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Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput (L4S) Internet Service: Architecture
draft-ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch-15

The information below is for an old version of the document.
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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9330.
Authors Bob Briscoe , Koen De Schepper , Marcelo Bagnulo , Greg White
Last updated 2021-12-24 (Latest revision 2021-11-08)
Replaces draft-briscoe-tsvwg-l4s-arch
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draft-ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch-15
Transport Area Working Group                             B. Briscoe, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                               Independent
Intended status: Informational                            K. De Schepper
Expires: 27 June 2022                                    Nokia Bell Labs
                                                        M. Bagnulo Braun
                                        Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
                                                                G. White
                                                               CableLabs
                                                        24 December 2021

   Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput (L4S) Internet Service:
                              Architecture
                      draft-ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch-15

Abstract

   This document describes the L4S architecture, which enables Internet
   applications to achieve Low queuing Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable
   throughput (L4S).  The insight on which L4S is based is that the root
   cause of queuing delay is in the congestion controllers of senders,
   not in the queue itself.  With the L4S architecture all Internet
   applications could (but do not have to) transition away from
   congestion control algorithms that cause substantial queuing delay,
   to a new class of congestion controls that induce very little
   queuing, aided by explicit congestion signalling from the network.
   This new class of congestion controls can provide low latency for
   capacity-seeking flows, so applications can achieve both high
   bandwidth and low latency.

   The architecture primarily concerns incremental deployment.  It
   defines mechanisms that allow the new class of L4S congestion
   controls to coexist with 'Classic' congestion controls in a shared
   network.  These mechanisms aim to ensure that the latency and
   throughput performance using an L4S-compliant congestion controller
   is usually much better (and rarely worse) than performance would have
   been using a 'Classic' congestion controller, and that competing
   flows continuing to use 'Classic' controllers are typically not
   impacted by the presence of L4S.  These characteristics are important
   to encourage adoption of L4S congestion control algorithms and L4S
   compliant network elements.

   The L4S architecture consists of three components: network support to
   isolate L4S traffic from classic traffic; protocol features that
   allow network elements to identify L4S traffic; and host support for
   L4S congestion controls.

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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 https://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 27 June 2022.

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/
   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 Revised BSD License text as
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  Document Roadmap  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   2.  L4S Architecture Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  L4S Architecture Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.1.  Protocol Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.2.  Network Components  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     4.3.  Host Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   5.  Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     5.1.  Why These Primary Components? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     5.2.  What L4S adds to Existing Approaches  . . . . . . . . . .  18
   6.  Applicability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
     6.1.  Applications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
     6.2.  Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
     6.3.  Applicability with Specific Link Technologies . . . . . .  24

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     6.4.  Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
       6.4.1.  Deployment Topology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
       6.4.2.  Deployment Sequences  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
       6.4.3.  L4S Flow but Non-ECN Bottleneck . . . . . . . . . . .  29
       6.4.4.  L4S Flow but Classic ECN Bottleneck . . . . . . . . .  30
       6.4.5.  L4S AQM Deployment within Tunnels . . . . . . . . . .  30
   7.  IANA Considerations (to be removed by RFC Editor) . . . . . .  30
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
     8.1.  Traffic Rate (Non-)Policing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
     8.2.  'Latency Friendliness'  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
     8.3.  Interaction between Rate Policing and L4S . . . . . . . .  33
     8.4.  ECN Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
     8.5.  Privacy Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
   9.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
   10. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
   Appendix A.  Standardization items  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  48

1.  Introduction

   At any one time, it is increasingly common for all of the traffic in
   a bottleneck link (e.g. a household's Internet access) to come from
   applications that prefer low delay: interactive Web, Web services,
   voice, conversational video, interactive video, interactive remote
   presence, instant messaging, online gaming, remote desktop, cloud-
   based applications and video-assisted remote control of machinery and
   industrial processes.  In the last decade or so, much has been done
   to reduce propagation delay by placing caches or servers closer to
   users.  However, queuing remains a major, albeit intermittent,
   component of latency.  For instance spikes of hundreds of
   milliseconds are not uncommon, even with state-of-the-art active
   queue management (AQM) [COBALT], [DOCSIS3AQM].  Queuing in access
   network bottlenecks is typically configured to cause overall network
   delay to roughly double during a long-running flow, relative to
   expected base (unloaded) path delay [BufferSize].  Low loss is also
   important because, for interactive applications, losses translate
   into even longer retransmission delays.

   It has been demonstrated that, once access network bit rates reach
   levels now common in the developed world, increasing capacity offers
   diminishing returns if latency (delay) is not addressed
   [Dukkipati06], [Rajiullah15].  Therefore, the goal is an Internet
   service with very Low queueing Latency, very Low Loss and Scalable
   throughput (L4S).  Very low queuing latency means less than
   1 millisecond (ms) on average and less than about 2 ms at the 99th
   percentile.  This document describes the L4S architecture for
   achieving these goals.

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   Differentiated services (Diffserv) offers Expedited Forwarding
   (EF [RFC3246]) for some packets at the expense of others, but this
   makes no difference when all (or most) of the traffic at a bottleneck
   at any one time requires low latency.  In contrast, L4S still works
   well when all traffic is L4S - a service that gives without taking
   needs none of the configuration or management baggage (traffic
   policing, traffic contracts) associated with favouring some traffic
   flows over others.

   Queuing delay degrades performance intermittently [Hohlfeld14].  It
   occurs when a large enough capacity-seeking (e.g. TCP) flow is
   running alongside the user's traffic in the bottleneck link, which is
   typically in the access network.  Or when the low latency application
   is itself a large capacity-seeking or adaptive rate (e.g. interactive
   video) flow.  At these times, the performance improvement from L4S
   must be sufficient that network operators will be motivated to deploy
   it.

   Active Queue Management (AQM) is part of the solution to queuing
   under load.  AQM improves performance for all traffic, but there is a
   limit to how much queuing delay can be reduced by solely changing the
   network; without addressing the root of the problem.

   The root of the problem is the presence of standard TCP congestion
   control (Reno [RFC5681]) or compatible variants (e.g. TCP
   Cubic [RFC8312]).  We shall use the term 'Classic' for these Reno-
   friendly congestion controls.  Classic congestion controls induce
   relatively large saw-tooth-shaped excursions up the queue and down
   again, which have been growing as flow rate scales [RFC3649].  So if
   a network operator naively attempts to reduce queuing delay by
   configuring an AQM to operate at a shallower queue, a Classic
   congestion control will significantly underutilize the link at the
   bottom of every saw-tooth.

   It has been demonstrated that if the sending host replaces a Classic
   congestion control with a 'Scalable' alternative, when a suitable AQM
   is deployed in the network the performance under load of all the
   above interactive applications can be significantly improved.  For
   instance, queuing delay under heavy load with the example DCTCP/DualQ
   solution cited below on a DSL or Ethernet link is roughly 1 to 2
   milliseconds at the 99th percentile without losing link
   utilization [DualPI2Linux], [DCttH19] (for other link types, see
   Section 6.3).  This compares with 5-20 ms on _average_ with a Classic
   congestion control and current state-of-the-art AQMs such as FQ-
   CoDel [RFC8290], PIE [RFC8033] or DOCSIS PIE [RFC8034] and about
   20-30 ms at the 99th percentile [DualPI2Linux].

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   L4S is designed for incremental deployment.  It is possible to deploy
   the L4S service at a bottleneck link alongside the existing best
   efforts service [DualPI2Linux] so that unmodified applications can
   start using it as soon as the sender's stack is updated.  Access
   networks are typically designed with one link as the bottleneck for
   each site (which might be a home, small enterprise or mobile device),
   so deployment at either or both ends of this link should give nearly
   all the benefit in the respective direction.  With some transport
   protocols, namely TCP and SCTP, the sender has to check for suitably
   updated receiver feedback, whereas with more recent transport
   protocols such as QUIC and DCCP, all receivers have always been
   suitable.

   This document presents the L4S architecture, by describing and
   justifying the component parts and how they interact to provide the
   scalable, low latency, low loss Internet service.  It also details
   the approach to incremental deployment, as briefly summarized above.

1.1.  Document Roadmap

   This document describes the L4S architecture in three passes.  First
   this brief overview gives the very high level idea and states the
   main components with minimal rationale.  This is only intended to
   give some context for the terminology definitions that follow in
   Section 3, and to explain the structure of the rest of the document.
   Then Section 4 goes into more detail on each component with some
   rationale, but still mostly stating what the architecture is, rather
   than why.  Finally Section 5 justifies why each element of the
   solution was chosen (Section 5.1) and why these choices were
   different from other solutions (Section 5.2).

   Having described the architecture, Section 6 clarifies its
   applicability; that is, the applications and use-cases that motivated
   the design, the challenges applying the architecture to various link
   technologies, and various incremental deployment models: including
   the two main deployment topologies, different sequences for
   incremental deployment and various interactions with pre-existing
   approaches.  The document ends with the usual tail pieces, including
   extensive discussion of traffic policing and other security
   considerations Section 8.

2.  L4S Architecture Overview

   Below we outline the three main components to the L4S architecture;
   1) the scalable congestion control on the sending host; 2) the AQM at
   the network bottleneck; and 3) the protocol between them.

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   But first, the main point to grasp is that low latency is not
   provided by the network - low latency results from the careful
   behaviour of the scalable congestion controllers used by L4S senders.
   The network does have a role - primarily to isolate the low latency
   of the carefully behaving L4S traffic from the higher queuing delay
   needed by traffic with pre-existing Classic behaviour.  The network
   also alters the way it signals queue growth to the transport - It
   uses the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) protocol, but it
   signals the very start of queue growth - immediately without the
   smoothing delay typical of Classic AQMs.  Because ECN support is
   essential for L4S, senders use the ECN field as the protocol to
   identify to the network which packets are L4S and which are Classic.

   1) Host:  Scalable congestion controls already exist.  They solve the
      scaling problem with Classic congestion controls, such as Reno or
      Cubic.  Because flow rate has scaled since TCP congestion control
      was first designed in 1988, assuming the flow lasts long enough,
      it now takes hundreds of round trips (and growing) to recover
      after a congestion signal (whether a loss or an ECN mark) as shown
      in the examples in Section 5.1 and [RFC3649].  Therefore control
      of queuing and utilization becomes very slack, and the slightest
      disturbances (e.g. from new flows starting) prevent a high rate
      from being attained.

      With a scalable congestion control, the average time from one
      congestion signal to the next (the recovery time) remains
      invariant as the flow rate scales, all other factors being equal.
      This maintains the same degree of control over queueing and
      utilization whatever the flow rate, as well as ensuring that high
      throughput is more robust to disturbances.  The scalable control
      used most widely (in controlled environments) is Data Center TCP
      (DCTCP [RFC8257]), which has been implemented and deployed in
      Windows Server Editions (since 2012), in Linux and in FreeBSD.
      Although DCTCP as-is functions well over wide-area round trip
      times, most implementations lack certain safety features that
      would be necessary for use outside controlled environments like
      data centres (see Section 6.4.3 and Appendix A).  So scalable
      congestion control needs to be implemented in TCP and other
      transport protocols (QUIC, SCTP, RTP/RTCP, RMCAT, etc.).  Indeed,
      between the present document being drafted and published, the
      following scalable congestion controls were implemented: TCP
      Prague [PragueLinux], QUIC Prague, an L4S variant of the RMCAT
      SCReAM controller [SCReAM] and the L4S ECN part of BBRv2 [BBRv2]
      intended for TCP and QUIC transports.

