Network Working Group                                  Gabor Feher, BUTE
INTERNET-DRAFT                                     Istvan Cselenyi, TRAB
Expiration Date: May 2002                              Andras Korn, BUTE

                                                           November 2001

  Benchmarking Terminology for Routers Supporting Resource Reservation
                 <draft-ietf-bmwg-benchres-term-01.txt>

1. Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
   groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
   Drafts.

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

   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt

   The list of Internet-Draft shadow directories can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html

   This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
   does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
   this memo is unlimited.

2. Table of contents

   1. Status of this Memo.............................................1
   2. Table of contents...............................................1
   3. Abstract........................................................2
   4. Introduction....................................................2
   5. Existing definitions............................................3
   6. Definition of Terms.............................................3
      6.1 Resource Reservation Protocol Basics........................3
         6.1.1 Resource Reservation Session...........................3
         6.1.2 Multicast Resource Reservation Session.................4
         6.1.3 Resource Reservation Capable Router....................4
         6.1.4 Signaling End-point....................................5
         6.1.5 Reservation Initiator..................................5
         6.1.6 Reservation Session Maintenance........................6
         6.1.7 Signaling Path.........................................7
      6.2 Traffic Types...............................................8
         6.2.1 Premium Traffic........................................8

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         6.2.2 Best-Effort Traffic....................................8
      6.3 Router Load Types...........................................9
         6.3.1 Traffic Load...........................................9
         6.3.2 Session Load...........................................9
         6.3.3 Signaling Load........................................10
         6.3.4 Signaling Burst.......................................11
      6.4 Performance Metrics........................................11
         6.4.1 Signaling Message Handling Time.......................11
         6.4.2 Premium Traffic Delay.................................12
         6.4.3 Best-effort Traffic Delay.............................13
         6.4.4 Signaling Message Loss................................13
         6.4.5 Session Refreshing Capacity...........................14
         6.4.6 Scalability Limit.....................................14
   7. Acknowledgement................................................15
   8. References.....................................................15
   9. Authors' Addresses:............................................15

3. Abstract

   The purpose of this document is to define terminology specific to the
   performance benchmarking of the resource reservation signaling of IP
   routers. These terms are used in additional documents that define
   benchmarking methodologies for routers supporting resource
   reservation and define reporting formats for the benchmarking
   measurements.

4. Introduction

   The IntServ over DiffServ framework [1] outlines a heterogeneous
   Quality of Service (QoS) architecture for multi domain Internet
   services. Signaling based resource reservation (e.g. via RSVP [2]) is
   an integral part of that model. While this significantly lightens the
   load on most of the core routers, the performance of border routers
   that handle the QoS signaling is still crucial. Therefore network
   operators, who are planning to deploy this model, shall scrutinize
   the scalability limitations in reservation capable routers and the
   impact of signaling on the forwarding performance of the routers.

   An objective way for quantifying the scalability constraints of QoS
   signaling is to perform measurements on routers that are capable of
   resource reservation. This document defines terminology for specific
   set of tests that vendors or network operators can use to measure and
   report the signaling performance characteristics of router devices
   that support resource reservation protocols. The results of these
   tests provide comparable data for different products supporting the
   decision process before purchase. Moreover, these measurements
   provide input characteristics for the dimensioning of a network in
   which resources are provisioned dynamically by signaling. Finally,
   the tests are applicable for characterizing the impact of the control
   plane signaling on the forwarding performance of routers.

   This benchmarking terminology document is based on the knowledge
   gained by examination of (and experimentation with) several very


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   different resource reservation protocols: RSVP [2], Boomerang [5],
   YESSIR [6], ST2+ [7], SDP [8] and Ticket [9]. Nevertheless, this
   document aspires to compose terms that are valid in general and not
   restricted to these protocols.

5. Existing definitions

   RFC 1242 [3] "Benchmarking Terminology for Network Interconnect
   Devices" and RFC 2285 [4] "Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching
   Devices" contains discussions and definitions for a number of terms
   relevant to the benchmarking of signaling performance of reservation
   capable routers and should be consulted before attempting to make use
   of this document.

