TSVWG                                                        B. Briscoe
Internet Draft                                               P. Eardley
draft-briscoe-tsvwg-cl-architecture-02.txt                 D. Songhurst
Expires: September 2006                                              BT

                                                        F. Le Faucheur
                                                              A. Charny
                                                    Cisco Systems, Inc

                                                           J. Babiarz
                                                                K. Chan
                                                            S. Dudley
                                                               Nortel

                                                         March 6, 2006


    A Framework for Admission Control over DiffServ using Pre-Congestion
                               Notification
                draft-briscoe-tsvwg-cl-architecture-02.txt


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   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 6, 2006.





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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document describes a framework to achieve an end-to-end
   Controlled Load (CL) service without the scalability problems of
   previous approaches. Flow admission control and if necessary flow
   pre-emption preserve the CL service to admitted flows. But interior
   routers within a large DiffServ-based region of the Internet do not
   require flow state or signalling. They only have to give early
   warning of their own congestion by bulk packet marking using new pre-
   congestion notification marking. Gateways around the edges of the
   region convert measurements of this packet granularity marking into
   admission control and pre-emption functions at flow granularity.



Authors' Note (TO BE DELETED BY THE RFC EDITOR UPON PUBLICATION)

   This document is posted as an Internet-Draft with the intention of
   eventually becoming an INFORMATIONAL RFC, rather than a standards
   track document.



Table of Contents


   1. Introduction................................................4
      1.1. Summary................................................4
         1.1.1. Flow admission control.............................5
         1.1.2. Flow pre-emption...................................7
         1.1.3. Both admission control and pre-emption.............8
      1.2. Terminology............................................9
      1.3. Existing terminology...................................10
      1.4. Standardisation requirements...........................10
      1.5. Structure of rest of the document......................11
   2. Key aspects of the framework................................12
      2.1. Key goals.............................................12
      2.2. Key assumptions........................................13
      2.3. Key benefits..........................................15
   3. Architecture...............................................18
      3.1. Admission control......................................18
         3.1.1. Pre-Congestion Notification for Admission Marking..18
         3.1.2. Measurements to support admission control..........18


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         3.1.3. How edge-to-edge admission control supports end-to-end
         QoS signalling..........................................19
         3.1.4. Use case.........................................19
      3.2. Flow pre-emption.......................................20
         3.2.1. Alerting an ingress gateway that flow pre-emption may be
         needed..................................................20
         3.2.2. Determining the right amount of CL traffic to drop.23
         3.2.3. Use case for flow pre-emption.....................24
   4. Details....................................................26
      4.1. Ingress gateways.......................................26
      4.2. Interior nodes........................................27
      4.3. Egress gateways........................................27
      4.4. Failures..............................................28
      4.5. Admission of 'emergency / higher precedence' session....29
      4.6. Tunnelling............................................30
   5. Potential future extensions.................................32
      5.1. Mechanisms to deal with 'Flash crowds'.................32
      5.2. Multi-domain and multi-operator usage..................33
      5.3. Adaptive bandwidth for the Controlled Load service......33
      5.4. Controlled Load service with end-to-end Pre-Congestion
      Notification...............................................34
      5.5. MPLS-TE...............................................34
   6. Relationship to other QoS mechanisms........................35
      6.1. IntServ Controlled Load................................35
      6.2. Integrated services operation over DiffServ............35
      6.3. Differentiated Services................................35
      6.4. ECN...................................................36
      6.5. RTECN.................................................36
      6.6. RMD...................................................36
      6.7. RSVP Aggregation over MPLS-TE..........................37
   7. Security Considerations.....................................37
   8. Acknowledgements...........................................38
   9. Comments solicited.........................................38
   10. Changes from earlier versions of the draft.................38
   11. Appendices................................................39
      11.1. Appendix A: Explicit Congestion Notification..........39
      11.2. Appendix B: What is distributed measurement-based admission
      control?...................................................40
      11.3. Appendix C: Calculating the Exponentially weighted moving
      average (EWMA).............................................41
   12. References................................................43
   Authors' Addresses............................................46
   Intellectual Property Statement................................48
   Disclaimer of Validity........................................48
   Copyright Statement...........................................49




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1. Introduction

1.1. Summary

   This document describes a framework to achieve an end-to-end
   controlled load service by using - within a large region of the
   Internet - DiffServ and edge-to-edge distributed measurement-based
   admission control and flow pre-emption. Controlled load service is a
   quality of service (QoS) closely approximating the QoS that the same
   flow would receive from a lightly loaded network element [RFC2211].
   Controlled Load (CL) is useful for inelastic flows such as those for
   real-time media.

   In line with the "IntServ over DiffServ" framework defined in
   [RFC2998], the CL service is supported end-to-end and RSVP signalling
   [RFC2205] is used end-to-end, over an edge-to-edge DiffServ region.

 ___    ___    _______________________________________    ____    ___
|   |  |   |  |                                       |  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |Ingress         Interior         Egress|  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |gateway          nodes          gateway|  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |-------+  +-------+  +-------+  +------|  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  | PCN-  |  | PCN-  |  | PCN-  |  |      |  |    |  |   |
|   |..|   |..|marking|..|marking|..|marking|..| Meter|..|    |..|   |
|   |  |   |  |-------+  +-------+  +-------+  +------|  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |  \                                 /  |  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |   \                               /   |  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |    \  Congestion-Level-Estimate  /    |  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |     \  (for admission control)  /     |  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |      --<-----<----<----<-----<--      |  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |      Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate       |  |    |  |   |
|   |  |   |  |        (for flow pre-emption)         |  |    |  |   |
|___|  |___|  |_______________________________________|  |____|  |___|

Sx     Access               CL-region                   Access    Rx
End    Network                                          Network   End
Host                                                              Host
                <------ edge-to-edge signalling ----->
              (for admission control & flow pre-emption)

<-------------------end-to-end QoS signalling protocol--------------->

Figure 1: Overall QoS architecture (NB terminology explained later)


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   In Section 1.1.1 we summarise how admission of new CL microflows is
   controlled so as to deliver the required QoS. In abnormal
   circumstances for instance a disaster affecting multiple interior
   nodes, then the QoS on existing CL microflows may degrade even if
   care was exercised when admitting those microflows before those
   circumstances. Therefore we also propose a mechanism (summarised in
   Section 1.1.2) to pre-empt some of the existing microflows. Then
   remaining microflows retain their expected QoS, while improved QoS is
   quickly restored to lower priority traffic.

   As a fundamental building block to support these two mechanisms, we
   introduce "Pre-Congestion Notification". Pre-Congestion Notification
   (PCN) builds on the concepts of RFC 3168, "The addition of Explicit
   Congestion Notification to IP". The draft [PCN] proposes the
   respective algorithms that determine when a PCN-enabled router marks
   a packet with Admission Marking or Pre-emption Marking, depending on
   the traffic level.

   Pre-Congestion Notification can supplement any Per Hop Behaviour. In
   order to support CL traffic we would expect it to supplement the
   existing Expedited Forwarding (EF). Within the controlled edge-to-
   edge region, a particular packet receives the Pre-Congestion
   Notification behaviour if the packet's DSCP (differentiated services
   codepoint) is set to EF (or whatever is configured for CL traffic)
   and also the ECN field indicates ECN Capable Transport.

   There are various possible ways to encode the markings into a packet,
   using the ECN field and perhaps other DSCPs, which are discussed in
   [PCN]. In this draft we use the abstract names Admission Marking and
   Pre-emption Marking.

   This framework assumes that the Pre-Congestion Notification behaviour
   is used in a controlled environment, i.e. within the controlled edge-
   to-edge region.



1.1.1. Flow admission control

   This document describes a new admission control procedure for an
   edge-to-edge region, which uses new per-hop Pre-Congestion
   Notification 'admission marking' as a fundamental building block. In
   turn, an end-to-end CL service would use this as a building block
   within a broader QoS architecture.



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   The per-hop, edge-to-edge and end-to-end aspects are now briefly
   introduced in turn.

   Appendix A provides a brief summary of Explicit Congestion
   Notification (ECN) [RFC3168]. It specifies that a router sets the ECN
   field to the Congestion Experienced (CE) value as a warning of
   incipient congestion. RFC3168 doesn't specify a particular algorithm
   for setting the CE codepoint, although RED (Random Early Detection)
   is expected to be used.

   Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN) builds on the concepts of ECN. PCN
   introduces a new algorithm that Admission Marks packets before there
   is any significant build-up of CL packets in the queue. Admission
   marked packets therefore act as an "early warning" when the amount of
   packets flowing is getting close to the engineered capacity. Hence it
   can be used with per-hop behaviours (PHBs) designed to operate with
   very low queue occupancy, such as Expedited Forwarding (EF). Note
   that our use of the ECN field operates across the CL-region, i.e.
   edge-to-edge, and not host-to-host as in [RFC3168].

   Turning next to the edge-to-edge aspect. All nodes within a region of
   the Internet, which we call the CL-region, apply the PHB used for CL
   traffic and the Pre-Congestion Notification behaviour. Traffic must
   enter/leave the CL-region through ingress/egress gateways, which have
   special functionality. Typically the CL-region is the core or
   backbone of an operator. The CL service is achieved "edge-to-edge"
   across the CL-region, by using distributed measurement-based
   admission control: the decision whether to admit a new microflow
   depends on a measurement of the existing traffic between the same
   pair of ingress and egress gateways (i.e. the same pair as the
   prospective new microflow). (See Appendix B for further discussion on
   "What is distributed measurement-based admission control?")

   As CL packets travel across the CL-region, nodes will admission mark
   packets (according to the Pre-Congestion Notification algorithm) as
   an "early warning" of potential congestion, i.e. before there is any
   significant build-up of CL packets in the queue. For traffic from
   each remote ingress gateway, the CL-region's egress gateway measures
   the fraction of CL traffic that is admission marked. The egress
   gateway calculates the value on a per bit basis as an exponentially
   weighted moving average (which we term Congestion-Level-Estimate).
   Then it reports it to the CL-region's ingress gateway piggy-backed on
   the signalling for a new flow. The ingress gateway only admits the
   new CL microflow if the Congestion-Level-Estimate is less than the
   value of the CLE-threshold. Hence previously accepted CL microflows
   will suffer minimal queuing delay, jitter and loss.



