Internet Engineering Task Force         K. Nichols / V. Jacobson / L. Zhang
INTERNET-DRAFT                                                    Nov, 1997
draft-nichols-diff-svc-arch-00.txt                            Expires: 5/98


    A Two-bit Differentiated Services Architecture for the Internet


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Abstract

    This document presents a differentiated services architecture for
    the internet. Dave Clark and Van Jacobson each presented work
    on differentiated services at the Munich IETF meeting [2,3].
    Each explained how to use one bit of the IP header to deliver a
    new kind of service to packets in the internet. These were two very
    different kinds of service with quite different policy assumptions.
    Ensuing discussion has convinced us that both service types
    have merit and that both service types can be implemented with
    a set of very similar mechanisms. We propose an architectural
    framework that permits the use of both of these service types
    and exploits their similarities in forwarding path mechanisms.
    The major goals of this architecture are each shared with one
    or both of those two proposals: keep the forwarding path simple,
    push complexity to the edges of the network to the extent possible,
    provide a service that avoids assumptions about the type of traffic
    using it, employ an allocation policy that will be compatible with
    both long-term and short-term provisioning, make it possible for
    the dominant Internet traffic model to remain best-effort.


NOTE: This document includes figures that are an integral part of its
      content.  The IETF's choice of ascii as the standard document form
      precludes the inclusion of those figures.  The complete document,
      with all its figures, is available at:
          http://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/papers/dsarch.pdf


Internet Engineering Task Force         K. Nichols / V. Jacobson / L. Zhang
INTERNET-DRAFT                                                    Nov, 1997
draft-nichols-diff-svc-arch-00.txt                            Expires: 4/98



    A Two-bit Differentiated Services Architecture for the Internet

                         K. Nichols
                        Bay Networks

                        V. Jacobson
                           LBNL

                        L. Zhang
                           UCLA

1. Introduction

This document presents a differentiated services architecture for
the internet. Dave Clark and Van Jacobson each presented work
on differentiated services at the Munich IETF meeting [2,3].
Each explained how to use one bit of the IP header to deliver a
new kind of service to packets in the internet. These were two very
different kinds of service with quite different policy assumptions.
Ensuing discussion has convinced us that both service types
have merit and that both service types can be implemented with
a set of very similar mechanisms. We propose an architectural
framework that permits the use of both of these service types
and exploits their similarities in forwarding path mechanisms.
The major goals of this architecture are each shared with one
or both of those two proposals: keep the forwarding path simple,
push complexity to the edges of the network to the extent possible,
provide a service that avoids assumptions about the type of traffic
using it, employ an allocation policy that will be compatible with
both long-term and short-term provisioning, make it possible for
the dominant Internet traffic model to remain best-effort.

The major contributions of this document are to present two
distinct service types, a set of general mechanisms for the
forwarding path that can be used to implement a range of
differentiated services and to propose a flexible framework
for provisioning a differentiated services network. It is
precisely this kind of architecture that is needed for expedient
deployment of differentiated services: we need a framework and
set of primitives that can be implemented in the short-term and
provide interoperable services, yet can provide a "sandbox" for
experimentation and elaboration that can lead in time to more
levels of differentiation within each service as needed.

At the risk of belaboring an analogy, we are motivated to provide
services tiers in somewhat the same fashion as the airlines do
with first class, business class and coach class. The latter
also has tiering built in due to the various restrictions put on
the purchase. A part of the analogy we want to stress is that
best effort traffic, like coach class seats on an airplane,
is still expected to make up the bulk of internet traffic.
Business and first class carry a small number of passengers,
but are quite important to the economics of the airline industry.
The various economic forces and realities combine to dictate the
relative allocation of the seats and to try to fill the airplane.
We don't expect that differentiated services will comprise all
the traffic on the internet, but we do expect that new services
will lead to a healthy economic and service environment.

This document is organized into sections describing service
architecture, mechanisms, the bandwidth allocation architecture,
how this architecture might interoperate with RSVP/int-serv work,
and gives recommendations for deployment.

2. Architecture

2.1 Background

The current internet delivers one type of service, best-effort,
to all traffic. A number of proposals have been made concerning
the addition of enhanced services to the Internet. We focus on two
particular methods of adding a differentiated level of service to
IP, each designated by one bit [1,2,3]. These services represent a
radical departure from the Internet's traditional service, but they
are also a radical departure from traditional "quality of service"
architectures which rely on circuit-based models. Both these
proposals seek to define a single common mechanism that is used by
interior network routers, pushing most of the complexity and state
of differentiated services to the network edges. Both use bandwidth
as the resource that is being requested and allocated. Clark and
Wroclawski defined an "Assured" service that follows "expected
capacity" usage profiles that are statistically provisioned [3].
The assurance that the user of such a service receives is that
such traffic is unlikely to be dropped as long as it stays within
the expected capacity profile. The exact meaning of "unlikely"
depends on how well provisioned the service is. An Assured service
traffic flow may exceed its Profile, but the excess traffic is
not given the same assurance level. Jacobson defined a "Premium"
service that is provisioned according to peak capacity Profiles
that are strictly not oversubscribed and that is given its own
high-priority queue in routers [2]. A Premium service traffic
flow is shaped and hard-limited to its provisioned peak rate
and shaped so that bursts are not injected into the network.
Premium service presents a "virtual wire" where a flow's bursts
may queue at the shaper at the edge of the network, but thereafter
only in proportion to the indegree of each router. Despite their
many similarities, these two approaches result in fundamentally
different services. The former uses buffer management to provide
a "better effort" service while the latter creates a service with
little jitter and queueing delay and no need for queue management
on the Premium packets' queue.

An Assured service was introduced in [3] by Clark and Wroclawski,
though we have made some alterations in its specification for
our architecture. Further refinements and an "Expected Capacity"
framework are given in Clark and Fang [10].  This framework is
focused on "providing different levels of best-effort service at
times of network congestion" but also mentions that it is possible
to have a separate router queue to implement a "guaranteed"
level of assurance.  We believe this framework and our Two-bit
architecture are compatible but this needs further exploration.
As Premium service has not been documented elsewhere, we describe
it next and follow this with a description of the two-bit
architecture.

