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Quick Failover Algorithm in SCTP
draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctp-failover-07

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7829.
Authors Yoshifumi Nishida , Preethi Natarajan , Armando L. Caro , Paul D. Amer , karen Nielsen
Last updated 2014-10-23
Replaces draft-nishida-tsvwg-sctp-failover
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IESG IESG state Became RFC 7829 (Proposed Standard)
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Send notices to tsvwg-chairs@tools.ietf.org, draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctp-failover@tools.ietf.org
draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctp-failover-07
Network Working Group                                         Y. Nishida
Internet-Draft                                        GE Global Research
Intended status: Standards Track                            P. Natarajan
Expires: April 26, 2015                                    Cisco Systems
                                                                 A. Caro
                                                        BBN Technologies
                                                                 P. Amer
                                                  University of Delaware
                                                              K. Nielsen
                                                                Ericsson
                                                        October 23, 2014

                    Quick Failover Algorithm in SCTP
                 draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctp-failover-07.txt

Abstract

   One of the major advantages of SCTP is that it supports multi-homed
   communication.  A multi-homed SCTP end-point has the ability to
   withstand network failures by migrating the traffic from an inactive
   network to an active one.  However, if the [RFC4960] specified
   failover operation is followed there can be a significant delay in
   the migration to the active destination addresses, thus severely
   reducing the effectiveness of SCTP multi-homed operation.

   The memo complements RFC4960 by the introduction of the Potentially
   Failed state and associated new Quick Failover operation to apply
   during network failure and specifies for SCTP senders to support this
   more performance optimal failover procedure as an add-on to the
   [RFC4960] failover operation.  The memo in addition complements
   [RFC4960] by introduction of alternative switchover operation modes
   for the data transfer path management after a failover.  These
   operation modes offer for more performance optimal operation in some
   network environments.  From the perspective of this memo the
   implementation of the additional switchover operation modes is
   considered optional.

   The procedures defined require only minimal modifications to the
   current specification.  The procedures are sender-side only and do
   not impact the SCTP receiver.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 26, 2015.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Conventions and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Issues with the SCTP Path Management  . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  SCTP with Potentially-Failed Destination State (SCTP-PF)  . .   5
     4.1.  SCTP-PF Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  SCTP-PF Algorithm Detail  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.3.  Optional Feature: Permanent Failover  . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Socket API Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.1.  Support for the Potentially Failed Path State . . . . . .  11
     5.2.  Peer Address Thresholds (SCTP_PEER_ADDR_THLDS) Socket
           Option  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.3.  Exposing the Potentially Failed Path State
           (SCTP_EXPOSE_POTENTIALLY_FAILED_STATE) Socket Option  . .  13
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   8.  Proposed Change of Status (to be Deleted before Publication)   14
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14

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   Appendix A.  Discussions of Alternative Approaches  . . . . . . .  15
     A.1.  Reduce Path.Max.Retrans (PMR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     A.2.  Adjust RTO related parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   Appendix B.  Discussions for Path Bouncing Effect . . . . . . . .  16
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17

1.  Introduction

   The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) as specified in
   [RFC4960] supports multihoming at the transport layer -- an SCTP
   association can bind to multiple IP addresses at each endpoint.
   SCTP's multihoming features include failure detection and failover
   procedures to provide network interface redundancy and improved end-
   to-end fault tolerance.

   In SCTP's current failure detection procedure, the sender must
   experience Path.Max.Retrans (PMR) number of consecutive failed
   retransmissions on a destination before detecting a path failure.
   The sender fails over to an alternate active destination only after
   failure detection.  Until detecting the failover, the sender
   continues to transmit data on the failed path, which degrades the
   SCTP performance.  Concurrent Multipath Transfer (CMT) [IYENGAR06] is
   an extension to SCTP and allows the sender to transmit data on
   multiple paths simultaneously.  Research [NATARAJAN09] shows that the
   current failure detection procedure worsens CMT performance during
   failover and can be significantly improved by employing a better
   failover algorithm.

   This document specifies an alternative failure detection procedure
   for SCTP that improves the SCTP performance during a failover.

