Network Working Group                                          L. Eggert
Internet-Draft                                                S. Schuetz
Expires: January 10, 2005                                      S. Schmid
                                                                     NEC
                                                           July 12, 2004



              TCP Extensions for Immediate Retransmissions
                draft-eggert-tcpm-tcp-retransmit-now-00


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Copyright Notice


   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.


Abstract


   This document describes a modification to TCP's standard
   retransmission scheme that improves performance across intermittently
   connected paths.  In addition to the regular retransmission attempts
   scheduled at exponentially increasing intervals, this extension
   causes additional, speculative retransmission attempts upon receiving
   external triggers.  One example of such a trigger is "first hop




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   router reachable." This document does not define the specifics of
   such triggers, although it describes some examples.  Instead, it
   defines how a conforming TCP implementation operates when it receives
   a trigger.


1.  Introduction


   Depending on the specific path between two nodes in the Internet,
   disruptions in connectivity may be frequent.  Host mobility and other
   factors can further increase the likelihood of connectivity
   disruptions.  When hosts communicate with the Transmission Control
   Protocol (TCP) [1], their connections may abort during periods of
   disconnection.


   The main reason for connection aborts during periods of disconnection
   is TCP's "user timeout." It defines the maximum amount of time that
   transmitted segments may remain unacknowledged.  If a disconnection
   lasts longer than the user timeout, the TCP connection will abort.
   Many TCP implementations default to user timeout values of a few
   minutes [6].  The proposed TCP Abort Timeout Option [7] allows
   conforming TCP implementations to use longer user timeout values and
   consequently tolerate long disconnections without disruption.


   Although the TCP Abort Timeout Option enables TCP connections to
   survive extended periods of disconnections, experiments have shown
   that TCP connections perform significantly worse when operating along
   paths with frequent disconnections [8][9].  This decrease in
   performance is caused by TCP's retransmission behavior after
   connectivity is restored.


   This document describes a modification of TCP's retransmission scheme
   to improve performance over a path with frequent disconnections.  The
   basic idea is to trigger a speculative retransmission attempt when a
   TCP implementation receives an indication that connectivity to a
   previously disconnected peer node may have been restored.


   Section 3 discusses TCP performance over intermittently connected
   paths in more detail, comparing it to similar proposals [10][11][12],
   and Section 4 describes the proposed "immediate retransmission"
   extension to TCP.  Section 7 investigates security aspects of the
   proposed modification and Section 8 summarizes and concludes this
   document.


2.  Conventions


   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [2].




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3.  Background


   When a disconnection occurs along the path between a host and its
   peer while the host is transmitting data, it stops receiving
   acknowledgments.  After the retransmission timeout (RTO) expires, the
   host attempts to retransmit the first unacknowledged segment.  TCP
   implementations that follow the recommended RTO management proposed
   in RFC 2988 [3] double the RTO after each retransmission attempt
   until it exceeds 60 seconds.  This scheme causes a host to attempt to
   retransmit across established connections roughly once a minute.
   (More frequently during the first minute or two of the disconnection,
   while the RTO is still being backed off.)


   When the disconnection ends, standard TCP implementations still wait
   until the RTO expires before attempting retransmission.  Figure 1
   illustrates this behavior.  Depending on when connectivity becomes
   available again, this can waste up to a minute of connection time for
   TCPs that implement the recommended RTO management described in RFC
   2988 [3].  For TCP implementations that do not implement RFC 2988,
   even more connection time may be lost.  For example, Linux uses 120
   seconds as the maximum RTO.


        sequence
        number      X = successfully transmitted segment
         ^          O = lost segment
         |     :                     :              : X
         |     :                     :              :X
         |     XO O  O    O        O :              X
         |    X:                     :              :
         |   X :                     :<------------>:
         |  X  :                     :    wasted    :
         | X   :                     :  connection  :
         |X    :                     :     time     :
         +-----:---------------------:--------------:-------->
               :                     :              :       time
          connectivity          connectivity       TCP
             gone                  back         retransmit


   Figure 1: Standard TCP behavior in the presence of a disconnection


   This retransmission behavior is not efficient, especially in
   scenarios where connected periods are short and disconnections
   frequent [13].  Experiments show that TCP performance across a path
   with frequent disruptions is significantly worse compared to a
   similar path without disruptions [8][9].