2.2 Premium service

In [2], a Premium service was presented that is fundamentally
different from the Internet's current best effort service.
This service is not meant to replace best effort but primarily to
meet an emerging demand for a commercial service that can share the
network with best effort traffic. This is desirable economically,
since the same network can be used for both kinds of traffic.
It is expected that Premium traffic would be allocated a small
percentage of the total network capacity, but that it would
be priced much higher. One use of such a service might be to
create "virtual leased lines", saving the cost of building and
maintaining a separate network. Premium service, not unlike
a standard telephone line, is a capacity which the customer
expects to be there when the receiver is lifted, although it may,
depending on the household, be idle a good deal of the time.
Provisioning Premium traffic in this way reduces the capacity
of the best effort internet by the amount of Premium allocated,
in the worst case, thus it would have to be priced accordingly.
On the other hand, whenever that capacity is not being used it
is available to best effort traffic. In contrast to normal best
effort traffic which is bursty and requires queue management
to deal fairly with congestive episodes, this Premium service
by design creates very regular traffic patterns and small or
nonexistent queues.

Premium service levels are specified as a desired peak bit-rate
for a specific flow (or aggregation of flows). The user contract
with the network is not to exceed the peak rate. The network
contract is that the contracted bandwidth will be available when
traffic is sent. First-hop routers (or other edge devices) filter
the packets entering the network, set the Premium bit of those
that match a Premium service specification, and perform traffic
shaping on the flow that smooths all traffic bursts before they
enter the network. This approach requires no changes in hosts.
A compliant router along the path needs two levels of priority
queueing, sending all packets with the Premium bit set first.
Best-effort traffic is unmarked and queued and sent at the lower
priority. This results in two "virtual networks": one which is
identical to today's Internet with buffers designed to absorb
traffic bursts; and one where traffic is limited and shaped to
a contracted peak-rate, but packets move through a network of
queues where they experience almost no queueing delay.

In this architecture, forwarding path decisions are made separately
and more simply than the setting up of the service agreements
and traffic profiles. With the exception of policing and shaping
at administrative or "trust" boundaries, the only actions that
need to be handled in the forwarding path are to classify a
packet into one of two queues on a single bit and to service
the two queues using simple priority. Shaping must include both
rate and burst parameters; the latter is expected to be small,
in the one or two packet range. Policing at boundaries enforces
rate compliance, and may be implemented by a simple token bucket.
The admission and set-up procedures are expected to evolve, in
time, to be dynamically configurable and fairly complex while
the mechanisms in the forwarding path remain simple.

A Premium service built on this architecture can be deployed in
a useful way once the forwarding path mechanisms are in place
by making static allocations. Traffic flows can be designated
for special treatment through network management configuration.
Traffic flows should be designated by the source, the destination,
or any combination of fields in the packet header. First-hop (of
leaf) routers will filter flows on all or part of the header tuple
consisting of the source IP address, destination IP address,
protocol identifier, source port number, and destination
port number. Based on this classification, a first-hop router
performs traffic shaping and sets the designated Premium bit
of the precedence field. End-hosts are thus not required to be
"differentiated services aware", though if and when end-systems
become universally "aware", they might do their own shaping and
first-hop routers merely police.

Adherence to the subscribed rate and burst size must be enforced
at the entry to the network, either by the end-system or by the
first-hop router. Within an intranet, administrative domain, or
"trust region" the packets can then be classified and serviced
solely on the Premium bit. Where packets cross a boundary, the
policing function is critical. The entered region will check the
prioritized packet flow for conformance to a rate the two regions
have agreed upon, discarding packets that exceed the rate. It is
thus in the best interests of a region to ensure conformance
to the agreed-upon rate at the egress. This requirement means
that Premium traffic is burst-free and, together with the no
oversubscription rule, leads directly to the observation that
Premium queues can easily be sized to prevent the need to drop
packets and thus the need for a queue management policy. At each
router, the largest queue size is related to the in-degree of
other routers and is thus quite small, on the order of ten packets.

Premium bandwidth allocations must not be oversubscribed as
they represent a commitment by the network and should be priced
accordingly. Note that, in this architecture, Premium traffic will
also experience considerably less delay variation than either best
effort traffic or the Assured data traffic of [3]. Premium rates
might be configured on a subscription basis in the near-term,
or on-demand when dynamic set-up or signaling is available.

Figure 1 shows how a Premium packet flow is established within a
particular administrative domain, Company A, and sent across the
access link to Company A's ISP. Assume that the host's first-hop
router has been configured to match a flow from the host's IP
address to a destination IP address that is reached through ISP.
A Premium flow is configured from a host with a rate which is
both smaller than the total Premium allocation Company A has
from the ISP, r bytes per second, and smaller than the amount of
that allocation has been assigned to other hosts in Company A.
Packets are not marked in any special way when they leave the host.
The first-hop router clears the Premium bit on all arriving
packets, sets the Premium bit on all packets in the designated
flow, shapes packets in the Premium flow to a configured rate
and burst size, queues best-effort unmarked packets in the low
priority queue and shaped Premium packets in the high priority
queue, and sends packets from those two queues at simple priority.
Intermediate routers internal to Company A enqueue packets in
one of two output queues based on the Premium bit and service
the queues with simple priority. Border routers perform quite
different tasks, depending on whether they are processing an egress
flow or an ingress flow. An egress border router may perform
some reshaping on the aggregate Premium traffic to conform to
rate r, depending on the number of Premium flows aggregated.
Ingress border routers only need to perform a simple policing
function that can be implemented with a token bucket. In the
example, the ISP accepts all Premium packets from A as long as
the flow does not exceed r bytes per second.

Figure 1.        Premium traffic flow from end-host to
organization's ISP

2.3 Two-bit differentiated services architecture

Clark's and Jacobson's proposals are markedly similar in the
location and type of functional blocks that are needed to implement
them. Furthermore, they implement quite different services which
are not incompatible in a network. The Premium service implements
a guaranteed peak bandwidth service with negligible queueing delay
that cannot starve best effort traffic and can be allocated in a
fairly straightforward fashion. This service would seem to have
a strong appeal for commercial applications, video broadcasts,
voice-over-IP, and VPNs. On the other hand, this service may
prove both too restrictive (in its hard limits) and overdesigned
(no overallocation) for some applications. The Assured service
implements a service that has the same delay characteristics as
(undropped) best effort packets and the firmness of its guarantee
depends on how well individual links are provisioned for bursts of
Assured packets. On the other hand, it permits traffic flows to use
any additional available capacity without penalty and occasional
dropped packets for short congestive periods may be acceptable
to many users. This service might be what an ISP would provide to
individual customers who are willing to pay a bit more for internet
service that seems unaffected by congestive periods. Both services
are only as good as their admission control schemes, though this
can be more difficult for traffic which is not peak-rate allocated.

