC-HTTP], for instance, recommends using keep-
alives only when a request is outstanding.
4. Use of Streams
QUIC's stream multiplexing feature allows applications to run
multiple streams over a single connection, without head-of-line
blocking between streams, associated at a point in time with a single
five-tuple. Stream data is carried within frames, where one QUIC
packet on the wire can carry one or multiple stream frames.
Streams can be unidirectional or bidirectional, and a stream may be
initiated either by client or server. Only the initiator of a
unidirectional stream can send data on it.
Streams and connections can each carry a maximum of 2^62-1 bytes in
each direction, due to encoding limitations on stream offsets and
connection flow control limits. In the presently unlikely event that
this limit is reached by an application, a new connection would need
to be established.
Streams can be independently opened and closed, gracefully or
abruptly. An application can gracefully close the egress direction
of a stream by instructing QUIC to send a FIN bit in a STREAM frame.
It cannot gracefully close the ingress direction without a peer-
generated FIN, much like in TCP. However, an endpoint can abruptly
close the egress direction or request that its peer abruptly close
the ingress direction; these actions are fully independent of each
other.
QUIC does not provide an interface for exceptional handling of any
stream. If a stream that is critical for an application is closed,
the application can generate error messages on the application layer
to inform the other end and/or the higher layer, which can eventually
terminate the QUIC connection.
Mapping of application data to streams is application-specific and
described for HTTP/3 in [QUIC-HTTP]. There are a few general
principles to apply when designing an application's use of streams:
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* A single stream provides ordering. If the application requires
certain data to be received in order, that data should be sent on
the same stream. There is no guarantee of transmission,
reception, or delivery order across streams.
* Multiple streams provide concurrency. Data that can be processed
independently, and therefore would suffer from head of line
blocking if forced to be received in order, should be transmitted
over separate streams.
* Streams can provide message orientation, and allow messages to be
cancelled. If one message is mapped to a single stream, resetting
the stream to expire an unacknowledged message can be used to
emulate partial reliability for that message.
If a QUIC receiver has opened the maximum allowed concurrent streams,
and the sender indicates that more streams are needed, it does not
automatically lead to an increase of the maximum number of streams by
the receiver. Therefore, an application can use the maximum number
of allowed, currently open, and currently used streams when
determining how to map data to streams.
QUIC assigns a numerical identifier to each stream, called the Stream
ID. While the relationship between these identifiers and stream
types is clearly defined in version 1 of QUIC, future versions might
change this relationship for various reasons. QUIC implementations
should expose the properties of each stream (which endpoint initiated
the stream, whether the stream is unidirectional or bidirectional,
the Stream ID used for the stream); applications should query for
these properties rather than attempting to infer them from the Stream
ID.
The method of allocating stream identifiers to streams opened by the
application might vary between transport implementations. Therefore,
an application should not assume a particular stream ID will be
assigned to a stream that has not yet been allocated. For example,
HTTP/3 uses Stream IDs to refer to streams that have already been
opened, but makes no assumptions about future Stream IDs or the way
in which they are assigned Section 6 of [QUIC-HTTP]).
4.1. Stream versus Flow Multiplexing
Streams are meaningful only to the application; since stream
information is carried inside QUIC's encryption boundary, no
information about the stream(s) whose frames are carried by a given
packet is visible to the network. Therefore stream multiplexing is
not intended to be used for differentiating streams in terms of
network treatment. Application traffic requiring different network
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treatment should therefore be carried over different five-tuples
(i.e. multiple QUIC connections). Given QUIC's ability to send
application data in the first RTT of a connection (if a previous
connection to the same host has been successfully established to
provide the necessary credentials), the cost of establishing another
connection is extremely low.
4.2. Prioritization
Stream prioritization is not exposed to either the network or the
receiver. Prioritization is managed by the sender, and the QUIC
transport should provide an interface for applications to prioritize
streams [QUIC]. Applications can implement their own prioritization
scheme on top of QUIC: an application protocol that runs on top of
QUIC can define explicit messages for signaling priority, such as
those defined in [I-D.draft-ietf-httpbis-priority] for HTTP; it can
define rules that allow an endpoint to determine priority based on
context; or it can provide a higher level interface and leave the
determination to the application on top.