   2) Network:  L4S traffic needs to be isolated from the queuing

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      latency of Classic traffic.  One queue per application flow (FQ)
      is one way to achieve this, e.g. FQ-CoDel [RFC8290].  However,
      just two queues is sufficient and does not require inspection of
      transport layer headers in the network, which is not always
      possible (see Section 5.2).  With just two queues, it might seem
      impossible to know how much capacity to schedule for each queue
      without inspecting how many flows at any one time are using each.
      And it would be undesirable to arbitrarily divide access network
      capacity into two partitions.  The Dual Queue Coupled AQM was
      developed as a minimal complexity solution to this problem.  It
      acts like a 'semi-permeable' membrane that partitions latency but
      not bandwidth.  As such, the two queues are for transition from
      Classic to L4S behaviour, not bandwidth prioritization.

      Section 4 gives a high level explanation of how the per-flow-queue
      (FQ) and DualQ variants of L4S work, and
      [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled] gives a full explanation of the
      DualQ Coupled AQM framework.  A specific marking algorithm is not
      mandated for L4S AQMs.  Appendices of
      [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled] give non-normative examples
      that have been implemented and evaluated, and give recommended
      default parameter settings.  It is expected that L4S experiments
      will improve knowledge of parameter settings and whether the set
      of marking algorithms needs to be limited.

   3) Protocol:  A host needs to distinguish L4S and Classic packets
      with an identifier so that the network can classify them into
      their separate treatments.  The L4S identifier
      spec. [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] concludes that all alternatives
      involve compromises, but the ECT(1) and CE codepoints of the ECN
      field represent a workable solution.  As already explained, the
      network also uses ECN to immediately signal the very start of
      queue growth to the transport.

3.  Terminology

   Note: The following definitions are copied from
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] for convenience.  If there are accidental
   differences those in [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] take precedence.

   Classic Congestion Control:  A congestion control behaviour that can
      co-exist with standard Reno [RFC5681] without causing
      significantly negative impact on its flow rate [RFC5033].  The
      scaling problem with Classic congestion control is explained, with
      examples, in Section 5.1 and in [RFC3649].

   Scalable Congestion Control:  A congestion control where the average

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      time from one congestion signal to the next (the recovery time)
      remains invariant as the flow rate scales, all other factors being
      equal.  For instance, DCTCP averages 2 congestion signals per
      round-trip whatever the flow rate, as do other recently developed
      scalable congestion controls, e.g. Relentless TCP [Mathis09], TCP
      Prague [I-D.briscoe-iccrg-prague-congestion-control],
      [PragueLinux], BBRv2 [BBRv2] and the L4S variant of SCReAM for
      real-time media [SCReAM], [RFC8298]).  See Section 4.3 of
      [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] for more explanation.

   Classic service:  The Classic service is intended for all the
      congestion control behaviours that co-exist with Reno [RFC5681]
      (e.g. Reno itself, Cubic [RFC8312],
      Compound [I-D.sridharan-tcpm-ctcp], TFRC [RFC5348]).  The term
      'Classic queue' means a queue providing the Classic service.

   Low-Latency, Low-Loss Scalable throughput (L4S) service:  The 'L4S'
      service is intended for traffic from scalable congestion control
      algorithms, such as the Prague congestion
      control [I-D.briscoe-iccrg-prague-congestion-control], which was
      derived from DCTCP  [RFC8257].  The L4S service is for more
      general traffic than just TCP Prague--it allows the set of
      congestion controls with similar scaling properties to Prague to
      evolve, such as the examples listed above (Relentless, SCReAM).
      The term 'L4S queue' means a queue providing the L4S service.

      The terms Classic or L4S can also qualify other nouns, such as
      'queue', 'codepoint', 'identifier', 'classification', 'packet',
      'flow'.  For example: an L4S packet means a packet with an L4S
      identifier sent from an L4S congestion control.

      Both Classic and L4S services can cope with a proportion of
      unresponsive or less-responsive traffic as well, but in the L4S
      case its rate has to be smooth enough or low enough not build a
      queue (e.g. DNS, VoIP, game sync datagrams, etc).

   Reno-friendly:  The subset of Classic traffic that is friendly to the
      standard Reno congestion control defined for TCP in [RFC5681].
      The TFRC spec. [RFC5348] indirectly implies that 'friendly' is
      defined as "generally within a factor of two of the sending rate
      of a TCP flow under the same conditions".  Reno-friendly is used
      here in place of 'TCP-friendly', given the latter has become
      imprecise, because the TCP protocol is now used with so many
      different congestion control behaviours, and Reno is used in non-
      TCP transports such as QUIC [RFC9000].

   Classic ECN:  The original Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)

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      protocol [RFC3168], which requires ECN signals to be treated as
      equivalent to drops, both when generated in the network and when
      responded to by the sender.

      L4S uses the ECN field as an identifier
      [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] with the names for the four codepoints
      of the 2-bit IP-ECN field unchanged from those defined in
      [RFC3168]: Not ECT, ECT(0), ECT(1) and CE, where ECT stands for
      ECN-Capable Transport and CE stands for Congestion Experienced.  A
      packet marked with the CE codepoint is termed 'ECN-marked' or
      sometimes just 'marked' where the context makes ECN obvious.

   Site:  A home, mobile device, small enterprise or campus, where the
      network bottleneck is typically the access link to the site.  Not
      all network arrangements fit this model but it is a useful, widely
      applicable generalization.

4.  L4S Architecture Components

   The L4S architecture is composed of the elements in the following
   three subsections.

4.1.  Protocol Mechanisms

   The L4S architecture involves: a) unassignment of an identifier; b)
   reassignment of the same identifier; and c) optional further
   identifiers:

   a.  An essential aspect of a scalable congestion control is the use
       of explicit congestion signals.  'Classic' ECN [RFC3168] requires
       an ECN signal to be treated as equivalent to drop, both when it
       is generated in the network and when it is responded to by hosts.
       L4S needs networks and hosts to support a more fine-grained
       meaning for each ECN signal that is less severe than a drop, so
       that the L4S signals:

       *  can be much more frequent;

       *  can be signalled immediately, without the significant delay
          required to smooth out fluctuations in the queue.

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       To enable L4S, the standards track Classic ECN spec. [RFC3168]
       has had to be updated to allow L4S packets to depart from the
       'equivalent to drop' constraint.  [RFC8311] is a standards track
       update to relax specific requirements in RFC 3168 (and certain
       other standards track RFCs), which clears the way for the
       experimental changes proposed for L4S.  [RFC8311] also
       reclassifies the original experimental assignment of the ECT(1)
       codepoint as an ECN nonce [RFC3540] as historic.

   b.  [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] specifies that ECT(1) is used as the
       identifier to classify L4S packets into a separate treatment from
       Classic packets.  This satisfies the requirement for identifying
       an alternative ECN treatment in [RFC4774].

       The CE codepoint is used to indicate Congestion Experienced by
       both L4S and Classic treatments.  This raises the concern that a
       Classic AQM earlier on the path might have marked some ECT(0)
       packets as CE.  Then these packets will be erroneously classified
       into the L4S queue.  Appendix B of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]
       explains why five unlikely eventualities all have to coincide for
       this to have any detrimental effect, which even then would only
       involve a vanishingly small likelihood of a spurious
       retransmission.

   c.  A network operator might wish to include certain unresponsive,
       non-L4S traffic in the L4S queue if it is deemed to be smoothly
       enough paced and low enough rate not to build a queue.  For
       instance, VoIP, low rate datagrams to sync online games,
       relatively low rate application-limited traffic, DNS, LDAP, etc.
       This traffic would need to be tagged with specific identifiers,
       e.g. a low latency Diffserv Codepoint such as Expedited
       Forwarding (EF [RFC3246]), Non-Queue-Building
       (NQB [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-nqb]), or operator-specific identifiers.

4.2.  Network Components

   The L4S architecture aims to provide low latency without the _need_
   for per-flow operations in network components.  Nonetheless, the
   architecture does not preclude per-flow solutions.  The following
   bullets describe the known arrangements: a) the DualQ Coupled AQM
   with an L4S AQM in one queue coupled from a Classic AQM in the other;
   b) Per-Flow Queues with an instance of a Classic and an L4S AQM in
   each queue; c) Dual queues with per-flow AQMs, but no per-flow
   queues:

   a.  The Dual Queue Coupled AQM (illustrated in Figure 1) achieves the
       'semi-permeable' membrane property mentioned earlier as follows:

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       *  Latency isolation: Two separate queues are used to isolate L4S
          queuing delay from the larger queue that Classic traffic needs
          to maintain full utilization.

       *  Bandwidth pooling: The two queues act as if they are a single
          pool of bandwidth in which flows of either type get roughly
          equal throughput without the scheduler needing to identify any
          flows.  This is achieved by having an AQM in each queue, but
          the Classic AQM provides a congestion signal to both queues in
          a manner that ensures a consistent response from the two
          classes of congestion control.  Specifically, the Classic AQM
          generates a drop/mark probability based on congestion in its
          own queue, which it uses both to drop/mark packets in its own
          queue and to affect the marking probability in the L4S queue.
          The strength of the coupling of the congestion signalling
          between the two queues is enough to make the L4S flows slow
          down to leave the right amount of capacity for the Classic
          flows (as they would if they were the same type of traffic
          sharing the same queue).

       Then the scheduler can serve the L4S queue with priority (denoted
       by the '1' on the higher priority input), because the L4S traffic
       isn't offering up enough traffic to use all the priority that it
       is given.  Therefore:

       *  for latency isolation on short time-scales (sub-round-trip)
          the prioritization of the L4S queue protects its low latency
          by allowing bursts to dissipate quickly;

       *  but for bandwidth pooling on longer time-scales (round-trip
          and longer) the Classic queue creates an equal and opposite
          pressure against the L4S traffic to ensure that neither has
          priority when it comes to bandwidth - the tension between
          prioritizing L4S and coupling the marking from the Classic AQM
          results in approximate per-flow fairness.

       To protect against unresponsive traffic taking advantage of the
       prioritization of the L4S queue and starving the Classic queue,
       it is advisable for the priority to be conditional, not strict
       (see Appendix A of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled]).

       When there is no Classic traffic, the L4S queue's own AQM comes
       into play.  It starts congestion marking with a very shallow
       queue, so L4S traffic maintains very low queuing delay.

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       If either queue becomes persistently overloaded, drop of ECN-
       capable packets is introduced, as recommended in Section 7 of
       [RFC3168] and Section 4.2.1 of [RFC7567].  Then both queues
       introduce the same level of drop (not shown in the figure).

       The Dual Queue Coupled AQM has been specified as generically as
       possible [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled] without specifying
       the particular AQMs to use in the two queues so that designers
       are free to implement diverse ideas.  Informational appendices in
       that draft give pseudocode examples of two different specific AQM
       approaches: one called DualPI2 (pronounced Dual PI
       Squared) [DualPI2Linux] that uses the PI2 variant of PIE, and a
       zero-config variant of RED called Curvy RED.  A DualQ Coupled AQM
       based on PIE has also been specified and implemented for Low
       Latency DOCSIS [DOCSIS3.1].