   Also the operation after a failover impacts the performance of the
   protocol.  With [RFC4960] procedures, SCTP will, after a failover
   from the primary path, switch back to use the primary path for data
   transfer as soon as this path becomes available.  From a performance
   perspective, as confirmed in research [CARO02], such a switchback of
   the data transmission path is not optimal in general.  As an optional
   alternative to the switchback operation of [RFC4960], this document
   specifies for SCTP to support the Permanent Failover switchover
   procedures proposed by [CARO02].  Additional discussions for
   alternative approach that does not require modifications to [RFC4960]
   and path bouncing effects that might be caused by frequent switchover
   are provided in Appendix.

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2.  Conventions and Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

3.  Issues with the SCTP Path Management

   This section describes issues in the current SCTP to be fixed by the
   approach described in this document.

   SCTP can utilize multiple IP addresses for a single SCTP association.
   Each SCTP endpoint exchanges the list of its usable addresses during
   initial negotiation with its peer.  Then the endpoints select one
   address from the peer's list and define this as the primary
   destination.  During normal transmission, SCTP sends all user data to
   the primary destination.  Also, it sends heartbeat packets to all
   idle destinations at a certain interval to check the reachability of
   the path.  Idle destinations normally include all non-primary
   destinations.

   If a sender has multiple active destination addresses, it can
   retransmit data to secondary destination address, when the
   transmission to the primary times out.

   When a sender receives an acknowledgment for DATA or HEARTBEAT chunks
   sent to one of the destination addresses, it considers that
   destination to be active.  If it fails to receive acknowledgments,
   the error count for the address is increased.  If the error counter
   exceeds the protocol parameter 'Path.Max.Retrans', SCTP endpoint
   considers the address to be inactive.

   The failover process of SCTP is initiated when the primary path
   becomes inactive (error counter for the primary path exceeds
   Path.Max.Retrans).  If the primary path is marked inactive, SCTP
   chooses a new destination address from one of the active destinations
   and start using this address to send data to.  If the primary path
   becomes active again, SCTP uses the primary destination for
   subsequent data transmissions and stop using non-primary one.

   One issue with this failover process is that it usually takes
   significant amount of time before SCTP switches to the new
   destination.  Let's say the primary path on a multi-homed host
   becomes unavailable and the RTO value for the primary path at that
   time is around 1 second, it usually takes over 60 seconds before SCTP
   starts to use the secondary path.  This is because the recommended
   value for Path.Max.Retrans in the standard is 5, which requires 6
   consecutive timeouts before failover takes place.  Before SCTP

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   switches to the secondary address, SCTP keeps trying to send packets
   to the primary and only retransmitted packets are sent to the
   secondary and can thus be reached at the receiver.  This slow
   failover process can cause significant performance degradation and
   will not be acceptable in some situations.

   Another issue is that once the primary path is active again, the
   traffic is switched back.  This is not optimal in some situations.
   This is further discussed in Section 4.3.

4.  SCTP with Potentially-Failed Destination State (SCTP-PF)

   To address the issues described in Section 3, this section updates
   SCTP path management scheme with the Potentially Failed state and
   associated Quick Failover operation.  We use the term SCTP-PF to
   denote the resulting SCTP path management operation.

4.1.  SCTP-PF Concept

   SCTP-PF as defined stems from the following two observations about
   SCTP's failure detection procedure:

   o  To minimize performance impact during failover, the sender should
      avoid transmitting data to the failed destination as early as
      possible.  In the current SCTP path management scheme, the sender
      stops transmitting data to a destination only after the
      destination is marked Failed (inactive).  Thus, a smaller PMR
      value is ideal so that the sender transitions a destination to the
      Failed (inactive) state quicker.

   o  Smaller PMR values increase the chances of spurious failure
      detection where the sender incorrectly marks a destination as
      Failed (inactive) during periods of temporary congestion.  As
      [RFC4960] recommends for a coupling of the PMR value and the AMR
      value such spurious failure detection risks to carry over to
      spurious association failure detection and closure.  Larger PMR
      values are preferable to avoid spurious failure detection.

