IPv6 Options for Congestion Measurement
draft-shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-ipv6-options-04
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Giuseppe Fioccola , Tianran Zhou , Liu Ying , Mengyao Han | ||
| Last updated | 2025-12-19 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
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| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
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draft-shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-ipv6-options-04
IP Performance Measurement G. Fioccola
Internet-Draft T. Zhou
Intended status: Standards Track Huawei
Expires: 22 June 2026 Y. Liu
M. Han
China Unicom
19 December 2025
IPv6 Options for Congestion Measurement
draft-shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-ipv6-options-04
Abstract
The Congestion Measurement enables precise congestion control,
assists in effective load balancing, and simplifies network debugging
by accurately reflecting the degree of congestion across network
paths. This document defines how Congestion Measurement Data Fields
are encapsulated in IPv6.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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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 22 June 2026.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Congestion Measurement Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1. Congestion Measurement Hop-by-hop Options Header (HBH) . 3
2.2. Congestion Measurement Destination Options Header
(DOH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1. Introduction
[I-D.shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-data] introduces data fields of
Congestion Measurement which enables sender to obtain the degree of
congestion across the path. This document defines the IPv6
encapsulation of the Congestion Measurement Data Fields.
1.1. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
2. Congestion Measurement Option
The Congestion Measurement IPv6 Option is defined to carry the
Congestion Measurement Data-Fields.
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|Opt Type = TBD1| Opt Data Len |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
. .
. Congestion Measurement Data-Fields (Variable) .
. .
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: Congestion Measurement IPv6 Option
where:
* Opt Type: Type value is TBD1, an 8-bit unsigned integer.
Identifier of the type of this Congestion Measurement Option.
* Opt Data Len: An 8-bit unsigned integer. The length of the Option
Data field of this option, that is, the length of the Congestion
Measurement Data-Fields.
* Congestion Measurement Data-Fields: Option-Type-specific data. It
carries the data fields for Congestion Measurement as specified in
[I-D.shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-data].
2.1. Congestion Measurement Hop-by-hop Options Header (HBH)
The Congestion Measurement option can be carried in the IPv6 Hop-by-
Hop Options Header. In this case, each node along the path can
inspect the Congestion Info Data field if they are configured to
support this option. If the U bit of Congestion Measurement Data-
Fields is set, intermediate nodes will modify the Congestion Info
Data field accordingly. In theory, the presence of the Hop-by-Hop
Option should not affect the traffic throughput both on nodes that do
not recognize this Option and on the nodes that support it. However,
in a real implementation, a packet with a Hop-by-hop Option may be
skipped or processed in the slow path. Proposals to mitigate the
problem are out of the scope for this document.
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2.2. Congestion Measurement Destination Options Header (DOH)
The Congestion Measurement option can be carried in the IPv6
Destination Options Header. In this case, it is usually processed by
the destination node. Note that, if there is also a Routing Header
(RH), any visited destination in the route list can process it. If
the U bit of Congestion Measurement Data-Fields is set, intermediate
nodes that are in the route list will modify the Congestion Info Data
field accordingly.
3. Security Considerations
The security considerations of the Congestion Measurement are
discussed in [I-D.shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-data].
4. IANA Considerations
IANA is requested to assign an IPv6 Option from the "Destination
Options and Hop-by-Hop Options" subregistry of "Internet Protocol
Version 6 (IPv6) Parameters (https://www.iana.org/assignments/
ipv6-parameters/)" as follows:
+=======+===============================+===========+
| Value | Description | Reference |
+=======+===============================+===========+
| TBD1 | Congestion Measurement Option | Section 2 |
+-------+-------------------------------+-----------+
Table 1
5. References
5.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
5.2. Informative References
[I-D.shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-data]
Fioccola, G., Zhou, T., Zhao, G., and Z. Li, "Data Fields
for Congestion Measurement", Work in Progress, Internet-
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Draft, draft-shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-data-05, 19
December 2025, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-shi-ippm-congestion-measurement-data-05>.
Contributors
Hang Shi
Huawei
Beijing
China
Email: shihang9@huawei.com
Authors' Addresses
Giuseppe Fioccola
Huawei
Vimodrone (Milan)
Italy
Email: giuseppe.fioccola@huawei.com
Tianran Zhou
Huawei
Beijing
China
Email: zhoutianran@huawei.com
Ying Liu
China Unicom
Beijing
China
Email: liuy619@chinaunicom.cn
Mengyao Han
China Unicom
Beijing
China
Email: hanmy12@chinaunicom.cn
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