Priority handling of retransmissions can be implemented by the sender
in the transport layer. [QUIC] recommends retransmitting lost data
before new data, unless indicated differently by the application.
Currently, QUIC only provides fully reliable stream transmission,
which means that prioritization of retransmissions will be beneficial
in most cases, by filling in gaps and freeing up the flow control
window. For partially reliable or unreliable streams, priority
scheduling of retransmissions over data of higher-priority streams
might not be desirable. For such streams, QUIC could either provide
an explicit interface to control prioritization, or derive the
prioritization decision from the reliability level of the stream.
4.3. Ordered and Reliable Delivery
QUIC streams enable ordered and reliable delivery. Though it is
possible for an implementation to provide options that use streams
for partial reliability or out-of-order delivery, most
implementations will assume that data is reliably delivered in order.
Under this assumption, an endpoint that receives stream data might
not make forward progress until data that is contiguous with the
start of a stream is available. In particular, a receiver might
withhold flow control credit until contiguous data is delivered to
the application; see Section 2.2 of [QUIC]. To support this receive
logic, an endpoint will send stream data until it is acknowledged,
ensuring that data at the start of the stream is sent and
acknowledged first.
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An endpoint that uses a different sending behavior and does not
negotiate that change with its peer might encounter performance
issues or deadlocks.
4.4. Flow Control Deadlocks
QUIC flow control provides a means of managing access to the limited
buffers endpoints have for incoming data. This mechanism limits the
amount of data that can be in buffers in endpoints or in transit on
the network. However, there are several ways in which limits can
produce conditions that can cause a connection to either perform
suboptimally or deadlock.
Deadlocks in flow control are possible for any protocol that uses
QUIC, though whether they become a problem depends on how
implementations consume data and provide flow control credit.
Understanding what causes deadlocking might help implementations
avoid deadlocks.
The size and rate of transport flow control credit updates can affect
performance. Applications that use QUIC often have a data consumer
that reads data from transport buffers. Some implementations might
have independent transport-layer and application-layer receive
buffers. Consuming data does not always imply it is immediately
processed. However, a common flow control implementation technique
is to extend credit to the sender, by emitting MAX_DATA and/or
MAX_STREAM_DATA frames, as data is consumed. Delivery of these
frames is affected by the latency of the back channel from the
receiver to the data sender. If credit is not extended in a timely
manner, the sending application can be blocked, effectively
throttling the sender.
Large application messages can produce deadlocking if the recipient
does not read data from the transport incrementally. If the message
is larger than the flow control credit available and the recipient
does not release additional flow control credit until the entire
message is received and delivered, a deadlock can occur. This is
possible even where stream flow control limits are not reached
because connection flow control limits can be consumed by other
streams.
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A length-prefixed message format makes it easier for a data consumer
to leave data unread in the transport buffer and thereby withhold
flow control credit. If flow control limits prevent the remainder of
a message from being sent, a deadlock will result. A length prefix
might also enable the detection of this sort of deadlock. Where
application protocols have messages that might be processed as a
single unit, reserving flow control credit for the entire message
atomically makes this style of deadlock less likely.
A data consumer can eagerly read all data as it becomes available, in
order to make the receiver extend flow control credit and reduce the
chances of a deadlock. However, such a data consumer might need
other means for holding a peer accountable for the additional state
it keeps for partially processed messages.
Deadlocking can also occur if data on different streams is
interdependent. Suppose that data on one stream arrives before the
data on a second stream on which it depends. A deadlock can occur if
the first stream is left unread, preventing the receiver from
extending flow control credit for the second stream. To reduce the
likelihood of deadlock for interdependent data, the sender should
ensure that dependent data is not sent until the data it depends on
has been accounted for in both stream- and connection- level flow
control credit.