There may be some additional benefits of deploying both services.
To the extent that Premium service is a conservative allocation
of resources, unused bandwidth that had been allocated to Premium
might provide some "headroom" for underallocated or burst periods
of Assured traffic or for best effort. Network elements that
deploy both services will be performing RED queue management on
all non-Premium traffic, as suggested in [4], and the effects of
mixing the Premium streams with best effort might serve to reduce
burstiness in the latter. A strength of the Assured service is that
it allows bursts to happen in their natural fashion, but this also
makes the provisioning, admission control and allocation problem
more difficult so it may take more time and experimentation before
this admission policy for this service is completely defined.
A Premium service could be deployed that employs static allocations
on peak rates with no statistical sharing.

As there appear to be a number of advantages to an architecture
that permits these two types of service and because, as we shall
see, they can be made to share many of the same mechanisms, we
propose designating two bit-patterns from the IP header precedence
field. We leave the explicit designation of these bit-patterns
to the standards process thus we use the shorthand notation of
denoting each pattern by a bit, one we will call the Premium or
P-bit, the other we call the assurance or A-bit. It is possible
for a network to implement only one of these services and to have
network elements that only look at the one applicable bit, but we
focus on the two service architecture. Further, we assume the case
where no changes are made in the hosts, appropriate packet marking
all being done in the network, at the first-hop, or leaf, router.
We describe the forwarding path architecture in this section,
assuming that the service has been allocated through mechanisms
we will discuss in section 4.

In a more general sense, Premium service denotes packets that are
enqueued at a higher priority than the ordinary best-effort queue.
Similarly, Assured service denotes packets that are treated
preferentially with respect to the dropping probability within
the "normal" queue. There are a number of ways to add more service
levels within each of these service types [7], but this document
takes the position of specifying the base-level services of
Premium and Assured.

The forwarding path mechanisms can be broken down into those
that happen at the input interface, before packet forwarding,
and those that happen at the output interface, after packet
forwarding. Intermediate routers only need to implement the
post packet forwarding functions, while leaf and border routers
must perform functions on arriving packets before forwarding.
We describe the mechanisms this way for illustration; other ways
of composing their functions are possible.

Leaf routers are configured with a traffic profile for a particular
flow based on its packet header. This functionality has been
defined by the RSVP Working Group in RFC 2205. Figure 2 shows
what happens to a packet that arrives at the leaf router, before
it is passed to the forwarding engine. All arriving packets must
have both the A-bit and the P-bit cleared after which packets
are classified on their header. If the header does not match any
configured values, it is immediately forwarded. Matched flows
pass through individual Markers that have been configured from the
usage profile for that flow: service class (Premium or Assured),
rate (peak for Premium, "expected" for Assured), and permissible
burst size (may be optional for Premium). Assured flow packets
emerge from the Marker with their A-bits set when the flow is in
conformance to its Profile, but the flow is otherwise unchanged.
For a Premium flow, the Marker will hold packets when necessary
to enforce their configured rate. Thus Premium flow packets
emerge from the Marker in a shaped flow with their P-bits set.
(It is possible for Premium flow packets to be dropped inside
of the Marker as we describe below.) Packets are passed to the
forwarding engine when they emerge from Markers. Packets that have
either their P or A bits set we will refer to as Marked packets.

Figure 2. Block diagram of leaf router input functionality

Figure 3 shows the inner workings of the Marker. For both Assured
and Premium packets, a token bucket "fills" at the flow rate
that was specified in the usage profile. For Assured service,
the token bucket depth is set by the Profile's burst size.
For Premium service, the token bucket depth must be limited to
the equivalent of only one or two packets. (We suggest a depth of
one packet in early deployments.) When a token is present, Assured
flow packets have their A-bit set to one, otherwise the packet is
passed to the forwarding engine. For Premium-configured Marker,
arriving packets that see a token present have their P-bits set
and are forwarded, but when no token is present, Premium flow
packets are held until a token arrives. If a Premium flow bursts
enough to overflow the holding queue, its packets will be dropped.
Though the flow set up data can be used to configure a size limit
for the holding queue (this would be the meaning of a "burst"
in Premium service), it is not necessary. Unconfigured holding
queues should be capable of holding at least two bandwidth-delay
products, adequate for TCP connections. A smaller value might
be used to suit delay requirements of a specific application.

Figure 3. Markers to implement the two different services

In practice, the token bucket should be implemented in bytes
and a token is considered to be present if the number of bytes
in the bucket is equal or larger to the size of the packet.
For Premium, the bucket can only be allowed to fill to the
maximum packet size; while Assured may fill to the configured
burst parameter. Premium traffic is held until a sufficient byte
credit has accumulated and this holding buffer provides the only
real queue the flow sees in the network. For Assured, traffic,
we just test if the bytes in the bucket are sufficient for the
packet size and set A if so. If not, the only difference is that
A is not set. Assured traffic goes into a queue following this
step and potentially sees a queue at every hop along its path.

Each output interface of a router must have two queues and must
implement a test on the P-bit to select a packet's output queue.
The two queues must be serviced by simple priority, Premium packets
first. Each output interface must implement the RED-based RIO
mechanism described in [3] on the lower priority queue. RIO uses
two thresholds for when to begin dropping packets, a lower one
based on total queue occupancy for ordinary best effort traffic and
one based on the number of packets enqueued that have their A-bit
set. This means that any action preferential to Assured service
traffic will only be taken when the queue's capacity exceeds the
threshold value for ordinary best effort service. In this case,
only unmarked packets will be dropped (using the RED algorithm)
unless the threshold value for Assured service is also reached.
Keeping an accurate count of the number of A-bit packets currently
in a queue requires either testing the A-bit at both entry and
exit of the queue or some additional state in the router. Figure 4
is a block diagram of the output interface for all routers.

Figure 4. Router output interface for two-bit architecture

The packet output of a leaf router is thus a shaped stream of
packets with P-bits set mingled with an unshaped best effort stream
of packets, some of which may have A-bits set. Premium service
clearly cannot starve best effort traffic because it is both burst
and bandwidth controlled. Assured service might rely only on a
conservative allocation to prevent starvation of unmarked traffic,
but bursts of Assured traffic might then close out best-effort
traffic at bottleneck queues during congestive periods.