                            (3)                  (2)
                     .-------^------..------------^------------------.
        ,-(1)-----.                               _____
       ; ________  :            L4S  -------.    |     |
       :|Scalable| :               _\      ||__\_|mark |
       :| sender | :  __________  / /      ||  / |_____|\   _________
       :|________|\; |          |/   -------'       ^    \1|condit'nl|
        `---------'\_|  IP-ECN  |          Coupling :     \|priority |_\
         ________  / |Classifier|                   :     /|scheduler| /
        |Classic |/  |__________|\   -------.     __:__  / |_________|
        | sender |                \_\ || | ||__\_|mark/|/
        |________|                  / || | ||  / |drop |
                             Classic -------'    |_____|

         Figure 1: Components of an L4S DualQ Coupled AQM Solution: 1)
            Scalable Sending Host; 2) Isolation in separate network
                 queues; and 3) Packet Identification Protocol

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   b.  Per-Flow Queues and AQMs: A scheduler with per-flow queues such
       as FQ-CoDel or FQ-PIE can be used for L4S.  For instance within
       each queue of an FQ-CoDel system, as well as a CoDel AQM, there
       is typically also the option of ECN marking at an immediate
       (unsmoothed) shallow threshold to support use in data centres
       (see Sec.5.2.7 of [RFC8290]).  In Linux, this has been modified
       so that the shallow threshold can be solely applied to ECT(1)
       packets [FQ_CoDel_Thresh].  Then if there is a flow of non-ECN or
       ECT(0) packets in the per-flow-queue, the Classic AQM (e.g.
       CoDel) is applied; while if there is a flow of ECT(1) packets in
       the queue, the shallower (typically sub-millisecond) threshold is
       applied.  In addition, ECT(0) and not-ECT packets could
       potentially be classified into a separate flow-queue from ECT(1)
       and CE packets to avoid them mixing if they share a common flow-
       identifier (e.g. in a VPN).

   c.  Dual-queues, but per-flow AQMs: It should also be possible to use
       dual queues for isolation, but with per-flow marking to control
       flow-rates (instead of the coupled per-queue marking of the Dual
       Queue Coupled AQM).  One of the two queues would be for isolating
       L4S packets, which would be classified by the ECN codepoint.
       Flow rates could be controlled by flow-specific marking.  The
       policy goal of the marking could be to differentiate flow rates
       (e.g. [Nadas20], which requires additional signalling of a per-
       flow 'value'), or to equalize flow-rates (perhaps in a similar
       way to Approx Fair CoDel [AFCD],
       [I-D.morton-tsvwg-codel-approx-fair], but with two queues not
       one).

       Note that whenever the term 'DualQ' is used loosely without
       saying whether marking is per-queue or per-flow, it means a dual
       queue AQM with per-queue marking.

4.3.  Host Mechanisms

   The L4S architecture includes two main mechanisms in the end host
   that we enumerate next:

   a.  Scalable Congestion Control at the sender: Section 2 defines a
       scalable congestion control as one where the average time from
       one congestion signal to the next (the recovery time) remains
       invariant as the flow rate scales, all other factors being equal.
       Data Center TCP is the most widely used example.  It has been
       documented as an informational record of the protocol currently
       in use in controlled environments [RFC8257].  A draft list of
       safety and performance improvements for a scalable congestion
       control to be usable on the public Internet has been drawn up
       (the so-called 'Prague L4S requirements' in Appendix A of

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       [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]).  The subset that involve risk of
       harm to others have been captured as normative requirements in
       Section 4 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id].  TCP
       Prague [I-D.briscoe-iccrg-prague-congestion-control] has been
       implemented in Linux as a reference implementation to address
       these requirements [PragueLinux].

       Transport protocols other than TCP use various congestion
       controls that are designed to be friendly with Reno.  Before they
       can use the L4S service, they will need to be updated to
       implement a scalable congestion response, which they will have to
       indicate by using the ECT(1) codepoint.  Scalable variants are
       under consideration for more recent transport protocols,
       e.g. QUIC, and the L4S ECN part of BBRv2 [BBRv2] is a scalable
       congestion control intended for the TCP and QUIC transports,
       amongst others.  Also an L4S variant of the RMCAT SCReAM
       controller [RFC8298] has been implemented [SCReAM] for media
       transported over RTP.

       Section 4.3 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] defines scalable
       congestion control in more detail, and specifies that
       requirements that an L4S scalable congestion control has to
       comply with.

   b.  The ECN feedback in some transport protocols is already
       sufficiently fine-grained for L4S (specifically DCCP [RFC4340]
       and QUIC [RFC9000]).  But others either require update or are in
       the process of being updated:

       *  For the case of TCP, the feedback protocol for ECN embeds the
          assumption from Classic ECN [RFC3168] that an ECN mark is
          equivalent to a drop, making it unusable for a scalable TCP.
          Therefore, the implementation of TCP receivers will have to be
          upgraded [RFC7560].  Work to standardize and implement more
          accurate ECN feedback for TCP (AccECN) is in
          progress [I-D.ietf-tcpm-accurate-ecn], [PragueLinux].

       *  ECN feedback is only roughly sketched in an appendix of the
          SCTP specification [RFC4960].  A fuller specification has been
          proposed in a long-expired draft [I-D.stewart-tsvwg-sctpecn],
          which would need to be implemented and deployed before SCTCP
          could support L4S.

       *  For RTP, sufficient ECN feedback was defined in [RFC6679], but
          [RFC8888] defines the latest standards track improvements.

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5.  Rationale

5.1.  Why These Primary Components?

   Explicit congestion signalling (protocol):  Explicit congestion
      signalling is a key part of the L4S approach.  In contrast, use of
      drop as a congestion signal creates a tension because drop is both
      an impairment (less would be better) and a useful signal (more
      would be better):

      *  Explicit congestion signals can be used many times per round
         trip, to keep tight control, without any impairment.  Under
         heavy load, even more explicit signals can be applied so the
         queue can be kept short whatever the load.  In contrast,
         Classic AQMs have to introduce very high packet drop at high
         load to keep the queue short.  By using ECN, an L4S congestion
         control's sawtooth reduction can be smaller and therefore
         return to the operating point more often, without worrying that
         more sawteeth will cause more signals.  The consequent smaller
         amplitude sawteeth fit between an empty queue and a very
         shallow marking threshold (~1 ms in the public Internet), so
         queue delay variation can be very low, without risk of under-
         utilization.

      *  Explicit congestion signals can be emitted immediately to track
         fluctuations of the queue.  L4S shifts smoothing from the
         network to the host.  The network doesn't know the round trip
         times of any of the flows.  So if the network is responsible
         for smoothing (as in the Classic approach), it has to assume a
         worst case RTT, otherwise long RTT flows would become unstable.
         This delays Classic congestion signals by 100-200 ms.  In
         contrast, each host knows its own round trip time.  So, in the
         L4S approach, the host can smooth each flow over its own RTT,
         introducing no more soothing delay than strictly necessary
         (usually only a few milliseconds).  A host can also choose not
         to introduce any smoothing delay if appropriate, e.g. during
         flow start-up.

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      Neither of the above are feasible if explicit congestion
      signalling has to be considered 'equivalent to drop' (as was
      required with Classic ECN [RFC3168]), because drop is an
      impairment as well as a signal.  So drop cannot be excessively
      frequent, and drop cannot be immediate, otherwise too many drops
      would turn out to have been due to only a transient fluctuation in
      the queue that would not have warranted dropping a packet in
      hindsight.  Therefore, in an L4S AQM, the L4S queue uses a new L4S
      variant of ECN that is not equivalent to drop (see section 5.2 of
      [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]), while the Classic queue uses either
      Classic ECN [RFC3168] or drop, which are equivalent to each other.

      Before Classic ECN was standardized, there were various proposals
      to give an ECN mark a different meaning from drop.  However, there
      was no particular reason to agree on any one of the alternative
      meanings, so 'equivalent to drop' was the only compromise that
      could be reached.  RFC 3168 contains a statement that:

         "An environment where all end nodes were ECN-Capable could
         allow new criteria to be developed for setting the CE
         codepoint, and new congestion control mechanisms for end-node
         reaction to CE packets.  However, this is a research issue, and
         as such is not addressed in this document."

   Latency isolation (network):  L4S congestion controls keep queue
      delay low whereas Classic congestion controls need a queue of the
      order of the RTT to avoid under-utilization.  One queue cannot
      have two lengths, therefore L4S traffic needs to be isolated in a
      separate queue (e.g. DualQ) or queues (e.g. FQ).

   Coupled congestion notification:  Coupling the congestion
      notification between two queues as in the DualQ Coupled AQM is not
      necessarily essential, but it is a simple way to allow senders to
      determine their rate, packet by packet, rather than be overridden
      by a network scheduler.  An alternative is for a network scheduler
      to control the rate of each application flow (see discussion in
      Section 5.2).

   L4S packet identifier (protocol):  Once there are at least two
      treatments in the network, hosts need an identifier at the IP
      layer to distinguish which treatment they intend to use.

   Scalable congestion notification:  A scalable congestion control in
      the host keeps the signalling frequency from the network high
      whatever the flow rate, so that queue delay variations can be
      small when conditions are stable, and rate can track variations in
      available capacity as rapidly as possible otherwise.

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   Low loss:  Latency is not the only concern of L4S.  The 'Low Loss'
      part of the name denotes that L4S generally achieves zero
      congestion loss due to its use of ECN.  Otherwise, loss would
      itself cause delay, particularly for short flows, due to
      retransmission delay [RFC2884].

   Scalable throughput:  The "Scalable throughput" part of the name
      denotes that the per-flow throughput of scalable congestion
      controls should scale indefinitely, avoiding the imminent scaling
      problems with Reno-friendly congestion control
      algorithms [RFC3649].  It was known when TCP congestion avoidance
      was first developed in 1988 that it would not scale to high
      bandwidth-delay products (see footnote 6 in [TCP-CA]).  Today,
      regular broadband flow rates over WAN distances are already beyond
      the scaling range of Classic Reno congestion control.  So `less
      unscalable' Cubic [RFC8312] and Compound [I-D.sridharan-tcpm-ctcp]
      variants of TCP have been successfully deployed.  However, these
      are now approaching their scaling limits.

      For instance, we will consider a scenario with a maximum RTT of
      30 ms at the peak of each sawtooth.  As Reno packet rate scales 8x
      from 1,250 to 10,000 packet/s (from 15 to 120 Mb/s with 1500 B
      packets), the time to recover from a congestion event rises
      proportionately by 8x as well, from 422 ms to 3.38 s.  It is
      clearly problematic for a congestion control to take multiple
      seconds to recover from each congestion event.  Cubic [RFC8312]
      was developed to be less unscalable, but it is approaching its
      scaling limit; with the same max RTT of 30 ms, at 120 Mb/s Cubic
      is still fully in its Reno-friendly mode, so it takes about 4.3 s
      to recover.  However, once the flow rate scales by 8x again to
      960 Mb/s it enters true Cubic mode, with a recovery time of
      12.2 s.  From then on, each further scaling by 8x doubles Cubic's
      recovery time (because the cube root of 8 is 2), e.g. at 7.68 Gb/s
      the recovery time is 24.3 s.  In contrast a scalable congestion
      control like DCTCP or TCP Prague induces 2 congestion signals per
      round trip on average, which remains invariant for any flow rate,
      keeping dynamic control very tight.

      For a feel of where the global average lone-flow download sits on
      this scale at the time of writing (2021), according to [BDPdata]
      globally averaged fixed access capacity was 103 Mb/s in 2020 and
      averaged base RTT to a CDN was 25-34ms in 2019.  Averaging of per-
      country data was weighted by Internet user population (data
      collected globally is necessarily of variable quality, but the
      paper does double-check that the outcome compares well against a
      second source).  So a lone CUBIC flow would at best take about 200
      round trips (5 s) to recover from each of its sawtooth reductions,
      if the flow even lasted that long.  This is described as 'at best'

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      because it assume everyone uses an AQM, whereas in reality most
      users still have a (probably bloated) tail-drop buffer.  In the
      tail-drop case, likely average recovery time would be at least 4x
      5 s, if not more, because RTT under load would be at least double
      that of an AQM, and recovery time depends on the square of RTT.

      Although work on scaling congestion controls tends to start with
      TCP as the transport, the above is not intended to exclude other
      transports (e.g. SCTP, QUIC) or less elastic algorithms
      (e.g. RMCAT), which all tend to adopt the same or similar
      developments.

5.2.  What L4S adds to Existing Approaches

   All the following approaches address some part of the same problem
   space as L4S.  In each case, it is shown that L4S complements them or
   improves on them, rather than being a mutually exclusive alternative:

   Diffserv:  Diffserv addresses the problem of bandwidth apportionment
      for important traffic as well as queuing latency for delay-
      sensitive traffic.  Of these, L4S solely addresses the problem of
      queuing latency.  Diffserv will still be necessary where important
      traffic requires priority (e.g. for commercial reasons, or for
      protection of critical infrastructure traffic) - see
      [I-D.briscoe-tsvwg-l4s-diffserv].  Nonetheless, the L4S approach
      can provide low latency for all traffic within each Diffserv class
      (including the case where there is only the one default Diffserv
      class).

