Network Transport Circuit Breakers
draft-ietf-tsvwg-circuit-breaker-09
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (tsvwg WG) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Gorry Fairhurst | ||
| Last updated | 2015-11-18 | ||
| Replaces | draft-fairhurst-tsvwg-circuit-breaker | ||
| Stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
| Formats | plain text xml htmlized pdfized bibtex | ||
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| Stream | WG state | Submitted to IESG for Publication | |
| Document shepherd | David L. Black | ||
| Shepherd write-up | Show Last changed 2015-09-28 | ||
| IESG | IESG state | AD Evaluation::External Party | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | Spencer Dawkins | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-ietf-tsvwg-circuit-breaker-09
TSVWG Working Group G. Fairhurst
Internet-Draft University of Aberdeen
Intended status: Best Current Practice November 18, 2015
Expires: May 21, 2016
Network Transport Circuit Breakers
draft-ietf-tsvwg-circuit-breaker-09
Abstract
This document explains what is meant by the term "network transport
Circuit Breaker" (CB). It describes the need for circuit breakers
for network tunnels and applications when using non-congestion
controlled traffic, and explains where circuit breakers are, and are
not, needed. It also defines requirements for building a circuit
breaker and the expected outcomes of using a circuit breaker within
the Internet.
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
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on May 21, 2016.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 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
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Types of Circuit Breaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Design of a Circuit-Breaker (What makes a good circuit
breaker?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Functional Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Requirements for a Network Transport Circuit Breaker . . . . 9
5. Other network topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1. Use with a multicast control/routing protocol . . . . . . 12
5.2. Use with control protocols supporting pre-provisioned
capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.3. Unidirectional Circuit Breakers over Controlled Paths . . 14
6. Examples of Circuit Breakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.1. A Fast-Trip Circuit Breaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.1.1. A Fast-Trip Circuit Breaker for RTP . . . . . . . . . 15
6.2. A Slow-trip Circuit Breaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.3. A Managed Circuit Breaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.3.1. A Managed Circuit Breaker for SAToP Pseudo-Wires . . 17
6.3.2. A Managed Circuit Breaker for Pseudowires (PWs) . . . 17
7. Examples where circuit breakers may not be needed. . . . . . 18
7.1. CBs over pre-provisioned Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
7.2. CBs with tunnels carrying Congestion-Controlled Traffic . 19
7.3. CBs with Uni-directional Traffic and no Control Path . . 19
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
10. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
11. Revision Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1. Introduction
[RFC2309] discusses the dangers of congestion-unresponsive flows and
also states that "all UDP-based streaming applications should
incorporate effective congestion avoidance mechanisms". All
applications ought to use a full-featured transport (TCP, SCTP,
DCCP), and if not, an application (e.g., those using UDP and its UDP-
Lite variant) needs to provide appropriate congestion avoidance.
Guidance for applications that do not use congestion-controlled
transports is provided in [ID-ietf-tsvwg-RFC5405.bis]. Such
mechanisms can be designed to react on much shorter timescales than a
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Circuit Breaker, that only observes a traffic envelope. Congestion-
control mechanisms can also interact with an application to more
effectively control its sending rate. However, not all traffic is
known to respond to the onset of congestion.
A network transport Circuit Breaker (CB) is an automatic mechanism
that is used to continuously monitor a flow or aggregate set of flows
to detect when the flow(s) experience persistent excessive
congestion. When this is detected the Circuit Breaker terminates (or
significantly reduces the rate of) the flow(s). This is a safety
measure to prevent starvation of network resources denying other
flows from access to the Internet, such measures are essential for an
Internet that is heterogeneous and for traffic that is hard to
predict in advance.
The term "Circuit Breaker" originates in electricity supply, and has
nothing to do with network circuits or virtual circuits. In
electricity supply, a Circuit Breaker is intended as a protection
mechanism of last resort. Under normal circumstances, a Circuit
Breaker ought not to be triggered; it is designed to protect the
supply network and attached equipment when there is overload. Just
as people do not expect the electrical circuit breaker (or fuse) in
their home to be triggered, except when there is a wiring fault or a
problem with an electrical appliance.
In networking, the Circuit Breaker principle can be used as a
protection mechanism of last resort to avoid persistent excessive
congestion impacting other flows that share network capacity.
Persistent excessive congestion was a feature of the early Internet
of the 1980s. This resulted in excess traffic starving another
connection from access to the Internet. It was countered by the
requirement to use congestion control (CC) by the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) [Jacobsen88]. These mechanisms operate in
Internet hosts to cause TCP connections to "back off" during
congestion. The introduction of a congest control in TCP (currently
documented in [RFC5681] ensured the stability of the Internet,
because it was able to detect congestion and promptly react. This
worked well while TCP was by far the dominant traffic in the
Internet, and most TCP flows were long-lived (ensuring that they
could detect and respond to congestion before the flows terminated).
This is no longer the case, and non-congestion-controlled traffic
(including many applications of the User Datagram Protocol, UDP) can
form a significant proportion of the total traffic traversing a link.
The current Internet therefore requires non-congestion-controlled
traffic to be considered to avoid persistent excessive congestion
impacting other flows. This is expected to also help reduce the
potential for "Congestion Collapse" [RFC2914].