   In the ideal case, TCP would attempt a retransmission as soon as
   connectivity to its peer was re-established.  Figure 2 illustrates




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   the ideal behavior.


        sequence
        number      X = successfully transmitted segment
         ^          O = lost segment
         |     :                     : X            :
         |     :                     :X             :
         |     XO O  O    O        O X              :
         |    X:                     :              :
         |   X :                     :<------------>:
         |  X  :                     :  efficiency  :
         | X   :                     :  improvement :
         |X    :                     :              :
         +-----:---------------------:--------------:-------->
               :                     :              :       time
          connectivity          connectivity      next
             gone             back = immediate  scheduled
                               TCP retransmit   retransmit


    Figure 2: Ideal TCP behavior in the presence of a disconnection


   The ideal behavior is difficult to achieve for arbitrary connectivity
   disruptions.  One obviously problematic approach would use
   higher-frequency retransmission attempts to enable earlier detection
   of whether connectivity was restored.  This can generate significant
   amounts of extra traffic.  Other proposals attempt to trigger faster
   retransmissions by retransmitting buffered or newly-crafted segments
   from inside the network [10][11][12].  Section 6 compares these
   approaches to the "immediate retransmission" extension.


4.  Examples of Reconnection Triggers


   This section describes examples for reconnection triggers, which the
   retransmission mechanism described in the next section acts upon.
   This document does not define the specifics of such triggers but
   merely discusses them to illustrate the operation of the "immediate
   retransmission" extension.


   Reconnection triggers signal TCP when connectivity to a previously
   disconnected peer may have been restored.  They depend on the
   specifics of a node and its environment, for example network-layer
   mechanisms such as DHCP [14], MobileIP [15] or HIP [16].  The IETF's
   Detection of Network Attachment (DNA) working group currently
   investigates the specifics of providing such triggers [17].


   One example of a reconnection trigger is "next hop reachable." This
   indicator could occur if a combination of the following conditions is
   true, depending on host specifics:




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   o  Network-layer connectivity along the path to the destination is
      restored, e.g., the outbound interface has an IP address and a
      next-hop router is known, maybe due to DHCP [14] or IPv6 router
      advertisements [18].


   o  Link-layer connectivity of the link to the next-hop router along
      the path to the destination is restored (e.g., link-layer "link
      up").


   o  Other local conditions that affect reachability of the destination
      are satisfied (e.g., IKE exchanges [19], MobileIP binding updates
      [15] or HIP readdressing [20] have completed).


   The "next hop reachable" trigger only depends on locally determinable
   information (e.g., state of directly-connected links, etc.) and does
   not require network cooperation.  It can signal TCP to restart active
   connections across intermittently connected links where disruptions
   occur on the first or last hop.  This simple trigger has the
   potential to improve TCP performance in many cases, because
   connection disruptions at the first or last hop are arguably the most
   common cause of disconnections in today's Internet.


   A second, more general example of a reconnection trigger would be
   "end-to-end connectivity restored." If hosts have the ability to
   detect or be notified of connectivity changes inside the network
   (i.e., not only at the first or last hop), a more general trigger
   could act on those pieces of information.  This can improve TCP
   performance across intermittently connected paths where disruptions
   occur at arbitrary links along the path, even inside the network.
   However, providing this more general trigger is problematic due to
   its dependence on remote information and its related issues, such as
   trust.


   Reconnection triggers are generally asymmetric, i.e., they may occur
   on one peer host but not the other.  As discussed above, a local
   event at one host may trigger the "immediate retransmission"
   mechanism, while the other host is unable to detect this event across
   the network.  Symmetric reconnection triggers are a special case and
   always occur concurrently at both communicating hosts.  Examples for
   such symmetric triggers are handshake events such as IKE exchanges or
   HIP readdressing.  Symmetric triggers are an important special case,
   because the retransmission procedure required in response to a
   symmetric trigger is simpler than that for an asymmetric one.  The
   next section will describe this in detail.


5.  TCP Immediate Retransmission Extension


   This section describes the main contribution of this document, i.e.,




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   a TCP extension for immediate retransmission in response to
   reconnection triggers.  The basic idea behind the "immediate
   retransmission" extension is to allow TCP to restart stalled
   connections as soon as it receives an indication - a reconnection
   trigger - that connectivity to previously disconnected peers may have
   been restored.