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   In turn, the edge-to-edge architecture is a building block in
   delivering an end-to-end CL service. The approach is similar to that
   described in [RFC2998] for Integrated services operation over
   DiffServ networks. Like [RFC2998], an IntServ class (CL in our case)
   is achieved end-to-end, with a CL-region viewed as a single
   reservation hop in the total end-to-end path. Interior nodes of the
   CL-region do not process flow signalling nor do they hold state. We
   assume that the end-to-end signalling mechanism is RSVP (Section
   2.2). However, the RSVP signalling may itself be originated or
   terminated by proxies still closer to the edge of the network, such
   as home hubs or the like, triggered in turn by application layer
   signalling. [RFC2998] and our approach are compared further in
   Section 6.2.

   An important benefit compared with the IntServ over DiffServ model
   [RFC2998] arises from the fact that the load is controlled
   dynamically rather than with the traffic conditioning agreements
   (TCAs). TCAs were originally introduced in the (informational)
   DiffServ architecture [RFC2475] as an alternative to reservation
   processing in the interior region in order to reduce the burden on
   interior nodes. With TCAs, in practice service providers rely on
   subscription-time Service Level Agreements that statically define the
   parameters of the traffic that will be accepted from a customer. The
   problem arises because the TCA at the ingress must allow any
   destination address, if it is to remain scalable. But for longer
   topologies, the chances increase that traffic will focus on an
   interior resource, even though it is within contract at the ingress
   [Reid], e.g. all flows converge on the same egress gateway. Even
   though networks can be engineered to make such failures rare, when
   they occur all inelastic flows through the congested resource fail
   catastrophically.

   Distributed measurement-based admission control avoids reservation
   processing (whether per flow or aggregated) on interior nodes but
   flows are still blocked dynamically in response to actual congestion
   on any interior node. Hence there is no need for accurate or
   conservative prediction of the traffic matrix.

1.1.2. Flow pre-emption

   An essential QoS issue in core and backbone networks is being able to
   cope with failures of nodes and links. The consequent re-routing can
   cause severe congestion on some links and hence degrade the QoS
   experienced by on-going microflows and other, lower priority traffic.
   Even when the network is engineered to sustain a single link failure,
   multiple link failures (e.g. due to a fibre cut or a node failure, or
   a natural disaster) can cause violation of capacity constraints and


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   resulting QoS failures. Our solution uses rate-based flow pre-
   emption, so that sufficient of the previously admitted CL microflows
   are dropped to ensure that the remaining ones again receive QoS
   commensurate with the CL service and at least some QoS is quickly
   restored to other traffic classes.

   The solution has two aspects. First, triggering the ingress gateway
   to test whether pre-emption may be needed. A router enhanced with
   Pre-Congestion Notification may optionally include an algorithm that
   sets packets into the Pre-emption Marked state. Such a packet alerts
   the egress that pre-emption may be needed, which in turn sends a Pre-
   emption Alert message to the ingress. Secondly, calculating the right
   amount of traffic to drop. This involves the egress gateway
   measuring, and reporting to the ingress gateway, the current amount
   of CL traffic received from that particular ingress gateway. The
   ingress gateway compares this measurement (which is the amount that
   the network can actually support, and which we thus call the
   Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate) with the rate that it is sending and
   hence determines how much traffic needs to be pre-empted.

   The solution operates within a little over one round trip time - the
   time required for microflow packets that have experienced Pre-emption
   Marking to travel downstream through the CL-region and arrive at the
   egress gateway, plus some additional time for the egress gateway to
   measure the rate seen after it has been alerted that pre-emption may
   be needed, and the time for the egress gateway to report this
   information to the ingress gateway.

1.1.3. Both admission control and pre-emption

   This document describes both the admission control and pre-emption
   mechanisms, and we suggest that an operator uses both. However, we do
   not require this and some operators may want to implement only one.

   For example, an operator could use just admission control, solving
   heavy congestion (caused by re-routing) by 'just waiting' - as
   sessions end, existing microflows naturally depart from the system
   over time, and the admission control mechanism will prevent admission
   of new microflows that use the affected links. So the CL-region will
   naturally return to normal controlled load service, but with reduced
   capacity. The drawback of this approach would be that until flows
   naturally depart to relieve the congestion, all flows and lower
   priority services will be adversely affected. As another example, an
   operator could use just admission control, avoiding heavy congestion
   (caused by re-routing) by 'capacity planning' - by configuring
   admission control thresholds to lower levels than the network could
   accept in normal situations such that the load after failure is


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   expected to stay below acceptable levels even with reduced network
   resources.

   On the other hand, an operator could just rely for admission control
   on the traffic conditioning agreements of the DiffServ architecture
   [RFC2475]. The pre-emption mechanism described in this document would
   be used to counteract the problem described at the end of Section
   1.1.1.



1.2. Terminology

   This terminology is copied from the pre-congestion notification
   marking draft [PCN]:

   o Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN): two new algorithms that
      determine when a PCN-enabled router Admission Marks and Pre-
      emption Marks a packet, depending on the traffic level.

   o Admission Marking condition: the traffic level is such that the
      router Admission Marks packets. The router provides an "early
      warning" that the load is nearing the engineered admission control
      capacity, before there is any significant build-up of CL packets
      in the queue.

   o Pre-emption Marking condition: the traffic level is such that the
      router Pre-emption Marks packets. The router warns explicitly that
      pre-emption may be needed.

   o Configured-admission-rate: the reference rate used by the
      admission marking algorithm in a PCN-enabled router.

   o Configured-pre-emption-rate - the reference rate used by the pre-
      emption marking algorithm in a PCN-enabled router.



   The following terms are defined here:

   o Ingress gateway: node at an ingress to the CL-region. A CL-region
      may have several ingress gateways.

   o Egress gateway: node at an egress from the CL-region. A CL-region
      may have several egress gateways.




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   o Interior node: a node which is part of the CL-region, but isn't an
      ingress or egress node.

   o CL-region: A region of the Internet in which all traffic
      enters/leaves through an ingress/egress gateway and all nodes run
      Pre-Congestion Notification marking. A CL-region is a DiffServ
      region (a DiffServ region is either a single DiffServ domain or
      set of contiguous DiffServ domains), but note that the CL-region
      does not use the traffic conditioning agreements (TCAs) of the
      (informational) DiffServ architecture.

   o CL-region-aggregate: all the microflows between a specific pair of
      ingress and egress gateways. Note there is no identifier unique to
      the aggregate.

   o Congestion-Level-Estimate: the number of bits in CL packets that
      are admission marked, divided by the number of bits in all CL
      packets. It is calculated as an exponentially weighted moving
      average. It is calculated by an egress gateway for the CL packets
      from a particular ingress gateway, i.e. there is a Congestion-
      Level-Estimate for each CL-region-aggregate.

   o Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate: the rate of traffic that the network
      can actually support for a specific CL-region-aggregate. So it is
      measured by an egress gateway for the CL packets from a particular
      ingress gateway.



1.3. Existing terminology

   This is a placeholder for useful terminology that is defined
   elsewhere.

1.4. Standardisation requirements

   The framework described in this document has two new standardisation
   requirements:

   o new Pre-Congestion Notification for Admission Marking and Pre-
      emption Marking are required, as detailed in [PCN].







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   o the end-to-end signalling protocol needs to be modified to carry
      the Congestion-Level-Estimate report (for admission control) and
      the Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate (for flow pre-emption). With our
      assumption of RSVP (Section 2.2) as the end-to-end signalling
      protocol, it means that extensions to RSVP are required, as
      detailed in [RSVP-ECN], for example to carry the Congestion-Level-
      Estimate and Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate information from egress
      gateway to ingress gateway.

   Other than these things, the arrangement uses existing IETF protocols
   throughout, although not in their usual architecture.

1.5. Structure of rest of the document

   Section 2 describes some key aspects of the framework: our goals,
   assumptions and the benefits we believe it has. Section 3 describes
   the architecture (including a use case), whilst Section 4 summarises
   the required changes to the various nodes in the CL-region. Section 5
   outlines some possible extensions. Section 6 provides some comparison
   with existing QoS mechanisms.




























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2. Key aspects of the framework

   In this section we discuss the key aspects of the framework:

   o At a high level, our key goals, i.e. the functionality that we
      want to achieve

   o The assumptions that we're prepared to make

   o The consequent benefits they bring

2.1. Key goals

   The framework achieves an end-to-end controlled load (CL) service
   where a segment of the end-to-end path is an edge-to-edge Pre-
   Congestion Notification region. CL is a quality of service (QoS)
   closely approximating the QoS that the same flow would receive from a
   lightly loaded network element [RFC2211]. It is useful for inelastic
   flows such as those for real-time media.

   o The CL service should be achieved despite varying load levels of
      other sorts of traffic, which may or may not be rate adaptive
      (i.e. responsive to packet drops or ECN marks).

   o The CL service should be supported for a variety of possible CL
      sources: Constant Bit Rate (CBR), Variable Bit Rate (VBR) and
      voice with silence suppression. VBR is the most challenging to
      support.

   o After a localised failure in the interior of the CL-region causing
      heavy congestion, the CL service should recover gracefully by pre-
      empting (dropping) some of the admitted CL microflows, whilst
      preserving as many of them as possible with their full CL QoS.

   o It is suggested that flow pre-emption needs to be completed within
      1-2 seconds, because it is estimated that after a few seconds then
      many affected users will start to hang up (and then not only is a
      flow pre-emption mechanism redundant and possibly even counter-
      productive, but also many more flows than necessary to reduce
      congestion may hang up). Also, other, lower priority traffic
      classes will not be restored to partial service until the higher
      priority CL service reduces its load on shared links.