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In contrast, Circuit Breakers are recommended for non-congestion-
controlled Internet flows and for traffic aggregates, e.g., traffic
sent using a network tunnel. They operate on timescales much longer
than the packet RTT, and trigger under situations of abnormal
excessive congestion. People have been implementing what this draft
characterizes as Circuit Breakers on an ad hoc basis to protect
Internet traffic, this draft therefore provides guidance on how to
deploy and use these mechanisms. Later sections provide examples of
cases where Circuit Breakers may or may not be desirable.
A Circuit Breaker needs to measure (meter) the traffic to determine
if the network is experiencing congestion and needs to be designed to
trigger robustly when there is persistent excessive congestion.
A Circuit Breaker trigger will often utilize a series of successive
sample measurements metered at an ingress point and an egress point
(either of which could be a transport endpoint). The trigger needs
to operate on a timescale much longer than the path round trip time
(e.g., seconds to possibly many tens of seconds). This longer period
is needed to provide sufficient time for transports (or applications)
to adjust their rate following congestion, and for the network load
to stabilize after any adjustment. This is to ensure that a Circuit
Breaker does not accidentally trigger following a single (or even
successive) congestion events (congestion events are what triggers
congestion control, and are to be regarded as normal on a network
link operating near its capacity). Once triggered, a control
function needs to remove traffic from the network, either by
disabling the flow or by significantly reducing the level of traffic.
This reaction provides the required protection to prevent persistent
excessive congestion being experienced by other flows that share the
congested part of the network path.
Section 4 defines requirements for building a Circuit Breaker.
The operational conditions that cause a Circuit Breaker to trigger
should be regarded as abnormal. Examples of situations that could
trigger a Circuit Breaker include:
o anomalous traffic that exceeds the provisioned capacity (or whose
traffic characteristics exceed the threshold configured for the
Circuit Breaker);
o traffic generated by an application at a time when the provisioned
network capacity is being utilised for other purposes;
o routing changes that cause additional traffic to start using the
path monitored by the Circuit Breaker;
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o misconfiguration of a service/network device where the capacity
available is insufficient to support the current traffic
aggregate;
o misconfiguration of an admission controller or traffic policer
that allows more traffic than expected across the path monitored
by the Circuit Breaker.
In many cases the reason for triggering a Circuit Breaker will not be
evident to the source of the traffic (user, application, endpoint,
etc). In contrast, an application that uses congestion control will
generate elastic traffic that may be expected to regulate the load it
introduces under congestion. This will therefore often be a
preferred solution for applications that can respond to congestion
signals or that can use a congestion-controlled transport.
A Circuit Breaker can be used to limit traffic from applications that
are unable, or choose not, to use congestion control, or where the
congestion control properties of their traffic cannot be relied upon
(e.g., traffic carried over a network tunnel). In such
circumstances, it is all but impossible for the Circuit Breaker to
signal back to the impacted applications, and it may further be the
case that applications may have some difficulty determining that a
Circuit Breaker has in fact been tripped, and where in the network
this happened. Application developers are advised to avoid these
circumstances, where possible, by deploying appropriate congestion
control mechanisms.
1.1. Types of Circuit Breaker
There are various forms of network transport Circuit Breaker. These
are differentiated mainly on the timescale over which they are
triggered, but also in the intended protection they offer:
o Fast-Trip Circuit Breakers: The relatively short timescale used by
this form of Circuit Breaker is intended to provide protection for
network traffic of a single non-responsive flow or related group
of non-responsive flows.
o Slow-Trip Circuit Breakers: This Circuit Breaker utilizes a longer
timescale and is designed to protect network traffic from
congestion by non-responsive traffic aggregates.
o Managed Circuit Breakers: Utilize the operations and management
functions that might be present in a managed service to implement
a Circuit Breaker.
Examples of each type of Circuit Breaker are provided in section 4.
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2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
3. Design of a Circuit-Breaker (What makes a good circuit breaker?)
Although Circuit Breakers have been talked about in the IETF for many
years, there has not yet been guidance on the cases where Circuit
Breakers are needed or upon the design of Circuit Breaker mechanisms.
This document seeks to offer advice on these two topics.
Circuit Breakers are RECOMMENDED for IETF protocols and tunnels that
carry non-congestion-controlled Internet flows and for traffic
aggregates. This includes traffic sent using a network tunnel.
Designers of other protocols and tunnel encapsulations also ought to
consider the use of these techniques as a last resort to protect
traffic that shares the network path being used.
This document defines the requirements for design of a Circuit
Breaker and provides examples of how a Circuit Breaker can be
constructed. The specifications of individual protocols and tunnel
encapsulations need to detail the protocol mechanisms needed to
implement a Circuit Breaker.
Section 3.1 describes the functional components of a Circuit Breaker
and section 3.2 defines requirements for implementing a Circuit
Breaker.
3.1. Functional Components
The basic design of a transport Circuit Breaker involves
communication between an ingress point (a sender) and an egress point
(a receiver) of a network flow or set of flows. A simple picture of
Circuit Breaker operation is provided in figure 1. This shows a set
of routers (each labelled R) connecting a set of endpoints.
In this example, a Circuit Breaker is used to control traffic passing
through a subset of these routers, acting between the ingress and a
egress point network devices. The path between the ingress and
egress could be provided by a tunnel or other network-layer
technique. One expected use would be at the ingress and egress of a
service, where all traffic being considered terminates beyond the
egress point, and hence the ingress and egress carry the same set of
flows.