Some deadlocking scenarios might be resolved by cancelling affected
streams with STOP_SENDING or RESET_STREAM. Cancelling some streams
results in the connection being terminated in some protocols.
4.5. Stream Limit Commitments
QUIC endpoints are responsible for communicating the cumulative limit
of streams they would allow to be opened by their peer. Initial
limits are advertised using the initial_max_streams_bidi and
initial_max_streams_uni transport parameters. As streams are opened
and closed they are consumed and the cumulative total is incremented.
Limits can be increased using the MAX_STREAMS frame but there is no
mechanism to reduce limits. Once stream limits are reached, no more
streams can be opened, which prevents applications using QUIC from
making further progress. At this stage connections can be terminated
via idle timeout or explicit close; see Section 10).
An application that uses QUIC might communicate a cumulative stream
limit but require the connection to be closed before the limit is
reached. For example, to stop the server to perform scheduled
maintenance. Immediate connection close causes abrupt closure of
actively used streams. Depending on how an application uses QUIC
streams, this could be undesirable or detrimental to behavior or
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performance. A more graceful closure technique is to stop sending
increases to stream limits and allow the connection to naturally
terminate once remaining streams are consumed. However, the period
of time it takes to do so is dependent on the client and an
unpredictable closing period might not fit application or operational
needs. Applications using QUIC can be conservative with open stream
limits in order to reduce the commitment and indeterminism. However,
being overly conservative with stream limits affects stream
concurrency. Balancing these aspects can be specific to applications
and their deployments. Instead of relying on stream limits to avoid
abrupt closure, an application-layer graceful close mechanism can be
used to communicate the intention to explicitly close the connection
at some future point.
HTTP/3 provides such a mechanism using the GOWAWAY frame. In HTTP/3,
when the GOAWAY frame is received by a client, it stops opening new
streams even if the cumulative stream limit would allow. Instead the
client would create a new connection on which to open further
streams. Once all streams are closed on the old connection, it can
be terminated safely by a connection close or after expiration of the
idle time out (see also Section 10).
5. Packetization and Latency
QUIC exposes an interface that provides multiple streams to the
application; however, the application usually cannot control how data
transmitted over those streams is mapped into frames or how those
frames are bundled into packets.
By default, many implementations will try to maximally pack QUIC
packets DATA frames from one or more streams to minimize bandwidth
consumption and computational costs (see Section 13 of [QUIC]). If
there is not enough data available to fill a packet, an
implementation might wait for a short time, to optimize bandwidth
efficiency instead of latency. This delay can either be pre-
configured or dynamically adjusted based on the observed sending
pattern of the application.
If the application requires low latency, with only small chunks of
data to send, it may be valuable to indicate to QUIC that all data
should be send out immediately. Alternatively, if the application
expects to use a specific sending pattern, it can also provide a
suggested delay to QUIC for how long to wait before bundle frames
into a packet.
Similarly, an application has usually no control about the length of
a QUIC packet on the wire. QUIC provides the ability to add a
PADDING frame to arbitrarily increase the size of packets. Padding
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is used by QUIC to ensure that the path is capable of transferring
datagrams of at least a certain size, during the handshake (see
Sections 8.1 and 14.1 of [QUIC]) and for path validation after
connection migration (see Section 8.2 of [QUIC]) as well as for
Datagram Packetization Layer PMTU Discovery (DPLMTUD) (see
Section 14.3 of [QUIC]).
Padding can also be used by an application to reduce leakage of
information about the data that is sent. A QUIC implementation can
expose an interface that allows an application layer to specify how
to apply padding.
6. Error Handling
QUIC recommends that endpoints signal any detected errors to the
peer. Errors can occur at the transport level and the application
level. Transport errors, such as a protocol violation, affect the
entire connection. Applications that use QUIC can define their own
error detection and signaling (see, for example, Section 8 of
[QUIC-HTTP]). Application errors can affect an entire connection or
a single stream.