   From the above observations it is clear that tuning the PMR value
   involves the following tradeoff -- a lower value improves performance
   but increases the chances of spurious failure detection, whereas a
   higher value degrades performance and reduces spurious failure
   detection in a wide range of path conditions.  Thus, tuning the
   association's PMR value is an incomplete solution to address
   performance impact during failure.

   This new method introduces a new "Potentially-Failed" (PF)
   destination state in SCTP's path management procedure.  The PF state

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   was originally proposed to improve CMT performance [NATARAJAN09].
   The PF state is an intermediate state between Active and Failed
   states.  SCTP's failure detection procedure is modified to include
   the PF state.  The new failure detection algorithm assumes that loss
   detected by a timeout implies either severe congestion or failure en-
   route.  After a number of consecutive timeouts on a path, the sender
   is unsure, and marks the corresponding destination as PF.  A PF
   destination is not used for data transmission except in special cases
   (discussed below).  The new failure detection algorithm requires only
   sender-side changes.

4.2.  SCTP-PF Algorithm Detail

   SCTP PF operation is specified as follows:

   1.   The sender maintains a new tunable parameter called Potentially-
        Failed.Max.Retrans (PFMR).  The RECOMMENDED value of PFMR = 0
        when Quick Failover is used.  When PFMR is larger or equal to
        PMR, Quick Failover is turned off.

   2.   The error counter of an active destination address is
        incremented as specified in [RFC4960].  This means that the
        error counter of the destination address will be incremented
        each time the T3-rtx timer expires, or at times where a
        HEARTBEAT sent to an idle, active address is not acknowledged
        within an RTO.  When the value in the destination address error
        counter exceeds PFMR, the endpoint MUST mark the destination
        transport address as PF.

   3.   The sender SHOULD avoid data transmission to PF destinations.
        When the destinations are all in PF state or some in PF state
        and some in inactive state, the sender MUST choose one
        destination in PF state and transmit data to this destination.
        The sender SHOULD choose the destination in PF state with the
        lowest error count (fewest consecutive timeouts) for data
        transmission and transmit data to this destination.  When there
        are multiple PF destinations with same error count, the sender
        SHOULD let the choice among the multiple PF destination with
        equal error count be based on the [RFC4960], section 6.4.1,
        principles of choosing most divergent source-destination pairs
        when executing (potentially consecutive) retransmission.  This
        means that the sender SHOULD attempt to pick the most divergent
        source - destination pair from the last source - destination
        pair on which data were transmitted or retransmitted.  Rules for
        picking the most divergent source-destination pair are an
        implementation decision and are not specified within this
        document.  A sender may choose to deploy other strategies than
        the above when choosing among multiple PF destinations with

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        equal error count.  In all cases the sender MUST NOT change the
        state of chosen destination and it MUST NOT clear the
        destination's error counter as a result of choosing the
        destination for data transmission.

   4.   Heartbeats SHOULD be sent to PF destination(s) once per RTO.
        This means the sender MUST ignore HB.interval for PF
        destinations.  If an heartbeat is unanswered, the sender SHOULD
        increment the error counter and exponentially back off the RTO
        value.  If error counter is less than PMR, the sender SHOULD
        transmit another heartbeat immediately after T3-timer
        expiration.  When data is transmitted to a PF destination, the
        transmission of heartbeats may be omitted as SACK or T3-rtx
        timer expiration can provide equivalent information.  It is
        RECOMMENDED that heartbeats be send to PF destinations
        regardless of whether the Path Heartbeat function (Section 8.3
        of [RFC4960]) is enabled for the destination address or not.

   5.   When the sender receives an heartbeat ACK from a PF destination,
        the sender MUST clear the destination's error counter and
        transition the PF destination back to Active state.  When the
        sender resumes data transmission on the destination it MUST do
        this following the prescriptions of Section 7.2 of [RFC4960].

   6.   Additional (PMR - PFMR) consecutive timeouts on a PF destination
        confirm the path failure, upon which the destination transitions
        to the Inactive state.  As described in [RFC4960], the sender
        (i) SHOULD notify ULP about this state transition, and (ii)
        transmit heartbeats to the Inactive destination at a lower
        frequency as described in Section 8.3 of [RFC4960] (when this
        function is enabled for the destination address).