   For the sake of clarity and continuity this document adopts the
   template for definitions set out in Section 2 of RFC 1242.
   Definitions are indexed and grouped together in sections for ease of
   reference.

6. Definition of Terms

6.1 Resource Reservation Protocol Basics

   This group of definitions applies to various signaling based resource
   reservation protocols implemented on IP router devices.

6.1.1 Resource Reservation Session

   Definition:
      A resource reservation session (or shortly reservation) expresses
      that routers along the data path between two network nodes apply
      special QoS treatment to a certain traffic flow.

   Discussion:
      The QoS treatment is specified by giving the amount of networking
      resources that are dedicated to the traffic flow during the length
      of the reservation session. Depending on the protocol, there are
      different approaches to define the network resource requirement of
      a traffic flow. It can be described by high-level parameters, like
      the required bandwidth, service class or the maximum traffic
      delay; or it can be low-level information, like the parameters of
      a leaky-bucket model of the traffic flow [10].

   Issues:
      There are resource reservation protocols, where resource
      dedications in a router are unique for each resource reservation
      session. However, in this case the number of resource dedications
      grows along with the number of sessions and working with huge
      number of resource dedications raise problems (see Reservation
      Session Maintenance). Therefore, many resource reservation
      protocols allow to bunch different reservation sessions into one
      aggregated session, which takes only one aggregated resource
      allocation for the whole bunch. The aggregation can be based on


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      the similar attributes of the flows, (e.g. aggregation using
      DiffServ code-points [11]) or it can combine arbitrary sessions as
      well.

   See Also:
      Reservation Session Maintenance

6.1.2 Multicast Resource Reservation Session

   Definition:
      A multicast resource reservation session (or, in short, multicast
      reservation) denotes that certain QoS treatment is applied to the
      packets of every traffic flow related to a multicast group.

   Discussion:
      Usually, there are several traffic sources and destinations in a
      multicast group. In order to be able to guarantee the QoS
      parameters for each packet of the multicast flow, every router
      that forwards the multicast traffic must dedicate resources to the
      flow.

      Generally, there are two types of multicast resource reservations:
      many-to-many and one-to-many multicast reservations. Those of the
      first type allow traffic to be originated from several sources,
      while those of the second type permit only one traffic source in
      the whole multicast group and this source should not change during
      the lifetime of the session. Additionally, in several cases, a
      many-to-many multicast reservation session does not require the
      same amount of resources reserved in every involved router.
      Depending on the resource reservation protocol, the traffic
      destinations of the multicast group may request different QoS
      parameters. Furthermore, the protocols may describe more than one
      reservation styles expressing the resource reservation
      distribution method among the involved routers. (e.g. RSVP
      SE/WF/FF [2])

   Issues:
      Naturally, many-to-many multicast reservation capable protocols
      are bound to be more complex than one-to-many or non-multicast
      protocols. Usually, the router has to be aware of the location of
      the traffic sources and destinations participating in the
      multicast reservation in the aspect of its network interfaces,
      plus the resource requirements of the traffic destinations in
      order to be able to calculate the right amount of resources
      dedicated to the session.

6.1.3 Resource Reservation Capable Router

   Definition:
      By definition, a router is resource reservation capable - supports
      resource reservation - if it understands a resource reservation
      protocol that signals the set-up, tear-down and modification of
      resource reservation sessions.


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   Discussion:
      Resource reservation protocols define signaling messages that are
      interpreted by resource reservation capable routers. The router
      captures the signaling message and manipulates resource
      reservation sessions according to the content of the message. In
      addition, the protocol might declare to forward the same or a
      modified signaling message to other routers as well.

   Issues:
      There are resource reservation protocols where routers are
      required to initiate signaling messages besides the signaling
      message forwarding. The benefits of such protocols are that
      changes in resource reservation sessions can be signaled to other
      routers immediately, even if the change is not caused by signaling
      messages directly. In contrast, the message initiation takes time
      that slows down the signaling message processing, so there are
      protocols declaring instant responses, where all the signaling
      messages are forwarded to other routers immediately, avoiding the
      signaling message initiation.