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   o The CL service should support emergency services ([EMERG-RQTS],
      [EMERG-TEL]) as well as the Assured Service which is the IP
      implementation of the existing ITU-T/NATO/DoD telephone system
      architecture known as Multi-Level Pre-emption and Precedence
      [ITU.MLPP.1990] [ANSI.MLPP.Spec][ANSI.MLPP.Supplement], or MLPP.
      In particular, this involves admitting new high priority sessions
      even when admission control thresholds are reached and new routine
      sessions are rejected. Similarly, this involves taking into
      account session priorities and properties at the time of pre-
      empting flows.


2.2. Key assumptions

   The framework does not try to deliver the above functionality in all
   scenarios. We make the following assumptions about the type of
   scenario to be solved.

   o Edge-to-edge: all the nodes in the CL-region are upgraded with
      Pre-Congestion Notification, and all the ingress and egress
      gateways are upgraded to perform the measurement-based admission
      control and flow pre-emption. Note that although the upgrades
      required are edge-to-edge, the CL service is provided end-to-end.

   o Additional load: we assume that any additional load offered within
      the reaction time of the admission control mechanism doesn't move
      the CL-region directly from no congestion to overload. So it
      assumes there will always be an intermediate stage where some CL
      packets are Admission Marked, but they are still delivered without
      significant QoS degradation. We believe this is valid for core and
      backbone networks with typical call arrival patterns (given the
      reaction time is little more than one round trip time across the
      CL-region), but is unlikely to be valid in access networks where
      the granularity of an individual call becomes significant.

   o Aggregation: we assume that in normal operations, there are many
      CL microflows within the CL-region, typically at least hundreds
      between any pair of ingress and egress gateways. The implication
      is that the solution is targeted at core and backbone networks and
      possibly parts of large access networks.

   o Trust: we assume that there is trust between all the nodes in the
      CL-region. For example, this trust model is satisfied if one
      operator runs the whole of the CL-region. But we make no such
      assumptions about the end nodes, i.e. depending on the scenario
      they may be trusted or untrusted by the CL-region.



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   o Signalling: we assume that the end-to-end signalling protocol is
      RSVP. Section 3 describes how the CL-region fits into such an end-
      to-end QoS scenario, whilst [RSVP-ECN] describes the extensions to
      RSVP that are required.

   o Separation: we assume that all nodes within the CL-region are
      upgraded with the CL mechanism, so the requirements of [Floyd] are
      met because the CL-region is an enclosed environment. Also, an
      operator separates CL-traffic in the CL-region from outside
      traffic by administrative configuration of the ring of gateways
      around the region. Within the CL-region we assume that the CL-
      traffic is separated from non-CL traffic.

   o Routing: we assume that one of the following applies:

        (same path) all packets between a pair of ingress and egress
        gateways follow the same path. This ensures that the Congestion-
        Level-Estimate used in the admission control procedure reflects
        the status of the path followed by the new flow's packets

        (load balanced) packets between a pair of ingress and egress
        gateways follow different paths but that the load balancing
        scheme is tuned in the CL-region to distribute load such that
        the different paths always receive comparable relative load.
        This ensures that the Congestion-Level-Estimate used in the
        admission control procedure (and which is computed taking into
        account packets travelling on all the paths) also approximately
        reflects the status of the actual path followed by the new
        microflow's packets

        (worst case assumed) packets between a pair of ingress and
        egress gateways follow different paths but that (i) it is
        acceptable for the operator to keep the CL traffic between this
        pair of gateways to a level dictated by the most loaded of all
        paths between this pair of gateways (so that CL flows may be
        rejected - or even pre-empted in some situations - even if one
        or more of the paths between the pair of gateways is operating
        below its engineered levels) and that (ii) it is acceptable for
        that operator to configure engineered levels below optimum
        levels to compensate for the fact that the effect on the
        Congestion-Level-Estimate of the congestion experienced over one
        of the paths may be diluted by traffic received over non-
        congested paths so that lower thresholds need to be used in
        these cases to ensure early admission control rejection and pre-
        emption over the congested paths.




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   We are investigating ways of loosening the restrictions set by some
   of these assumptions, for instance:

   o Trust: to allow the CL-region to span multiple, non-trusting
      operators, using the technique of [Re-PCN] and mentioned in
      Section 5.1.

   o Signalling: we believe that the solution could operate with
      another signalling protocol such as NSIS. It could also work with
      application level signalling as suggested in [RT-ECN].

   o Additional load: we believe that the assumption is valid for core
      and backbone networks, with an appropriate margin between the
      configured-admission-rate and the capacity for CL traffic.
      However, in principle a burst of admission requests can occur in a
      short time. We expect this to be a rare event under normal
      conditions, but it could happen e.g. due to a 'flash crowd'. If it
      does, then more flows may be admitted than should be, triggering
      the pre-emption mechanisms. There are various approaches to how an
      operator might try to alleviate this issue, which are discussed in
      the 'Flash crowds' section 5.1 later.

   o Separation: the assumption that CL traffic is separated from non-
      CL traffic implies that the CL traffic has its own PHB, not shared
      with other traffic. We are looking at whether it could share
      Expedited Forwarding's PHB, but supplemented with Pre-Congestion
      Notification. If this is possible, other PHBs (like Assured
      Forwarding) could be supplemented with the same new behaviours.
      This is similar to how RFC3168 ECN was defined to supplement any
      PHB.

   o Routing: we are looking in greater detail at the solution in the
      presence of Equal Cost Multi-Path routing and at suitable
      enhancements. See also the "Tunnelling" section later.



2.3. Key benefits

   We believe that the mechanism described in this document has several
   advantages:








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   o It achieves statistical guarantees of quality of service for
      microflows, delivering a very low delay, jitter and packet loss
      service suitable for applications like voice and video calls that
      generate real time inelastic traffic. This is because of its per
      microflow admission control scheme, combined with its dynamic on-
      path "early warning" of potential congestion. The guarantee is at
      least as strong as with IntServ Controlled Load (Section 6.1
      mentions why the guarantee may be somewhat better), but without
      the scalability problems of per-microflow IntServ.

   o It can support "Emergency" and military Multi-Level Pre-emption
      and Priority services, even in times of heavy congestion (perhaps
      caused by failure of a node within the CL-region), by pre-empting
      on-going "ordinary CL microflows". See also Section 4.5.

   o It scales well, because there is no signal processing or path
      state held by the interior nodes of the CL-region.

   o It is resilient, again because no state is held by the interior
      nodes of the CL-region. Hence during an interior routing change
      caused by a node failure no microflow state has to be relocated.
      The flow pre-emption mechanism further helps resilience because it
      rapidly reduces the load to one that the CL-region can support.

   o It helps preserve, through the flow pre-emption mechanism, QoS to
      as many microflows as possible and to lower priority traffic in
      times of heavy congestion (e.g. caused by failure of an interior
      node). Otherwise long-lived microflows could cause loss on all CL
      microflows for a long time.

   o It avoids the potential catastrophic failure problem when the
      DiffServ architecture is used in large networks using statically
      provisioned capacity. This is achieved by controlling the load
      dynamically, based on edge-to-edge-path real-time measurement of
      Pre-Congestion Notification, as discussed in Section 1.1.1.

   o It requires minimal new standardisation, because it reuses
      existing QoS protocols and algorithms.

   o It can be deployed incrementally, region by region or network by
      network. Not all the regions or networks on the end-to-end path
      need to have it deployed. Two CL-regions can even be separated by
      a network that uses another QoS mechanism (e.g. MPLS-TE).






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   o It provides a deployment path for use of ECN for real-time
      applications. Operators can gain experience of ECN before its
      applicability to end-systems is understood and end terminals are
      ECN capable.












































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3. Architecture

3.1. Admission control

   In this section we describe the admission control mechanism. We
   discuss the three pieces of the solution and then give an example of
   how they fit together in a use case:

   o the new Pre-Congestion Notification for Admission Marking used by
      all nodes in the CL-region

   o how the measurements made support our admission control mechanism

   o how the edge to edge mechanism fits into the end to end RSVP
      signalling



3.1.1. Pre-Congestion Notification for Admission Marking

   This is discussed in [PCN]. Here we only give a brief outline.

   To support our admission control mechanism, each node in the CL-
   region runs an algorithm to determine whether to set the packet into
   the Admission Marked state. The algorithm measures the aggregate CL
   traffic on the link and ensures that packets are admission marked
   before the actual queue builds up, but when it is in danger of doing
   so soon; the probability of admission marking increases with the
   danger. The algorithm's main parameter is the configured-admission-
   rate, which is set lower than the link speed, perhaps considerably
   so. Admission marked packets indicate that the CL traffic rate is
   reaching the configured-admission-rate and so act as an "early
   warning" that the engineered capacity is nearly reached. Therefore
   they indicate that requests to admit prospective new CL flows may
   need to be refused.



3.1.2. Measurements to support admission control

   To support our admission control mechanism the egress measures the
   Congestion-Level-Estimate for traffic from each remote ingress
   gateway, i.e. per CL-region-aggregate. The Congestion-Level-Estimate
   is the number of bits in CL packets that are admission marked,
   divided by the number of bits in all CL packets. It is calculated as
   an exponentially weighted moving average. It is calculated by an
   egress node separately for the CL packets from each particular


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   ingress node. This Congestion-Level-Estimate provides an estimate of
   how near the links on the path inside the CL-region are getting to
   the configured-admission-rate. Note that the metering is done
   separately per ingress node, because there may be sufficient capacity
   on all the nodes on the path between one ingress gateway and a
   particular egress, but not from a second ingress to that same egress
   gateway.

3.1.3. How edge-to-edge admission control supports end-to-end QoS
   signalling

   Consider a scenario that consists of two end hosts, each connected to
   their own access networks, which are linked by the CL-region. A
   source tries to set up a new CL microflow by sending an RSVP PATH
   message, and the receiving end host replies with an RSVP RESV
   message. Outside the CL-region some other method, for instance
   IntServ, is used to provide QoS. From the perspective of RSVP the CL-
   region is a single hop, so the RSVP PATH and RESV messages are
   processed by the ingress and egress gateways but are carried
   transparently across all the interior nodes; hence, the ingress and
   egress gateways hold per microflow state, whilst no state is kept by
   the interior nodes. So far this is as in IntServ over DiffServ
   [RFC2998]. However, in order to support our admission control
   mechanism, the egress gateway adds to the RESV message an opaque
   object which states the current Congestion-Level-Estimate for the
   relevant CL-region-aggregate. Details of the corresponding RSVP
   extensions are described in [RSVP-ECN].