   7.   When all destinations are in inactive state (association dormant
        state) the sender MUST also choose one destination to transmit
        data to.  The sender SHOULD choose the destination in inactive
        state with the lowest error count (fewest consecutive timeouts)
        for data transmission and transmit data to this destination.
        When there are multiple destinations with same error count in
        inactive state, the sender SHOULD attempt to pick the most
        divergent source - destination pair from the last source -
        destination pair on which data were transmitted or retransmitted
        following [RFC4960].  Rules for picking the most divergent
        source-destination pair are an implementation decision and are
        not specified within this document.  Therefore, a sender SHOULD
        allow for incrementing the destination error counters up to some
        reasonable limit larger than PMR+1, thus changing the
        prescriptions of [RFC4960], section 8.3, in this respect.  The
        exact limit to apply is not specified in this document but it is

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        considered reasonable to require for such to be an order of
        magnitude higher than the PMR value.  A sender MAY choose to
        deploy other strategies than the above.  For example, a sender
        could choose to prioritize the last active destination during
        dormant state.  The strategy to prioritize the last active
        destination is optimal when some paths are permanently inactive,
        but suboptimal when paths' instability is transient.  While the
        increment of the error counters above PMR+1 is a prerequisite
        for the error counter values to serve to guide the path
        selection in dormant state, then it is noted that by virtue of
        the introduction of the Potentially Failed state, one may deploy
        higher values of PMR without compromising the efficiency of the
        failover operation, and thus making the increase of path error
        counters above PMR+1 less critical as the dormant state will be
        less likely to happen.  The downside of increasing the PMR value
        relative to the AMR value, however, is that the per destination
        address failure detection and notification of such to ULP
        thereby is weakened.  In all cases the sender MUST NOT change
        the state of the chosen destination and it MUST NOT clear the
        destination's error counter as a result of choosing the
        destination for data transmission.

   8.   ACKs for chunks that have been transmitted to multiple
        destinations (i.e., a chunk which has been retransmitted to a
        different destination than the destination to which the chunk
        was first transmitted) SHOULD NOT clear the error count of an
        inactive destination and SHOULD NOT transition a PF destination
        back to Active state, since a sender cannot disambiguate whether
        the ACK was for the original transmission or the
        retransmission(s).  The same ambiguity concerns the related
        congestion window growth.  The bytes of a newly acknowledged
        chunk which has been transmitted to multiple destinations SHOULD
        be considered for contribution to the congestion window growth
        towards the destination where the chunk was last sent.  The
        contribution of the acked bytes to the window growth is subject
        to the prescriptions described in Section 7.2 of [RFC4960] is
        fulfilled.  A SCTP sender MAY apply a different approach for
        both the error count handling and the congestion control growth
        handling based on unequivocally information on which destination
        (including multiple destinations) the chunk reached.  This
        document makes no reference to what such unequivocally
        information could consist of, neither how such unequivocally
        information could be obtained.  The implementation of such an
        alternative approach is left to implementations.

   9.   ACKs for chunks which has been transmitted to one destination
        address only MUST clear the error counter of the destination
        address and MUST transition a PF destination back to Active

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        state.  This situation can happen when new data is sent to a
        destination address in PF state.  It can also happen in
        situations where the destination address is in PF state due to
        the occurrence of a spurious T3-rtx timer and ACKs start to
        arrive for data sent prior to occurrence of the spurious T3-rtx
        and data has not yet been retransmitted towards other
        destinations.  This document does not specify special handling
        for detection of or reaction to spurious T3-rtx timeouts, e.g.,
        for special operation vis-a-vis the congestion control handling
        or data retransmission operation towards a destination address
        which undergoes a transition from active to PF to active state
        due to a spurious T3-rtx timeout.  But it is noted that this is
        an area which would benefit from additional attention,
        experimentation and specification for Single Homed SCTP as well
        as for Multi Homed SCTP protocol operation.