6.1.4 Signaling End-point

   Definition:
      A signaling end-point is a network node capable of initiating and
      terminating resource reservation sessions.

   Discussion:
      Typically, signaling end-points have a separate protocol stack
      that is capable of generating and understanding the signaling
      messages. However, in some special cases, the resource reservation
      initiation is carried out without the notice of the signaling
      terminating node. For example, the Boomerang resource reservation
      protocol encapsulates the reservation requests in an ICMP Echo
      message. This message is bounced back from the signaling
      terminating network node and as a result the node becomes a
      signaling end-point without understanding the reservation
      protocol.

      There are reservation gateways that translate the signaling
      messages of one resource reservation protocol into messages of
      another resource reservation protocol. Thus the reservation
      gateway represents two signaling end-points in one, as it is both
      a signaling terminator and a signaling initiator.

6.1.5 Reservation Initiator

   Definition:
      The reservation initiator is the signaling end-point that
      initiates the resource reservation session setup.

   Discussion:



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      Resource reservation protocols can be classified depending on the
      relationship between the reservation initiators and their role in
      the traffic flow.

      In the case of receiver-oriented protocols, the traffic
      destinations, which are the receivers of the data traffic,
      initiate the reservation session setup, unlike the sender-oriented
      protocols where this is done by traffic sources. Moreover, there
      are protocols where both the traffic source and destination can
      act as the reservation initiator.

      The importance of the reservation initiator orientation is only
      dominant in case of multicast reservation sessions. Generally, in
      multicast groups the number of traffic destinations changes more
      frequently than the number of traffic sources. In this case, the
      receiver-oriented protocols do not require the traffic sources to
      change their states generating signaling messages when a new
      traffic destination joins or an existing one leaves the group,
      since the reservation session is managed by the traffic
      destinations.

   Issues:
      Receiver-oriented resource reservation protocols often require two
      pass to setup the reservation session. Since the resource
      dedication should take place on all the routers that are on the
      path from the sources to the destinations, thus the reservation
      initiator must have a method to reach every such router. In the
      case of the sender-oriented protocols this method is assured by
      sending the signaling traffic same way as the data traffic, which
      guarantees that signaling messages goes through the same routers
      as the data traffic. However, in the case of the receiver-oriented
      protocols the reservation initiation requests go from the
      destinations to the sources, which is the opposite direction
      compared to the data traffic. Thus, receiver-oriented protocols
      must provide a mechanism that at first discovers all the routers
      along the path of the data traffic (RSVP PATH message [2]), before
      the second pass, where the traffic destinations are ready to
      initiate resource reservation requests.

6.1.6 Reservation Session Maintenance

   Definition:
      Soft-state resource reservation protocols require the routers to
      maintain the resource reservation sessions from the initiation
      until the teardown of the session. This maintenance often involves
      the regular checking and refreshing of the session.

   Discussion:
      Based on the approach of reservation session maintenance, resource
      reservation protocols can be divided into two categories: soft-
      state protocols and hard-state protocols.




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      In the case of hard-state protocols (e.g. ST2 [7]), the resource
      reservation session established by a set-up signaling primitive is
      permanent and is cancelled only when the corresponding tear-down
      signaling primitive arrives to the router. Contrary, in the case
      of the soft-state protocols there are no permanent resource
      reservations. The resource reservation session have to be
      regularly refreshed by appropriate signaling messages. No refresh
      signaling message arrived during a certain period is assumed as
      the indication that the resource reservation session is not
      maintained by the signaling end-points any longer. In such case,
      the router tears the session down waiting for no explicit request.
      For this reason, soft-state protocols exhibit more robust behavior
      than hard-state protocols, since no failures can cause permanent
      resource stuck in the routers.

   Issues:
      Although soft-state protocols are more robust than hard-state
      protocols, the frequent processing of refresh signaling messages
      might cause serious increase in the router load. Moreover, session
      maintenance mechanisms often use timers to watch the refresh
      period expirations of the sessions. The maintenance of such timers
      and the actions due to the expiration of such timers also
      contributes to the router load.