      Also, Diffserv can only provide a latency benefit if a small
      subset of the traffic on a bottleneck link requests low latency.
      As already explained, it has no effect when all the applications
      in use at one time at a single site (home, small business or
      mobile device) require low latency.  In contrast, because L4S
      works for all traffic, it needs none of the management baggage
      (traffic policing, traffic contracts) associated with favouring
      some packets over others.  This lack of management baggage ought
      to give L4S a better chance of end-to-end deployment.

      In particular, because networks tend not to trust end systems to
      identify which packets should be favoured over others, where
      networks assign packets to Diffserv classes they tend to use
      packet inspection of application flow identifiers or deeper
      inspection of application signatures.  Thus, nowadays, Diffserv
      doesn't always sit well with encryption of the layers above IP
      [RFC8404].  So users have to choose between privacy and QoS.

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      As with Diffserv, the L4S identifier is in the IP header.  But, in
      contrast to Diffserv, the L4S identifier does not convey a want or
      a need for a certain level of quality.  Rather, it promises a
      certain behaviour (scalable congestion response), which networks
      can objectively verify if they need to.  This is because low delay
      depends on collective host behaviour, whereas bandwidth priority
      depends on network behaviour.

   State-of-the-art AQMs:  AQMs such as PIE and FQ-CoDel give a
      significant reduction in queuing delay relative to no AQM at all.
      L4S is intended to complement these AQMs, and should not distract
      from the need to deploy them as widely as possible.  Nonetheless,
      AQMs alone cannot reduce queuing delay too far without
      significantly reducing link utilization, because the root cause of
      the problem is on the host - where Classic congestion controls use
      large saw-toothing rate variations.  The L4S approach resolves
      this tension between delay and utilization by enabling hosts to
      minimize the amplitude of their sawteeth.  A single-queue Classic
      AQM is not sufficient to allow hosts to use small sawteeth for two
      reasons: i) smaller sawteeth would not get lower delay in an AQM
      designed for larger amplitude Classic sawteeth, because a queue
      can only have one length at a time; and ii) much smaller sawteeth
      implies much more frequent sawteeth, so L4S flows would drive a
      Classic AQM into a high level of ECN-marking, which would appear
      as heavy congestion to Classic flows, which in turn would greatly
      reduce their rate as a result (see Section 6.4.4).

   Per-flow queuing or marking:  Similarly, per-flow approaches such as
      FQ-CoDel or Approx Fair CoDel [AFCD] are not incompatible with the
      L4S approach.  However, per-flow queuing alone is not enough - it
      only isolates the queuing of one flow from others; not from
      itself.  Per-flow implementations need to have support for
      scalable congestion control added, which has already been done for
      FQ-CoDel in Linux (see Sec.5.2.7 of [RFC8290] and
      [FQ_CoDel_Thresh]).  Without this simple modification, per-flow
      AQMs like FQ-CoDel would still not be able to support applications
      that need both very low delay and high bandwidth, e.g. video-based
      control of remote procedures, or interactive cloud-based video
      (see Note 1 below).

      Although per-flow techniques are not incompatible with L4S, it is
      important to have the DualQ alternative.  This is because handling
      end-to-end (layer 4) flows in the network (layer 3 or 2) precludes
      some important end-to-end functions.  For instance:

      a.  Per-flow forms of L4S like FQ-CoDel are incompatible with full
          end-to-end encryption of transport layer identifiers for
          privacy and confidentiality (e.g. IPSec or encrypted VPN

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          tunnels, as opposed to TLS over UDP), because they require
          packet inspection to access the end-to-end transport flow
          identifiers.

          In contrast, the DualQ form of L4S requires no deeper
          inspection than the IP layer.  So, as long as operators take
          the DualQ approach, their users can have both very low queuing
          delay and full end-to-end encryption [RFC8404].

      b.  With per-flow forms of L4S, the network takes over control of
          the relative rates of each application flow.  Some see it as
          an advantage that the network will prevent some flows running
          faster than others.  Others consider it an inherent part of
          the Internet's appeal that applications can control their rate
          while taking account of the needs of others via congestion
          signals.  They maintain that this has allowed applications
          with interesting rate behaviours to evolve, for instance,
          variable bit-rate video that varies around an equal share
          rather than being forced to remain equal at every instant, or
          e2e scavenger behaviours [RFC6817] that use less than an equal
          share of capacity [LEDBAT_AQM].

          The L4S architecture does not require the IETF to commit to
          one approach over the other, because it supports both, so that
          the 'market' can decide.  Nonetheless, in the spirit of 'Do
          one thing and do it well' [McIlroy78], the DualQ option
          provides low delay without prejudging the issue of flow-rate
          control.  Then, flow rate policing can be added separately if
          desired.  This allows application control up to a point, but
          the network can still choose to set the point at which it
          intervenes to prevent one flow completely starving another.

      Note:

      1.  It might seem that self-inflicted queuing delay within a per-
          flow queue should not be counted, because if the delay wasn't
          in the network it would just shift to the sender.  However,
          modern adaptive applications, e.g. HTTP/2 [RFC7540] or some
          interactive media applications (see Section 6.1), can keep low
          latency objects at the front of their local send queue by
          shuffling priorities of other objects dependent on the
          progress of other transfers (for example see [lowat]).  They
          cannot shuffle objects once they have released them into the
          network.

   Alternative Back-off ECN (ABE):  Here again, L4S is not an

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      alternative to ABE but a complement that introduces much lower
      queuing delay.  ABE [RFC8511] alters the host behaviour in
      response to ECN marking to utilize a link better and give ECN
      flows faster throughput.  It uses ECT(0) and assumes the network
      still treats ECN and drop the same.  Therefore ABE exploits any
      lower queuing delay that AQMs can provide.  But as explained
      above, AQMs still cannot reduce queuing delay too far without
      losing link utilization (to allow for other, non-ABE, flows).

   BBR:  Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time
      (BBR [I-D.cardwell-iccrg-bbr-congestion-control]) controls queuing
      delay end-to-end without needing any special logic in the network,
      such as an AQM.  So it works pretty-much on any path (although it
      has not been without problems, particularly capacity sharing in
      BBRv1).  BBR keeps queuing delay reasonably low, but perhaps not
      quite as low as with state-of-the-art AQMs such as PIE or FQ-
      CoDel, and certainly nowhere near as low as with L4S.  Queuing
      delay is also not consistently low, due to BBR's regular bandwidth
      probing spikes and its aggressive flow start-up phase.

      L4S complements BBR.  Indeed BBRv2 [BBRv2] can use L4S ECN where
      available and a scalable L4S congestion control behaviour in
      response to any ECN signalling from the path.  The L4S ECN signal
      complements the delay based congestion control aspects of BBR with
      an explicit indication that hosts can use, both to converge on a
      fair rate and to keep below a shallow queue target set by the
      network.  Without L4S ECN, both these aspects need to be assumed
      or estimated.

6.  Applicability

6.1.  Applications

   A transport layer that solves the current latency issues will provide
   new service, product and application opportunities.

   With the L4S approach, the following existing applications also
   experience significantly better quality of experience under load:

   *  Gaming, including cloud based gaming;

   *  VoIP;

   *  Video conferencing;

   *  Web browsing;

   *  (Adaptive) video streaming;

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   *  Instant messaging.

   The significantly lower queuing latency also enables some interactive
   application functions to be offloaded to the cloud that would hardly
   even be usable today:

   *  Cloud based interactive video;

   *  Cloud based virtual and augmented reality.

   The above two applications have been successfully demonstrated with
   L4S, both running together over a 40 Mb/s broadband access link
   loaded up with the numerous other latency sensitive applications in
   the previous list as well as numerous downloads - all sharing the
   same bottleneck queue simultaneously [L4Sdemo16].  For the former, a
   panoramic video of a football stadium could be swiped and pinched so
   that, on the fly, a proxy in the cloud could generate a sub-window of
   the match video under the finger-gesture control of each user.  For
   the latter, a virtual reality headset displayed a viewport taken from
   a 360 degree camera in a racing car.  The user's head movements
   controlled the viewport extracted by a cloud-based proxy.  In both
   cases, with 7 ms end-to-end base delay, the additional queuing delay
   of roughly 1 ms was so low that it seemed the video was generated
   locally.

   Using a swiping finger gesture or head movement to pan a video are
   extremely latency-demanding actions--far more demanding than VoIP.
   Because human vision can detect extremely low delays of the order of
   single milliseconds when delay is translated into a visual lag
   between a video and a reference point (the finger or the orientation
   of the head sensed by the balance system in the inner ear --- the
   vestibular system).

   Without the low queuing delay of L4S, cloud-based applications like
   these would not be credible without significantly more access
   bandwidth (to deliver all possible video that might be viewed) and
   more local processing, which would increase the weight and power
   consumption of head-mounted displays.  When all interactive
   processing can be done in the cloud, only the data to be rendered for
   the end user needs to be sent.

   Other low latency high bandwidth applications such as:

   *  Interactive remote presence;

   *  Video-assisted remote control of machinery or industrial
      processes.

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   are not credible at all without very low queuing delay.  No amount of
   extra access bandwidth or local processing can make up for lost time.

6.2.  Use Cases

   The following use-cases for L4S are being considered by various
   interested parties:

   *  Where the bottleneck is one of various types of access network:
      e.g. DSL, Passive Optical Networks (PON), DOCSIS cable, mobile,
      satellite (see Section 6.3 for some technology-specific details)

   *  Private networks of heterogeneous data centres, where there is no
      single administrator that can arrange for all the simultaneous
      changes to senders, receivers and network needed to deploy DCTCP:

      -  a set of private data centres interconnected over a wide area
         with separate administrations, but within the same company

      -  a set of data centres operated by separate companies
         interconnected by a community of interest network (e.g. for the
         finance sector)

      -  multi-tenant (cloud) data centres where tenants choose their
         operating system stack (Infrastructure as a Service - IaaS)

   *  Different types of transport (or application) congestion control:

      -  elastic (TCP/SCTP);

      -  real-time (RTP, RMCAT);

      -  query (DNS/LDAP).

   *  Where low delay quality of service is required, but without
      inspecting or intervening above the IP layer [RFC8404]:

      -  mobile and other networks have tended to inspect higher layers
         in order to guess application QoS requirements.  However, with
         growing demand for support of privacy and encryption, L4S
         offers an alternative.  There is no need to select which
         traffic to favour for queuing, when L4S can give favourable
         queuing to all traffic.

   *  If queuing delay is minimized, applications with a fixed delay
      budget can communicate over longer distances, or via a longer
      chain of service functions [RFC7665] or onion routers.

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   *  If delay jitter is minimized, it is possible to reduce the
      dejitter buffers on the receive end of video streaming, which
      should improve the interactive experience

6.3.  Applicability with Specific Link Technologies

   Certain link technologies aggregate data from multiple packets into
   bursts, and buffer incoming packets while building each burst.  WiFi,
   PON and cable all involve such packet aggregation, whereas fixed
   Ethernet and DSL do not.  No sender, whether L4S or not, can do
   anything to reduce the buffering needed for packet aggregation.  So
   an AQM should not count this buffering as part of the queue that it
   controls, given no amount of congestion signals will reduce it.

   Certain link technologies also add buffering for other reasons,
   specifically:

   *  Radio links (cellular, WiFi, satellite) that are distant from the
      source are particularly challenging.  The radio link capacity can
      vary rapidly by orders of magnitude, so it is considered desirable
      to hold a standing queue that can utilize sudden increases of
      capacity;

   *  Cellular networks are further complicated by a perceived need to
      buffer in order to make hand-overs imperceptible;

   L4S cannot remove the need for all these different forms of
   buffering.  However, by removing 'the longest pole in the tent'
   (buffering for the large sawteeth of Classic congestion controls),
   L4S exposes all these 'shorter poles' to greater scrutiny.