   10.  SCTP stack SHOULD provide the ULP with the means to expose the
        PF state of its destinations as well as the means to notify the
        state transitions from Active to PF, and vice-versa.  When doing
        this, such SCTP stack MUST provide the ULP with the means to
        suppress exposure of PF state and association state transitions
        as well.

4.3.  Optional Feature: Permanent Failover

   In [RFC4960], an SCTP sender migrates the traffic back to the
   original primary destination once this destination becomes active
   again.  As the CWND towards the original primary destination has to
   be rebuilt once data transfer resumes, the switch back to use the
   original primary path is not always optimal.  Indeed [CARO02] shows
   that the switch back to the original primary may degrade SCTP
   performance compared to continuing data transmission on the same
   path, especially, but not only, in scenarios where this path's
   characteristics are better.  In order to mitigate this performance
   degradation, Permanent Failover operation was proposed in [CARO02].
   When SCTP changes the destination due to failover, Permanent Failover
   operation allows SCTP sender to continue data transmission on the new
   working path even if the old primary destination becomes active
   again.  This is achieved by having SCTP perform a switch over of the
   primary path to the alternative working path rather than having SCTP
   switch back data transfer to the (previous) primary path.

   The manner of switch over operation that is most optimal in a given
   scenario depends on the relative quality of a set primary path versus
   the quality of alternative paths available as well as it depends on
   the extent to which it is desired for the mode of operation to
   enforce traffic distribution over a number of network paths.  I.e.,
   load distribution of traffic from multiple SCTP associations may be

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   sought to be enforced by distribution of the set primary paths with
   [RFC4960] switchback operation.  However as [RFC4960] switchback
   behavior is suboptimal in certain situations, especially in scenarios
   where a number of equally good paths are available, it is recommended
   for SCTP to support also, as alternative behavior, the Permanent
   Failover switch over modes of operation.

   The Permanent Failover operation requires only sender side changes.
   The details are:

   1.  The sender maintains a new tunable parameter, called
       Primary.Switchover.Max.Retrans (PSMR).  The PSMR MUST be set
       greater or equal to the PFMR value.  Implementations MUST reject
       any other values of PSMR.

   2.  When the path error counter on a set primary path exceeds PSMR,
       the SCTP implementation MUST autonomously select and set a new
       primary path.

   3.  The primary path selected by the SCTP implementation MUST be the
       path which at the given time would be chosen for data transfer.
       A previously failed primary path MAY come in use as data transfer
       path as per normal path selection when the present data transfer
       path fails.

   4.  The recommended value of PSMR is PFMR when Permanent Failover is
       used.  This means that no forced switchback to a previously
       failed primary path is performed.  An implementation of Permanent
       Failover MUST support the setting of PSMR = PFMR.  An
       implementation of Permanent Failover MAY support setting of PSMR
       > PFMR.

   5.  It MUST be possible to disable the Permanent Failover and obtain
       the standard switchback operation of [RFC4960].

   This specifications RECOMMENDS a default configuration that uses
   standard RFC4960 switchback, i.e., switch back to the old primary
   destination once the destination becomes active again.  However, to
   support optimal operation in a wider range of network scenarios, an
   implementation MAY implement Permanent Failover operation as detailed
   above and MAY enable it based on network configurations or users'
   requests.

5.  Socket API Considerations

   This section describes how the socket API defined in [RFC6458] is
   extended to provide a way for the application to control and observe
   the quick failover behavior.

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   Please note that this section is informational only.

   A socket API implementation based on [RFC6458] is, by means of the
   existing SCTP_PEER_ADDR_CHANGE event, extended to provide the event
   notification when a peer address enters or leaves the potentially
   failed state as well as the socket API implementation is extended to
   expose the potentially failed state of a peer address in the existing
   SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDR_INFO structure.

   Furthermore, two new read/write socket options for the level
   IPPROTO_SCTP and the name SCTP_PEER_ADDR_THLDS and
   SCTP_EXPOSE_POTENTIALLY_FAILED_STATE are defined as described below.
   The first socket option is used to control the values of the PFMR and
   PSMR parameters described in Section 4.  The second one controls the
   exposition of the potentially failed path state.