      In order to reduce the large number of refresh signaling message
      processing overhead, the resource reservation protocol may support
      various mechanisms to pack several refresh signaling messages into
      one signaling message.

6.1.7 Signaling Path

   Definition:
      A signaling path is a sequence of network nodes and links along
      which signaling messages travel from one signaling end-point to
      the other.

   Discussion:
      The resource reservation protocol must provide that each router,
      which is responsible to handle a signaling message, truly receives
      the signaling message. Usually it is assured by passing through
      the signaling messages along the signaling path, which involves
      every router affected by the resource reservation session.

      Resource reservation protocol must be also prepared that there are
      routers forwarding the data traffic of a resource reservation
      session that do not support the actual resource reservation
      protocol. In this case the signaling traffic must be tunneled
      through the zones of the routers that can not interpret the
      signaling messages in order to keep the continuity of the
      signaling path.

   Issues:



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      It is not unusual for routers to change their routing from time to
      time. One reason for the change can be a failure of a neighboring
      router or link. In case of route changes the data traffic will be
      forwarded along a different path than the signaling messages used
      in establishing the resource dedications for the reservation
      session. In order to properly handle this situation, hard-state
      protocols have to be much more sophisticated in order to detect
      the route change and to re-reserve the resources on the new path.
      However, soft-state protocols do not have to worry about such
      situation, since the refresh messages can be used to set up the
      reservation on the new path and the dedicated resources will
      eventually disappear from routers of the obsoleted path.

6.2 Traffic Types

   This group of definitions defines traffic types forwarded by resource
   reservation capable routers.

6.2.1 Premium Traffic

   Definition:
      Premium traffic is a traffic type that the router distinguishes
      from best-effort traffic (to be defined later) and forwards its
      packets according to a QoS agreement.

   Discussion:
      Traffic that corresponds to a resource reservation session in the
      router is premium traffic. The QoS treatment is defined in the
      associated flow descriptor that is established by the signaling
      messages during the reservation session setup.

      The router may distinguish several types of premium traffic (e.g.
      delay sensitive traffic, loss sensitive traffic, etc.). Different
      types of premium traffic may receive different QoS treatment.

   Issues:
      The router has to identify every packet whether it has dedicated
      resource or not. This can be done by either multi-field
      classification [11] using the IP 5-tuple or behavior-aggregate
      classification using the DSCP field. However, if a packet claims
      that it has an associated resource reservation session in the
      router, the router has to find the flow descriptor, which might be
      time consuming in routers with vast amounts of resource
      reservation sessions.

6.2.2 Best-Effort Traffic

   Definition:
      Best-effort traffic is a traffic type that has no reservation
      entry in the router.

   Discussion:



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      Traffic flows that do not require QoS guarantees along their path
      are considered to be best-effort traffic. "Best-effort" means that
      the router makes its best effort to forward every data packet, but
      does not guarantee anything. This is the most common type of
      traffic on today's Internet. (There may be scenarios where
      resource reservation is done for BE traffic too, but those are
      outside of the focus of this memo.)

6.3 Router Load Types

   This group of definitions describes different load component types
   that impact only a specific part of the resource reservation capable
   router. Categorizing the router load is crucial, since the
   conventional router load metric expressing the processing power
   utilization of the router does not characterize perfectly the
   resource reservation capable router. In the case of routers
   supporting resource reservations it is also important to know the
   source of the processing power utilization.

6.3.1 Traffic Load

   Definition:
      Traffic load is the load that is raised by forwarding data traffic
      on the router.

   Discussion:
      It is obvious that forwarding the data packets, which requires
      obtaining the routing information and transferring the data packet
      between network interfaces, requires processing power. Speaking of
      general router measurements only this type of load is considered
      as the source of the processing power utilization expressed by the
      router load metric. Although the traffic load is the dominant load
      component, benchmarking routers supporting resource reservations
      must consider other load components also in line with the resource
      reservation handling.

   Measurement unit:
      The amount of the traffic load is represented by the volume of the
      data traffic. The volume is measured with the transferred bits
      during a specified time unit, which is typically bit per seconds
      (bps).