QUIC defines an error code space that is used for error handling at
the transport layer. QUIC encourages endpoints to use the most
specific code, although any applicable code is permitted, including
generic ones.
Applications using QUIC define an error code space that is
independent from QUIC or other applications (see, for example,
Section 8.1 of [QUIC-HTTP]). The values in an application error code
space can be reused across connection-level and stream-level errors.
Connection errors lead to connection termination. They are signaled
using a CONNECTION_CLOSE frame, which contains an error code and a
reason field that can be zero length. Different types of
CONNECTION_CLOSE frame are used to signal transport and application
errors.
Stream errors lead to stream termination. The are signaled using
STOP_SENDING or RESET_STREAM frames, which contain only an error
code.
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7. ACK-only packets on constrained links
The cost of sending acknowledgments - in processing cost or link
utilization - could be a significant proportion of available
resources if these resources are constrained. Reducing the rate at
which acknowledgments are generated can preserve these resources and
improve overall performance, for both network processing as well as
application-relevant metrics.
8. Port Selection and Application Endpoint Discovery
In general, port numbers serve two purposes: "first, they provide a
demultiplexing identifier to differentiate transport sessions between
the same pair of endpoints, and second, they may also identify the
application protocol and associated service to which processes
connect" [RFC6335]. The assumption that an application can be
identified in the network based on the port number is less true today
due to encapsulation, mechanisms for dynamic port assignments, and
NATs.
As QUIC is a general-purpose transport protocol, there are no
requirements that servers use a particular UDP port for QUIC. For
applications with a fallback to TCP that do not already have an
alternate mapping to UDP, usually the registration (if necessary) and
use of the UDP port number corresponding to the TCP port already
registered for the application is appropriate. For example, the
default port for HTTP/3 [QUIC-HTTP] is UDP port 443, analogous to
HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2 over TLS over TCP.
Additionally, Application-Layer Version Negotiation [RFC7301] permits
the client and server to negotiate which of several protocols will be
used on a given connection. Therefore, multiple applications might
be supported on a single UDP port based on the ALPN token offered.
Applications using QUIC should register an ALPN token for use in the
TLS handshake.
Applications could define an alternate endpoint discovery mechanism
to allow the usage of ports other than the default. For example,
HTTP/3 (Sections 3.2 and 3.3 of [QUIC-HTTP]) specifies the use of
HTTP Alternative Services for an HTTP origin to advertise the
availability of an equivalent HTTP/3 endpoint on a certain UDP port
by using the "h3" ALPN token. Note that HTTP/3's ALPN token ("h3")
identifies not only the version of the application protocol, but also
the version of QUIC itself; this approach allows unambiguous
agreement between the endpoints on the protocol stack in use.
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Given the prevalence of the assumption in network management practice
that a port number maps unambiguously to an application, the use of
ports that cannot easily be mapped to a registered service name might
lead to blocking or other changes to the forwarding behavior by
network elements such as firewalls that use the port number for
application identification.
9. Connection Migration
QUIC supports connection migration by the client. If an IP address
changes, a QUIC endpoint can still associate packets with an existing
transport connection using the destination connection ID field (see
also Section 11) in the QUIC header, unless a zero-length value is
used. This supports cases where address information changes, such as
NAT rebinding, intentional change of the local interface, or based on
an indication in the handshake of the server for a preferred address
to be used.
Use of a non-zero-length connection ID for the server is strongly
recommended if any clients are behind a NAT or could be. A non-zero-
length connection ID is also strongly recommended when migration is
supported.
Currently QUIC only supports failover cases. Only one "path" can be
used at a time; and only when the new path is validated, all traffic
can be switched over to that new path. Path validation means that
the remote endpoint is required to validate the new path before use
in order to avoid address spoofing attacks. Path validation takes at
least one RTT and congestion control will also be reset after path
migration. Therefore migration usually has a performance impact.
QUIC probing packets, which can be sent on multiple paths at once,
are used to perform address validation as well as measure path
characteristics as input for the switching decision. Probing packets
cannot carry application data but may contain padding frames.