After [3], we designate the forwarding path objects that test flows
against their usage profiles "Profile Meters". Border routers will
require Profile Meters at their input interfaces. The bilateral
agreement between adjacent administrative domains must specify a
peak rate on all P traffic and a rate and burst for A traffic (and
possibly a start time and duration). A Profile Meter is required
at the ingress of a trust region to ensure that differentiated
service packet flows are in compliance with their agreed-upon
rates. Non-compliant packets of Premium flows are discarded while
non-compliant packets of Assured flows have their A-bits reset.
For example, in figure 1, if the ISP has agreed to supply Company
A with r bytes/sec of Premium service, P-bit marked packets that
enter the ISP through the link from Company A will be dropped if
they exceed r. If instead, the service in figure 1 was Assured
service, the packets would simply be unmarked, forwarded as
best effort.

The simplest border router input interface is a Profile Meter
constructed from a token bucket configured with the contracted
rate across that ingress link (see figure 5). Each type, Premium
or Assured, and each interface must have its own profile meter
corresponding to a particular class across a particular boundary.
(This is in contrast to models where every flow that crosses the
boundary must be separately policed and/or shaped.) The exact
mechanisms required at a border router input interface depend
on the allocation policy deployed; a more complex approach is
presented in section 4.

Figure 5. Border router input interface Profile Meters


3. Mechanisms

3.1 Forwarding Path Primitives

Section 2.3 introduced the forwarding path objects of Markers and
Profile Meters. In this section we specify the primitive building
blocks required to compose them. The primitives are: general
classifier, bit-pattern classifier, bit setter, priority queues,
policing token bucket and shaping token bucket. These primitives
can compose a Marker (either a policing or a shaping token bucket
plus a bit setter) and a Profile Meter (a policing token bucket
plus a dropper or bit setter).

General Classifier:
    Leaf or first-hop routers must perform a transport-level signature
    matching based on a tuple in the packet header, a functionality
    which is part of any RSVP-capable router. As described above,
    packets whose tuples match one of the configured flows are
    conformance tested and have the appropriate service bit set.
    This function is memory- and processing-intensive, but is kept
    at the edges of the network where there are fewer flows.

Bit-pattern classifier:
    This primitive comprises a simple two-way decision based on
    whether a particular bit-pattern in the IP header is set or not.
    As in figure 4, the P-bit is tested when a packet arrives at a
    non-leaf router to determine whether to enqueue it in the high
    priority output queue or the low priority packet queue. The A-bit
    of packets bound for the low priority queue is tested to 1)
    increment the count of Assured packets in the queue if set and 2)
    determine which drop probability will be used for that packet.
    Packets exiting the low priority queue must also have the A-bit
    tested so that the count of enqueued Assured packets can be
    decremented if necessary.

Bit setter:
    The A-bits and P-bits must be set or cleared in several places.
    A functional block that sets the appropriate bits of the IP header
    to a configured bit-pattern would be the most general.

Priority queues:
    Every network element must include (at least) two levels of simple
    priority queueing. The high priority queue is for the Premium
    traffic and the service rule is to send packets in that queue
    first and to exhaustion. Recall that Premium traffic must never be
    oversubscribed, thus Premium traffic should see little or no queue.

Shaping token bucket:
    This is the token bucket required at the leaf router for Premium
    traffic and shown in figure 3. As we shall see, shaping is also
    useful at egress points of a trust region. An arriving packet is
    immediately forwarded if there is a token present in the bucket,
    otherwise the packet is enqueued until the bucket contains tokens
    sufficient to send it. Shaping requires clocking mechanisms,
    packet memory, and some state block for each flow and is thus a
    memory and computation-intensive process.

Policing token bucket:
    This is the token bucket required for Profile Meters and shown in
    figure 5. Policing token buckets never hold arriving packets, but
    check on arrival to see if a token is available for the packet's
    service class. If so, the packet is forwarded immediately.
    If not, the policing action is taken, dropping for Premium and
    reclassifying or unmarking for Assured.

3.2 Passing configuration information

Clearly, mechanisms are required to communicate the information
about the request to the leaf router. This configuration
information is the rate, burst, and whether it is a Premium or
Assured type. There may also need to be a specific field to set
or clear this configuration. This information can be passed in
a number of ways, including using the semantics of RSVP, SNMP,
or directly set by a network administrator in some other way.
There must be some mechanisms for authenticating the sender of
this information. We expect configuration to be done in a variety
of ways in early deployments and a protocol and mechanism for
this to be a topic for future standards work.

3.3 Discussion

The requirements of shapers motivate their placement at the edges
of the network where the state per router can be smaller than
in the middle of a network. The greatest burden of flow matching
and shaping will be at leaf routers where the speeds and buffering
required should be less than those that might be required deeper in
the network. This functionality is not required at every network
element on the path. Routers that are internal to a trust region
will not need to shape traffic. Border routers may need or desire
to shape the aggregate flow of Marked packets at their egress
in order to ensure that they will not burst into non-compliance
with the policing mechanism at the ingress to the other domain
(though this may not be necessary if the in-degree of the router
is low). Further, the shaping would be applied to an aggregation
of all the Premium flows that exit the domain via that path,
not to each flow individually.

These mechanisms are within reach of today's technology and
it seems plausible to us that Premium and Assured services are
all that is needed in the Internet. If, in time, these services
are found insufficient, this architecture provides a migration
path for delivering other kinds of service levels to traffic.
The A- and P-bits would continue to be used to identify traffic
that gets Marked service, but further filter matching could be
done on packet headers to differentiate service levels further.
Using the bits this way reduces the number of packets that have
to have further matching done on them rather than filtering every
incoming packet. More queue levels and more complex scheduling
could be added for P-bit traffic and more levels of drop priority
could be added for A-bit traffic if experience shows them to be
necessary and processing speeds are sufficient. We propose that
the services described here be considered as "at least" services.
Thus, a network element should at least be capable of mapping all
P-bit traffic to Premium service and of mapping all A-bit traffic
to be treated with one level of priority in the "best effort" queue
(it appears that the single level of A-bit traffic should map to
a priority that is equivalent to the best level in a multi-level
element that is also in the path).