   This document does not specify how TCP determines which connections
   are affected by a specific reconnection trigger, i.e., for which
   connections it should initiate retransmission attempts.  This is a
   property of individual reconnection triggers.  For example, the "next
   hop reachable" trigger described in the previous section affects
   connections to all destinations routed through that hop.


   It is important to note that this retransmission extension does not
   modify TCP's basic congestion control, fairness properties or
   slow-start algorithms.  The only difference in TCP behavior is the
   timing of retransmission events and, in some cases, a minor, fixed
   increase in the number of initially retransmitted segments.  The
   "immediate retransmission" extensions increases performance through
   better utilization of connected periods, not through sending traffic
   at a faster rate or modifying TCP's congestion control mechanisms.


   Hosts that implement the "immediate retransmission" TCP extension
   MUST implement the following retransmission mechanism whenever a
   reconnection trigger is received:


   When receiving a symmetric or asymmetric reconnection trigger,
   conforming TCP implementations MUST immediately initiate the standard
   retransmission procedure for connections affected by the reconnection
   trigger - just as if the RTO for those connections had expired.


   If the reconnection trigger is symmetric, i.e., all peers receive it
   concurrently; this simple change is sufficient to kick-start the
   relevant TCP connections.


   If the reconnection trigger is asymmetric, this simple extension is
   not always sufficient, because only one peer received the
   reconnection trigger.  In case the host receiving the trigger has no
   (or too little) unacknowledged data awaiting retransmission, it will
   not emit enough segments to cause its peer nodes, which may have
   unacknowledged data, to attempt retransmission themselves.
   Transmission would thus only resume in one direction, which is
   ineffective for two-way communication.


   To avoid this issue, conforming TCP implementation MUST perform a
   different retransmission procedure in response to an asymmetric
   reconnection trigger.  TCP MUST send at least four segments that all




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   acknowledge the last segment received from a peer for all connections
   affected by the reconnection trigger.  These triple-duplicate ACKs
   will activate the peers' fast retransmit algorithm and cause them to
   immediately restart communication in the reverse direction, i.e.,
   before their next scheduled retransmission.


   If a TCP connection affected by a reconnection trigger has four or
   more unacknowledged data segments in the retransmission queue, it
   SHOULD piggyback the triple-duplicate ACK to the regular
   retransmissions of those data segments.  In this case, the "immediate
   retransmission" TCP extension does not require additional messages,
   compared to standard TCP.


   For connections where the retransmission queue contains only three or
   less unacknowledged data segments, TCP implementations supporting the
   "immediate retransmission" TCP extension MUST send additional pure
   ACKs until a complete triple-duplicate ACK has been sent.  In the
   worst case, when the retransmission queue is empty, this scheme
   requires four additional ACKs, compared to standard TCP.


   After the peer's fast retransmit algorithm sends the assumed missing
   segment, TCP performs either fast recovery or a slow-start [4],
   depending on the length of the disconnection.  If the retransmission
   trigger occurs before the RTO, i.e., for very short disconnections,
   TCP has not yet lost its ACK clock and can thus perform fast
   recovery.  After longer disconnections, TCP falls back to slow-start
   to restart the ACK clock, just as it does at the beginning of a
   connection.


   The result of this modification is twofold.  First, TCP connections
   receiving the reconnection trigger attempt retransmission of their
   unacknowledged segments before the next scheduled RTO.  This
   increases utilization of connected periods.  Second, TCP connections
   receiving the reconnection trigger use an existing TCP mechanism
   (triple-duplicate ACK) to signal their peer.  Although the peer may
   not have received a reconnection trigger itself (e.g., the trigger
   was asymmetric), this causes it to attempt faster retransmission as
   well.


   As mentioned above, the "immediate retransmission" scheme can
   generate up to four additional segments, compared to standard TCP.
   All additional segments are pure ACKs and hence small, resulting in a
   minor total overhead.  Furthermore, measurements have shown that
   increasing TCP's initial window is not problematic [21]; this may
   indicate that a minor increase in traffic at retransmission time may
   be tolerable as well.