Endpoints can use information about their receipt as input to
congestion control for that path. Applications could use information
learned from probing to inform a decisions to switch paths.
Only the client can actively migrate in version 1 of QUIC. However,
servers can indicate during the handshake that they prefer to
transfer the connection to a different address after the handshake.
For instance, this could be used to move from an address that is
shared by multiple servers to an address that is unique to the server
instance. The server can provide an IPv4 and an IPv6 address in a
transport parameter during the TLS handshake and the client can
select between the two if both are provided. See also Section 9.6 of
[QUIC].
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10. Connection Termination
QUIC connections are terminated in one of three ways: implicit idle
timeout, explicit immediate close, or explicit stateless reset.
QUIC does not provide any mechanism for graceful connection
termination; applications using QUIC can define their own graceful
termination process (see, for example, Section 5.2 of [QUIC-HTTP]).
QUIC idle timeout is enabled via transport parameters. Client and
server announce a timeout period and the effective value for the
connection is the minimum of the two values. After the timeout
period elapses, the connection is silently closed. An application
therefore should be able to configure its own maximum value, as well
as have access to the computed minimum value for this connection. An
application may adjust the maximum idle timeout for new connections
based on the number of open or expected connections, since shorter
timeout values may free-up resources more quickly.
Application data exchanged on streams or in datagrams defers the QUIC
idle timeout. Applications that provide their own keep-alive
mechanisms will therefore keep a QUIC connection alive. Applications
that do not provide their own keep-alive can use transport-layer
mechanisms (see Section 10.1.2 of [QUIC], and Section 3.2). However,
QUIC implementation interfaces for controlling such transport
behavior can vary, affecting the robustness of such approaches.
An immediate close is signaled by a CONNECTION_CLOSE frame (see
Section 6). Immediate close causes all streams to become immediately
closed, which may affect applications; see Section 4.5.
A stateless reset is an option of last resort for an endpoint that
does not have access to connection state. Receiving a stateless
reset is an indication of an unrecoverable error distinct from
connection errors in that there is no application-layer information
provided.
11. Information Exposure and the Connection ID
QUIC exposes some information to the network in the unencrypted part
of the header, either before the encryption context is established or
because the information is intended to be used by the network. QUIC
has a long header that exposes some additional information (the
version and the source connection ID), while the short header exposes
only the destination connection ID. In QUIC version 1, the long
header is used during connection establishment, while the short
header is used for data transmission in an established connection.
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The connection ID can be zero length. Zero length connection IDs can
be chosen on each endpoint individually, on any packet except the
first packets sent by clients during connection establishment.
An endpoint that selects a zero-length connection ID will receive
packets with a zero-length destination connection ID. The endpoint
needs to use other information, such as the source and destination IP
address and port number to identify which connection is referred to.
This could mean that the endpoint is unable to match datagrams to
connections successfully if these values change, making the
connection effectively unable to survive NAT rebinding or migrate to
a new path.
11.1. Server-Generated Connection ID
QUIC supports a server-generated connection ID, transmitted to the
client during connection establishment (see Section 7.2 of [QUIC]).
Servers behind load balancers may need to change the connection ID
during the handshake, encoding the identity of the server or
information about its load balancing pool, in order to support
stateless load balancing.
Server deployments with load balancers and other routing
infrastructure need to ensure that this infrastructure consistently
routes packets to the server instance that has the connection state,
even if addresses, ports, and/or connection IDs change. This might
require coordination between servers and infrastructure. One method
of achieving this involves encoding routing information into the
connection ID. For an example of this technique, see [QUIC-LB].
11.2. Mitigating Timing Linkability with Connection ID Migration
QUIC requires that endpoints generate fresh connection IDs for use on
new network paths. Choosing values that are unlinkable to an outside
observer ensures that activity on different paths cannot be trivially
correlated using the connection ID.
While sufficiently robust connection ID generation schemes will
mitigate linkability issues, they do not provide full protection.