6.3.2 Session Load

   Definition:
      Session load is the load that manifests itself as the excess
      processing power required to keep track of reservation sessions.

   Discussion:
      All signaling based resource reservation protocol implementation
      employ a packet classifier algorithm that distinguishes the flows
      having reservations in the router from the others that do not.
      Therefore each implementation maintains a list of reservation


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      session descriptors that is instrumental in keeping track of the
      resource reservation dedication. Obviously, the more reservation
      sessions are set up on the router, the more complex traffic
      classification becomes, and the more time it takes for the
      classification algorithm to identify the session descriptor list.

      Moreover, in most protocols, not only the traffic flows, but also
      signaling messages that manipulate resource reservations on the
      router have to identify themselves first, before taking any other
      actions. This kind of classification gives extra work for the
      router.

      Session load also involves the duties related to reservation
      session maintenance. The maintenance of timers that watchdog the
      reservation session refreshes and the signaling of the reservation
      session refresh may cause severe load on the router. Based on the
      initiating point of the refresh messages, resource reservation
      protocols can be divided into two groups. First, there are
      protocols where it is the responsibility of the signaling end-
      points to initiate refresh messages, which messages are forwarded
      by the routers along the signaling path refreshing the
      corresponding session. Second, there are other protocols, where
      the session refresh happens between the two peering network nodes
      from the signaling path only. In this latter case, the routers and
      signaling end-points have their own schedule for the refresh
      message initiation. The first approach lightens the load of the
      session maintenance task; however, the second approach bears the
      ability to adjust the signaling message traffic intensity along
      the signaling path.

   Measurement unit:
      The session load is represented by the number of reservation
      sessions in the router.

6.3.3 Signaling Load

   Definition:
      Signaling load is the load that manifests itself as the time
      required to process the incoming signaling messages.

   Discussion:
      The processing of signaling messages requires processing power
      that raises load on the control plane of the router. In the case
      of routers where the control plane and the data plane are not
      totally independent (e.g. certain parts of the tasks are served by
      the same processor; or the architecture has common memory buffers
      or transfer buses) the signaling load can have an impact on the
      router's packet forwarding performance as well.

      Most of the resource reservation protocols have several protocol
      primitives realized by different signaling message types. Each of
      these message types may require a different amount of processing
      power from the router.


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   Measurement unit:
      The signaling load is characterized by the signaling intensity,
      which expresses how many signaling messages arrive to the router
      within a time unit. The typical unit of the signaling intensity is
      [1/s], which is the number of signaling messages that arrive
      within one second.

6.3.4 Signaling Burst

   Definition:
      The signaling burst denotes a certain number of signaling messages
      that arrive to the input port(s) of the router without
      interruption, causing persistent load on the signaling message
      handler.

   Discussion:
      Back-to-back signaling messages on one port of the router form a
      typical signaling burst. However, other cases are imaginable, for
      example when signaling messages arrive on different ports
      simultaneously or with an overlap in time (i.e. when the tail of
      one signaling message is behind the head of another one arriving
      on another port).

   Measurement unit:
      The signaling burst is characterized by its length, which is the
      number of messages that have arrived during the burst.

6.4 Performance Metrics

   This group of definitions is the collection of the measurable impacts
   that a resource reservation protocol has over the tested router
   device it is running on.

6.4.1 Signaling Message Handling Time

   Definition:
      The signaling message handling time (or, in short, signal handling
      time) is the time that a signaling message spends inside the
      router before it is forwarded to the next node on the signaling
      path.

   Discussion:
      Depending on the type of the signaling message, the router also
      interprets the signaling messages, acts on them and forwards an
      extended signaling message, which might contain information about
      the result of the message processing. Thus the message handling
      time is usually longer than forwarding time of data packets of the
      same size. In addition, there might be also signaling message
      primitives that are drained or generated by the router. Thus, the
      signal handling time is defined as the time difference between the
      time when a signaling message is received and the time the
      corresponding processed signaling message is transmitted. If a


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      message is not forwarded on the router, the signal handling time
      is immeasurable; therefore it is not defined for such messages.