   Support for the SCTP_PEER_ADDR_THLDS and
   SCTP_EXPOSE_POTENTIALLY_FAILED_STATE socket options need also to be
   added to the function sctp_opt_info().

5.1.  Support for the Potentially Failed Path State

   As defined in [RFC6458], the SCTP_PEER_ADDR_CHANGE event is provided
   if the status of a peer address changes.  In addition to the state
   changes described in [RFC6458], this event is also provided, if a
   peer address enters or leaves the potentially failed state.  The
   notification as defined in [RFC6458] uses the following structure:

   struct sctp_paddr_change {
     uint16_t spc_type;
     uint16_t spc_flags;
     uint32_t spc_length;
     struct sockaddr_storage spc_aaddr;
     uint32_t spc_state;
     uint32_t spc_error;
     sctp_assoc_t spc_assoc_id;
   }

   [RFC6458] defines the constants SCTP_ADDR_AVAILABLE,
   SCTP_ADDR_UNREACHABLE, SCTP_ADDR_REMOVED, SCTP_ADDR_ADDED, and
   SCTP_ADDR_MADE_PRIM to be provided in the spc_state field.  This
   document defines in addition to that the new constant
   SCTP_ADDR_POTENTIALLY_FAILED, which is reported if the affected
   address becomes potentially failed.

   The SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDR_INFO socket option defined in [RFC6458] can be
   used to query the state of a peer address.  It uses the following
   structure:

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   struct sctp_paddrinfo {
     sctp_assoc_t spinfo_assoc_id;
     struct sockaddr_storage spinfo_address;
     int32_t spinfo_state;
     uint32_t spinfo_cwnd;
     uint32_t spinfo_srtt;
     uint32_t spinfo_rto;
     uint32_t spinfo_mtu;
   };

   [RFC6458] defines the constants SCTP_UNCONFIRMED, SCTP_ACTIVE, and
   SCTP_INACTIVE to be provided in the spinfo_state field.  This
   document defines in addition to that the new constant
   SCTP_POTENTIALLY_FAILED, which is reported if the peer address is
   potentially failed.

5.2.  Peer Address Thresholds (SCTP_PEER_ADDR_THLDS) Socket Option

   Applications can control the quick failover behavior by getting or
   setting the number of consecutive timeouts before a peer address is
   considered potentially failed or unreachable and before the primary
   path is changed automatically.  This socket option uses the level
   IPPROTO_SCTP and the name SCTP_PEER_ADDR_THLDS.

   The following structure is used to access and modify the thresholds:

   struct sctp_paddrthlds {
     sctp_assoc_t spt_assoc_id;
     struct sockaddr_storage spt_address;
     uint16_t spt_pathmaxrxt;
     uint16_t spt_pathpfthld;
     uint16_t spt_pathcpthld;
   };

   spt_assoc_id:  This parameter is ignored for one-to-one style
      sockets.  For one-to-many style sockets the application may fill
      in an association identifier or SCTP_FUTURE_ASSOC.  It is an error
      to use SCTP_{CURRENT|ALL}_ASSOC in spt_assoc_id.

   spt_address:  This specifies which peer address is of interest.  If a
      wildcard address is provided, this socket option applies to all
      current and future peer addresses.

   spt_pathmaxrxt:  Each peer address of interest is considered
      unreachable, if its path error counter exceeds spt_pathmaxrxt.

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   spt_pathpfthld:  Each peer address of interest is considered
      potentially failed, if its path error counter exceeds
      spt_pathpfthld.

   spt_pathcpthld:  Each peer address of interest is not considered the
      primary remote address anymore, if its path error counter exceeds
      spt_pathcpthld.  Using a value of 0xffff disables the selection of
      a new primary peer address.  If an implementation does not support
      the automatically selection of a new primary address, it should
      indicate an error with errno set to EINVAL if a value different
      from 0xffff is used in spt_pathcpthld.  Setting of spt_pathcpthld
      < spt_pathpfthld should be rejected with errno set to EINVAL.  An
      implementation MAY support only setting of spt_pathcpthld =
      spt_pathpfthld and spt_pathcpthld = 0xffff.  In this case it shall
      reject setting of other values with errno set to EINVAL.