Analysis of the lifetimes of six-tuples (source and destination
addresses as well as the migrated CID) may expose these links anyway.
In the limit where connection migration in a server pool is rare, it
is trivial for an observer to associate two connection IDs.
Conversely, in the opposite limit where every server handles multiple
simultaneous migrations, even an exposed server mapping may be
insufficient information.
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The most efficient mitigations for these attacks are through network
design and/or operational practice, by using a load balancing
architecture that loads more flows onto a single server-side address,
by coordinating the timing of migrations in an attempt to increase
the number of simultaneous migrations at a given time, or through
other means.
11.3. Using Server Retry for Redirection
QUIC provides a Server Retry packet that can be sent by a server in
response to the Client Initial packet. The server may choose a new
connection ID in that packet and the client will retry by sending
another Client Initial packet with the server-selected connection ID.
This mechanism can be used to redirect a connection to a different
server, e.g. due to performance reasons or when servers in a server
pool are upgraded gradually, and therefore may support different
versions of QUIC. In this case, it is assumed that all servers
belonging to a certain pool are served in cooperation with load
balancers that forward the traffic based on the connection ID. A
server can choose the connection ID in the Server Retry packet such
that the load balancer will redirect the next Client Initial packet
to a different server in that pool. Alternatively the load balancer
can directly offer a Retry service as further described in [QUIC-LB].
Section 4 of [RFC5077] describes an example approach for constructing
TLS resumption tickets that can be also applied for validation
tokens, however, the use of more modern cryptographic algorithms is
highly recommended.
12. Quality of Service (QoS) and DSCP
QUIC assumes that all packets of a QUIC connection, or at least with
the same 5-tuple {dest addr, source addr, protocol, dest port, source
port}, will receive similar network treatment since feedback about
loss or delay of each packet is used as input to the congestion
controller. Therefore it is not recommended to use different
DiffServ Code Points (DSCPs) [RFC2475] for packets belonging to the
same connection. If differential network treatment, e.g. by the use
of different DSCPs, is desired, multiple QUIC connections to the same
server may be used. However, in general it is recommended to
minimize the number of QUIC connections to the same server, to avoid
increased overheads and, more importantly, competing congestion
control.
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13. Use of Versions and Cryptographic Handshake
Versioning in QUIC may change the protocol's behavior completely,
except for the meaning of a few header fields that have been declared
to be invariant [QUIC-INVARIANTS]. A version of QUIC with a higher
version number will not necessarily provide a better service, but
might simply provide a different feature set. As such, an
application needs to be able to select which versions of QUIC it
wants to use.
A new version could use an encryption scheme other than TLS 1.3 or
higher. [QUIC] specifies requirements for the cryptographic
handshake as currently realized by TLS 1.3 and described in a
separate specification [QUIC-TLS]. This split is performed to enable
light-weight versioning with different cryptographic handshakes.
14. Enabling New Versions
QUIC version 1 does not specify a version negotation mechanism in the
base spec but [I-D.draft-ietf-quic-version-negotiation] proposes an
extension. This process assumes that the set of versions that a
server supports is fixed. This complicates the process for deploying
new QUIC versions or disabling old versions when servers operate in
clusters.
A server that rolls out a new version of QUIC can do so in three
stages. Each stage is completed across all server instances before
moving to the next stage.
In the first stage of deployment, all server instances start
accepting new connections with the new version. The new version can
be enabled progressively across a deployment, which allows for
selective testing. This is especially useful when the new version is
compatible with an old version, because the new version is more
likely to be used.
While enabling the new version, servers do not advertise the new
version in any Version Negotiation packets they send. This prevents
clients that receive a Version Negotiation packet from attempting to
connect to server instances that might not have the new version
enabled.
During the initial deployment, some clients will have received
Version Negotiation packets that indicate that the server does not
support the new version. Other clients might have successfully
connected with the new version and so will believe that the server
supports the new version. Therefore, servers need to allow for this
ambiguity when validating the negotiated version.