      In the case of signaling messages that carry information
      pertaining to multicast flows, the router might issue multiple
      signaling messages after processing. In this case, by definition,
      the signal handling time is the time interval elapsed between the
      arrival of the incoming signaling message and the departure of the
      last signaling message related to the received one.

      This metric depends on the load on the router, as other tasks may
      limit the processing power available to signaling message
      handling. In addition to the router load, the signal handling time
      may also be dependent on the type of the signaling message. For
      example, it usually takes a shorter time for the router to tear
      down a resource reservation session than to set it up.

   Issues:
      In the case of soft-state protocols, where refresh messages are
      exchanged between peering network nodes only (see Reservation
      Session Maintenance) the incoming refresh messages are drained by
      the router making impossible to measure the signaling message
      handling time on them.

      Signal handling time is an important characteristic as it directly
      affects the setup time of a session.

   Measurement unit:
      The typical unit of the signaling message handling time is
      microsecond.

6.4.2 Premium Traffic Delay

   Definition:
      Premium traffic delay is the forwarding time of a packet that
      belongs to a premium traffic flow passing through a resource
      reservation capable router.

   Discussion:
      Premium traffic packets must be classified first in order to find
      the resources dedicated to the flow. The time of the
      classification is added to the usual forwarding time that a router
      would spend on the packet without any resource reservation
      capability.

      There are routers where the processing power is shared between the
      control plane and the data plane. This means that the processing
      of signaling messages may have an impact on the data forwarding
      performance of the router. In this case the premium traffic delay
      metric reflects the influence the two planes have on each other.

   Measurement unit:
      The typical unit of the premium traffic delay is the microsecond.


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6.4.3 Best-effort Traffic Delay

   Definition:
      Best-effort traffic delay is the forwarding time of a packet that
      does not belong to any premium traffic flow passing through a
      resource reservation capable router.

   Discussion:
      It looks trivial that the classification algorithms do not have
      any influence on the best-effort traffic. However, the processing
      power sharing between the control and data plane may cause delays
      in the forwarding procedure of each packet.

   Measurement unit:
      The typical unit of the best-effort traffic delay is microsecond.

6.4.4 Signaling Message Loss

   Definition:
      Signaling message loss is the ratio of the actual and the expected
      number of signaling messages leaving a resource reservation
      capable router subtracted from one.

   Discussion:
      There are certain types of signaling messages, which are required
      to be forwarded by the router immediately when their processing is
      finished. However, due to the high router load or for other
      reasons, the forwarding or even the processing of the signaling
      message might be canceled. To characterize such situations we
      introduce the signaling message loss metric, which expresses the
      ratio of the signaling messages that actually have left the router
      and those ones that were expected to leave the router as a result
      of the incoming sequence of signaling messages.

      Since the most frequent reason for the signaling message loss is
      the high router load, therefore this metric is suitable for
      sounding out the scalability limits of resource reservation
      capable routers.

   Issues:
      In the case of routers where network packets are queued in several
      places, we have to be aware of that a signaling message may be
      delayed seriously. Therefore, it may be hard or impossible to
      determine whether the signaling message is still in the queues or
      whether it was already dropped. By definition we say that a
      signaling message is lost if there is no appearing forwarded
      signaling message within a reasonable long time period. This time
      period should be adjusted to the actual resource reservation
      protocol (e.g. soft-state protocols may wait as much as the
      refresh period to determine the loss of a signaling message).

   Measurement unit:


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      Usually, we measure the signaling message loss over a longer
      period of time and then we express it as a percentage value.
      Besides, in many cases it is enough to know that there was
      signaling loss.

6.4.5 Session Refreshing Capacity

   Definition:
      The session refreshing capacity is the ratio of the truly
      refreshed sessions and the number of session that have to be
      refreshed during one refresh period. This metric is applied for
      soft-state routers only.

   Discussion:
      The session refreshing capacity informs about condition of the
      session maintenance. When the router is overloaded it may happen
      that the router is not capable to refresh all the allocated
      reservation sessions due to other tasks with higher priorities. In
      this case sooner or later the resource reservation sessions over
      the session refresh capacity are dropped even if the resource
      reservation end-points are still refreshing them.