3.1.4. Use case

   To see how the three pieces of the solution fit together, we imagine
   a scenario where some microflows are already in place between a given
   pair of ingress and egress gateways, but the traffic load is such
   that no packets from these flows are admission marked as they travel
   across the CL-region. A source wanting to start a new CL microflow
   sends an RSVP PATH message. The egress gateway adds an object to the
   RESV message with the Congestion-Level-Estimate, which is zero. The
   ingress gateway sees this and consequently admits the new flow. It
   then forwards the RSVP RESV message upstream towards the source end
   host. Hence, assuming there's sufficient capacity in the access
   networks, the new microflow is admitted end-to-end.

   The source now sends CL packets, which arrive at the ingress gateway.
   The ingress uses a five-tuple filter to identify that the packets are
   part of a previously admitted CL microflow, and it also polices the
   microflow to ensure it remains within its traffic profile. (The
   ingress has learnt the required information from the RSVP messages.)


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   When forwarding a packet belonging to an admitted microflow, the
   ingress sets the packet's DSCP and ECN fields to the appropriate
   values configured for the CL region. The CL packet now travels across
   the CL-region, getting admission marked if necessary.

   Next, we imagine the same scenario but at a later time when load is
   higher at one (or more) of the interior nodes, which start to set CL
   packets into the Admission Marked state, because their load on the
   outgoing link is nearing the configured-admission-rate. The next time
   a source tries to set up a CL microflow, the ingress gateway learns
   (from the egress) the relevant Congestion-Level-Estimate. If it is
   greater than some CLE-threshold value then the ingress refuses the
   request, otherwise it is accepted.

   It is also possible for an egress gateway to get a RSVP RESV message
   and not know what the Congestion-Level-Estimate is. For example, if
   there are no CL microflows at present between the relevant ingress
   and egress gateways. In this case the egress requests the ingress to
   send probe packets, from which it can initialise its meter. RSVP
   Extensions for such a request to send probe data can be found in
   [RSVP-ECN].




3.2. Flow pre-emption

   In this section we describe the flow pre-emption mechanism. We
   discuss the two parts of the solution and then give an example of how
   they fit together in a use case:

   o How an ingress gateway is triggered to test whether flow pre-
      emption may be needed

   o How an ingress gateway determines the right amount of CL traffic
      to drop

   The mechanism is defined in [PCN] and [RSVP-ECN].

3.2.1. Alerting an ingress gateway that flow pre-emption may be needed

   Alerting an ingress gateway that flow pre-emption may be needed is a
   two stage process: a router in the CL-region alerts an egress gateway
   that flow pre-emption may be needed; in turn the egress gateway
   alerts the relevant ingress gateway. Every router in the CL-region




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   has the ability to alert egress gateways, which may be done either
   explicitly or implicitly:

   o Explicit - the router per-hop behaviour is supplemented with a new
      Pre-emption Marking behaviour, which is outlined below. Reception
      of such a packet by the egress gateway alerts it that pre-emption
      may be needed.

   o Implicit - the router behaviour is unchanged from the Admission
      Marking behaviour described earlier. The egress gateway treats a
      Congestion-Level-Estimate of (almost) 100% as an implicit alert
      that pre-emption may be required. ('Almost' because the
      Congestion-Level-Estimate is a moving average, so can never reach
      exactly 100%.)

   To support explicit pre-emption alerting, each node in the CL-region
   runs an algorithm to determine whether to set the packet into the
   Pre-emption Marked state. The algorithm measures the aggregate CL
   traffic and ensures that packets are pre-emption marked before the
   actual queue builds up. The algorithm's main parameter is the
   configured-pre-emption-rate, which is set lower than the link speed
   (but higher than the configured-admission-rate). Thus pre-emption
   marked packets indicate that the CL traffic rate is reaching the
   configured-pre-emption-rate and so act as an "early warning" that the
   engineered capacity is nearly reached. Therefore they indicate that
   it may be advisable to pre-empt some of the existing CL flows in
   order to preserve the QoS of the others.

   Note that the explicit mechanism only makes sense if all the routers
   in the CL-region have the functionality so that the egress gateways
   can rely on the explicit mechanism. Otherwise there is the danger
   that the traffic happens to focus on a router without it, and egress
   gateways then have also to watch for implicit pre-emption alerts.


   When one or more packets in a CL-region-aggregate alert the egress
   gateway of the need for flow pre-emption, whether explicitly or
   implicitly, the egress puts that CL-region-aggregate into the Pre-
   emption Alert state. For each CL-region-aggregate in alert state it
   measures the rate of traffic at the egress gateway (i.e. the traffic
   rate of the appropriate CL-region-aggregate) and reports this to the
   relevant ingress gateway. The steps are:






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   o Determine the relevant ingress gateway - for the explicit case the
      egress gateway examines the pre-emption marked packet and uses the
      state installed at the time of admission to determine which
      ingress gateway the packet came from. For the implicit case the
      egress gateway has already determined this information, because
      the Congestion-Level-Estimate is calculated per ingress gateway.

   o Measure the traffic rate of CL packets - as soon as the egress
      gateway is alerted (whether explicitly or implicitly) it measures
      the rate of CL traffic from this ingress gateway (i.e. for this
      CL-region-aggregate). Note that pre-emption marked packets are
      excluded from that measurement. It should make its measurement
      quickly and accurately, but exactly how is up to the
      implementation.

   o Alert the ingress gateway - the egress gateway then immediately
      alerts the relevant ingress gateway about the fact that flow pre-
      emption may be required. This Alert message also includes the
      measured Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate, i.e. the egress rate of CL-
      traffic for this ingress gateway. The Alert message is sent using
      reliable delivery. Procedures for support of such an Alert using
      RSVP are defined in [RSVP-ECN].

                                   _     _
             --------------       /       \          -----------------
CL packet   |Update        |     / Is it a \   Y    | Measure CL rate |
arrives --->|Congestion-   |--->/pre-emption\-----> | from ingress and|
            |Level-Estimate|    \  marked   /       | alert ingress   |
             --------------      \ packet? /         -----------------
                                  \_     _/

Figure 2: Egress gateway action for explicit Pre-emption Alert



                                   _     _
             --------------       /       \          -----------------
CL packet   |Update        |     /  Is     \   Y    | Measure CL rate |
arrives --->|Congestion-   |--->/  C.L.E.   \-----> | from ingress and|
            |Level-Estimate|    \ (nearly)  /       | alert ingress   |
             --------------      \ 100%?   /         -----------------
                                  \_     _/

Figure 3: Egress gateway action for implicit Pre-emption Alert


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3.2.2. Determining the right amount of CL traffic to drop

   The method relies on the insight that the amount of CL traffic that
   can be supported between a particular pair of ingress and egress
   gateways, is the amount of CL traffic that is actually getting across
   the CL-region to the egress gateway without being re-marked to the
   Pre-emption Marked state. Hence we term it the Sustainable-Aggregate-
   Rate.

   So when the ingress gateway gets the Alert message from an egress
   gateway, it compares:

   o The traffic rate that it is sending to this particular egress
      gateway (which we term ingress-aggregate-rate)

   o The traffic rate that the egress gateway reports (in the Alert
      message) that it is receiving from this ingress gateway (which is
      the Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate)

   If the difference is significant, then the ingress gateway pre-empts
   some microflows. It only pre-empts if:

        Ingress-aggregate-rate > Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate + error

   The "error" term is partly to allow for inaccuracies in the
   measurements of the rates. It is also needed because the ingress-
   aggregate-rate is measured at a slightly later moment than the
   Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate, and it is quite possible that the
   ingress-aggregate-rate has increased in the interim due to natural
   variation of the bit rate of the CL sources. So the "error" term
   allows for some variation in the ingress rate without triggering pre-
   emption.

   The ingress gateway should pre-empt enough microflows to ensure that:

        New ingress-aggregate-rate < Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate - error

   The "error" term here is used for similar reasons but in the other
   direction, to ensure slightly more load is shed than seems necessary,
   in case the two measurements were taken during a short-term fall in
   load.

   When the routers in the CL-region are using explicit pre-emption
   alerting, the ingress gateway would normally pre-empt microflows
   whenever it gets an alert (it always would if it were possible to set



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   "error" equal to zero). For the implicit case however this is not so.
   It receives an Alert message when the Congestion-Level-Estimate
   reaches (almost) 100%, which is roughly when traffic exceeds the
   configured-admission-rate. However, it is only when packets are
   indeed dropped en route that the Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate becomes
   less than the ingress-aggregate-rate so only then will pre-emption
   will actually occur on the ingress router.

   Hence with the implicit scheme, pre-emption can only be triggered
   once the system starts dropping packets and thus the QoS of flows
   starts being significantly degraded. This is in contrast with the
   explicit scheme which allows flow pre-emption to be triggered before
   any packet drop, simply when the traffic reaches the configured-pre-
   emption-rate. Therefore we believe that the explicit mechanism is
   superior. However it does require new functionality on all the
   routers (although this is little more than a bulk token bucket - see
   [PCN] for details).



3.2.3. Use case for flow pre-emption

   To see how the pieces of the solution fit together in a use case, we
   imagine a scenario where many microflows have already been admitted.
   We confine our description to the explicit pre-emption mechanism. Now
   an interior router in the CL-region fails. The network layer routing
   protocol re-routes round the problem, but as a consequence traffic on
   other links increases. In fact let's assume the traffic on one link
   now exceeds its configured-pre-emption-rate and so the router pre-
   emption marks CL packets. When the egress sees the first one of the
   pre-emption marked packets it immediately determines which microflow
   this packet is part of (by using a five-tuple filter and comparing it
   with state installed at admission) and hence which ingress gateway
   the packet came from. It sets up a meter to measure the traffic rate
   from this ingress gateway, and as soon as possible sends a message to
   the ingress gateway. This message alerts the ingress gateway that
   pre-emption may be needed and contains the traffic rate measured by
   the egress gateway. Then the ingress gateway determines the traffic
   rate that it is sending towards this egress gateway and hence it can
   calculate the amount of traffic that needs to be pre-empted.