   Until now, the buffering needed for these additional reasons tended
   to be over-specified - with the excuse that none were 'the longest
   pole in the tent'.  But having removed the 'longest pole', it becomes
   worthwhile to minimize them, for instance reducing packet aggregation
   burst sizes and MAC scheduling intervals.

6.4.  Deployment Considerations

   L4S AQMs, whether DualQ [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled] or FQ,
   e.g. [RFC8290] are, in themselves, an incremental deployment
   mechanism for L4S - so that L4S traffic can coexist with existing
   Classic (Reno-friendly) traffic.  Section 6.4.1 explains why only
   deploying an L4S AQM in one node at each end of the access link will
   realize nearly all the benefit of L4S.

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   L4S involves both end systems and the network, so Section 6.4.2
   suggests some typical sequences to deploy each part, and why there
   will be an immediate and significant benefit after deploying just one
   part.

   Section 6.4.3 and Section 6.4.4 describe the converse incremental
   deployment case where there is no L4S AQM at the network bottleneck,
   so any L4S flow traversing this bottleneck has to take care in case
   it is competing with Classic traffic.

6.4.1.  Deployment Topology

   L4S AQMs will not have to be deployed throughout the Internet before
   L4S can benefit anyone.  Operators of public Internet access networks
   typically design their networks so that the bottleneck will nearly
   always occur at one known (logical) link.  This confines the cost of
   queue management technology to one place.

   The case of mesh networks is different and will be discussed later in
   this section.  But the known bottleneck case is generally true for
   Internet access to all sorts of different 'sites', where the word
   'site' includes home networks, small- to medium-sized campus or
   enterprise networks and even cellular devices (Figure 2).  Also, this
   known-bottleneck case tends to be applicable whatever the access link
   technology; whether xDSL, cable, PON, cellular, line of sight
   wireless or satellite.

   Therefore, the full benefit of the L4S service should be available in
   the downstream direction when an L4S AQM is deployed at the ingress
   to this bottleneck link.  And similarly, the full upstream service
   will be available once an L4S AQM is deployed at the ingress into the
   upstream link.  (Of course, multi-homed sites would only see the full
   benefit once all their access links were covered.)

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                                            ______
                                           (      )
                         __          __  (          )
                        |DQ\________/DQ|( enterprise )
                    ___ |__/        \__| ( /campus  )
                   (   )                   (______)
                 (      )                           ___||_
   +----+      (          )  __                 __ /      \
   | DC |-----(    Core    )|DQ\_______________/DQ|| home |
   +----+      (          ) |__/               \__||______|
                  (_____) __
                         |DQ\__/\        __ ,===.
                         |__/    \  ____/DQ||| ||mobile
                                  \/    \__|||_||device
                                            | o |
                                            `---'

       Figure 2: Likely location of DualQ (DQ) Deployments in common
                             access topologies

   Deployment in mesh topologies depends on how overbooked the core is.
   If the core is non-blocking, or at least generously provisioned so
   that the edges are nearly always the bottlenecks, it would only be
   necessary to deploy an L4S AQM at the edge bottlenecks.  For example,
   some data-centre networks are designed with the bottleneck in the
   hypervisor or host NICs, while others bottleneck at the top-of-rack
   switch (both the output ports facing hosts and those facing the
   core).

   An L4S AQM would often next be needed where the WiFi links in a home
   sometimes become the bottleneck.  And an L4S AQM would eventually
   also need to be deployed at any other persistent bottlenecks such as
   network interconnections, e.g. some public Internet exchange points
   and the ingress and egress to WAN links interconnecting data-centres.

6.4.2.  Deployment Sequences

   For any one L4S flow to provide benefit, it requires three (or
   sometimes two) parts to have been deployed: i) the congestion control
   at the sender; ii) the AQM at the bottleneck; and iii) older
   transports (namely TCP) need upgraded receiver feedback too.  This
   was the same deployment problem that ECN faced [RFC8170] so we have
   learned from that experience.

   Firstly, L4S deployment exploits the fact that DCTCP already exists
   on many Internet hosts (Windows, FreeBSD and Linux); both servers and
   clients.  Therefore, an L4S AQM can be deployed at a network
   bottleneck to immediately give a working deployment of all the L4S

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   parts for testing, as long as the ECT(0) codepoint is switched to
   ECT(1).  DCTCP needs some safety concerns to be fixed for general use
   over the public Internet (see Section 4.3 of
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]), but DCTCP is not on by default, so
   these issues can be managed within controlled deployments or
   controlled trials.

   Secondly, the performance improvement with L4S is so significant that
   it enables new interactive services and products that were not
   previously possible.  It is much easier for companies to initiate new
   work on deployment if there is budget for a new product trial.  If,
   in contrast, there were only an incremental performance improvement
   (as with Classic ECN), spending on deployment tends to be much harder
   to justify.

   Thirdly, the L4S identifier is defined so that initially network
   operators can enable L4S exclusively for certain customers or certain
   applications.  But this is carefully defined so that it does not
   compromise future evolution towards L4S as an Internet-wide service.
   This is because the L4S identifier is defined not only as the end-to-
   end ECN field, but it can also optionally be combined with any other
   packet header or some status of a customer or their access link (see
   section 5.4 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]).  Operators could do this
   anyway, even if it were not blessed by the IETF.  However, it is best
   for the IETF to specify that, if they use their own local identifier,
   it must be in combination with the IETF's identifier.  Then, if an
   operator has opted for an exclusive local-use approach, later they
   only have to remove this extra rule to make the service work
   Internet-wide - it will already traverse middleboxes, peerings, etc.

   +-+--------------------+----------------------+---------------------+
   | | Servers or proxies |      Access link     |             Clients |
   +-+--------------------+----------------------+---------------------+
   |0| DCTCP (existing)   |                      |    DCTCP (existing) |
   +-+--------------------+----------------------+---------------------+
   |1|                    |Add L4S AQM downstream|                     |
   | |       WORKS DOWNSTREAM FOR CONTROLLED DEPLOYMENTS/TRIALS        |
   +-+--------------------+----------------------+---------------------+
   |2| Upgrade DCTCP to   |                      |Replace DCTCP feedb'k|
   | | TCP Prague         |                      |         with AccECN |
   | |                 FULLY     WORKS     DOWNSTREAM                  |
   +-+--------------------+----------------------+---------------------+
   | |                    |                      |    Upgrade DCTCP to |
   |3|                    | Add L4S AQM upstream |          TCP Prague |
   | |                    |                      |                     |
   | |              FULLY WORKS UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM                |
   +-+--------------------+----------------------+---------------------+

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                 Figure 3: Example L4S Deployment Sequence

   Figure 3 illustrates some example sequences in which the parts of L4S
   might be deployed.  It consists of the following stages:

   1.  Here, the immediate benefit of a single AQM deployment can be
       seen, but limited to a controlled trial or controlled deployment.
       In this example downstream deployment is first, but in other
       scenarios the upstream might be deployed first.  If no AQM at all
       was previously deployed for the downstream access, an L4S AQM
       greatly improves the Classic service (as well as adding the L4S
       service).  If an AQM was already deployed, the Classic service
       will be unchanged (and L4S will add an improvement on top).

   2.  In this stage, the name 'TCP
       Prague' [I-D.briscoe-iccrg-prague-congestion-control] is used to
       represent a variant of DCTCP that is designed to be used in a
       production Internet environment (assuming it complies with the
       requirements in Section 4 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]).  If
       the application is primarily unidirectional, 'TCP Prague' at one
       end will provide all the benefit needed.  For TCP transports,
       Accurate ECN feedback (AccECN) [I-D.ietf-tcpm-accurate-ecn] is
       needed at the other end, but it is a generic ECN feedback
       facility that is already planned to be deployed for other
       purposes, e.g. DCTCP, BBR.  The two ends can be deployed in
       either order, because, in TCP, an L4S congestion control only
       enables itself if it has negotiated the use of AccECN feedback
       with the other end during the connection handshake.  Thus,
       deployment of TCP Prague on a server enables L4S trials to move
       to a production service in one direction, wherever AccECN is
       deployed at the other end.  This stage might be further motivated
       by the performance improvements of TCP Prague relative to DCTCP
       (see Appendix A.2 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]).

       Unlike TCP, from the outset, QUIC ECN feedback [RFC9000] has
       supported L4S.  Therefore, if the transport is QUIC, one-ended
       deployment of a Prague congestion control at this stage is simple
       and sufficient.

   3.  This is a two-move stage to enable L4S upstream.  An L4S AQM or
       TCP Prague can be deployed in either order as already explained.
       To motivate the first of two independent moves, the deferred
       benefit of enabling new services after the second move has to be
       worth it to cover the first mover's investment risk.  As
       explained already, the potential for new interactive services
       provides this motivation.  An L4S AQM also improves the upstream
       Classic service - significantly if no other AQM has already been
       deployed.

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   Note that other deployment sequences might occur.  For instance: the
   upstream might be deployed first; a non-TCP protocol might be used
   end-to-end, e.g. QUIC, RTP; a body such as the 3GPP might require L4S
   to be implemented in 5G user equipment, or other random acts of
   kindness.

6.4.3.  L4S Flow but Non-ECN Bottleneck

   If L4S is enabled between two hosts, the L4S sender is required to
   coexist safely with Reno in response to any drop (see Section 4.3 of
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]).

   Unfortunately, as well as protecting Classic traffic, this rule
   degrades the L4S service whenever there is any loss, even if the
   cause is not persistent congestion at a bottleneck, e.g.:

   *  congestion loss at other transient bottlenecks, e.g. due to bursts
      in shallower queues;

   *  transmission errors, e.g. due to electrical interference;

   *  rate policing.

   Three complementary approaches are in progress to address this issue,
   but they are all currently research:

   *  In Prague congestion control, ignore certain losses deemed
      unlikely to be due to congestion (using some ideas from
      BBR [I-D.cardwell-iccrg-bbr-congestion-control] regarding isolated
      losses).  This could mask any of the above types of loss while
      still coexisting with drop-based congestion controls.

   *  A combination of RACK, L4S and link retransmission without
      resequencing could repair transmission errors without the head of
      line blocking delay usually associated with link-layer
      retransmission [UnorderedLTE], [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id];

   *  Hybrid ECN/drop rate policers (see Section 8.3).

   L4S deployment scenarios that minimize these issues (e.g. over
   wireline networks) can proceed in parallel to this research, in the
   expectation that research success could continually widen L4S
   applicability.

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6.4.4.  L4S Flow but Classic ECN Bottleneck

   Classic ECN support is starting to materialize on the Internet as an
   increased level of CE marking.  It is hard to detect whether this is
   all due to the addition of support for ECN in implementations of FQ-
   CoDel and/or FQ-COBALT, which is not generally problematic, because
   flow-queue (FQ) scheduling inherently prevents a flow from exceeding
   the 'fair' rate irrespective of its aggressiveness.  However, some of
   this Classic ECN marking might be due to single-queue ECN deployment.
   This case is discussed in Section 4.3 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id].

6.4.5.  L4S AQM Deployment within Tunnels

   An L4S AQM uses the ECN field to signal congestion.  So, in common
   with Classic ECN, if the AQM is within a tunnel or at a lower layer,
   correct functioning of ECN signalling requires correct propagation of
   the ECN field up the layers [RFC6040],
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-rfc6040update-shim],
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-encap-guidelines].

7.  IANA Considerations (to be removed by RFC Editor)

   This specification contains no IANA considerations.