On the other hand, what is the downside of deploying an
architecture for both classes of service if later experience
convinces us that only one of them is needed? The functional blocks
of both service classes are similar and can be provided by the same
mechanism, parameterized differently. If Assured service is not
used, very little is lost. A RED-managed best effort queue has been
strongly recommended in [4] and, to the extent that the deployment
of this architecture pushes the deployment of RED-managed best
effort queues, it is clearly a positive. If Premium service
goes unused, the two-queues with simple priority service is not
required and the shaping function of the Marker may be unused,
thus these would impose an unnecessary implementation cost.


4. The Architectural Framework for Marked Traffic Allocation

Thus far we have focused on the service definitions and the
forwarding path mechanisms. We now turn to the problem of
allocating the level of Marked traffic throughout the Internet.
We observe that most organizations have fixed portions of their
budgets, including data communications, that are determined on
an annual or quarterly basis. Some additional monies might be
attached to specific projects for discretionary costs that arise
in the shorter term. In turn, service providers (ISPs and NSPs)
must do their planning on annual and quarterly bases and thus
cannot be expected to provide differentiated services purely
"on call". Provisioning sets up static levels of Marked traffic
while call set-up creates an allocation of Marked traffic for
a single flow's duration. Static levels can be provisioned with
time-of-day specifications, but cannot be changed in response to
a dynamic message. We expect both kinds of bandwidth allocation
to be important. The purchasers of Marked services can generally
be expected to work on longer-term budget cycles where these
services will be accounted for similarly to many information
services today. A mail-order house may wish to purchase a fixed
allocation of bandwidth in and out of its web-server to give
potential customers a "fast" feel when browsing their site.
This allocation might be based on hit rates of the previous
quarter or some sort of industry-based averages. In addition,
there needs to be a dynamic allocation capability to respond to
particular events, such as a demonstration, a network broadcast
by a company's CEO, or a particular network test. Furthermore,
a dynamic capability may be needed in order to meet a precommitted
service level when the particular source or destination is allowed
to be "anywhere on the Internet". "Dynamic" covers the range
from a telephoned or e-mailed request to a signalling type model.
A strictly statically allocated scenario is expected to be useful
in initial deployment of differentiated services and to make up
a major portion of the Marked traffic for the forseeable future.

Without a "per call" dynamic set up, the preconfiguring of
usage profiles can always be construed as "paying for bits you
don't use" whether the type of service is Premium or Assured.
We prefer to think of this as paying for the level of service that
one expects to have available at any time, for example paying
for a telephone line. A customer might pay an additional flat
fee to have the privilege of calling a wide local area for no
additional charge or might pay by the call. Although a customer
might pay on a "per call" basis for every call made anywhere,
it generally turns out not to be the most economical option for
most customers. It's possible similar pricing structures might
arise in the internet.

We use Allocation to refer to the process of making Marked
traffic commitments anywhere along this continuum from strictly
preallocated to dynamic call set-up and we require an Allocation
architecture capable of encompassing this entire spectrum
in any mix. We further observe that Allocation must follow
organizational hierarchies, that is each organization must
have complete responsibility for the Allocation of the Marked
traffic resource within its domain. Finally, we observe that
the only chance of success for incremental deployment lies in an
Allocation architecture that is made up of bilateral agreements,
as multilateral agreements are much too complex to administer.
Thus, the Allocation architecture is made up of agreements across
boundaries as to the amount of Marked traffic that will be allowed
to pass. This is similar to "settlement" models used today.

4.1 Bandwidth Brokers - Allocating and Controlling Bandwidth Shares

The goal of differentiated services is controlled sharing of
some organization's Internet bandwidth. The control can be done
independently by individuals, i.e., users set bit(s) in their
packets to distinguish their most important traffic, or it can
be done by agents that have some knowledge of the organization's
priorities and policies and allocate bandwidth with respect to
those policies.  Independent labeling by individuals is simple to
implement but unlikely to be sufficient since it's unreasonable to
expect all individuals to know all their organization's priorities
and current network use and always mark their traffic accordingly.
Thus this architecture is designed with agents called bandwidth
brokers (BB) [2], that can be configured with organizational
policies, keep track of the current allocation of marked traffic,
and interpret new requests to mark traffic in light of the policies
and current allocation.

We note that such agents are inherent in any but the most trivial
notions of sharing.  Neither individuals nor the routers their
packets transit have the information necessary to decide which
packets are most important to the organization.  Since these
agents must exist, they can be used to allocate bandwidth for
end-to-end connections with far less state and simpler trust
relationships than deploying per flow or per filter guarantees in
all network elements on an end-to-end path. BBs make it possible
for bandwidth allocation to follow organizational hierarchies
and, in concert with the forwarding path mechanisms discussed
in section 3, reduce the state required to set up and maintain a
flow over architectures that require checking the full flow header
at every network element. Organizationally, the BB architecture
is motivated by the observation that multilateral agreements
rarely work and this architecture allows end-to-end services to
be constructed out of purely bilateral agreements. BBs only need
to establish relationships of limited trust with their peers
in adjacent domains, unlike schemes that require the setting
of flow specifications in routers throughout an end-to-end path.
In practical technical terms, the BB architecture makes it possible
to keep state on an administrative domain basis, rather than at
every router and the service definitions of Premium and Assured
service make it possible to confine per flow state to just the
leaf routers.

BBs have two responsibilities. Their primary one is to parcel
out their region's Marked traffic allocations and set up the
leaf routers within the local domain. The other is to manage the
messages that are sent across boundaries to adjacent regions' BBs.
A BB is associated with a particular trust region, one per domain.
A BB has a policy database that keeps the information on who can
do what when and a method of using that database to authenticate
requesters. Only a BB can configure the leaf routers to deliver a
particular service to flows, crucial for deploying a secure system.
If the deployment of Differentiated Services has advanced to
the stage where dynamically allocated, marked flows are possible
between two adjacent domains, BBs also provide the hook needed to
implement this. Each domain's BB establishes a secure association
with its peer in the adjacent domain to negotiate or configure a
rate and a service class (Premium or Assured) across the shared
boundary and through the peer's domain. As we shall see, it is
possible for some types of service and particularly in early
implementations, that this "secure association" is not automatic
but accomplished through human negotiation and subsequent manual
configuration of the adjacent BBs according to the negotiated
agreement. This negotiated rate is a capability that a BB controls
for all hosts in its region.