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+--------+ +--------+
|Endpoint| |Endpoint|
+--+-----+ >>> Circuit Breaker traffic >>> +--+-----+
| |
| +-+ +-+ +---------+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +--------+ +-+ +-+ |
+-+R+--+R+->+ Ingress +--+R+--+R+--+R+--+ Egress |--+R+--+R+-+
+++ +-+ +------+--+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-----+--+ +++ +-+
| ^ | | |
| | +--+------+ +------+--+ |
| | | Ingress | | Egress | |
| | | Meter | | Meter | |
| | +----+----+ +----+----+ |
| | | | |
+-+ | | +----+----+ | | +-+
|R+--+ | | Measure +<----------------+ +--+R|
+++ | +----+----+ Reported +++
| | | Egress |
| | +----+----+ Measurement |
+--+-----+ | | Trigger + +--+-----+
|Endpoint| | +----+----+ |Endpoint|
+--------+ | | +--------+
+---<---+
Reaction
Figure 1: A CB controlling the part of the end-to-end path between an
ingress point and an egress point. (Note: In some cases, the trigger
and measure functions could alternatively be located at other
locations (e.g., at a network operations centre.)
In the context of a Circuit Breaker, the ingress and egress functions
could be implemented in different places. For example, they could be
located in network devices at a tunnel ingress and at the tunnel
egress. In some cases, they could be located at one or both network
endpoints (see figure 2), e.g., implemented as components within a
transport protocol.
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+----------+ +----------+
| Ingress | +-+ +-+ +-+ | Egress |
| Endpoint +->+R+--+R+--+R+--+ Endpoint |
+--+----+--+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +----+-----+
^ | |
| +--+------+ +----+----+
| | Ingress | | Egress |
| | Meter | | Meter |
| +----+----+ +----+----+
| | |
| +--- +----+ |
| | Measure +<-----------------+
| +----+----+ Reported
| | Egress
| +----+----+ Measurement
| | Trigger |
| +----+----+
| |
+---<--+
Reaction
Figure 2: An endpoint CB implemented at the sender (ingress) and
receiver (egress).
The set of components needed to implement a Circuit Breaker are:
1. An ingress meter (at the sender or tunnel ingress) records the
number of packets/bytes sent in each measurement interval. This
measures the offered network load for a flow or set of flows.
For example, the measurement interval could be many seconds (or
every few tens of seconds or a series of successive shorter
measurements that are combined by the Circuit Breaker Measurement
function).
2. An egress meter (at the receiver or tunnel egress) records the
number/bytes received in each measurement interval. This
measures the supported load for the flow or set of flows, and
could utilize other signals to detect the effect of congestion
(e.g., loss/marking experienced over the path). The measurements
at the egress could be synchronised (including an offset for the
time of flight of the data, or referencing the measurements to a
particular packet) to ensure any counters refer to the same span
of packets.
3. The measured values (measurements) at the ingress and egress are
communicated to the Circuit Breaker Measurement function. This
could use several methods including: Sending return measurement
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packets from a receiver to a trigger function at the sender; An
implementation using Operations, Administration and Management
(OAM); or be sending another in-band signalling datagram to the
trigger function. This could also be implemented purely as a
control plane function, e.g., using a software-defined network
controller.
4. The measurement function combines the ingress and egress
measurements to assess the present level of network congestion.
(For example, the loss rate for each measurement interval could
be deduced from calculating the difference between ingress and
egress counter values.) Note that methods do not require high
accuracy for the period of the measurement interval (or therefore
the measured value), since isolated and/or infrequent loss events
need to be disregarded.
5. A trigger function determines whether the measurements indicate
persistent excessive congestion. This function defines an
appropriate trigger interval and threshold for determining that
there is persistent excessive congestion between the ingress and
egress. This preferably considers a rate or ratio, rather than
an absolute value (e.g., more than 10% loss, but other methods
could also be based on the rate of transmission as well as the
loss rate). The transport Circuit Breaker is triggered when the
threshold is exceeded in multiple measurement intervals (e.g., 3
measurements within the triggering interval [RFC4553]). Designs
need to be robust so that single or spurious events do not
trigger a reaction.
6. A reaction that is applied at the Ingress when the Circuit
Breaker is triggered. This seeks to automatically remove the
traffic causing persistent excessive congestion.
7. A method for control communication control between the components
that provides appropriate security and is robust when ingress and
egress measurements are not available.
4. Requirements for a Network Transport Circuit Breaker
The requirements for implementing a Circuit Breaker are:
o A Circuit Breaker REQUIRED to define a measurement function to
measure the level of congestion or loss. This does not have to
detect individual packet loss, but MUST specify a way to know that
packets have been lost/marked from the traffic flow. If Explicit
Congestion Notification (ECN) is enabled [RFC3168], an egress
meter MAY also count the number of ECN congestion marks/event per
measurement interval, but even if ECN is used, loss MUST still be
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measured, since this better reflects the impact of persistent
excessive congestion. In this context, loss represents a reliable
indication of congestion, as opposed to the finer-grain marking of
incipient congestion that can be provided via ECN.
o A Circuit Breaker is REQUIRED to define the period over each
measurement is made by the Circuit Breaker measurement function.
The measurement period MUST be longer than the time that current
congestion control mechanisms need to reduce their rate following
detection of congestion. This is important because end-to-end
congestion control mechanisms require at least one RTT to notify
and adjust the traffic to experienced congestion, and congestion
bottlenecks can share traffic with a diverse range of RTTs. A
sufficiently long period is needed to avoid additionally
penalizing flows with a long path RTT. The type of Circuit
Breaker will determine how long this measurement period needs to
be, but it needs to be significantly longer than the RTT
experienced by the Circuit Breaker itself.
o If necessary, the measurement period MAY combine successive
individual meter samples from the ingress and egress to ensure
observation over a sufficiently long interval. (Note when meter
samples need to be combined, the combination needs to reflect the
sum of the individual sample counts divided by the total time/
volume over which the samples were measured. Individual samples
over different intervals can not be directly combined to generate
an average value.)
o A Circuit Breaker is REQUIRED to define the triggering interval.