8.  Security Considerations

8.1.  Traffic Rate (Non-)Policing

   In the current Internet, scheduling usually enforces separation
   between 'sites' (e.g. households, businesses or mobile users
   [RFC0970]) and various techniques like redirection to traffic
   scrubbing facilities deal with flooding attacks.  However, there has
   never been a universal need to police the rate of individual
   application flows - the Internet has generally always relied on self-
   restraint of congestion controls at senders for sharing intra-'site'
   capacity.

   As explained in Section 5.2, the DualQ variant of L4S provides low
   delay without prejudging the issue of flow-rate control.  Then, if
   flow-rate control is needed, per-flow-queuing (FQ) can be used
   instead, or flow rate policing can be added as a modular addition to
   a DualQ.

   Because the L4S service reduces delay without increasing the delay of
   Classic traffic, it should not be necessary to rate-police access to
   the L4S service.  In contrast, Section 5.2 explains how Diffserv only
   makes a difference if some packets get less favourable treatment than
   others, which typically requires traffic rate policing, which can, in

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   turn, lead to further complexity such as traffic contracts at trust
   boundaries.  Because L4S avoids this management complexity, it is
   more likely to work end-to-end.

   During early deployment (and perhaps always), some networks will not
   offer the L4S service.  In general, these networks should not need to
   police L4S traffic.  They are required (by both [RFC3168] and
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]) not to change the L4S identifier, which
   would interfere with end-to-end congestion control.  Instead they can
   merely treat L4S traffic as Not-ECT, as they might already treat all
   ECN traffic today.  At a bottleneck, such networks will introduce
   some queuing and dropping.  When a scalable congestion control
   detects a drop it will have to respond safely with respect to Classic
   congestion controls (as required in Section 4.3 of
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]).  This will degrade the L4S service to
   be no better (but never worse) than Classic best efforts, whenever a
   non-ECN bottleneck is encountered on a path (see Section 6.4.3).

   In cases that are expected to be rare, networks that solely support
   Classic ECN [RFC3168] in a single queue bottleneck might opt to
   police L4S traffic so as to protect competing Classic ECN traffic
   (for instance, see Section 6.1.3 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-l4sops]).
   However, Section 4.3 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] recommends that
   the sender adapts its congestion response to properly coexist with
   Classic ECN flows, i.e. reverting to the self-restraint approach.

   Certain network operators might choose to restrict access to the L4S
   class, perhaps only to selected premium customers as a value-added
   service.  Their packet classifier (item 2 in Figure 1) could identify
   such customers against some other field (e.g. source address range)
   as well as classifying on the ECN field.  If only the ECN L4S
   identifier matched, but not the source address (say), the classifier
   could direct these packets (from non-premium customers) into the
   Classic queue.  Explaining clearly how operators can use an
   additional local classifiers (see section 5.4 of
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]) is intended to remove any motivation to
   clear the L4S identifier.  Then at least the L4S ECN identifier will
   be more likely to survive end-to-end even though the service may not
   be supported at every hop.  Such local arrangements would only
   require simple registered/not-registered packet classification,
   rather than the managed, application-specific traffic policing
   against customer-specific traffic contracts that Diffserv uses.

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8.2.  'Latency Friendliness'

   Like the Classic service, the L4S service relies on self-restraint -
   limiting rate in response to congestion.  In addition, the L4S
   service requires self-restraint in terms of limiting latency
   (burstiness).  It is hoped that self-interest and guidance on dynamic
   behaviour (especially flow start-up, which might need to be
   standardized) will be sufficient to prevent transports from sending
   excessive bursts of L4S traffic, given the application's own latency
   will suffer most from such behaviour.

   Whether burst policing becomes necessary remains to be seen.  Without
   it, there will be potential for attacks on the low latency of the L4S
   service.

   If needed, various arrangements could be used to address this
   concern:

   Local bottleneck queue protection:  A per-flow (5-tuple) queue
      protection function [I-D.briscoe-docsis-q-protection] has been
      developed for the low latency queue in DOCSIS, which has adopted
      the DualQ L4S architecture.  It protects the low latency service
      from any queue-building flows that accidentally or maliciously
      classify themselves into the low latency queue.  It is designed to
      score flows based solely on their contribution to queuing (not
      flow rate in itself).  Then, if the shared low latency queue is at
      risk of exceeding a threshold, the function redirects enough
      packets of the highest scoring flow(s) into the Classic queue to
      preserve low latency.

   Distributed traffic scrubbing:  Rather than policing locally at each
      bottleneck, it may only be necessary to address problems
      reactively, e.g. punitively target any deployments of new bursty
      malware, in a similar way to how traffic from flooding attack
      sources is rerouted via scrubbing facilities.

   Local bottleneck per-flow scheduling:  Per-flow scheduling should
      inherently isolate non-bursty flows from bursty (see Section 5.2
      for discussion of the merits of per-flow scheduling relative to
      per-flow policing).

   Distributed access subnet queue protection:  Per-flow queue
      protection could be arranged for a queue structure distributed
      across a subnet inter-communicating using lower layer control
      messages (see Section 2.1.4 of [QDyn]).  For instance, in a radio
      access network, user equipment already sends regular buffer status
      reports to a radio network controller, which could use this
      information to remotely police individual flows.

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   Distributed Congestion Exposure to Ingress Policers:  The Congestion
      Exposure (ConEx) architecture [RFC7713] which uses egress audit to
      motivate senders to truthfully signal path congestion in-band
      where it can be used by ingress policers.  An edge-to-edge variant
      of this architecture is also possible.

   Distributed Domain-edge traffic conditioning:  An architecture
      similar to Diffserv [RFC2475] may be preferred, where traffic is
      proactively conditioned on entry to a domain, rather than
      reactively policed only if it leads to queuing once combined with
      other traffic at a bottleneck.

   Distributed core network queue protection:  The policing function
      could be divided between per-flow mechanisms at the network
      ingress that characterize the burstiness of each flow into a
      signal carried with the traffic, and per-class mechanisms at
      bottlenecks that act on these signals if queuing actually occurs
      once the traffic converges.  This would be somewhat similar to
      [Nadas20], which is in turn similar to the idea behind core
      stateless fair queuing.

   None of these possible queue protection capabilities are considered a
   necessary part of the L4S architecture, which works without them (in
   a similar way to how the Internet works without per-flow rate
   policing).  Indeed, even where latency policers are deployed, under
   normal circumstances they would not intervene, and if operators found
   they were not necessary they could disable them.  Part of the L4S
   experiment will be to see whether such a function is necessary, and
   which arrangements are most appropriate to the size of the problem.

8.3.  Interaction between Rate Policing and L4S

   As mentioned in Section 5.2, L4S should remove the need for low
   latency Diffserv classes.  However, those Diffserv classes that give
   certain applications or users priority over capacity, would still be
   applicable in certain scenarios (e.g. corporate networks).  Then,
   within such Diffserv classes, L4S would often be applicable to give
   traffic low latency and low loss as well.  Within such a Diffserv
   class, the bandwidth available to a user or application is often
   limited by a rate policer.  Similarly, in the default Diffserv class,
   rate policers are used to partition shared capacity.

   A classic rate policer drops any packets exceeding a set rate,
   usually also giving a burst allowance (variants exist where the
   policer re-marks non-compliant traffic to a discard-eligible Diffserv
   codepoint, so they can be dropped elsewhere during contention).
   Whenever L4S traffic encounters one of these rate policers, it will
   experience drops and the source will have to fall back to a Classic

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   congestion control, thus losing the benefits of L4S (Section 6.4.3).
   So, in networks that already use rate policers and plan to deploy
   L4S, it will be preferable to redesign these rate policers to be more
   friendly to the L4S service.

   L4S-friendly rate policing is currently a research area (note that
   this is not the same as latency policing).  It might be achieved by
   setting a threshold where ECN marking is introduced, such that it is
   just under the policed rate or just under the burst allowance where
   drop is introduced.  For instance the two-rate three-colour marker
   [RFC2698] or a PCN threshold and excess-rate marker [RFC5670] could
   mark ECN at the lower rate and drop at the higher.  Or an existing
   rate policer could have congestion-rate policing added, e.g. using
   the 'local' (non-ConEx) variant of the ConEx aggregate congestion
   policer [I-D.briscoe-conex-policing].  It might also be possible to
   design scalable congestion controls to respond less catastrophically
   to loss that has not been preceded by a period of increasing delay.

   The design of L4S-friendly rate policers will require a separate
   dedicated document.  For further discussion of the interaction
   between L4S and Diffserv, see [I-D.briscoe-tsvwg-l4s-diffserv].

8.4.  ECN Integrity

   Receiving hosts can fool a sender into downloading faster by
   suppressing feedback of ECN marks (or of losses if retransmissions
   are not necessary or available otherwise).  Various ways to protect
   transport feedback integrity have been developed.  For instance:

   *  The sender can test the integrity of the receiver's feedback by
      occasionally setting the IP-ECN field to the congestion
      experienced (CE) codepoint, which is normally only set by a
      congested link.  Then the sender can test whether the receiver's
      feedback faithfully reports what it expects (see 2nd para of
      Section 20.2 of [RFC3168]).

   *  A network can enforce a congestion response to its ECN markings
      (or packet losses) by auditing congestion exposure
      (ConEx) [RFC7713].

   *  Transport layer authentication such as the TCP authentication
      option (TCP-AO [RFC5925]) or QUIC's use of TLS [RFC9001] can
      detect any tampering with congestion feedback.

   *  The ECN Nonce [RFC3540] was proposed to detect tampering with
      congestion feedback, but it has been reclassified as
      historic [RFC8311].

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   Appendix C.1 of [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] gives more details of
   these techniques including their applicability and pros and cons.

8.5.  Privacy Considerations

   As discussed in Section 5.2, the L4S architecture does not preclude
   approaches that inspect end-to-end transport layer identifiers.  For
   instance, L4S support has been added to FQ-CoDel, which classifies by
   application flow ID in the network.  However, the main innovation of
   L4S is the DualQ AQM framework that does not need to inspect any
   deeper than the outermost IP header, because the L4S identifier is in
   the IP-ECN field.

   Thus, the L4S architecture enables very low queuing delay without
   _requiring_ inspection of information above the IP layer.  This means
   that users who want to encrypt application flow identifiers, e.g. in
   IPSec or other encrypted VPN tunnels, don't have to sacrifice low
   delay [RFC8404].

   Because L4S can provide low delay for a broad set of applications
   that choose to use it, there is no need for individual applications
   or classes within that broad set to be distinguishable in any way
   while traversing networks.  This removes much of the ability to
   correlate between the delay requirements of traffic and other
   identifying features [RFC6973].  There may be some types of traffic
   that prefer not to use L4S, but the coarse binary categorization of
   traffic reveals very little that could be exploited to compromise
   privacy.

9.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks to Richard Scheffenegger, Wes Eddy, Karen Nielsen, David
   Black, Jake Holland, Vidhi Goel, Ermin Sakic, Praveen
   Balasubramanian, Gorry Fairhurst, Mirja Kuehlewind, Philip Eardley,
   Neal Cardwell and Pete Heist for their useful review comments.

   Bob Briscoe and Koen De Schepper were part-funded by the European
   Community under its Seventh Framework Programme through the Reducing
   Internet Transport Latency (RITE) project (ICT-317700).  Bob Briscoe
   was also part-funded by the Research Council of Norway through the
   TimeIn project, partly by CableLabs and partly by the Comcast
   Innovation Fund.  The views expressed here are solely those of the
   authors.

10.  Informative References

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Internet-Draft              L4S Architecture               December 2021

   [AFCD]     Xue, L., Kumar, S., Cui, C., Kondikoppa, P., Chiu, C-H.,
              and S-J. Park, "Towards fair and low latency next
              generation high speed networks: AFCD queuing", Journal of
              Network and Computer Applications 70:183--193, July 2016,
              <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2016.03.021>.