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The second stage of deployment commences once all server instances
are able accept new connections with the new version. At this point,
all servers can start sending the new version in Version Negotiation
packets.
During the second stage, the server still allows for the possibility
that some clients believe the new version to be available and some do
not. This state will persist only for as long as any Version
Negotiation packets take to be transmitted and responded to. So the
third stage can follow after a relatively short delay.
The third stage completes the process by enabling authentication of
the negotiated version with the assumption that the new version is
fully available.
The process for disabling an old version or rolling back the
introduction of a new version uses the same process in reverse.
Servers disable validation of the old version, stop sending the old
version in Version Negotiation packets, then the old version is no
longer accepted.
15. Unreliable Datagram Service over QUIC
[I-D.ietf-quic-datagram] specifies a QUIC extension to enable sending
and receiving unreliable datagrams over QUIC. Unlike operating
directly over UDP, applications that use the QUIC datagram service do
not need to implement their own congestion control, per [RFC8085], as
QUIC datagrams are congestion controlled.
QUIC datagrams are not flow-controlled, and as such data chunks may
be dropped if the receiver is overloaded. While the reliable
transmission service of QUIC provides a stream-based interface to
send and receive data in order over multiple QUIC streams, the
datagram service has a unordered message-based interface. If needed,
an application layer framing can be used on top to allow separate
flows of unreliable datagrams to be multiplexed on one QUIC
connection.
16. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA; however, note that Section 8
recommends that application bindings to QUIC for applications using
TCP register UDP ports analogous to their existing TCP registrations.
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17. Security Considerations
See the security considerations in [QUIC] and [QUIC-TLS]; the
security considerations for the underlying transport protocol are
relevant for applications using QUIC, as well. Considerations on
linkability, replay attacks, and randomness discussed in [QUIC-TLS]
should be taken into account when deploying and using QUIC.
Application developers should note that any fallback they use when
QUIC cannot be used due to network blocking of UDP should guarantee
the same security properties as QUIC; if this is not possible, the
connection should fail to allow the application to explicitly handle
fallback to a less-secure alternative. See Section 2.
Further, [QUIC-HTTP] provides security considerations specific to
HTTP. However, discussions such as on cross-protocol attacks,
traffic analysis and padding, or migration might be relevant for
other applications using QUIC as well.
18. Contributors
The following people have contributed text to this document:
* Igor Lubashev
* Mike Bishop
* Martin Thomson
* Lucas Pardue
* Gorry Fairhurst
19. Acknowledgments
Thanks also to Martin Duke, Sean Turner, and Ian Swett for their
reviews.
This work is partially supported by the European Commission under
Horizon 2020 grant agreement no. 688421 Measurement and Architecture
for a Middleboxed Internet (MAMI), and by the Swiss State Secretariat
for Education, Research, and Innovation under contract no. 15.0268.
This support does not imply endorsement.
20. References
20.1. Normative References
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[QUIC] Iyengar, J. and M. Thomson, "QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed
and Secure Transport", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-quic-transport-34, 14 January 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-transport-
34>.
[QUIC-INVARIANTS]
Thomson, M., "Version-Independent Properties of QUIC",
Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-quic-
invariants-13, 14 January 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-invariants-
13>.
[QUIC-TLS] Thomson, M. and S. Turner, "Using TLS to Secure QUIC",
Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-quic-tls-34,
14 January 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-tls-34>.
[RFC6335] Cotton, M., Eggert, L., Touch, J., Westerlund, M., and S.
Cheshire, "Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
Procedures for the Management of the Service Name and
Transport Protocol Port Number Registry", BCP 165,
RFC 6335, DOI 10.17487/RFC6335, August 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6335>.
[TLS13] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446>.
20.2. Informative References
[Edeline16]
Edeline, K., Kuehlewind, M., Trammell, B., Aben, E., and
B. Donnet, "Using UDP for Internet Transport Evolution
(arXiv preprint 1612.07816)", 22 December 2016,
<https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07816>.