This is the period over which the trigger uses the collected
measurements.
o A Circuit Breaker is REQUIRED to define a threshold to determine
whether the measurements indicate that congestion is excessive.
This SHOULD be constructed so that it does not trigger under light
or intermittent congestion and MUST be robust to multiple
congestion events per triggering period. For example, a Circuit
Breaker is expected to monitor over several measurement periods to
determine whether the Circuit Breaker is to be triggered. (e.g.,
triggered when persistent excessive congestion is detected in at
least 3 of the measurement periods within the triggering
interval).
o Once triggered, the Circuit Breaker MUST react decisively by
disabling or significantly reducing traffic at the source (e.g.,
ingress). The reaction needs to be much more severe than that of
a congestion control mechanism (such as TCP's congestion control
[RFC5681] or TCP-Friendly Rate Control, TFRC [RFC5348]), because
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the Circuit Breaker reacts to more persistent excessive congestion
and operates over longer timescales (i.e., the overload condition
will have persisted for a longer time before the Circuit Breaker
is triggered).
o The default response to a trigger SHOULD cause the ingress to
disable all of the traffic flows managed by the Circuit Breaker.
o A reaction that instead results in a reduction SHOULD reduce the
traffic by at least an order of magnitude. A response that
achieves the reduction by terminating flows, rather than
uniformally dropping packets across multiple flows, will often be
more desirable to users of the service. A Circuit Breaker that
reduces the rate of a flow, MUST continue to monitor the level of
congestion and MUST further react to reduce the rate if the
Circuit Breaker is again triggered.
o The reaction to a triggered Circuit Breaker MUST continue for a
period that is at least the triggering interval. Operator
intervention will usually be required to restore a flow. If an
automated response is needed to reset the trigger, then this needs
to not be immediate. The design of an automated reset mechanism
needs to be sufficiently conservative that it does not adversely
interact with other mechanisms (including other Circuit Breaker
mechanisms that control traffic over a common path). It SHOULD
NOT perform an automated reset when there is evidence of continued
congestion.
o When a Circuit Breaker is triggered, it SHOULD be regarded as an
abnormal network event. As such, this event SHOULD be logged.
The measurements that lead to triggering of the Circuit Breaker
SHOULD also be logged.
o A Circuit Breaker needs a communication path for control between
the ingress and the egress meters and other components. The
source and integrity of control information (measurements and
triggers) MUST be protected from off-path attacks (Section 8).
When there is a risk of on-path attack, a cryptographic
authentication mechanism for all control/measurement messages is
RECOMMENDED (Section 8).
o Control communication can be in-band or out-of-band. In-band
communication is RECOMMENDED when either design would be possible.
If this traffic is sent over a shared path, it is RECOMMENDED that
this control traffic is prioritized to reduce the probability of
loss under congestion.
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in-Band: An in-band control method SHOULD assume that loss of
control messages is an indication of potential congestion on
the path, and repeated loss (e.g., failure to receive
measurement reports) ought to cause the Circuit Breaker to be
triggered. (Because the feedback signal could itself be lost
under congestion, this needs to confirm the absence of
congestion, rather than relying on the successful transmission
of a "congested" signal back to the sender.) This design has
the advantage that it provides fate-sharing of the traffic
flow(s) and the control communications.
Out-of-Band: An out-of-band control method SHOULD NOT trigger
Circuit Breaker reaction when there is loss of control messages
(e.g., a loss of measurement reports). This avoids failure
amplification/propagation when the measurement and data paths
fail independently. A failure of an out-of-band communication
path SHOULD be regarded as abnormal network event and be
handled as appropriate for the network, e.g., this event SHOULD
be logged, and additional network operator action might be
appropriate, depending on the network and the traffic involved.
o The Circuit Breaker MUST be designed to be robust to loss of
control messages that can also be experienced during congestion/
overload. This does not imply that it is desirable to provide
reliable delivery (e.g., over TCP), since this can incur
additional delay in responding to congestion. Appropriate
mechanisms could duplicate control messages over time to provide
increased robustness to loss, or/and to regard a lack of control
traffic as an indication that excessive congestion may be being
experienced [ID-ietf-tsvwg-RFC5405.bis].
o The volume of control traffic ought to be considered when
provisioning a network that uses a Circuit Breaker.
5. Other network topologies
A Circuit Breaker can be deployed in networks with topologies
different to that presented in figure 2. This section describes
examples of such usage, and possible places where functions may be
implemented.
5.1. Use with a multicast control/routing protocol
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+----------+ +--------+ +----------+
| Ingress | +-+ +-+ +-+ | Egress | | Egress |
| Endpoint +->+R+--+R+--+R+--+ Router |--+ Endpoint +->+
+----+-----+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +---+--+-+ +----+-----+ |
^ ^ ^ ^ | ^ | |
| | | | | | | |
+----+----+ + - - - < - - - - + | +----+----+ | Reported
| Ingress | multicast Prune | | Egress | | Ingress
| Meter | | | Meter | | Measurement
+---------+ | +----+----+ |
| | |
| +----+----+ |
| | Measure +<--+
| +----+----+
| |
| +----+----+
multicast | | Trigger |
Leave | +----+----+
Message | |
+----<----+
Figure 3: An example of a multicast CB controlling the end-to-end
path between an ingress endpoint and an egress endpoint.