   The ingress gateway could now just shed random microflows, but it is
   better if the least important ones are dropped. The ingress gateway
   could use information stored locally in each reservation's state
   (such as for example the RSVP pre-emption priority) as well as
   information provided by a policy decision point in order to decide
   which of the flows to shed (or perhaps which ones not to shed). The


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   ingress gateway then initiates RSVP signalling to instruct the
   relevant destinations that their session has been terminated, and to
   tell (RSVP) nodes along the path to tear down associated RSVP state.
   To guard against recalcitrant sources, normal IntServ policing will
   block any future traffic from the dropped flows from entering the CL-
   region. Note that - with the explicit Pre-emption Alert mechanism -
   since the configured-pre-emption-rate may be significantly less than
   the physical line capacity, flow pre-emption may be triggered before
   any congestion has actually occurred and before any packet is
   dropped.

   We extend the scenario further by imagining that (due to a disaster
   of some kind) further routers in the CL-region fail during the time
   taken by the pre-emption process described above. This is handled
   naturally, as packets will continue to be pre-emption marked and so
   the pre-emption process will happen for a second time.

   Flow pre-emption also helps emergency/military calls by taking into
   account the corresponding call priorities when selecting calls to be
   pre-empted, which is likely to be particularly important in a
   disaster scenario.




























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4. Details

   This section is intended to provide a systematic summary of the new
   functionality required by the routers in the CL-region.

   A network operator upgrades normal IP routers by:

   o Adding functionality related to admission control and flow pre-
      emption to all its ingress and egress gateways

   o Adding Pre-Congestion Notification for Admission and Pre-emption
      Marking to all the nodes in the CL-region.

   We consider the detailed actions required for each of the types of
   node in turn.

4.1. Ingress gateways

   Ingress gateways perform the following tasks:

   o Classify incoming packets - decide whether they are CL or non-CL
      packets. This is done using an IntServ filter spec (source and
      destination addresses and port numbers), whose details have been
      gathered from the RSVP messaging.

   o Police - check that the microflow conforms with what has been
      agreed (i.e. it keeps to its agreed data rate). If necessary,
      packets which do not correspond to any reservations, packets which
      are in excess of the rate agreed for their reservation, and
      packets for a reservation that has earlier been pre-empted may be
      policed. Policing may be achieved via dropping or via re-marking
      of the packet's DSCP to a value different from the CL behaviour
      aggregate.

   o Packet ECN colouring - for CL microflows, set the ECN field
      appropriately (see [PCN] for some discussion of encoding)

   o Perform 'interior node' functions (see next sub-section)

   o Admission Control - on new session establishment, consider the
      Congestion-Level-Estimate received from the corresponding egress
      gateway and most likely based on a simple configured CLE-threshold
      decide if a new call is to be admitted or rejected (taking into
      account local policy information as well as optionally information
      provided by a policy decision point).




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   o Probe - if requested by the egress gateway to do so, the ingress
      gateway generates probe traffic so that the egress gateway can
      compute the Congestion-Level-Estimate from this ingress gateway.
      Probe packets may be simple data addressed to the egress gateway
      and require no protocol standardisation, although there will be
      best practice for their number, size and rate.

   o Measure - when it receives an Alert message from an egress
      gateway, it determines the rate at which it is sending packets to
      that egress gateway

   o Pre-empt - calculate how much CL traffic needs to be pre-empted;
      decide which microflows should be dropped, perhaps in consultation
      with a Policy Decision Point; and do the necessary signalling to
      drop them.

4.2. Interior nodes

   Interior nodes do the following tasks:

   o Classify packets - examine the DSCP and ECN field to see if it's a
      CL packet

   o Non-CL packets are handled as usual, with respect to dropping them
      or setting their CE codepoint.

   o Pre-Congestion Notification - CL packets are Admission Marked and
      Pre-emption Marked according to the algorithm detailed in [PCN]
      and outlined in Section 3.



4.3. Egress gateways

   Egress gateways do the following tasks:

   o Classify packets - determine which ingress gateway a CL packet has
      come from. This is the previous RSVP hop, hence the necessary
      details are obtained just as with IntServ from the state
      associated with the packet five-tuple, which has been built using
      information from the RSVP messages.








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   o Meter - for CL packets, calculate the fraction of the total number
      of bits which are in Admission marked packets. The calculation is
      done as an exponentially weighted moving average (see Appendix). A
      separate calculation is made for CL packets from each ingress
      gateway. The meter works on an aggregate basis and not per
      microflow.

   o Signal the Congestion-Level-Estimate - this is piggy-backed on the
      reservation reply. An egress gateway's interface is configured to
      know it is an egress gateway, so it always appends this to the
      RESV message. If the Congestion-Level-Estimate is unknown or is
      too stale, then the egress gateway can request the ingress gateway
      to send probes.

   o Packet colouring - for CL packets, set the DSCP and the ECN field
      to whatever has been agreed as appropriate for the next domain. By
      default the ECN field is set to the Not-ECT codepoint. See also
      the discussion in the Tunnelling section later.

   o Measure the rate - measure the rate of CL traffic from a
      particular ingress gateway (i.e. the rate for the CL-region-
      aggregate), when alerted (either explicitly or implicitly) that
      pre-emption may be required. The measured rate is reported back to
      the appropriate ingress gateway [RSVP-ECN].

4.4. Failures

   If an interior node fails, then the regular IP routing protocol will
   re-route round it. If the new route can carry all the admitted
   traffic, flows will gracefully continue. If instead this causes early
   warning of congestion from the new route, then admission control
   based on pre-congestion notification will ensure new flows will not
   be admitted until enough existing flows have departed. Finally re-
   routing may result in heavy congestion, when the pre-emption
   mechanism will kick in.

   If a gateway fails then we would like regular RSVP procedures
   [RFC2205] to take care of things. With the local repair mechanism of
   [RFC2205], when a route changes the next RSVP PATH refresh message
   will establish path state along the new route, and thus attempt to
   re-establish reservations through the new ingress gateway.
   Essentially the same procedure is used as described earlier in this
   document, with the re-routed session treated as a new session
   request.

   In more detail, consider what happens if an ingress gateway of the
   CL-region fails. Then RSVP routers upstream of it do IP re-routing to


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   a new ingress gateway. The next time the upstream RSVP router sends a
   PATH refresh message it reaches the new ingress gateway which
   therefore installs the associated RSVP state. The next RSVP RESV
   refresh will pick up the congestion-level-estimate from the egress
   gateway, and the ingress compares this with its threshold to decide
   whether to admit the new session. This could result in some of the
   flows being rejected, but those accepted will receive the full QoS.

   An issue with this is that we have to wait until a PATH and RESV
   refresh messages are sent - which may not be very often - the default
   value is 30 seconds. [RFC2205] discusses how to speed up the local
   repair mechanism. First, the RSVP module is notified by the local
   routing protocol module of a route change to particular destinations,
   which triggers it to rapidly send out PATH refresh messages. Further,
   when a PATH refresh arrives with a previous hop address different
   from the one stored, then RESV refreshes are immediately sent to that
   previous hop. Where RSVP is operating hop-by-hop, ie on every router,
   then triggering the PATH refresh is easy as the node can simply
   monitor its local link. Thus, this fast local repair mechanism can be
   used to deal with failures upstream of the ingress gateway, with
   failures of the ingress gateway and with failures downstream of the
   egress gateway.

   But where RSVP is not operating hop-by-hop (as is the case within the
   CL-region), it is not so easy to trigger the PATH refresh.

   Unfortunately, this problem applies if an egress gateway fails, since
   it's very likely that an egress gateway is several IP hops from the
   ingress gateway. (If the ingress is several IP hops from its previous
   RSVP node, then there is the same issue.) The options appear to be:

   o the ingress gateway has a link state database for the CL-region,
      so it can detect that an egress gateway has failed or became
      unreachable

   o there is an inter-gateway protocol, so the ingress can
      continuously check that the egress gateways are still alive

   o (default) do nothing and wait for the regular PATH/RESV refreshes
      (and, if needed, the pre-emption mechanism) to sort things out.



4.5. Admission of 'emergency / higher precedence' session

   Section 4.1 describes how if the Congestion-Level-Estimate is greater
   than the CLE-threshold all new sessions are refused. But it is


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   unsatisfactory to block emergency calls, for instance. Therefore it
   is recommended that an 'emergency / higher precedence' call is
   admitted immediately even if the CLE-threshold is exceeded. Usually
   the network can actually handle the additional microflow, because
   there is a safety margin between the configured-admission-rate and
   the configured-pre-emption-rate. Normal call termination behaviour
   will soon bring the traffic level down below the configured-
   admission-rate. However, in exceptional circumstances the 'emergency
   / higher precedence' call may cause the traffic level to exceed the
   configured-pre-emption-rate; then the usual pre-emption mechanism
   will pre-empt enough (non 'emergency / higher precedence' )
   microflows to bring the total traffic back under the configured-pre-
   emption-rate.

4.6. Tunnelling

   It is possible to tunnel all CL packets across the CL-region.
   Although there is a cost of tunnelling (additional header on each
   packet, additional processing at tunnel ingress and egress), there
   are three reasons it may be interesting.

   ECMP:

   If the CL-region uses Equal Cost Multipath Routing (ECMP), then
   traffic between a particular pair of ingress and egress gateways may
   follow several different paths.

   Why? An ECMP-enabled router runs an algorithm to choose between
   potential outgoing links, based on a hash of fields such as the
   packet's source and destination addresses - exactly what depends on
   the proprietary algorithm. Packets are addressed to the CL flow's
   end-point, and therefore different flows may follow different paths
   through the CL-region.

   The problem is that if one of the paths is congested such that
   packets are being admission marked, then the Congestion-Level-
   Estimate measured by the egress gateway will be diluted by unmarked
   packets from other non-congested paths. Similarly, the measurement of
   the Sustainable-Aggregate-Rate will also be diluted.