[Hatonen10]
Hatonen, S., Nyrhinen, A., Eggert, L., Strowes, S.,
Sarolahti, P., and M. Kojo, "An experimental study of home
gateway characteristics (Proc. ACM IMC 2010)", October
2010.
[HTTP-REPLAY]
Thomson, M., Nottingham, M., and W. Tarreau, "Using Early
Data in HTTP", RFC 8470, DOI 10.17487/RFC8470, September
2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8470>.
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[I-D.draft-ietf-httpbis-priority]
Oku, K. and L. Pardue, "Extensible Prioritization Scheme
for HTTP", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
httpbis-priority-03, 11 January 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-priority-
03>.
[I-D.draft-ietf-quic-version-negotiation]
Schinazi, D. and E. Rescorla, "Compatible Version
Negotiation for QUIC", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-quic-version-negotiation-03, 4 February 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-version-
negotiation-03>.
[I-D.ietf-quic-datagram]
Pauly, T., Kinnear, E., and D. Schinazi, "An Unreliable
Datagram Extension to QUIC", Work in Progress, Internet-
Draft, draft-ietf-quic-datagram-02, 16 February 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-datagram-02>.
[I-D.ietf-taps-arch]
Pauly, T., Trammell, B., Brunstrom, A., Fairhurst, G.,
Perkins, C., Tiesel, P. S., and C. A. Wood, "An
Architecture for Transport Services", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-taps-arch-09, 2 November 2020,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-taps-arch-09>.
[PaaschNanog]
Paasch, C., "Network Support for TCP Fast Open (NANOG 67
presentation)", 13 June 2016,
<https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/
Paasch_Network_Support.pdf>.
[QUIC-HTTP]
Bishop, M., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 3
(HTTP/3)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
quic-http-34, 2 February 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-http-34>.
[QUIC-LB] Duke, M. and N. Banks, "QUIC-LB: Generating Routable QUIC
Connection IDs", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-quic-load-balancers-06, 4 February 2021,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-quic-load-
balancers-06>.
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[RFC2475] Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.,
and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
Services", RFC 2475, DOI 10.17487/RFC2475, December 1998,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2475>.
[RFC5077] Salowey, J., Zhou, H., Eronen, P., and H. Tschofenig,
"Transport Layer Security (TLS) Session Resumption without
Server-Side State", RFC 5077, DOI 10.17487/RFC5077,
January 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5077>.
[RFC5382] Guha, S., Ed., Biswas, K., Ford, B., Sivakumar, S., and P.
Srisuresh, "NAT Behavioral Requirements for TCP", BCP 142,
RFC 5382, DOI 10.17487/RFC5382, October 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5382>.
[RFC7301] Friedl, S., Popov, A., Langley, A., and E. Stephan,
"Transport Layer Security (TLS) Application-Layer Protocol
Negotiation Extension", RFC 7301, DOI 10.17487/RFC7301,
July 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7301>.
[RFC7413] Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Radhakrishnan, S., and A. Jain, "TCP
Fast Open", RFC 7413, DOI 10.17487/RFC7413, December 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7413>.
[RFC8085] Eggert, L., Fairhurst, G., and G. Shepherd, "UDP Usage
Guidelines", BCP 145, RFC 8085, DOI 10.17487/RFC8085,
March 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8085>.
[Swett16] Swett, I., "QUIC Deployment Experience at Google (IETF96
QUIC BoF presentation)", 20 July 2016,
<https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-
quic-3.pdf>.
[Trammell16]
Trammell, B. and M. Kuehlewind, "Internet Path
Transparency Measurements using RIPE Atlas (RIPE72 MAT
presentation)", 25 May 2016, <https://ripe72.ripe.net/wp-
content/uploads/presentations/86-atlas-udpdiff.pdf>.
Authors' Addresses
Mirja Kuehlewind
Ericsson
Email: mirja.kuehlewind@ericsson.com
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Brian Trammell
Google
Gustav-Gull-Platz 1
CH- 8004 Zurich
Switzerland
Email: ietf@trammell.ch
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