Figure 3 shows one example of how a multicast Circuit Breaker could
be implemented at a pair of multicast endpoints (e.g., to implement a
Fast-Trip Circuit Breaker, Section 6.1). The ingress endpoint (the
sender that sources the multicast traffic) meters the ingress load,
generating an ingress measurement (e.g., recording timestamped packet
counts), and sends this measurement to the multicast group together
with the traffic it has measured.
Routers along a multicast path forward the multicast traffic
(including the ingress measurement) to all active endpoint receivers.
Each last hop (egress) router forwards the traffic to one or more
egress endpoint(s).
In this figure, each endpoint includes a meter that performs a local
egress load measurement. An endpoint also extracts the received
ingress measurement from the traffic, and compares the ingress and
egress measurements to determine if the Circuit Breaker ought to be
triggered. This measurement has to be robust to loss (see previous
section). If the Circuit Breaker is triggered, it generates a
multicast leave message for the egress (e.g., an IGMP or MLD message
sent to the last hop multicast router), which causes the upstream
multicast router to cease forwarding traffic to the egress endpoint.
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Any multicast router that has no active receivers for a particular
multicast group will prune traffic for that group, sending a prune
message to its upstream router. This starts the process of releasing
the capacity used by the traffic and is a standard multicast routing
function (e.g., using the PIM-SM routing protocol). Each egress
operates autonomously, and the Circuit Breaker reaction is executed
by the multicast control plane (e.g., by the PIM multicast routing
protocol), requiring no explicit signalling by the Circuit Breaker
along the communication path used for the control messages. Note: In
this example, there is no direct communication back to the Ingress,
and hence a triggered Circuit Breaker only controls traffic
downstream of the first hop router. It does not stop traffic flowing
from the sender to the first hop router; this is however the common
practice for multicast deployment.
The method could also be used with a multicast tunnel or subnetwork
(e.g., Section 6.2, Section 6.3), where a meter at the ingress
generates additional control messages to carry the measurement data
towards the point where the egress metering is implemented.
5.2. Use with control protocols supporting pre-provisioned capacity
Some network paths are provisioned using a control protocol, e.g.,
flows provisioned using the Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
services, path provisioned using the Resource reservation protocol
(RSVP), networks utilizing Software Defined Network (SDN) functions,
or admission-controlled Differentiated Services.
Figure 1 shows one expected use case, where in this usage a separate
device could perform the measurement and trigger functions. The
reaction generated by the trigger could take the form of a network
control message sent to the ingress and/or other network elements
causing these elements to react to the Circuit Breaker. Examples of
this type of use are provided in section Section 6.3.
5.3. Unidirectional Circuit Breakers over Controlled Paths
A Circuit Breaker can be used to control uni-directional traffic
where the traffic does not itself provide congestion control (e.g.,
there is no feedback of congestion information at the transport or
higher layers), providing that there is a communication path that can
be used for control messages to connect the functional components at
the Ingress and Egress. This communication path for the control
messages can exist in networks for which the traffic flow is purely
unidirectional. For example, a multicast stream that sends packets
across an Internet path and can use multicast routing to prune flows
to shed network load. Some other types of subnetwork also utilize
control protocols that can be used to control traffic flows.
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6. Examples of Circuit Breakers
There are multiple types of Circuit Breaker that could be defined for
use in different deployment cases. This section provides examples of
different types of Circuit Breaker:
6.1. A Fast-Trip Circuit Breaker
A fast-trip Circuit Breaker is the most responsive form of Circuit
Breaker. It has a response time that is only slightly larger than
that of the traffic that it controls. It is suited to traffic with
well-understood characteristics (and could include one or more
trigger functions specifically tailored the type of traffic for which
it is designed). It is not suited to arbitrary network traffic and
may be unsuitable for traffic aggregates, since it could prematurely
trigger (e.g., when multiple congestion-controlled flows lead to
short-term overload).
Although the mechanisms can be implemented in a RTP-aware network
devices, these mechanisms are also suitable for implementation in
endpoints (e.g., as a part of the transport system), where they can
also compliment end-to-end congestion control mechanism. A shorter
response time enables these mechanisms to triggers before other forms
of Circuit Breaker (e.g., Circuit Breakers operating on traffic
aggregates at a point along the network path).
6.1.1. A Fast-Trip Circuit Breaker for RTP
A set of fast-trip Circuit Breaker methods have been specified for
use together by a Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) flow using the
RTP/AVP Profile [RTP-CB]. It is expected that, in the absence of
severe congestion, all RTP applications running on best-effort IP
networks will be able to run without triggering these Circuit
Breakers. A fast-trip RTP Circuit Breaker is therefore implemented
as a fail-safe that when triggered will terminate RTP traffic.
The sending endpoint monitors reception of in-band RTP Control
Protocol (RTCP) reception report blocks, as contained in SR or RR
packets, that convey reception quality feedback information. This is
used to measure (congestion) loss, possibly in combination with ECN
[RFC6679].
The Circuit Breaker reaction (shutdown of the flow) is triggered when
any of the following trigger conditions are true:
1. An RTP Circuit Breaker triggers on reported lack of progress.
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2. An RTP Circuit Breaker triggers when no receiver reports messages
are received.