   [BBRv2]    Cardwell, N., "TCP BBR v2 Alpha/Preview Release", github
              repository; Linux congestion control module,
              <https://github.com/google/bbr/blob/v2alpha/README.md>.

   [BDPdata]  Briscoe, B., "PI2 Parameters", Technical Report TR-BB-
              2021-001 arXiv:2107.01003 [cs.NI], July 2021,
              <https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.01003>.

   [BufferSize]
              Appenzeller, G., Keslassy, I., and N. McKeown, "Sizing
              Router Buffers", In Proc. SIGCOMM'04 34(4):281--292,
              September 2004, <https://doi.org/10.1145/1015467.1015499>.

   [COBALT]   Palmei, J., Gupta, S., Imputato, P., Morton, J.,
              Tahiliani, M. P., Avallone, S., and D. Täht, "Design and
              Evaluation of COBALT Queue Discipline", In Proc. IEEE
              Int'l Symp. Local and Metropolitan Area Networks
              (LANMAN'19) 2019:1-6, July 2019,
              <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8847054>.

   [DCttH19]  De Schepper, K., Bondarenko, O., Tilmans, O., and B.
              Briscoe, "`Data Centre to the Home': Ultra-Low Latency for
              All", Updated RITE project Technical Report , July 2019,
              <https://bobbriscoe.net/pubs.html#DCttH_TR>.

   [DOCSIS3.1]
              CableLabs, "MAC and Upper Layer Protocols Interface
              (MULPI) Specification, CM-SP-MULPIv3.1", Data-Over-Cable
              Service Interface Specifications DOCSIS® 3.1 Version i17
              or later, 21 January 2019, <https://specification-
              search.cablelabs.com/CM-SP-MULPIv3.1>.

   [DOCSIS3AQM]
              White, G., "Active Queue Management Algorithms for DOCSIS
              3.0; A Simulation Study of CoDel, SFQ-CoDel and PIE in
              DOCSIS 3.0 Networks", CableLabs Technical Report , April
              2013, <{http://www.cablelabs.com/wp-
              content/uploads/2013/11/
              Active_Queue_Management_Algorithms_DOCSIS_3_0.pdf>.

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   [DualPI2Linux]
              Albisser, O., De Schepper, K., Briscoe, B., Tilmans, O.,
              and H. Steen, "DUALPI2 - Low Latency, Low Loss and
              Scalable (L4S) AQM", Proc. Linux Netdev 0x13 , March 2019,
              <https://www.netdevconf.org/0x13/session.html?talk-
              DUALPI2-AQM>.

   [Dukkipati06]
              Dukkipati, N. and N. McKeown, "Why Flow-Completion Time is
              the Right Metric for Congestion Control", ACM CCR 
              36(1):59--62, January 2006,
              <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1111322.1111336>.

   [FQ_CoDel_Thresh]
              Høiland-Jørgensen, T., "fq_codel: generalise ce_threshold
              marking for subset of traffic", Linux Patch Commit ID:
              dfcb63ce1de6b10b, 20 October 2021,
              <https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/
              net-next.git/commit/?id=dfcb63ce1de6b10b>.

   [Hohlfeld14]
              Hohlfeld, O., Pujol, E., Ciucu, F., Feldmann, A., and P.
              Barford, "A QoE Perspective on Sizing Network Buffers",
              Proc. ACM Internet Measurement Conf (IMC'14) hmm, November
              2014, <http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2663716.2663730>.

   [I-D.briscoe-conex-policing]
              Briscoe, B., "Network Performance Isolation using
              Congestion Policing", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-briscoe-conex-policing-01, 14 February 2014,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-briscoe-
              conex-policing-01>.

   [I-D.briscoe-docsis-q-protection]
              Briscoe, B. and G. White, "The DOCSIS(r) Queue Protection
              Algorithm to Preserve Low Latency", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-briscoe-docsis-q-protection-01, 17
              December 2021, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
              draft-briscoe-docsis-q-protection-01>.

   [I-D.briscoe-iccrg-prague-congestion-control]
              Schepper, K. D., Tilmans, O., and B. Briscoe, "Prague
              Congestion Control", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-briscoe-iccrg-prague-congestion-control-00, 9 March
              2021, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              briscoe-iccrg-prague-congestion-control-00>.

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   [I-D.briscoe-tsvwg-l4s-diffserv]
              Briscoe, B., "Interactions between Low Latency, Low Loss,
              Scalable Throughput (L4S) and Differentiated Services",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-briscoe-tsvwg-l4s-
              diffserv-02, 4 November 2018,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-briscoe-
              tsvwg-l4s-diffserv-02>.

   [I-D.cardwell-iccrg-bbr-congestion-control]
              Cardwell, N., Cheng, Y., Yeganeh, S. H., Swett, I., and V.
              Jacobson, "BBR Congestion Control", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-cardwell-iccrg-bbr-congestion-
              control-01, 7 November 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-cardwell-
              iccrg-bbr-congestion-control-01>.

   [I-D.ietf-tcpm-accurate-ecn]
              Briscoe, B., Kühlewind, M., and R. Scheffenegger, "More
              Accurate ECN Feedback in TCP", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-ietf-tcpm-accurate-ecn-15, 12 July 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-
              accurate-ecn-15>.

   [I-D.ietf-tcpm-generalized-ecn]
              Bagnulo, M. and B. Briscoe, "ECN++: Adding Explicit
              Congestion Notification (ECN) to TCP Control Packets",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-tcpm-
              generalized-ecn-08, 2 August 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-
              generalized-ecn-08>.

   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled]
              Schepper, K. D., Briscoe, B., and G. White, "DualQ Coupled
              AQMs for Low Latency, Low Loss and Scalable Throughput
              (L4S)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled-19, 3 November 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-
              aqm-dualq-coupled-19>.

   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-encap-guidelines]
              Briscoe, B. and J. Kaippallimalil, "Guidelines for Adding
              Congestion Notification to Protocols that Encapsulate IP",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-tsvwg-ecn-
              encap-guidelines-16, 25 May 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-
              ecn-encap-guidelines-16>.

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   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id]
              Schepper, K. D. and B. Briscoe, "Explicit Congestion
              Notification (ECN) Protocol for Very Low Queuing Delay
              (L4S)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id-22, 8 November 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-
              ecn-l4s-id-22>.

   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-l4sops]
              White, G., "Operational Guidance for Deployment of L4S in
              the Internet", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              ietf-tsvwg-l4sops-02, 25 October 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-
              l4sops-02>.

   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-nqb]
              White, G. and T. Fossati, "A Non-Queue-Building Per-Hop
              Behavior (NQB PHB) for Differentiated Services", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-tsvwg-nqb-08, 25
              October 2021, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
              draft-ietf-tsvwg-nqb-08>.

   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-rfc6040update-shim]
              Briscoe, B., "Propagating Explicit Congestion Notification
              Across IP Tunnel Headers Separated by a Shim", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-tsvwg-rfc6040update-
              shim-14, 25 May 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-
              rfc6040update-shim-14>.

   [I-D.morton-tsvwg-codel-approx-fair]
              Morton, J. and P. G. Heist, "Controlled Delay Approximate
              Fairness AQM", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              morton-tsvwg-codel-approx-fair-01, 9 March 2020,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-morton-tsvwg-
              codel-approx-fair-01>.

   [I-D.sridharan-tcpm-ctcp]
              Sridharan, M., Tan, K., Bansal, D., and D. Thaler,
              "Compound TCP: A New TCP Congestion Control for High-Speed
              and Long Distance Networks", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-sridharan-tcpm-ctcp-02, 11 November 2008,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-sridharan-
              tcpm-ctcp-02>.

   [I-D.stewart-tsvwg-sctpecn]
              Stewart, R. R., Tuexen, M., and X. Dong, "ECN for Stream
              Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)", Work in Progress,

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              Internet-Draft, draft-stewart-tsvwg-sctpecn-05, 15 January
              2014, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              stewart-tsvwg-sctpecn-05>.

   [L4Sdemo16]
              Bondarenko, O., De Schepper, K., Tsang, I., and B.
              Briscoe, "Ultra-Low Delay for All: Live Experience, Live
              Analysis", Proc. MMSYS'16 pp33:1--33:4, May 2016,
              <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2910017.2910633
              (videos of demos:
              https://riteproject.eu/dctth/#1511dispatchwg )>.

   [LEDBAT_AQM]
              Al-Saadi, R., Armitage, G., and J. But, "Characterising
              LEDBAT Performance Through Bottlenecks Using PIE, FQ-CoDel
              and FQ-PIE Active Queue Management", Proc. IEEE 42nd
              Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN) 278--285,
              2017, <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8109367>.

   [lowat]    Meenan, P., "Optimizing HTTP/2 prioritization with BBR and
              tcp_notsent_lowat", Cloudflare Blog , 12 October 2018,
              <https://blog.cloudflare.com/http-2-prioritization-with-
              nginx/>.

   [Mathis09] Mathis, M., "Relentless Congestion Control", PFLDNeT'09 ,
              May 2009, <https://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/
              presentations/2010-07-06-questnet-tcp/reference-
              materials/papers/mathis-relentless-congestion-
              control.pdf>.

   [McIlroy78]
              McIlroy, M.D., Pinson, E. N., and B. A. Tague, "UNIX Time-
              Sharing System: Foreword", The Bell System Technical
              Journal 57:6(1902--1903), July 1978,
              <https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1899>.

   [Nadas20]  Nádas, S., Gombos, G., Fejes, F., and S. Laki, "A
              Congestion Control Independent L4S Scheduler", Proc.
              Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW '20) 45--51,
              July 2020, <https://doi.org/10.1145/3404868.3406669>.

   [NewCC_Proc]
              Eggert, L., "Experimental Specification of New Congestion
              Control Algorithms", IETF Operational Note ion-tsv-alt-cc,
              July 2007, <https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/
              congestion-control.html>.

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   [PragueLinux]
              Briscoe, B., De Schepper, K., Albisser, O., Misund, J.,
              Tilmans, O., Kühlewind, M., and A.S. Ahmed, "Implementing
              the `TCP Prague' Requirements for Low Latency Low Loss
              Scalable Throughput (L4S)", Proc. Linux Netdev 0x13 ,
              March 2019, <https://www.netdevconf.org/0x13/
              session.html?talk-tcp-prague-l4s>.

   [QDyn]     Briscoe, B., "Rapid Signalling of Queue Dynamics",
              bobbriscoe.net Technical Report TR-BB-2017-001;
              arXiv:1904.07044 [cs.NI], September 2017,
              <https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.07044>.

   [Rajiullah15]
              Rajiullah, M., "Towards a Low Latency Internet:
              Understanding and Solutions", Masters Thesis; Karlstad
              Uni, Dept of Maths & CS 2015:41, 2015, <https://www.diva-
              portal.org/smash/get/diva2:846109/FULLTEXT01.pdf>.

   [RFC0970]  Nagle, J., "On Packet Switches With Infinite Storage",
              RFC 970, DOI 10.17487/RFC0970, December 1985,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc970>.

   [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/info/rfc2475>.

   [RFC2698]  Heinanen, J. and R. Guerin, "A Two Rate Three Color
              Marker", RFC 2698, DOI 10.17487/RFC2698, September 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2698>.

   [RFC2884]  Hadi Salim, J. and U. Ahmed, "Performance Evaluation of
              Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) in IP Networks",
              RFC 2884, DOI 10.17487/RFC2884, July 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2884>.

   [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,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3168>.

   [RFC3246]  Davie, B., Charny, A., Bennet, J.C.R., Benson, K., Le
              Boudec, J.Y., Courtney, W., Davari, S., Firoiu, V., and D.
              Stiliadis, "An Expedited Forwarding PHB (Per-Hop
              Behavior)", RFC 3246, DOI 10.17487/RFC3246, March 2002,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3246>.