When an allocation is desired for a particular flow, a request is
sent to the BB. Requests include a service type, a target rate,
a maximum burst, and the time period when service is required.
The request can be made manually by a network administrator
or a user or it might come from another region's BB. A BB first
authenticates the credentials of the requester, then verifies there
exists unallocated bandwidth sufficient to meet the request. If a
request passes these tests, the available bandwidth is reduced by
the requested amount and the flow specification is recorded. In the
case where the flow has a destination outside this trust region,
the request must fall within the class allocation through the
"next hop" trust region that was established through a bilateral
agreement of the two trust regions. The requester's BB informs
the adjacent region's BB that it will be using some of this rate
allocation. The BB configures the appropriate leaf router with
the information about the packet flow to be given a service at
the time that the service is to commence. This configuration is
"soft state" that the BB will periodically refresh. The BB in
the adjacent region is responsible for configuring the border
router to permit the allocated packet flow to pass and for any
additional configurations and negotiations within and across its
borders that will allow the flow to reach its final destination.

At DMZs, there must be an unambiguous way to determine the local
source of a packet. An interface's source could be determined
from its MAC address which would then be used to classify packets
as coming across a logical link directly from the source domain
corresponding to that MAC address. Thus with this understanding
we can continue to use figures illustrating a single pipe between
two different domains.

In this way, all agreements and negotiations are performed
between two adjacent domains. An initial request might cause
communication between BBs on several domains along a path, but
each communication is only between two adjacent BBs. Initially,
these agreements will be prenegotiated and fairly static. Some may
become more dynamic as the service evolves.

4.2 Examples

This section gives examples of BB transactions in a non-trivial,
multi-transit-domain Internet. The BB framework allows operating
points across a spectrum from "no signalling across boundaries"
to "each flow set up dynamically". We might expect to move
across this spectrum over time, as the necessary mechanisms are
ubiquitously deployed and BBs become more sophisticated, but
the statically allocated portions of the spectrum should always
have uses. We believe the ability to support this wide spectrum
of choices simultaneously will be important both in incremental
deployment and in allowing ISPs to make a wide range of offerings
and pricings to users. The examples of this section roughly follow
the spectrum of increasing sophistication. Note that we assume
that domains contract for some amount of Marked traffic which can
be requested as either `Assured' or `Premium' in each individual
flow setup transaction. The examples say "Marked" although actual
transactions would have to specify either Assured or Premium.

A statically configured example with no BB messages exchanged

Here all allocations are statically preallocated through purely
bilateral agreements between users (individual TCPs, individual
hosts, campus networks, or whole ISPs) [6]. The allocations are in
the form of usage profiles of rate, burst, and a time during which
that profile is to be active. Users and providers negotiate these
Profiles which are then installed in the user domain BB and in the
provider domain BB. No BB messages cross the boundary; we assume
this negotiation is done by human representatives of each domain.
In this case, BBs only have to perform one of their two functions,
that of allocating this Profile within their local domain. It is
even possible to set all of this suballocations up in advance and
then the BB only needs to set up and tear down the Profile at the
proper time and to refresh the soft state in the leaf routers.
>From the user domain BB, the Profile is sent as soft state
to the first hop router of the flow during the specified time.
These Profiles might be set using RSVP, a variant of RSVP, SNMP, or
some vendor-specific mechanism. Although this static approach can
work for all Marked traffic, due to the strictly not oversubscribed
requirement, it is only appropriate for Premium traffic as long as
it is kept to a small percentage of the bottleneck path through
a domain or is otherwise constrained to a well-known behavior.
Similar restrictions might hold for Assured depending on the
expectation associated with the service.

In figure 6, we show an example of setting a Profile in a leaf
router. A usage profile has been negotiated with the ISP for the
entire domain and the BB parcels it out among individual flows
as requested. The leaf router mechanism is that shown in figure 3,
with the token bucket set to the parameters from the usage profile.
The ISP's BB would configure its own Profile Meter at the ingress
router from that customer to ensure the Profile was maintained.
This mechanism was shown in figure 5. We assume that the time
duration and start times for any Profile to be active are
maintained in the BB. The Profile is sent to the ingress device
or cleared from the ingress device by messages sent from the BB.
In this example, we assume that van@lbl wants to talk to ddc@mit.
The LBL-BB is sent a request from Van asking that premium service
be assigned to a flow that is designated as having source address
"V:4" and going to destination address "D:8". This flow should be
configured for a rate of 128kb/sec and allocated from 1pm to 3pm.
The request must be "signed" in a secure, verifiable manner.
The request might be sent as data to the LBL-BB, an e-mail message
to a network administrator, or in a phone call to a network
administrator. The LBL-BB receives this message, verifies that
there is 128kb/sec of unused Premium service for the domain from
1-3pm, then sends a message to Leaf1 that sets up an appropriate
Profile Meter. The message to Leaf1 might be an RSVP message,
or SNMP, or some proprietary method. All the domains passed must
have sufficient reserve capacity to meet this request.



Figure 6. Bandwidth Broker setting Profiles in leaf routers

A statically configured example with BB messages exchanged

Next we present an example where all allocations are statically
preallocated but BB messages are exchanged for greater flexibility.
Figure 7 shows an end-to-end example for Marked traffic in a
statically allocated internet. The numbers at the trust region
boundaries indicate the total statically allocated Marked packet
rates that will be accepted across those boundaries. For example,
100kbps of Marked traffic can be sent from LBL to ESNet; a Profile
Meter at the ESNet egress boundary would have a token bucket set
to rate 100kbps. (There MAY be a shaper set at LBL's egress to
ensure that the Marked traffic conforms to the aggregate Profile.)
The tables inside the transit network "bubbles" show their policy
databases and reflect the values after the transaction is complete.
In Figure 7, V wants to transmit a flow from LBL to D at MIT at 10
Kbps. As in figure 6, a request for this profile is made of LBL's
BB. LBL's BB authenticates the request and checks to see if there
is 10kbps left in its Marked allocation going in that direction.
There is, so the LBL-BB passes a message to the ESNet-BB saying
that it would like to use 10kbps of its Marked allocation for
this flow. ESNet authenticates the message, checks its database
and sees that it has a 10kbps Marked allocation to NEARNet (the
next region in that direction) that is being unused. The policy
is that ESNet-BB must always inform ("ask") NEARNet-BB when it
is about to use part of its allocation. NEARNET-BB authenticates
the message, checks its database and discovers that 20kbps of the
allocation to MIT is unused and the policy at that boundary is to
not inform MIT when part of the allocation is about to be used
("<50 ok" where the total allocation is 50). The dotted lines
indicate the "implied" transaction, that is the transaction that
would have happened if the policy hadn't said "don't ask me".
Now each BB can pass an "ok" message to this request across
its boundary. This allows V to send to D, but not vice versa.
It would also be possible for the request to originate from D.