3. An RTP Circuit Breaker uses a TFRC-style check and sets a hard
upper limit to the long-term RTP throughput (over many RTTs).
4. An RTP Circuit Breaker includes the notion of Media Usability.
This Circuit Breaker is triggered when the quality of the
transported media falls below some required minimum acceptable
quality.
6.2. A Slow-trip Circuit Breaker
A slow-trip Circuit Breaker could be implemented in an endpoint or
network device. This type of Circuit Breaker is much slower at
responding to congestion than a fast-trip Circuit Breaker and is
expected to be more common.
One example where a slow-trip Circuit Breaker is needed is where
flows or traffic-aggregates use a tunnel or encapsulation and the
flows within the tunnel do not all support TCP-style congestion
control (e.g., TCP, SCTP, TFRC), see [ID-ietf-tsvwg-RFC5405.bis]
section 3.1.3. A use case is where tunnels are deployed in the
general Internet (rather than "controlled environments" within an
Internet service provider or enterprise network), especially when the
tunnel could need to cross a customer access router.
6.3. A Managed Circuit Breaker
A managed Circuit Breaker is implemented in the signalling protocol
or management plane that relates to the traffic aggregate being
controlled. This type of Circuit Breaker is typically applicable
when the deployment is within a "controlled environment".
A Circuit Breaker requires more than the ability to determine that a
network path is forwarding data, or to measure the rate of a path -
which are often normal network operational functions. There is an
additional need to determine a metric for congestion on the path and
to trigger a reaction when a threshold is crossed that indicates
persistent excessive congestion.
The control messages can use either in-band or out-of-band
communications.
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6.3.1. A Managed Circuit Breaker for SAToP Pseudo-Wires
[RFC4553], SAToP Pseudo-Wires (PWE3), section 8 describes an example
of a managed Circuit Breaker for isochronous flows.
If such flows were to run over a pre-provisioned (e.g., Multi-
Protocol Label Switching, MPLS) infrastructure, then it could be
expected that the Pseudowire (PW) would not experience congestion,
because a flow is not expected to either increase (or decrease) their
rate. If instead Pseudo-Wire traffic is multiplexed with other
traffic over the general Internet, it could experience congestion.
[RFC4553] states: "If SAToP PWs run over a PSN providing best-effort
service, they SHOULD monitor packet loss in order to detect "severe
congestion". The currently recommended measurement period is 1
second, and the trigger operates when there are more than three
measured Severely Errored Seconds (SES) within a period. If such a
condition is detected, a SAToP PW ought to shut down bidirectionally
for some period of time...".
The concept was that when the packet loss ratio (congestion) level
increased above a threshold, the PW was by default disabled. This
use case considered fixed-rate transmission, where the PW had no
reasonable way to shed load.
The trigger needs to be set at the rate that the PW was likely to
experience a serious problem, possibly making the service non-
compliant. At this point, triggering the Circuit Breaker would
remove the traffic preventing undue impact on congestion-responsive
traffic (e.g., TCP). Part of the rationale, was that high loss
ratios typically indicated that something was "broken" and ought to
have already resulted in operator intervention, and therefore need to
trigger this intervention.
An operator-based response provides opportunity for other action to
restore the service quality, e.g., by shedding other loads or
assigning additional capacity, or to consciously avoid reacting to
the trigger while engineering a solution to the problem. This could
require the trigger to be sent to a third location (e.g., a network
operations centre, NOC) responsible for operation of the tunnel
ingress, rather than the tunnel ingress itself.
6.3.2. A Managed Circuit Breaker for Pseudowires (PWs)
Pseudowires (PWs) [RFC3985] have become a common mechanism for
tunneling traffic, and may compete for network resources both with
other PWs and with non-PW traffic, such as TCP/IP flows.
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[ID-ietf-pals-congcons] discusses congestion conditions that can
arise when PWs compete with elastic (i.e., congestion responsive)
network traffic (e.g, TCP traffic). Elastic PWs carrying IP traffic
(see [RFC4488]) do not raise major concerns because all of the
traffic involved responds, reducing the transmission rate when
network congestion is detected.
In contrast, inelastic PWs (e.g., a fixed bandwidth Time Division
Multiplex, TDM) [RFC4553] [RFC5086] [RFC5087]) have the potential to
harm congestion responsive traffic or to contribute to excessive
congestion because inelastic PWs do not adjust their transmission
rate in response to congestion. [ID-ietf-pals-congcons] analyses TDM
PWs, with an initial conclusion that a TDM PW operating with a degree
of loss that may result in congestion-related problems is also
operating with a degree of loss that results in an unacceptable TDM
service. For that reason, the draft suggests that a managed Circuit
Breaker that shuts down a PW when it persistently fails to deliver
acceptable TDM service is a useful means for addressing these
congestion concerns.
7. Examples where circuit breakers may not be needed.
A Circuit Breaker is not required for a single congestion-controlled
flow using TCP, SCTP, TFRC, etc. In these cases, the congestion
control mechanisms are already designed to prevent persistent
excessive congestion.
7.1. CBs over pre-provisioned Capacity
One common question is whether a Circuit Breaker is needed when a
tunnel is deployed in a private network with pre-provisioned
capacity.