5.3.  Exposing the Potentially Failed Path State
      (SCTP_EXPOSE_POTENTIALLY_FAILED_STATE) Socket Option

   Applications can control the exposure of the potentially failed path
   state in the SCTP_PEER_ADDR_CHANGE event and the
   SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDR_INFO as described in Section 5.1.  The default
   value is implementation specific.

   This socket option uses the level IPPROTO_SCTP and the name
   SCTP_EXPOSE_POTENTIALLY_FAILED_STATE.

   The following structure is used to control the exposition of the
   potentially failed path state:

   struct sctp_assoc_value {
     sctp_assoc_t assoc_id;
     uint32_t assoc_value;
   };

   assoc_id:  This parameter is ignored for one-to-one style sockets.
      For one-to-many style sockets the application may fill in an
      association identifier or SCTP_FUTURE_ASSOC.  It is an error to
      use SCTP_{CURRENT|ALL}_ASSOC in assoc_id.

   assoc_value:  The potentially failed path state is exposed if and
      only if this parameter is non-zero.

6.  Security Considerations

   Security considerations for the use of SCTP and its APIs are
   discussed in [RFC4960] and [RFC6458].  There are no new security
   considerations introduced in this document.

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7.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not create any new registries or modify the rules
   for any existing registries managed by IANA.

8.  Proposed Change of Status (to be Deleted before Publication)

   The initial status of this document was Experimental.  However,
   because of its usefulness, simple design and the existence of
   multiple active implementations, it has been changed to PS by WG
   consensus.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC4960]  Stewart, R., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC
              4960, September 2007.

9.2.  Informative References

   [CARO02]   Caro Jr., A., Iyengar, J., Amer, P., Heinz, G., and R.
              Stewart, "A Two-level Threshold Recovery Mechanism for
              SCTP", Tech report, CIS Dept, University of Delaware , 7
              2002.

   [CARO04]   Caro Jr., A., Amer, P., and R. Stewart, "End-to-End
              Failover Thresholds for Transport Layer Multihoming",
              MILCOM 2004 , 11 2004.

   [CARO05]   Caro Jr., A., "End-to-End Fault Tolerance using Transport
              Layer Multihoming", Ph.D Thesis, University of Delaware ,
              1 2005.

   [FALLON08]
              Fallon, S., Jacob, P., Qiao, Y., Murphy, L., Fallon, E.,
              and A. Hanley, "SCTP Switchover Performance Issues in WLAN
              Environments", IEEE CCNC 2008, 1 2008.

   [GRINNEMO04]
              Grinnemo, K-J. and A. Brunstrom, "Performance of SCTP-
              controlled failovers in M3UA-based SIGTRAN networks",
              Advanced Simulation Technologies Conference , 4 2004.

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   [IYENGAR06]
              Iyengar, J., Amer, P., and R. Stewart, "Concurrent
              Multipath Transfer using SCTP Multihoming over Independent
              End-to-end Paths.", IEEE/ACM Trans on Networking 14(5), 10
              2006.

   [JUNGMAIER02]
              Jungmaier, A., Rathgeb, E., and M. Tuexen, "On the use of
              SCTP in failover scenarios", World Multiconference on
              Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics , 7 2002.

   [NATARAJAN09]
              Natarajan, P., Ekiz, N., Amer, P., and R. Stewart,
              "Concurrent Multipath Transfer during Path Failure",
              Computer Communications , 5 2009.

   [RFC6458]  Stewart, R., Tuexen, M., Poon, K., Lei, P., and V.
              Yasevich, "Sockets API Extensions for the Stream Control
              Transmission Protocol (SCTP)", RFC 6458, December 2011.

Appendix A.  Discussions of Alternative Approaches

   This section lists alternative approaches for the issues desribed in
   this document.  Although these approaches do not require to update
   RFC4960, we do not recommend them from the reasons described below.

A.1.  Reduce Path.Max.Retrans (PMR)

   Smaller values for Path.Max.Retrans shorten the failover duration.
   In fact, this is recommended in some research results [JUNGMAIER02]
   [GRINNEMO04] [FALLON08].  For example, if when Path.Max.Retrans=0,
   SCTP switches to another destination on a single timeout.  This
   smaller value for Path.Max.Retrans can results in spurious failover,
   which might be a problem.