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   [RFC3540]  Spring, N., Wetherall, D., and D. Ely, "Robust Explicit
              Congestion Notification (ECN) Signaling with Nonces",
              RFC 3540, DOI 10.17487/RFC3540, June 2003,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3540>.

   [RFC3649]  Floyd, S., "HighSpeed TCP for Large Congestion Windows",
              RFC 3649, DOI 10.17487/RFC3649, December 2003,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3649>.

   [RFC4340]  Kohler, E., Handley, M., and S. Floyd, "Datagram
              Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP)", RFC 4340,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4340, March 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4340>.

   [RFC4774]  Floyd, S., "Specifying Alternate Semantics for the
              Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) Field", BCP 124,
              RFC 4774, DOI 10.17487/RFC4774, November 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4774>.

   [RFC4960]  Stewart, R., Ed., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol",
              RFC 4960, DOI 10.17487/RFC4960, September 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4960>.

   [RFC5033]  Floyd, S. and M. Allman, "Specifying New Congestion
              Control Algorithms", BCP 133, RFC 5033,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5033, August 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5033>.

   [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,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5348>.

   [RFC5670]  Eardley, P., Ed., "Metering and Marking Behaviour of PCN-
              Nodes", RFC 5670, DOI 10.17487/RFC5670, November 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5670>.

   [RFC5681]  Allman, M., Paxson, V., and E. Blanton, "TCP Congestion
              Control", RFC 5681, DOI 10.17487/RFC5681, September 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5681>.

   [RFC5925]  Touch, J., Mankin, A., and R. Bonica, "The TCP
              Authentication Option", RFC 5925, DOI 10.17487/RFC5925,
              June 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5925>.

   [RFC6040]  Briscoe, B., "Tunnelling of Explicit Congestion
              Notification", RFC 6040, DOI 10.17487/RFC6040, November
              2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6040>.

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   [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, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6679>.

   [RFC6817]  Shalunov, S., Hazel, G., Iyengar, J., and M. Kuehlewind,
              "Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT)", RFC 6817,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6817, December 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6817>.

   [RFC6973]  Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
              Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
              Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6973>.

   [RFC7540]  Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7540>.

   [RFC7560]  Kuehlewind, M., Ed., Scheffenegger, R., and B. Briscoe,
              "Problem Statement and Requirements for Increased Accuracy
              in Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) Feedback",
              RFC 7560, DOI 10.17487/RFC7560, August 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7560>.

   [RFC7567]  Baker, F., Ed. and G. Fairhurst, Ed., "IETF
              Recommendations Regarding Active Queue Management",
              BCP 197, RFC 7567, DOI 10.17487/RFC7567, July 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7567>.

   [RFC7665]  Halpern, J., Ed. and C. Pignataro, Ed., "Service Function
              Chaining (SFC) Architecture", RFC 7665,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7665, October 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7665>.

   [RFC7713]  Mathis, M. and B. Briscoe, "Congestion Exposure (ConEx)
              Concepts, Abstract Mechanism, and Requirements", RFC 7713,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7713, December 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7713>.

   [RFC8033]  Pan, R., Natarajan, P., Baker, F., and G. White,
              "Proportional Integral Controller Enhanced (PIE): A
              Lightweight Control Scheme to Address the Bufferbloat
              Problem", RFC 8033, DOI 10.17487/RFC8033, February 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8033>.

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   [RFC8034]  White, G. and R. Pan, "Active Queue Management (AQM) Based
              on Proportional Integral Controller Enhanced PIE) for
              Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS)
              Cable Modems", RFC 8034, DOI 10.17487/RFC8034, February
              2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8034>.

   [RFC8170]  Thaler, D., Ed., "Planning for Protocol Adoption and
              Subsequent Transitions", RFC 8170, DOI 10.17487/RFC8170,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8170>.

   [RFC8257]  Bensley, S., Thaler, D., Balasubramanian, P., Eggert, L.,
              and G. Judd, "Data Center TCP (DCTCP): TCP Congestion
              Control for Data Centers", RFC 8257, DOI 10.17487/RFC8257,
              October 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8257>.

   [RFC8290]  Hoeiland-Joergensen, T., McKenney, P., Taht, D., Gettys,
              J., and E. Dumazet, "The Flow Queue CoDel Packet Scheduler
              and Active Queue Management Algorithm", RFC 8290,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8290, January 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8290>.

   [RFC8298]  Johansson, I. and Z. Sarker, "Self-Clocked Rate Adaptation
              for Multimedia", RFC 8298, DOI 10.17487/RFC8298, December
              2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8298>.

   [RFC8311]  Black, D., "Relaxing Restrictions on Explicit Congestion
              Notification (ECN) Experimentation", RFC 8311,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8311, January 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8311>.

   [RFC8312]  Rhee, I., Xu, L., Ha, S., Zimmermann, A., Eggert, L., and
              R. Scheffenegger, "CUBIC for Fast Long-Distance Networks",
              RFC 8312, DOI 10.17487/RFC8312, February 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8312>.

   [RFC8404]  Moriarty, K., Ed. and A. Morton, Ed., "Effects of
              Pervasive Encryption on Operators", RFC 8404,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8404, July 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8404>.

   [RFC8511]  Khademi, N., Welzl, M., Armitage, G., and G. Fairhurst,
              "TCP Alternative Backoff with ECN (ABE)", RFC 8511,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8511, December 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8511>.

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Internet-Draft              L4S Architecture               December 2021

   [RFC8888]  Sarker, Z., Perkins, C., Singh, V., and M. Ramalho, "RTP
              Control Protocol (RTCP) Feedback for Congestion Control",
              RFC 8888, DOI 10.17487/RFC8888, January 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8888>.

   [RFC9000]  Iyengar, J., Ed. and M. Thomson, Ed., "QUIC: A UDP-Based
              Multiplexed and Secure Transport", RFC 9000,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9000, May 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9000>.

   [RFC9001]  Thomson, M., Ed. and S. Turner, Ed., "Using TLS to Secure
              QUIC", RFC 9001, DOI 10.17487/RFC9001, May 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9001>.

   [SCReAM]   Johansson, I., "SCReAM", github repository; ,
              <https://github.com/EricssonResearch/scream/blob/master/
              README.md>.

   [TCP-CA]   Jacobson, V. and M.J. Karels, "Congestion Avoidance and
              Control", Laurence Berkeley Labs Technical Report ,
              November 1988, <http://ee.lbl.gov/papers/congavoid.pdf>.

   [TCP-sub-mss-w]
              Briscoe, B. and K. De Schepper, "Scaling TCP's Congestion
              Window for Small Round Trip Times", BT Technical Report 
              TR-TUB8-2015-002, May 2015,
              <http://www.bobbriscoe.net/projects/latency/sub-mss-
              w.pdf>.

   [UnorderedLTE]
              Austrheim, M.V., "Implementing immediate forwarding for 4G
              in a network simulator", Masters Thesis, Uni Oslo , June
              2019.

Appendix A.  Standardization items

   The following table includes all the items that will need to be
   standardized to provide a full L4S architecture.

   The table is too wide for the ASCII draft format, so it has been
   split into two, with a common column of row index numbers on the
   left.

   The columns in the second part of the table have the following
   meanings:

   WG:  The IETF WG most relevant to this requirement.  The "tcpm/iccrg"

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      combination refers to the procedure typically used for congestion
      control changes, where tcpm owns the approval decision, but uses
      the iccrg for expert review [NewCC_Proc];

   TCP:  Applicable to all forms of TCP congestion control;

   DCTCP:  Applicable to Data Center TCP as currently used (in
      controlled environments);

   DCTCP bis:  Applicable to any future Data Center TCP congestion
      control intended for controlled environments;

   XXX Prague:  Applicable to a Scalable variant of XXX (TCP/SCTP/RMCAT)
      congestion control.

   +=====+========================+====================================+
   | Req | Requirement            | Reference                          |
   | #   |                        |                                    |
   +=====+========================+====================================+
   | 0   | ARCHITECTURE           |                                    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 1   | L4S IDENTIFIER         | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] S.3    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 2   | DUAL QUEUE AQM         | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-aqm-dualq-coupled] |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 3   | Suitable ECN           | [I-D.ietf-tcpm-accurate-ecn]       |
   |     | Feedback               | S.4.2,                             |
   |     |                        | [I-D.stewart-tsvwg-sctpecn].       |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   |     | SCALABLE TRANSPORT -   |                                    |
   |     | SAFETY ADDITIONS       |                                    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 4-1 | Fall back to Reno/     | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] S.4.3, |
   |     | Cubic on loss          | [RFC8257]                          |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 4-2 | Fall back to Reno/     | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] S.4.3  |
   |     | Cubic if classic ECN   |                                    |
   |     | bottleneck detected    |                                    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 4-3 | Reduce RTT-            | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] S.4.3  |
   |     | dependence             |                                    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 4-4 | Scaling TCP's          | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] S.4.3, |
   |     | Congestion Window      | [TCP-sub-mss-w]                    |
   |     | for Small Round Trip   |                                    |

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   |     | Times                  |                                    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   |     | SCALABLE TRANSPORT -   |                                    |
   |     | PERFORMANCE            |                                    |
   |     | ENHANCEMENTS           |                                    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 5-1 | Setting ECT in TCP     | [I-D.ietf-tcpm-generalized-ecn]    |
   |     | Control Packets and    |                                    |
   |     | Retransmissions        |                                    |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 5-2 | Faster-than-additive   | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] (Appx  |
   |     | increase               | A.2.2)                             |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+
   | 5-3 | Faster Convergence     | [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-ecn-l4s-id] (Appx  |
   |     | at Flow Start          | A.2.2)                             |
   +-----+------------------------+------------------------------------+

                                  Table 1

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   +=====+========+=====+=======+===========+========+========+========+
   | #   | WG     | TCP | DCTCP | DCTCP-bis | TCP    | SCTP   | RMCAT  |
   |     |        |     |       |           | Prague | Prague | Prague |
   +=====+========+=====+=======+===========+========+========+========+
   | 0   | tsvwg  | Y   | Y     | Y         | Y      | Y      | Y      |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 1   | tsvwg  |     |       | Y         | Y      | Y      | Y      |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 2   | tsvwg  | n/a | n/a   | n/a       | n/a    | n/a    | n/a    |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 3   | tcpm   | Y   | Y     | Y         | Y      | n/a    | n/a    |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 4-1 | tcpm   |     | Y     | Y         | Y      | Y      | Y      |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 4-2 | tcpm/  |     |       |           | Y      | Y      | ?      |
   |     | iccrg? |     |       |           |        |        |        |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 4-3 | tcpm/  |     |       | Y         | Y      | Y      | ?      |
   |     | iccrg? |     |       |           |        |        |        |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 4-4 | tcpm   | Y   | Y     | Y         | Y      | Y      | ?      |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 5-1 | tcpm   | Y   | Y     | Y         | Y      | n/a    | n/a    |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 5-2 | tcpm/  |     |       | Y         | Y      | Y      | ?      |
   |     | iccrg? |     |       |           |        |        |        |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+
   | 5-3 | tcpm/  |     |       | Y         | Y      | Y      | ?      |
   |     | iccrg? |     |       |           |        |        |        |
   +-----+--------+-----+-------+-----------+--------+--------+--------+

                                  Table 2

Authors' Addresses

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   Bob Briscoe (editor)
   Independent
   United Kingdom

   Email: ietf@bobbriscoe.net
   URI:   http://bobbriscoe.net/

   Koen De Schepper
   Nokia Bell Labs
   Antwerp
   Belgium

   Email: koen.de_schepper@nokia.com
   URI:   https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/koen.de_schepper

   Marcelo Bagnulo
   Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
   Av. Universidad 30
   Leganes, Madrid 28911
   Spain

   Phone: 34 91 6249500
   Email: marcelo@it.uc3m.es
   URI:   http://www.it.uc3m.es

   Greg White
   CableLabs
   United States of America

   Email: G.White@CableLabs.com

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