In this case, compliant traffic that does not exceed the provisioned
capacity ought not to result in persistent excessive congestion. A
Circuit Breaker will hence only be triggered when there is non-
compliant traffic. It could be argued that this event ought never to
happen - but it could also be argued that the Circuit Breaker equally
ought never to be triggered. If a Circuit Breaker were to be
implemented, it will provide an appropriate response if persistent
excessive congestion occurs in an operational network.
Implementing a Circuit Breaker will not reduce the performance of the
flows, but in the event that persistent excessive congestion occurs,
it protects network traffic that shares network capacity with these
flows. A Circuit Breaker also could be used to protect other sharing
network traffic from a failure that causes the Circuit Breaker
traffic to be routed over a non-pre-provisioned path.
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7.2. CBs with tunnels carrying Congestion-Controlled Traffic
IP-based traffic is generally assumed to be congestion-controlled,
i.e., it is assumed that the transport protocols generating IP-based
traffic at the sender already employ mechanisms that are sufficient
to address congestion on the path [ID-ietf-tsvwg-RFC5405.bis]. A
question therefore arises when people deploy a tunnel that is thought
to only carry an aggregate of TCP (or some other congestion control)
traffic: Is there advantage in this case in using a Circuit Breaker?
For sure, traffic in a such a tunnel will respond to congestion.
However, the answer to the question is not always obvious, because
the overall traffic formed by an aggregate of flows that implement a
congestion control mechanism does not necessarily prevent persistent
excessive congestion. For instance, most congestion control
mechanisms require long-lived flows to react to reduce the rate of a
flow, an aggregate of many short flows could result in many
terminating before they experience congestion. It is also often
impossible for a tunnel service provider to know that the tunnel only
contains congestion-controlled traffic (e.g., Inspecting packet
headers could not be possible). The important thing to note is that
if the aggregate of the traffic does not result in persistent
excessive congestion (impacting other flows), then the Circuit
Breaker will not trigger. This is the expected case in this context
- so implementing an appropriately configured Circuit Breaker will
not reduce performance of the tunnel, but in the event that
persistent excessive congestion occurs this protects other network
traffic that shares capacity with the tunnel traffic.
7.3. CBs with Uni-directional Traffic and no Control Path
A one-way forwarding path could have no associated communication path
for sending control messages, and therefore cannot be controlled
using an automated process. This service could be provided using a
path that has dedicated capacity and does not share this capacity
with other elastic Internet flows (i.e., flows that vary their rate
and respond to congestion indications).
A way to mitigate the impact on other flows when capacity could be
shared is to manage the traffic envelope by using ingress policing.S.
Supporting this type of traffic in the general Internet requires
operator monitoring to detect and respond to persistent excessive
congestion.
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8. Security Considerations
All Circuit Breaker mechanisms rely upon coordination between the
ingress and egress meters and communication with the trigger
function. This is usually achieved by passing network control
information (or protocol messages) across the network. Timely
operation of a Circuit Breaker depends on the choice of measurement
period. If the receiver has an interval that is overly long, then
the responsiveness of the Circuit Breaker decreases. This impacts
the ability of the Circuit Breaker to detect and react to congestion.
A Circuit Breaker could potentially be exploited by an attacker to
mount a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against the traffic being
measured. Mechanisms therefore need to be implemented to prevent
attacks on the network control information that would result in DoS.
The source and integrity of control information (measurements and
triggers) MUST be protected from off-path attacks. Without
protection, it could be trivial for an attacker to inject fake or
modified control/measurement messages (e.g., indicating high packet
loss rates) causing a Circuit Breaker to trigger and to therefore
mount a DoS attack that disrupts a flow.
Simple protection can be provided by using a randomized source port,
or equivalent field in the packet header (such as the RTP SSRC value
and the RTP sequence number) expected not to be known to an off-path
attacker. Stronger protection can be achieved using a secure
authentication protocol. This attack is relatively easy for an on-
path attacker when the messages are neither encrypted nor
authenticated. When there is a risk of on-path attack, a
cryptographic authentication mechanism for all control/measurement
messages is RECOMMENDED to mitigate this concern. There is a design
trade-off between the cost of introducing cryptographic security for
control messages and the desire to protect control communication.
For some deployment scenarios the value of additional protection from
DoS attack will therefore lead to a requirement to authenticate all
control messages.
Transmission of network control information consumes network
capacity. This control traffic needs to be considered in the design
of a Circuit Breaker and could potentially add to network congestion.
If this traffic is sent over a shared path, it is RECOMMENDED that
this control traffic is prioritized to reduce the probability of loss
under congestion. Control traffic also needs to be considered when
provisioning a network that uses a Circuit Breaker.
The Circuit Breaker MUST be designed to be robust to packet loss that
can also be experienced during congestion/overload. Loss of control
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messages could be a side-effect of a congested network, but also
could arise from other causes Section 4.
The security implications depend on the design of the mechanisms, the
type of traffic being controlled and the intended deployment
scenario. Each design of a Circuit Breaker MUST therefore evaluate
whether the particular Circuit Breaker mechanism has new security
implications.
9. IANA Considerations
This document makes no request from IANA.
10. Acknowledgments
There are many people who have discussed and described the issues
that have motivated this draft. Contributions and comments included:
Lars Eggert, Colin Perkins, David Black, Matt Mathis, Andrew
McGregor, Bob Briscoe and Eliot Lear. This work was part-funded by
the European Community under its Seventh Framework Programme through
the Reducing Internet Transport Latency (RITE) project (ICT-317700).
11. Revision Notes
XXX RFC-Editor: Please remove this section prior to publication XXX
Draft 00
This was the first revision. Help and comments are greatly
appreciated.