   One solution is to tunnel across the CL-region. Then the destination
   address (and so on) seen by the ECMP algorithm is that of the egress
   gateway, so all flows follow the same path.



   Ingress gateway determination:


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   If packets are tunnelled from ingress gateway to egress gateway, the
   egress gateway can very easily determine in the datapath which
   ingress gateway a packet comes from (by simply looking at the source
   address of the tunnel header). This can facilitate operations such as
   computing the Congestion-Level-Estimate on a per ingress gateway
   basis.



   End-to-end ECN:

   The ECN field is used for PCN marking (see [PCN] for details), and so
   it needs to be re-set by the egress gateway to whatever has been
   agreed as appropriate for the next domain. Therefore if a packet
   arrives at the ingress gateway with its ECN field already set (ie not
   '00'), it may leave the egress gateway with a different value. Hence
   the end-to-end meaning of the ECN field is lost.

   It is open to debate whether end-to-end congestion control is ever
   necessary within an end-to-end reservation. But if a genuine need is
   identified for end-to-end ECN semantics within a reservation, then
   one solution is to tunnel CL packets across the CL-region. When the
   egress gateway decapsulates them the original ECN field is recovered.


























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5. Potential future extensions

5.1. Mechanisms to deal with 'Flash crowds'

   There is a time lag between the admission control decision (which
   depends on the Congestion-Level-Estimate during RSVP signalling
   during call set-up) and when the data is actually sent (after the
   called party has answered). In PSTN terms this is the time the phone
   rings. Normally the time lag doesn't matter much because (1) in the
   CL-region there are many flows and they terminate and are answered at
   roughly the same rate, and (2) the network can still operate safely
   when the traffic level is some margin above the configured-admission-
   rate.

   A 'flash crowd' occurs when something causes many calls to be
   initiated in a short period of time - for instance a 'televote'. So
   there is a danger that a 'flash' of calls is accepted, but when the
   calls are answered and data flows the traffic overloads the network.
   There are various possible ways an operator could try to address the
   problem.

   The simplest option is to do nothing; an operator relies on the pre-
   emption mechanism if there is a problem. This doesn't seem a good
   choice, as 'flash crowds' are reasonably common on the PSTN, unless
   the operator can ensure that nearly all "flash crowd" events are
   blocked in the access network and so do not impact on the CL-region.

   A second option is to send 'dummy data' as soon as the call is
   admitted, thus effectively reserving the bandwidth whilst waiting for
   the called party to answer. Reserving bandwidth in advance means that
   the network cannot admit as many calls. For example, suppose sessions
   last 100 seconds and ringing for 10 seconds, the cost is a 10% loss
   of capacity. It may be possible to offset this somewhat by increasing
   the configured-admission-rate in the routers, but it would need
   further investigation.

   A concern with this 'dummy data' option is that it may allow an
   attacker to initiate many calls that are never answered (by a
   cooperating attacker), so eventually the network would only be
   carrying 'dummy data'. The attack exploits that charging only starts
   when the call is answered and not when it is dialled. It may be
   possible to alleviate the attack at the session layer - for example,
   when the ingress gateway gets an RSVP PATH message it checks that the
   source has been well-behaved recently.

   A third option is that the egress gateway limits the rate at which it
   sends out the Congestion-Level-Estimate, or limits the rate at which


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   calls are accepted by replying with a Congestion-Level-Estimate of
   100% (this is the equivalent of 'call gapping' in the PSTN). There is
   a trade-off, which would need to be investigated further, between the
   degree of protection and possible adverse side-effects like slowing
   down call set-up.

   A final option is to re-perform admission control before the call is
   answered. The ingress gateway monitors Congestion-Level-Estimate
   updates received from each egress. If it notices that a Congestion-
   Level-Estimate has risen above the CLE-threshold, then it terminates
   all unanswered calls through that egress (eg by instructing the
   session protocol to stop the 'ringing tone'). For extra safety the
   Congestion-Level-Estimate could be re-checked when the call is
   answered. A potential drawback for an operator that wants to emulate
   the PSTN is that the PSTN network never drops a 'ringing' PSTN call.



5.2. Multi-domain and multi-operator usage

   This potential extension would eliminate the trust assumption
   (Section 2.2), so that the CL-region could consist of multiple
   domains run by different operators that did not trust each other.
   Then only the ingress and egress gateways of the CL-region would take
   part in the admission control procedure, i.e. at the ingress to the
   first domain and the egress from the final domain. The border routers
   between operators within the CL-region would only have to do bulk
   accounting - they wouldn't do per microflow metering and policing,
   and they wouldn't take part in signal processing or hold path state
   [Briscoe]. [Re-feedback] explains how a downstream domain can police
   that its upstream domain does not 'cheat' by admitting traffic when
   the downstream path is over-congested. [Re-PCN] proposes how to
   achieve this with the help of another recently proposed extension to
   ECN, involving re-echoing ECN feedback [Re-ECN].



5.3. Adaptive bandwidth for the Controlled Load service

   The admission control mechanism described in this document assumes
   that each router has a fixed bandwidth allocated to CL flows. A
   possible extension is that the bandwidth is flexible, depending on
   the level of non-CL traffic. If a large share of the current load on
   a path is CL, then more CL traffic can be admitted. And if the
   greater share of the load is non-CL, then the admission threshold can
   be proportionately lower. The approach re-arranges sharing between
   classes to aim for economic efficiency, whatever the traffic load


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   matrix. It also deals with unforeseen changes to capacity during
   failures better than configuring fixed engineered rates. Adaptive
   bandwidth allocation can be achieved by changing the admission
   marking behaviour, so that the probability of admission marking a
   packet would now depend on the number of queued non-CL packets as
   well as the size of the virtual queue. The adaptive bandwidth
   approach would be supplemented by placing limits on the adaptation to
   prevent starvation of the CL by other traffic classes and of other
   classes by CL traffic.

5.4. Controlled Load service with end-to-end Pre-Congestion Notification

   It may be possible to extend the framework to parts of the network
   where there are only a low number of CL microflows, i.e. the
   aggregation assumption (Section 2.2) doesn't hold. In the extreme it
   may be possible to operate the framework end-to-end, i.e. between end
   hosts. One potential method is to send probe packets to test whether
   the network can support a prospective new CL microflow. The probe
   packets would be sent at the same traffic rate as expected for the
   actual microflow, but in order not to disturb existing CL traffic a
   router would always schedule probe packets behind CL ones (compare
   [Breslau00]); this implies they have a new DSCP. Otherwise the
   routers would treat probe packets identically to CL packets. In order
   to perform admission control quickly, in parts of the network where
   there are only a few CL microflows, the Pre-Congestion marking
   behaviour for probe packets would switch from admission marking no
   packets to admission marking them all for only a minimal increase in
   load.

5.5. MPLS-TE

   It may be possible to extend the framework for admission control of
   microflows into a set of MPLS-TE aggregates (Multi-protocol label
   switching traffic engineering). However it would require that the
   MPLS header could include the ECN field, which is not precluded by
   RFC3270.













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6. Relationship to other QoS mechanisms

6.1. IntServ Controlled Load

   The CL mechanism delivers QoS similar to Integrated Services
   controlled load, but rather better as queues are kept empty by
   driving admission control from a bulk virtual queue on each interface
   that can detect a rise in load before queues build, sometimes termed
   a virtual queue [AVQ, vq]. It is also more robust to route changes.

6.2. Integrated services operation over DiffServ

   Our approach to end-to-end QoS is similar to that described in
   [RFC2998] for Integrated services operation over DiffServ networks.
   Like [RFC2998], an IntServ class (CL in our case) is achieved end-to-
   end, with a CL-region viewed as a single reservation hop in the total
   end-to-end path. Interior routers of the CL-region do not process
   flow signalling nor do they hold state. Unlike [RFC2998] we do not
   require the end-to-end signalling mechanism to be RSVP, although it
   can be.

   Bearing in mind these differences, we can describe our architecture
   in the terms of the options in [RFC2998]. The DiffServ network region
   is RSVP-aware, but awareness is confined to (what [RFC2998] calls)
   the "border routers" of the DiffServ region. We use explicit
   admission control into this region, with static provisioning within
   it. The ingress "border router" does per microflow policing and sets
   the DSCP and ECN fields to indicate the packets are CL ones (i.e. we
   use router marking rather than host marking).

6.3. Differentiated Services

   The DiffServ architecture does not specify any way for devices
   outside the domain to dynamically reserve resources or receive
   indications of network resource availability.  In practice, service
   providers rely on subscription-time Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
   that statically define the parameters of the traffic that will be
   accepted from a customer. The CL mechanism allows dynamic reservation
   of resources through the DiffServ domain and, with the potential
   extension mentioned in Section 5.1, it can span multiple domains
   without active policing mechanisms at the borders (unlike DiffServ).
   Therefore we do not use the traffic conditioning agreements (TCAs) of
   the (informational) DiffServ architecture [RFC2475].

   [Johnson] compares admission control with a 'generously dimensioned'
   DiffServ network as ways to achieve QoS. The former is recommended.



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6.4. ECN

   The marking behaviour described in this document complies with the
   ECN aspects of the IP wire protocol RFC3168, but provides its own
   edge-to-edge feedback instead of the TCP aspects of RFC3168. All
   nodes within the CL-region are upgraded with the admission marking
   and pre-emption marking of Pre-Congestion Notification, so the
   requirements of [Floyd] are met because the CL-region is an enclosed
   environment. The operator prevents traffic arriving at a node that
   doesn't understand CL by administrative configuration of the ring of
   gateways around the CL-region.

6.5. RTECN

   Real-time ECN (RTECN) [RTECN, RTECN-usage] has a similar aim to this
   document (to achieve a low delay, jitter and loss service suitable
   for RT traffic) and a similar approach (per microflow admission
   control combined with an "early warning" of potential congestion
   through setting the CE codepoint). But it explores a different
   architecture without the aggregation assumption: host-to-host rather
   than edge-to-edge. We plan to document such a host-to-host framework
   in a parallel draft to this one, and to describe if and how [PCN] can
   work in this framework.