   Unlike SCTP-PF, the interval for heartbeat packets is governed by
   'HB.interval' even during failover process.  'HB.interval' is usually
   set in the order of seconds (recommended value is 30 seconds).  When
   the primary path becomes inactive, the next HB can be transmitted
   only seconds later.  Meanwhile, the primary path may have recovered.
   In such situations, post failover, an endpoint is forced to wait on
   the order of seconds before the endpoint can resume transmission on
   the primary path.  However, using smaller value for 'HB.interval'
   might help this situation, but it will be the waste of bandwidth in
   most cases.

   In addition, smaller Path.Max.Retrans values also affect
   'Association.Max.Retrans' values.  When the SCTP association's error

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   count (sum of error counts on all ACTIVE paths) exceeds
   Association.Max.Retrans threshold, the SCTP sender considers the peer
   endpoint unreachable and terminates the association.  Therefore,
   Section 8.2 in [RFC4960] recommends that Association.Max.Retrans
   value should not be larger than the summation of the Path.Max.Retrans
   of each of the destination addresses, else the SCTP sender considers
   its peer reachable even when all destinations are INACTIVE.  To avoid
   such inconsistent behavior an SCTP implementation SHOULD reduce
   Association.Max.Retrans accordingly whenever it reduces
   Path.Max.Retrans.  However, smaller Association.Max.Retrans value
   increases chances of association termination during minor congestion
   events.

A.2.  Adjust RTO related parameters

   As several research results indicate, we can also shorten the
   duration of failover process by adjusting RTO related parameters
   [JUNGMAIER02] [FALLON08].  During failover process, RTO keeps being
   doubled.  However, if we can choose smaller value for RTO.max, we can
   stop the exponential growth of RTO at some point.  Also, choosing
   smaller values for RTO.initial or RTO.min can contribute to keep RTO
   value small.

   Similar to reducing Path.Max.Retrans, the advantage of this approach
   is that it requires no modification to the current specification,
   although it needs to ignore several recommendations described in the
   Section 15 of [RFC4960].  However, this approach requires to have
   enough knowledge about the network characteristics between end
   points.  Otherwise, it can introduce adverse side-effects such as
   spurious timeouts.

Appendix B.  Discussions for Path Bouncing Effect

   The methods described in the document can accelerate the failover
   process.  Hence, they might introduce the path bouncing effect where
   the sender keeps changing the data transmission path frequently.
   This sounds harmful to the data transfer, however several research
   results indicate that there is no serious problem with SCTP in terms
   of path bouncing effect [CARO04] [CARO05].

   There are two main reasons for this.  First, SCTP is basically
   designed for multipath communication, which means SCTP maintains all
   path related parameters (CWND, ssthresh, RTT, error count, etc) per
   each destination address.  These parameters cannot be affected by
   path bouncing.  In addition, when SCTP migrates the data transfer to
   another path, it starts with the minimal or the initial CWND.  Hence,
   there is little chance for packet reordering or duplicating.

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   Second, even if all communication paths between the end-nodes share
   the same bottleneck, the quick failover results in a behavior already
   allowed by [RFC4960].

Authors' Addresses

   Yoshifumi Nishida
   GE Global Research
   2623 Camino Ramon
   San Ramon, CA  94583
   USA

   Email: nishida@wide.ad.jp

   Preethi Natarajan
   Cisco Systems
   510 McCarthy Blvd
   Milpitas, CA  95035
   USA

   Email: prenatar@cisco.com

   Armando Caro
   BBN Technologies
   10 Moulton St.
   Cambridge, MA  02138
   USA

   Email: acaro@bbn.com

   Paul D. Amer
   University of Delaware
   Computer Science Department - 434 Smith Hall
   Newark, DE  19716-2586
   USA

   Email: amer@udel.edu

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   Karen E. E. Nielsen
   Ericsson
   Kistavaegen 25
   Stockholm  164 80
   Sweden

   Email: karen.nielsen@tieto.com

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