Figure 7. End-to-end example with static allocation.

Consider the same example where the ESNet-BB finds all of its
Marked allocation to NEARNet, 10 kbps, in use. With static
allocations, ESNet must transmit a "no" to this request back to
the LBL-BB. Presumably, the LBL-BB would record this information to
complain to ESNet about the overbooking at the end of the month!
One solution to this sort of "busy signal" is for ESNet to get
better at anticipating its customers needs or require long advance
bookings for every flow, but it's also possible for bandwidth
brokerage decisions to become dynamic.

Figure 8. End-to-end static allocation example with no remaining
allocation

Dynamic Allocation and additional mechanism

As we shall see, dynamic allocation requires more complex BBs as
well as more complex border policing, including the necessity to
keep more state. However, it enables an important service with
a small increase in state.

The next set of figures (starting with figure 9) show what happens
in the case of dynamic allocation. As before, V requests 10kbps
to talk to D at MIT. Since the allocation is dynamic, the border
policers do not have a preset value, instead being set to reflect
the current peak value of Marked traffic permitted to cross
that boundary. The request is sent to the LBL-BB.

Figure 9. First step in end-to-end dynamic allocation example.

In figure 10, note that ESNet has no allocation set up to NEARNet.
This system is capable of dynamic allocations in addition to
static, so it asks NEARNet if it can "add 10" to its allocation
from ESNet. As in the figure 7 example, MIT's policy is set to
"don't ask" for this case, so the dotted lines represent "implicit
transactions" where no messages were exchanged. However, NEARNet
does update its table to indicate that it is now using 20kbps of
the Marked allocation to MIT.

Figure 10. Second step in end-to-end dynamic allocation example

In figure 11, we see the third step where MIT's "virtual ok"
allows the NEARNet-BB to tell its border router to increase the
Marked allocation across the ESNet-NEARNet boundary by 10 kbps.

Figure 11. Third step in end-to-end dynamic allocation example

Figure 11 shows NEARNet-BB's "ok" for that request transmitted
back to ESNet-BB. This causes ESNet-BB to send its border router
a message to create a 10 kbps subclass for the flow "V->D".
This is required in order to ensure that the 10kpbs that has just
been dynamically allocated gets used only for that connection.
Note that this does require that the per flow state be passed
from LBL-BB to ESNet-BB, but this is the only boundary that needs
that level of flow information and this further classification
will only need to be done at that one boundary router and only
on packets coming from LBL. Thus dynamic allocation requires more
complex Profile Metering than that shown in figure 5.

Figure 12. Fourth step in end-to-end dynamic allocation example.

In figure 12, the ESNet border router gives the "ok" that a
subclass has been created, causing the ESNet-BB to send an "ok"
to the LBL-BB which lets V know the request has been approved.

Figure 13. Final step in end-to-end dynamic allocation example

For dynamic allocation, a basic version of a CBQ scheduler [5]
would have all the required functionality to set up the subclasses.
RSVP currently provides a way to move the TSpec for the flow.

For multicast flows, we assume that packets that are bound for
at least one egress can be carried through a domain at that level
of service to all egress points. If a particular multicast branch
has been subscribed to at best-effort when upstream branches are
Marked, it will have its bit settings cleared before it crosses
the boundary. The information required for this flow identification
is used to augment the existing state that is already kept on
this flow because it is a multicast flow. We note that we are
already "catching" this flow, but now we must potentially clear
the bit-pattern.

5. RSVP/int-serv and this architecture

Much work has been done in recent years on the definition of
related integrated services for the internet and the specification
of the RSVP signalling protocol. The two-bit architecture proposed
in this work can easily interoperate with those specifications.
In this section we first discuss how the forwarding mechanisms
described in section 3 can be used to support integrated
services. Second, we discuss how RSVP could interoperate with
the administrative structure of the BBs to provide better scaling.

5.1 Providing Controlled-Load and Guaranteed Service

We believe that the forwarding path mechanisms described in
section 3 are general enough that they can also be used to provide
the Controlled-Load service [8] and a version of the Guaranteed
Quality of Service [9], as developed by the int-serv WG. First note
that Premium service can be thought of as a constrained case of
Controlled-Load service where the burst size is limited to one
packet and where non-conforming packets are dropped. A network
element that has implemented the mechanisms to support premium
service can easily support the more general controlled-load
service by making one or more minor parameter adjustments, e.g.
by lifting the constraint on the token bucket size, or configuring
the Premium service rate with the peak traffic rate parameter in
the Controlled-Load specification, and by changing the policing
action on out-of-profile packets from dropping to sending the
packets to the Best-effort queue.

It is also possible to implement Guaranteed Quality of Service
using the mechanisms of Premium service. From RFC 2212 [9]:
"The definition of guaranteed service relies on the result that
the fluid delay of a flow obeying a token bucket (r, b) and being
served by a line with bandwidth R is bounded by b/R as long as R is
no less than r. Guaranteed service with a service rate R, where now
R is a share of bandwidth rather than the bandwidth of a dedicated
line approximates this behavior." The service model of Premium
clearly fits this model. RFC 2212 states that "Non-conforming
datagrams SHOULD be treated as best-effort datagrams." Thus, a
policing Profile Meter that drops non-conforming datagrams would
be acceptable, but it's also possible to change the action for
non-compliant packets from a drop to sending to the best-effort
queue.

5.2 RSVP and BBs

In this section we discuss how RSVP signaling can be used in
conjunction with the BBs described in section 4 to deliver a
more scalable end-to-end resource set up for Integrated Services.
First we note that the BB architecture has three major differences
with the original RSVP resource set up model:

 1. There exist apriori bilateral business relations between BBs of
    adjacent trust regions before one can set up end-to-end resource
    allocation; real-time signaling is used only to activate/confirm
    the availability of pre-negotiated Marked bandwidth, and to
    dynamically readjust the allocation amount when necessary. We note
    that this real-time signaling across domains is not required,
    but depends on the nature of the bilateral agreement (e.g., the
    agreement might state "I'll tell you whenever I'm going to use
    some of my allocation" or not).