      The session refreshing capacity sounds out the limit of resource
      reservation session number that the router is capable to maintain.

   Measurement unit:
      The session refreshing capacity is expressed as a percentage
      value.

6.4.6 Scalability Limit

   Definition:
      The scalability limit is the threshold between the steady state
      and the overloaded state of the device under test.

   Discussion:
      All existing routers have finite buffer memory and finite
      processing power. In the steady state of the router, the buffer
      memories are not fully utilized and the processing power is enough
      to cope with all tasks running on the router. As the router load
      increases the router has to postpone more and more tasks. These
      tasks (e.g. forwarding certain packets) are queued in the buffers,
      and processed later. However, there is a certain point where no
      more buffer memory is available; thus, the router becomes
      overloaded and it is unable to store any more tasks for future
      processing, so it is forced to drop them. Therefore the overloaded
      state of the router can be recognized by the fact that some kind
      of data (signaling or packet) loss occurs. A resource reservation
      capable router may drop signaling messages, data packets or entire
      resource reservation sessions.

      The critical load condition when the router is still in the steady
      state but the smallest amount of constant load increase would


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      drive it to the overloaded state is the scalability limit of the
      router.

7. Acknowledgement

   We would like to thank the following individuals for their help in
   forming this document: Joakim Bergkvist and Norbert Vegh from Telia
   Research AB, Sweden, Krisztian Nemeth, Balazs Szabo, Gabor Kovacs and
   Peter Vary from High Speed Networks Laboratory of Budapest University
   of Technology and Economics, Hungary.

8. References

   [1]  Y. Bernet, et. al., "A Framework for Integrated Services
        Operation over Diffserv Networks", RFC 2998, November 2000

   [2]  B. Braden, Ed., et. al., "Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) -
        Version 1 Functional Specification", RFC 2205, September 1997.

   [3]  S. Bradner, "Benchmarking Terminology for Network
        Interconnection Devices", RFC 1242, July 1991

   [4]  R. Mandeville, "Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching
        Devices", RFC 2285, February 1998

   [5]  G. Feher, K. Nemeth, M. Maliosz, "Boomerang : A Simple Protocol
        for Resource Reservation in IP Networks," Vancouver, IEEE Real-
        Time Technology and Applications Symposium, June 1999

   [6]  P. Pan, H. Schulzrinne, "YESSIR: A Simple Reservation Mechanism
        for the Internet", Computer Communication Review, on-line
        version, volume 29, number 2, April 1999

   [7]  L. Delgrossi, L. Berger, "Internet Stream Protocol Version 2
        (ST2) Protocol Specification - Version ST2+", RFC 1819, August
        1995

   [8]  P. White, J. Crowcroft, "A Case for Dynamic Sender-Initiated
        Reservation in the Internet", Journal on High Speed Networks,
        Special Issue on QoS Routing and Signaling, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1998

   [9]  A. Eriksson, C. Gehrmann, "Robust and Secure Light-weight
        Resource Reservation for Unicast IP Traffic", International WS
        on QoS'98, IWQoS'98, May 18-20, 1998

   [10] J. Wroclawski, "The Use of RSVP with IETF Integrated Services",
        RFC 2210, September 1997

   [11] K. Nichols et al., " Definition of the Differentiated Services
        Field (DS Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers ", RFC 2474

9. Authors' Addresses:



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INTERNET-DRAFT   <draft-ietf-bmwg-benchres-term-01.txt>    November 2001

   Gabor Feher
   Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE)
   Department of Telecommunications and Telematics
   Pazmany Peter Setany 1/D, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary
   Phone: +36 1 463-3110
   Email: feher@ttt-atm.ttt.bme.hu

   Istvan Cselenyi
   Telia Research AB
   Vitsandsgatan 9B
   SE 12386, Farsta
   SWEDEN,
   Phone: +46 8 713-8173
   Email: istvan.i.cselenyi@telia.se

   Andras Korn
   Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE)
   Institute of Mathematics, Department of Analysis
   Egry Jozsef u. 2, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary
   Phone: +36 1 463-2475
   Email: korn@math.bme.hu


































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