Draft 01
Contained clarifications and changes in response to received
comments, plus addition of diagram and definitions. Comments are
welcome.
WG Draft 00
Approved as a WG work item on 28th Aug 2014.
WG Draft 01
Incorporates feedback after Dallas IETF TSVWG meeting. This version
is thought ready for WGLC comments. Definitions of abbreviations.
WG Draft 02
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Minor fixes for typos. Rewritten security considerations section.
WG Draft 03
Updates following WGLC comments (see TSV mailing list). Comments
from C Perkins; D Black and off-list feedback.
A clear recommendation of intended scope.
Changes include: Improvement of language on timescales and minimum
measurement period; clearer articulation of endpoint and multicast
examples - with new diagrams; separation of the controlled network
case; updated text on position of trigger function; corrections to
RTP-CB text; clarification of loss v ECN metrics; checks against
submission checklist 9use of keywords, added meters to diagrams).
WG Draft 04
Added section on PW CB for TDM - a newly adopted draft (D. Black).
WG Draft 05
Added clarifications requested during AD review.
WG Draft 06
Fixed some remaining typos.
Update following detailed review by Bob Briscoe, and comments by D.
Black.
WG Draft 07
Additional update following review by Bob Briscoe.
WG Draft 08
Updated text on the response to lack of meter measurements with
managed Circuit Breakers. Additional comments from Eliot Lear (APPs
area).
WG Draft 09
Updated text on applications from Eliot Lear. Additional feedback
from Bob Briscoe. Comments from David Black and Mirja Kuehlewind.
Resulted in change of terminology to describe this as reacting to
"persistent excessive congestion", and more consistent use of
"congestion control mechanisms". The requirements section was
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reordered and repetition removed to ease reading. Moved text on
value of CC to front of document.
12. References
12.1. Normative References
[ID-ietf-tsvwg-RFC5405.bis]
Eggert, L., Fairhurst, G., and G. Shepherd, "UDP Usage
Guidelines (Work-in-Progress)", 2015.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC3168] Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S., and D. Black, "The Addition
of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP",
RFC 3168, DOI 10.17487/RFC3168, September 2001,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3168>.
12.2. Informative References
[ID-ietf-pals-congcons]
Stein, YJ., Black, D., and B. Briscoe, "Pseudowire
Congestion Considerations (Work-in-Progress)", 2015.
[Jacobsen88]
European Telecommunication Standards, Institute (ETSI),
"Congestion Avoidance and Control", SIGCOMM Symposium
proceedings on Communications architectures and
protocols", August 1998.
[RFC1112] Deering, S., "Host extensions for IP multicasting", STD 5,
RFC 1112, DOI 10.17487/RFC1112, August 1989,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1112>.
[RFC2309] Braden, B., Clark, D., Crowcroft, J., Davie, B., Deering,
S., Estrin, D., Floyd, S., Jacobson, V., Minshall, G.,
Partridge, C., Peterson, L., Ramakrishnan, K., Shenker,
S., Wroclawski, J., and L. Zhang, "Recommendations on
Queue Management and Congestion Avoidance in the
Internet", RFC 2309, DOI 10.17487/RFC2309, April 1998,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2309>.
[RFC2914] Floyd, S., "Congestion Control Principles", BCP 41,
RFC 2914, DOI 10.17487/RFC2914, September 2000,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2914>.
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[RFC3985] Bryant, S., Ed. and P. Pate, Ed., "Pseudo Wire Emulation
Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) Architecture", RFC 3985,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3985, March 2005,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3985>.
[RFC4488] Levin, O., "Suppression of Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) REFER Method Implicit Subscription", RFC 4488,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4488, May 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4488>.
[RFC4553] Vainshtein, A., Ed. and YJ. Stein, Ed., "Structure-
Agnostic Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) over Packet
(SAToP)", RFC 4553, DOI 10.17487/RFC4553, June 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4553>.
[RFC5086] Vainshtein, A., Ed., Sasson, I., Metz, E., Frost, T., and
P. Pate, "Structure-Aware Time Division Multiplexed (TDM)
Circuit Emulation Service over Packet Switched Network
(CESoPSN)", RFC 5086, DOI 10.17487/RFC5086, December 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5086>.
[RFC5087] Stein, Y(J)., Shashoua, R., Insler, R., and M. Anavi,
"Time Division Multiplexing over IP (TDMoIP)", RFC 5087,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5087, December 2007,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5087>.
[RFC5348] Floyd, S., Handley, M., Padhye, J., and J. Widmer, "TCP
Friendly Rate Control (TFRC): Protocol Specification",
RFC 5348, DOI 10.17487/RFC5348, September 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5348>.
[RFC5681] Allman, M., Paxson, V., and E. Blanton, "TCP Congestion
Control", RFC 5681, DOI 10.17487/RFC5681, September 2009,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5681>.
[RFC6679] Westerlund, M., Johansson, I., Perkins, C., O'Hanlon, P.,
and K. Carlberg, "Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)
for RTP over UDP", RFC 6679, DOI 10.17487/RFC6679, August
2012, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6679>.
[RTP-CB] Perkins, and Singh, "Multimedia Congestion Control:
Circuit Breakers for Unicast RTP Sessions", February 2014.
Author's Address
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Godred Fairhurst
University of Aberdeen
School of Engineering
Fraser Noble Building
Aberdeen, Scotland AB24 3UE
UK
Email: gorry@erg.abdn.ac.uk
URI: http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk
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