6.6. RMD

   Resource Management in DiffServ (RMD) [RMD] is similar to this work,
   in that it pushes complex classification, traffic conditioning and
   admission control functions to the edge of a DiffServ domain and
   simplifies the operation of the interior nodes. One of the RMD modes
   uses measurement-based admission control, however it works
   differently: each interior node measures the user traffic load in the
   PHB traffic aggregate, and each interior node processes a local
   RESERVE message and compares the requested resources with the
   available resources (maximum allowed load minus current load).

   Hence a difference is that the CL architecture described in this
   document has been designed not to require interaction between
   interior nodes and signalling, whereas in RMD all interior nodes are
   QoS-NSLP aware. So our architecture involves less processing in
   interior nodes, is more agnostic to signalling, requires fewer
   changes to existing standards and therefore works with existing RSVP
   as well as having the potential to work with future signalling
   protocols like NSIS.



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   RMD introduced the concept of Severe Congestion handling. The pre-
   emption mechanism described in the CL architecture has similar
   objectives but relies on different mechanisms.

   It is planned to work together with the authors of [RMD] and that the
   next version of this draft and [PCN] will be co-authored with them.

6.7. RSVP Aggregation over MPLS-TE

   Multi-protocol label switching traffic engineering (MPLS-TE) allows
   scalable reservation of resources in the core for an aggregate of
   many microflows. To achieve end-to-end reservations, admission
   control and policing of microflows into the aggregate can be achieved
   using techniques such as RSVP Aggregation over MPLS TE Tunnels as per
   [AGGRE-TE]. However, in the case of inter-provider environments,
   these techniques require that admission control and policing be
   repeated at each trust boundary or that MPLS TE tunnels span multiple
   domains.



7. Security Considerations

   To protect against denial of service attacks, the ingress gateway of
   the CL-region needs to police all CL packets and drop packets in
   excess of the reservation. This is similar to operations with
   existing IntServ behaviour.

   For pre-emption, it is considered acceptable from a security
   perspective that the ingress gateway can treat "emergency/military"
   CL flows preferentially compared with "ordinary" CL flows. However,
   in the rest of the CL-region they are not distinguished (nonetheless,
   our proposed technique does not preclude the use of different DSCPs
   at the packet level as well as different priorities at the flow
   level.). Keeping emergency traffic indistinguishable at the packet
   level minimises the opportunity for new security attacks. For
   example, if instead a mechanism used different DSCPs for
   "emergency/military" and "ordinary" packets, then an attacker could
   specifically target the former in the data plane (perhaps for DoS or
   for eavesdropping).

   Further security aspects to be considered later.







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8. Acknowledgements

   The admission control mechanism evolved from the work led by Martin
   Karsten on the Guaranteed Stream Provider developed in the M3I
   project [GSPa, GSP-TR], which in turn was based on the theoretical
   work of Gibbens and Kelly [DCAC]. Kennedy Cheng, Gabriele Corliano,
   Carla Di Cairano-Gilfedder, Kashaf Khan, Peter Hovell, Arnaud Jacquet
   and June Tay (BT) helped develop and evaluate this approach.

9. Comments solicited

   Comments and questions are encouraged and very welcome. They can be
   sent to the Transport Area Working Group's mailing list,
   tsvwg@ietf.org, and/or to the authors.

10. Changes from earlier versions of the draft

   The main changes are:

   From -00 to -01

   The whole of the Pre-emption mechanism is added.

   There are several modifications to the admission control mechanism.



   From -01 to -02

   The pre-congestion notification algorithms for admission marking and
   pre-emption marking are now described in [PCN].

   There are new sub-sections in Section 4 on Failures, Admission of
   'emergency / higher precedence' session, and Tunnelling; and a new
   sub-section in Section 5 on Mechanisms to deal with 'Flash crowds'.














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11. Appendices

11.1. Appendix A: Explicit Congestion Notification

   This Appendix provides a brief summary of Explicit Congestion
   Notification (ECN).

   [RFC3168] specifies the incorporation of ECN to TCP and IP, including
   ECN's use of two bits in the IP header. It specifies a method for
   indicating incipient congestion to end-nodes (eg as in RED, Random
   Early Detection), where the notification is through ECN marking
   packets rather than dropping them.

   ECN uses two bits in the IP header of both IPv4 and IPv6 packets:

            0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7
         +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
         |          DS FIELD, DSCP           | ECN FIELD |
         +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

           DSCP: differentiated services codepoint
           ECN:  Explicit Congestion Notification

   Figure A.1: The Differentiated Services and ECN Fields in IP.

   The two bits of the ECN field have four ECN codepoints, '00' to '11':
         +-----+-----+
         | ECN FIELD |
         +-----+-----+
           ECT   CE
            0     0         Not-ECT
            0     1         ECT(1)
            1     0         ECT(0)
            1     1         CE

   Figure A.2: The ECN Field in IP.

   The not-ECT codepoint '00' indicates a packet that is not using ECN.

   The CE codepoint '11' is set by a router to indicate congestion to
   the end nodes. The term 'CE packet' denotes a packet that has the CE
   codepoint set.

   The ECN-Capable Transport (ECT) codepoints '10' and '01' (ECT(0) and
   ECT(1) respectively) are set by the data sender to indicate that the
   end-points of the transport protocol are ECN-capable. Routers treat
   the ECT(0) and ECT(1) codepoints as equivalent. Senders are free to


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   use either the ECT(0) or the ECT(1) codepoint to indicate ECT, on a
   packet-by-packet basis. The use of both the two codepoints for ECT is
   motivated primarily by the desire to allow mechanisms for the data
   sender to verify that network elements are not erasing the CE
   codepoint, and that data receivers are properly reporting to the
   sender the receipt of packets with the CE codepoint set.

   ECN requires support from the transport protocol, in addition to the
   functionality given by the ECN field in the IP packet header.
   [RFC3168] addresses the addition of ECN Capability to TCP, specifying
   three new pieces of functionality: negotiation between the endpoints
   during connection setup to determine if they are both ECN-capable; an
   ECN-Echo (ECE) flag in the TCP header so that the data receiver can
   inform the data sender when a CE packet has been received; and a
   Congestion Window Reduced (CWR) flag in the TCP header so that the
   data sender can inform the data receiver that the congestion window
   has been reduced.

   The transport layer (e.g.. TCP) must respond, in terms of congestion
   control, to a *single* CE packet as it would to a packet drop.

   The advantage of setting the CE codepoint as an indication of
   congestion, instead of relying on packet drops, is that it allows the
   receiver(s) to receive the packet, thus avoiding the potential for
   excessive delays due to retransmissions after packet losses.



11.2. Appendix B: What is distributed measurement-based admission
   control?

   This Appendix briefly explains what distributed measurement-based
   admission control is [Breslau99].

   Traditional admission control algorithms for 'hard' real-time
   services (those providing a firm delay bound for example) guarantee
   QoS by using 'worst case analysis'. Each time a flow is admitted its
   traffic parameters are examined and the network re-calculates the
   remaining resources. When the network gets a new request it therefore
   knows for certain whether the prospective flow, with its particular
   parameters, should be admitted. However, parameter-based admission
   control algorithms result in under-utilisation when the traffic is
   bursty. Therefore 'soft' real time services - like Controlled Load -
   can use a more relaxed admission control algorithm.

   This insight suggests measurement-based admission control (MBAC). The
   aim of MBAC is to provide a statistical service guarantee. The


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   classic scenario for MBAC is where each node participates in hop-by-
   hop admission control, characterising existing traffic locally
   through measurements (instead of keeping an accurate track of traffic
   as it is admitted), in order to determine the current value of some
   parameter e.g. load. Note that for scalability the measurement is of
   the aggregate of the flows in the local system. The measured
   parameter(s) is then compared to the requirements of the prospective
   flow to see whether it should be admitted.

   MBAC may also be performed centrally for a network, it which case it
   uses centralised measurements by a bandwidth broker.

   We use distributed MBAC. "Distributed" means that the measurement is
   accumulated for the 'whole-path' using in-band signalling. In our
   case, this means that the measurement of existing traffic is for the
   same pair of ingress and egress gateways as the prospective
   microflow.

   In fact our mechanism can be said to be distributed in three ways:
   all nodes on the ingress-egress path affect the Congestion-Level-
   Estimate; the admission control decision is made just once on behalf
   of all the nodes on the path across the CL-region; and the ingress
   and egress gateways cooperate to perform MBAC.



11.3. Appendix C: Calculating the Exponentially weighted moving average
   (EWMA)

   At the egress gateway, for every CL packet arrival:

   [EWMA-total-bits]n+1  =  (w * bits-in-packet)  +  ((1-w) * [EWMA-
   total-bits]n )

   [EWMA-AM-bits]n+1  =  (B * w * bits-in-packet)  +  ((1-w) * [EWMA-AM-
   bits]n )

   Then, per new flow arrival:

   [Congestion-Level-Estimate]n+1  =  [EWMA-AM-bits]n+1  /  [EWMA-total-
   bits]n+1



   where




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   EWMA-total-bits is the total number of bits in CL packets, calculated
   as an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA)

   EWMA-AM-bits is the total number of bits in CL packets that are
   Admission Marked, again calculated as an EWMA.

   B is either 0 or 1:

     B = 0 if the CL packet is not admission marked

     B = 1 if the CL packet is admission marked

   w is the exponential weighting factor.


   Varying the value of the weight trades off between the smoothness and
   responsiveness of the Congestion-Level-Estimate. However, in general
   both can be achieved, given our original assumption of many CL
   microflows and remembering that the EWMA is calculated on the basis
   of aggregate traffic between the ingress and egress gateways.
   There will be a threshold inter-arrival time between packets of the
   same aggregate below which the egress will consider the estimate of
   the Congestion-Level-Estimate as too stale, and it will then trigger
   generation of probes by the ingress.

   The first two per-packet algorithms can be simplified, if their only
   use will be where the result of one is divided by the result of the
   other in the third, per-flow algorithm.