 2. A few bits in the packet header, i.e. the P-bit and A-bit,
    are used to mark the service class of each packet, therefore a
    full packet classification (by checking all relevant fields in
    the header) need be done only once at the leaf router; after that
    packets will be served according to their class bit settings.

 3. RSVP resource set up assumes that resources will be reserved
    hop-by-hop at each router along the entire end-to-end path.

RSVP messages sent to leaf routers by hosts can be intercepted
and sent to the local domain's BB. The BB processes the message
and, if the request is approved, forwards a message to the leaf
router that sets up appropriate per-flow packet classification.
A message should also be sent to the egress border router to add
to the aggregate Marked traffic allocation for packet shaping by
the Profile Meter on outbound traffic. (It's possible that this is
always set to the full allocation.) An RSVP message must be sent
across the boundary to adjacent ISP's border router, either from
the local domain's border router or from the local domain's BB.
If the ISP is also implementing the RSVP with a BB and diff-serv
framework, its border router forwards the message to the ISP's
local BB. A similar process (to what happened in the first domain)
can be carried out in the ISP domain, then an RSVP message
gets forwarded to the next ISP along the path. Inside a domain,
packets are served solely according to the Marked bits. The local
BB knows exactly how much Premium traffic is permitted to enter
at each border router and from which border router packets exit.

6. Recommendations

This document has presented a reference architecture for
differentiated services. Several variations can be envisioned,
particularly for early and partial deployments, but we do not
enumerate all of these variations here. There has been a great
market demand for differentiated services lately. As one of the
many efforts to meet that demand this draft sketches out the
framework of a flexible architecture for offering differential
services, and in particular defines a simple set of packet
forwarding path mechanisms to support two basic types of
differential services. Although there remain a number of issues
and parameters that need further exploration and refinement,
we believe it is both possible and feasible at this time to
start deployment of differentiated services incrementally. First,
given that the basic mechanisms required in the packet forwarding
path are clearly understood, both Assured and Premium services
can be implemented today with manually configured BBs and static
resource allocation. Initially we recommend conservative choices
on the amount of Marked traffic that is admitted into the network.
Second, we plan to continue the effort started with this draft
and the experimental work of the authors to define and deploy
increasingly sophisticated BBs. We hope to turn the experience
gained from in-progress trial implementations on ESNet and CAIRN
into future proposals to the IETF.

Future revisions of this draft will present the receiver-based
and multicast flow allocations in detail.    After this step
is finished, we believe the basic picture of an scalable,
robust, secure resource management and allocation system will be
completed. In this draft we described how the proposed architecture
supports two services that seem to us to provide at least a good
starting point for trial deployment of differentiated services.
Our main intent is to define an architecture with three services,
Premium, Assured, and Best effort, that can be determined by
specific bit-patterns, but not to preclude additional levels
of differentiation within each service. It seems that more
experimentation and experience is required before we could
standardize more than one level per service class. Our base-level
approach says that everyone has to provide "at least" Premium
service and Assured service as documented. We feel rather strongly
about both 1) that we should not try to define, at this time,
something beyond the minimalist two service approach and 2) that
the architecture we define must be open-ended so that more levels
of differentiation might be standardized in the future. We believe
this architecture is completely compatible with approaches that
would define more levels of differentiation within a particular
service, if the benefits of doing so become well understood.

7. Acknowledgments

The authors have benefited from many discussions, both in
person and electronically and wish to particularly thank Dave
Clark who has been responsible for the genesis of many of the
ideas presented here, though he does not agree with all of the
content this document. We also thank Sally Floyd for comments
on an earlier draft. A comment from Jon Crowcroft was partially
responsible for our including section 5. Comments from Fred Baker
made us try to make it clearer that we are defining two base-level
services, irrespective of the bit patterns used to encode them.

8. References

[1] D. Clark, "Adding Service Discrimination to the Internet",
1995.

[2] V. Jacobson, "Differentiated Services Architecture", talk in
the Int-Serv WG at the Munich IETF, August, 1997.

[3] D. Clark and J. Wroclawski, "An Approach to Service Allocation
in the Internet", Internet Draft draft-clark-diff-svc-alloc-00.txt,
July 1997, also talk by D. Clark in the Int-Serv WG at the Munich
IETF, August, 1997.

[4] Braden et. al., "Recommendations on Queue Management and
Congestion Avoidance in the Internet", Internet Draft, March, 1997.

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

[5] S. Floyd and V. Jacobson, "Link-sharing and Resource Management
Models for Packet Networks", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking,
pp 365-386, August 1995.

[6] D. Clark, private communication, October 26, 1997

[7] "Advanced QoS Services for the Intelligent Internet", Cisco
Systems White Paper, 1997.

[8] J. Wroclawski, "Specification of the Controlled-Load Network
Element Service", RFC 2211, September, 1997.

[9] S. Shenker, et. al., "Specification of Guaranteed Quality of
Service", RFC 2212, September, 1997.

[10] D. Clark and W. Fang, "Explicit Allocation of
Best Effort Packet Delivery Service", November, 1997.
http://diffserv.lcs.mit.edu/Papers/exp-alloc-ddc-wf.pdf


Authors' Addresses

    Kathleen Nichols
    Bay Networks, Inc.
    Bay Architecture Lab
    4401 Great America Parkway, SC1-04
    Santa Clara, CA 95052-8185
    Phone: 408-495-3252
    Fax:   408-495-1299
    Email: knichols@baynetworks.com

    Van Jacobson
    M/S 50B-2239
    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    One Cyclotron Rd
    Berkeley, CA 94720
    Email: van@ee.lbl.gov

    Lixia Zhang
    UCLA
    4531G Boelter Hall
    Los Angeles, CA  90095
    Phone: 310-825-2695
    Email: lixia@cs.ucla.edu



Internet Engineering Task Force         K. Nichols / V. Jacobson / L. Zhang
INTERNET-DRAFT                                                    Nov, 1997
draft-nichols-diff-svc-arch-00.txt                            Expires: 5/98