   (NB: The authors have seen the idea of triggering retransmits based




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   on connectivity events of directly-connected links attributed to Phil
   Karn, but were unable to locate a specific reference.  Pointers are
   highly appreciated.)


6.  Related Work


   Several other approaches try to improve TCP performance in the
   presence of connectivity disruptions [10][11][12].  They attempt to
   improve TCP startup after a disconnection by retransmitting buffered
   or newly-crafted segments from inside the network.


   These proposals can be problematic, because TCP is built on the
   assumption that segments older than the maximum segment lifetime
   (MSL) of 2 minutes [1] will never be received.  When a disconnection
   lasts longer than the MSL, these proposals will either become
   ineffective or risk leaking buffered old segments onto new
   connections, violating TCP's semantics.


   The "immediate retransmission" modification also improves performance
   over a path with frequent disconnections.  The basic idea is to
   schedule an additional, speculative retransmission attempt when a TCP
   implementation receives an indication that connectivity to a peer
   node has been restored.  Unlike the other proposals, the "immediate
   retransmission" scheme uses regular retransmissions, i.e.,
   retransmits data that is buffered at the end systems.  Because that
   data has not entered the network yet, it is not subject to the
   problematic MSL rule.  Consequently, the "immediate retransmission"
   scheme remains effective even for disconnections longer than the MSL,
   without the risk of compromising connection integrity.


   Other transport-layer approaches such as the Explicit Link Failure
   Notification [22] or TCP-F [23] use specific messages generated by
   intermediate routers to inform TCP senders about disrupted paths.
   The former extends the TCP state machine with a new "stand by" state
   during which the standard retransmission timers are disabled.  In
   this state, TCP periodically probes the network to detect
   connectivity reestablishment.  Depending on the frequency of the
   probes and the network environment, this can cause significant
   amounts of extra traffic.  TCP-F completely suspends ongoing
   connections until receiving "route reestablishment notifications"
   that indicate peer reachability.  Both proposals are primarily
   designed for ad hoc networks and rely on changes to intermediate
   routers, whereas the "immediate retransmission" extension only
   requires end system support.


   ATCP [24] uses a similar approach as the Explicit Link Failure
   Notification, but discovers link failures through ICMP Destination
   Unreachable messages.  Caceres and Iftode [25] propose and evaluate a




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   solution similar to the TCP Retransmission Trigger that improves
   performance during MobileIP handoffs.  Unlike the solution proposed
   in this paper, the handoff mechanism is targeted at disconnections of
   a few seconds.


7.  Security Considerations


   To protect the TCP retransmission trigger from abuse, e.g., the
   launch denial-of-service attacks by flooding TCP with triggers, a
   control mechanism that "rate-limits" connectivity indications may be
   effective.  This document does not currently discuss the security
   aspects of reconnection triggers and the "immediate retransmission"
   extension to TCP further.


8.  Conclusion


   This document described the "immediate retransmission" extension to
   TCP's standard retransmission scheme.  The new extension improves
   performance across intermittently connected paths through additional,
   speculative retransmission attempts upon receiving external triggers.
   One example of such a trigger is "first hop router reachable." This
   document did not define the specifics of such triggers, although it
   described some examples to illustrate the operation of the "immediate
   retransmission" extension, which is its main contribution.


9.  Acknowledgments


   The following people have helped to improve this document through
   thoughtful suggestions and feedback: Marcus Brunner, Juergen Quittek
   and Joe Touch.


   This work is a byproduct of the Ambient Networks project supported in
   part by the European Commission under its Sixth Framework Programme.
   It is provided "as is" and without any express or implied warranties,
   including, without limitation, the implied warranties of fitness for
   a particular purpose.  The views and conclusions contained herein are
   those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily
   representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed
   or implied, of the Ambient Networks project or the European
   Commission.


10.  References


10.1  Normative References


   [1]  Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC 793,
        September 1981.





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


   [3]  Paxson, V. and M. Allman, "Computing TCP's Retransmission
        Timer", RFC 2988, November 2000.


   [4]  Allman, M., Paxson, V. and W. Stevens, "TCP Congestion Control",
        RFC 2581, April 1999.


   [5]  Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, September 1981.


10.2  Informative References


   [6]   Stevens, W., "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols",
         Addison-Wesley , 1994.