   [EWMA-total-bits]'n+1  =  bits-in-packet  +  (w' * [EWMA- total-
   bits]n )

   [EWMA-AM-bits]'n+1  =  (B * bits-in-packet)  +  (w' * [EWMA-AM-bits]n
   )

   where w' = (1-w)/w.

   If w' is arranged to be a power of 2, these per packet algorithms can
   be implemented solely with a shift and an add.






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12. References

   A later version will distinguish normative and informative
   references.

   [AGGRE-TE]    Francois Le Faucheur, Michael Dibiasio, Bruce Davie,
                 Michael Davenport, Chris Christou, Jerry Ash, Bur
                 Goode, 'Aggregation of RSVP Reservations over MPLS
                 TE/DS-TE Tunnels', draft-ietf-tsvwg-rsvp-dste-00 (work
                 in progress), July 2005

   [ANSI.MLPP.Spec] American National Standards Institute,
                 "Telecommunications- Integrated Services Digital
                 Network (ISDN) - Multi-Level Precedence and Pre-
                 emption (MLPP) Service Capability", ANSI T1.619-1992
                 (R1999), 1992.

   [ANSI.MLPP.Supplement] American National Standards Institute, "MLPP
                 Service Domain Cause Value Changes", ANSI ANSI
                 T1.619a-1994 (R1999), 1990.

   [AVQ]         S. Kunniyur and R. Srikant "Analysis and Design of an
                 Adaptive Virtual Queue (AVQ) Algorithm for Active
                 Queue Management", In: Proc. ACM SIGCOMM'01, Computer
                 Communication Review 31 (4) (October, 2001).

   [Breslau99]   L. Breslau, S. Jamin, S. Shenker "Measurement-based
                 admission control: what is the research agenda?", In:
                 Proc. Int'l Workshop on Quality of Service 1999.

   [Breslau00]   L. Breslau, E. Knightly, S. Shenker, I. Stoica, H.
                 Zhang "Endpoint Admission Control: Architectural
                 Issues and Performance", In: ACM SIGCOMM 2000

   [Briscoe]     Bob Briscoe and Steve Rudkin, "Commercial Models for
                 IP Quality of Service Interconnect", BT Technology
                 Journal, Vol 23 No 2, April 2005.

   [DCAC]        Richard J. Gibbens and Frank P. Kelly "Distributed
                 connection acceptance control for a connectionless
                 network", In: Proc. International Teletraffic Congress
                 (ITC16), Edinburgh, pp. 941—952 (1999).

   [EMERG-RQTS]  Carlberg, K. and R. Atkinson, "General Requirements
                 for Emergency Telecommunication Service (ETS)", RFC
                 3689, February 2004.



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   [EMERG-TEL]   Carlberg, K. and R. Atkinson, "IP Telephony
                 Requirements for Emergency Telecommunication Service
                 (ETS)", RFC 3690, February 2004.

   [Floyd]       S. Floyd, 'Specifying Alternate Semantics for the
                 Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) Field', draft-
                 floyd-ecn-alternates-02.txt (work in progress), August
                 2005

   [GSPa]        Karsten (Ed.), Martin "GSP/ECN Technology &
                 Experiments", Deliverable: 15.3 PtIII, M3I Eu Vth
                 Framework Project IST-1999-11429, URL:
                 http://www.m3i.org/ (February, 2002) (superseded by
                 [GSP-TR])

   [GSP-TR]      Martin Karsten and Jens Schmitt, "Admission Control
                 Based on Packet Marking and Feedback Signalling ­--
                 Mechanisms, Implementation and Experiments", TU-
                 Darmstadt Technical Report TR-KOM-2002-03, URL:
                 http://www.kom.e-technik.tu-
                 darmstadt.de/publications/abstracts/KS02-5.html (May,
                 2002)

   [ITU.MLPP.1990] International Telecommunications Union, "Multilevel
                 Precedence and Pre-emption Service (MLPP)", ITU-T
                 Recommendation I.255.3, 1990.

   [Johnson]     DM Johnson, 'QoS control versus generous
                 dimensioning', BT Technology Journal, Vol 23 No 2,
                 April 2005

   [PCN]         B. Briscoe, P. Eardley, D. Songhurst, F. Le Faucheur,
                 A.   Charny, V. Liatsos, S. Dudley, J. Babiarz, K.
                 Chan. 'Pre-Congestion Notification marking', draft-
                 briscoe-tsvwg-cl-phb-01 (work in progress), March
                 2006.

   [Re-ECN]      Bob Briscoe, Arnaud Jacquet, Alessandro Salvatori,
                 'Re-ECN: Adding Accountability for Causing Congestion
                 to TCP/IP', draft-briscoe-tsvwg-re-ecn-tcp-01 (work in
                 progress), March 2006.

   [Re-feedback] Bob Briscoe, Arnaud Jacquet, Carla Di Cairano-
                 Gilfedder, Andrea Soppera, 'Re-feedback for Policing
                 Congestion Response in an Inter-network', ACM SIGCOMM
                 2005, August 2005.



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   [Re-PCN]      B. Briscoe, 'Emulating Border Flow Policing using Re-
                 ECN on Bulk Data', draft-briscoe-tsvwg-re-ecn-border-
                 cheat-00 (work in progress), February 2006.

   [Reid]        ABD Reid, 'Economics and scalability of QoS
                 solutions', BT Technology Journal, Vol 23 No 2, April
                 2005

   [RFC2211]     J. Wroclawski, Specification of the Controlled-Load
                 Network Element Service, September 1997

   [RFC2309]     Braden, B., et al., "Recommendations on Queue
                 Management and Congestion Avoidance in the Internet",
                 RFC 2309, April 1998.

   [RFC2474]     Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F. and D. Black,
                 "Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
                 Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474,
                 December 1998

   [RFC2475]     Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang,
                 Z. and W. Weiss, 'A framework for Differentiated
                 Services', RFC 2475, December 1998.

   [RFC2597]     Heinanen, J., Baker, F., Weiss, W. and J. Wrocklawski,
                 "Assured Forwarding PHB Group", RFC 2597, June 1999.

   [RFC2998]     Bernet, Y., Yavatkar, R., Ford, P., Baker, F., Zhang,
                 L., Speer, M., Braden, R., Davie, B., Wroclawski, J.
                 and E. Felstaine, "A Framework for Integrated Services
                 Operation Over DiffServ Networks", RFC 2998, November
                 2000.

   [RFC3168]     Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S. and D. Black "The Addition
                 of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP", RFC
                 3168, September 2001.

   [RFC3246]     B. Davie, A. Charny, J.C.R. Bennet, K. Benson, J.Y. Le
                 Boudec, W. Courtney, S. Davari, V. Firoiu, D.
                 Stiliadis, 'An Expedited Forwarding PHB (Per-Hop
                 Behavior)', RFC 3246, March 2002.

   [RFC3270]      Le Faucheur, F., Wu, L., Davie, B., Davari, S.,
                 Vaananen, P., Krishnan, R., Cheval, P., and J.
                 Heinanen, "Multi- Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
                 Support of Differentiated Services", RFC 3270, May
                 2002.


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   [RMD]         Attila Bader, Lars Westberg, Georgios Karagiannis,
                 Cornelia Kappler, Tom Phelan, 'RMD-QOSM - The Resource
                 Management in DiffServ QoS model', draft-ietf-nsis-
                 rmd-03 Work in Progress, June 2005.

   [RSVP-ECN]    Francois Le Faucheur, Anna Charny, Bob Briscoe, Philip
                 Eardley, Joe Barbiaz, Kwok-Ho Chan, 'RSVP Extensions
                 for Admission Control over DiffServ using Pre-
                 congestion Notification', draft-lefaucheur-rsvp-ecn-00
                 (work in progress), October 2005.

   [RTECN]       Babiarz, J., Chan, K. and V. Firoiu, 'Congestion
                 Notification Process for Real-Time Traffic', draft-
                 babiarz-tsvwg-rtecn-04 Work in Progress, July 2005.

   [RTECN-usage] Alexander, C., Ed., Babiarz, J. and J. Matthews,
                 'Admission Control Use Case for Real-time ECN', draft-
                 alexander-rtecn-admission-control-use-case-00, Work in
                 Progress, February 2005.

   [vq]          Costas Courcoubetis and Richard Weber "Buffer Overflow
                 Asymptotics for a Switch Handling Many Traffic
                 Sources" In: Journal Applied Probability 33 pp. 886--
                 903 (1996).



Authors' Addresses

   Bob Briscoe
   BT Research
   B54/77, Sirius House
   Adastral Park
   Martlesham Heath
   Ipswich, Suffolk
   IP5 3RE
   United Kingdom
   Email: bob.briscoe@bt.com










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   Dave Songhurst
   BT Research
   B54/69, Sirius House
   Adastral Park
   Martlesham Heath
   Ipswich, Suffolk
   IP5 3RE
   United Kingdom
   Email: dsonghurst@jungle.bt.co.uk

   Philip Eardley
   BT Research
   B54/77, Sirius House
   Adastral Park
   Martlesham Heath
   Ipswich, Suffolk
   IP5 3RE
   United Kingdom
   Email: philip.eardley@bt.com

   Francois Le Faucheur
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   Village d'Entreprise Green Side - Batiment T3
   400, Avenue de Roumanille
   06410 Biot Sophia-Antipolis
   France
   Email: flefauch@cisco.com

   Anna Charny
   Cisco Systems
   300 Apollo Drive
   Chelmsford, MA 01824
   USA
   Email: acharny@cisco.com

   Kwok Ho Chan
   Nortel Networks
   600 Technology Park Drive
   Billerica, MA  01821
   USA
   Email: khchan@nortel.com








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   Jozef Z. Babiarz
   Nortel Networks
   3500 Carling Avenue
   Ottawa, Ont  K2H 8E9
   Canada
   Email: babiarz@nortel.com

   Stephen Dudley
   Nortel Networks
   4001 E. Chapel Hill Nelson Highway
   P.O. Box 13010, ms 570-01-0V8
   Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
   USA
   Email: smdudley@nortel.com


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