   [7]   Eggert, L., "TCP Abort Timeout Option",
         draft-eggert-tcpm-tcp-abort-timeout-option-00 (work in
         progress), April 2004.


   [8]   Schuetz, S., "Network Support for Intermittently Connected
         Mobile Nodes", M.S. Thesis, University of Mannheim, Germany,
         June 2004.


   [9]   Schuetz, S., Eggert, L., Schmid, S. and M. Brunner, "Protocol
         Enhancements for Intermittently Connected Hosts", under
         submission (work in progress), July 2004.


   [10]  Scott, J. and G. Mapp, "Link layer-based TCP optimisation for
         disconnecting networks", ACM Computer Communication Review,
         Vol. 33, No. 5, October 2003.


   [11]  Dawkins, S., "End-to-end, Implicit 'Link-Up' Notification",
         draft-dawkins-trigtran-linkup-01 (work in progress), October
         2003.


   [12]  Karn, P., "Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers",
         draft-ietf-pilc-link-design-15 (work in progress), December
         2003.


   [13]  Ott, J. and D. Kutscher, "Drive-Thru Internet: IEEE 802.11b for
         Automobile Users", Proc. INFOCOM 2004, March 2004.


   [14]  Droms, R., "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol", RFC 2131,
         March 1997.


   [15]  Johnson, D., Perkins, C. and J. Arkko, "Mobility Support in
         IPv6", RFC 3775, June 2004.




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   [16]  Moskowitz, R., "Host Identity Protocol Architecture",
         draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-05 (work in progress), October 2003.


   [17]  Choi, J., "Detecting Network Attachment in IPv6 Goals",
         draft-ietf-dna-goals-00 (work in progress), June 2004.


   [18]  Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6)
         Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.


   [19]  Harkins, D. and D. Carrel, "The Internet Key Exchange (IKE)",
         RFC 2409, November 1998.


   [20]  Nikander, P., "End-Host Mobility and Multi-Homing with Host
         Identity Protocol", draft-nikander-hip-mm-01 (work in
         progress), January 2004.


   [21]  Allman, M., Hayes, C. and S. Ostermann, "An Evaluation of TCP
         with Larger Initial Windows.", ACM Computer Communication
         Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, July 1998.


   [22]  Holland, G. and N. Vaidya, "Analysis of TCP Performance over
         Mobile Ad Hoc Networks", Proc. 5th Annual ACM/IEEE
         International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking,
         1999.


   [23]  Chandran, K., Raghunathan, S., Venkatesan, S. and R. Prakash,
         "A Feedback Based Scheme For Improving TCP Performance In
         Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks", IEEE Personal Communication Systems
         (PCS) Magazine: Special Issue on Ad Hoc Networks, Vol. 8, No.
         1, February 2001.


   [24]  Liu, J. and S. Singh, "ATCP: TCP for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks",
         IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication, Vol. 19, No.
         7, July 2001.


   [25]  Caceres, R. and L. Iftode, "Improving the Performance of
         Reliable Transport Protocols in Mobile Computing Environments",
         IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication, Vol. 13, No.
         5, 1995.













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Authors' Addresses


   Lars Eggert
   NEC Network Laboratories
   Kurfuerstenanlage 36
   Heidelberg  69115
   DE


   Phone: +49 6221 90511 43
   Fax:   +49 6221 90511 55
   EMail: lars.eggert@netlab.nec.de
   URI:   http://www.netlab.nec.de/



   Simon Schuetz
   NEC Network Laboratories
   Kurfuerstenanlage 36
   Heidelberg  69115
   DE


   Phone: +49 6221 90511 10
   Fax:   +49 6221 90511 55
   EMail: simon.schuetz@netlab.nec.de
   URI:   http://www.netlab.nec.de/



   Stefan Schmid
   NEC Network Laboratories
   Kurfuerstenanlage 36
   Heidelberg  69115
   DE


   Phone: +49 6221 90511 54
   Fax:   +49 6221 90511 55
   EMail: stefan.schmid@netlab.nec.de
   URI:   http://www.netlab.nec.de/


Appendix A.  Document Revision History


   +-----------+-------------------------------------------------------+
   | Revision  | Comments                                              |
   +-----------+-------------------------------------------------------+
   | 00        | Initial version.                                      |
   +-----------+-------------------------------------------------------+








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