Network Working Group                                         D. Goderis
      Internet Draft                                                   Alcatel
      Document: draft-tequila-sls-03.txt                            D. Griffin
      Category: Best Current Practice                University College London
      Expires April 2004                                          C. Jacquenet
                                                                France Telecom
                                                                     G. Pavlou
                                                          University of Surrey
                                                                       Editors
                                                                  October 2003
      
      
             Attributes of a Service Level Specification (SLS) Template
                              <draft-tequila-sls-03.txt>
      
      
      Status of this Memo
      
         This document is an Internet Draft and is in full conformance with
         all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026 [1].
      
         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.
      
      Abstract
      
         This document depicts a standard set of information to be
         (dynamically) negotiated between a customer and an IP service
         provider or between service providers, by means of instantiated
         Service Level Specifications (SLS). It also specifies the
         corresponding semantics of such information, so that it might be
         appropriately modeled and processed by the above-mentioned parties in
         an automated fashion.
      
      Table of Contents
      
         1.      Introduction...............................................2
         2.      Conventions used in this document..........................3
         3.      Changes since the Previous Version.........................3
      
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         4.      Basic Assumptions..........................................3
         4.1.    A DiffServ-driven Approach.................................3
         4.2.    Positioning SLS Templates in a Layered Model...............4
         5.      Service Level Specification Template.......................5
         5.1.    The Scope Attribute........................................5
         5.1.1.  Semantics of the Scope Attribute...........................5
         5.1.2.  Possible Combinations of the Scope Attribute...............5
         5.2.    The Flow Identifier (Flow ID) Attribute....................6
         5.2.1.  Semantics of the Flow ID Attribute.........................6
         5.2.2.  Usage of the Flow ID Attribute.............................7
         5.3.    The Performance Attribute..................................7
         5.3.1.  Semantics of the Performance Attribute.....................8
         5.3.2.  Quantitative aspects of the Performance Attribute..........8
         5.3.3.  Qualitative aspects of the Performance Attribute...........8
         5.4.    The Traffic Conformance Attribute..........................9
         5.4.1.  Semantics of the Traffic Conformance attribute.............9
         5.4.2.  Usage of the Traffic Conformance attribute................10
         5.4.2.1.  Basic Conformance Testing...............................10
         5.4.2.2.  Two-Level Conformance Testing...........................10
         5.5.    The Excess Treatment Attribute............................10
         5.6.    The Service Schedule Attribute............................11
         5.7.    The Reliability Attribute.................................11
         5.8.    Additional Attributes.....................................11
         6.      Examples of Instantiated SLS Templates....................11
         6.1.    SLS for a Virtual Leased Line Service.....................11
         6.2.    The Funnel Service........................................12
         6.3.    SLS for Best Effort Traffic...............................13
         7.      SLS Negotiation Protocol Requirements.....................13
         8.      Security Considerations...................................14
         9.      References................................................14
         10.     Acknowledgments...........................................14
         11.     Authors' Addresses........................................15
      
      
      1. Introduction
      
         The deployment of value-added IP service offerings over the Internet
         has yielded a tremendous effort for the definition, the specification
         and possibly the standardization of the notion of Quality of Service
         (QoS), which generally encompasses a wide set of elementary
         parameters, such as the maximum transit delay, the inter-packet delay
         variation, or the packet loss rate.
      
         Because the subscription to an IP service offering implies the
         definition of a contractual agreement between the customer and the
         corresponding IP Service Provider (ISP), the level of quality that
         will be associated to the deployment of such service will be based
         upon a set of the aforementioned parameters both parties will have to
         agree upon.
      
      
      
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         From this perspective, this document aims at listing (and promoting a
         standard formalism for) a set of basic parameters that will compose
         the elementary contents of a SLS, hence yielding the specification of
         a (hopefully) standardized SLS template that should dramatically
         facilitate the enforcement of IP QoS policies, especially with an
         inter-domain context where QoS-based IP service offerings are
         deployed over the whole Internet.
      
         Thus, this document presents an outline for the definition of the SLS
         parameters and the semantics that go behind this representation. As
         such, the document is structured as follows:
      
         - Section 4 lists the basic assumptions this work relies upon, and
           also provides a glossary of the terms used in this draft,
      
         - Section 5 specifies the SLS template, while section 6 provides some
           example of SLS instantiations, with the goal to show how such
           templates could be used,
      
         - Finally, sections 7 and 8 provide a list of requirements as far as
           the use of a SLS negotiation protocol is concerned, and some
           security considerations, respectively.
      
      2. Conventions used in this document
      
         The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
         "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
         document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [2].
      
      3. Changes since the Previous Version
      
         The following changes have been made since the previous version of
         the document:
      
         - Most of the text has been cleaned up and the overall organization
           of the document has been reviewed,
      
         - A section on SLS negotiation protocol requirements has been added,
      
         - Both the References and Authors' sections have been updated,
      
         - Remaining typos have been corrected.
      
      4. Basic Assumptions
      
      4.1. A DiffServ-driven Approach
      
         The basic assumption of this document is that IP service offerings
         will be deployed over a public IP infrastructure (namely the
         Internet) where part of if not all the network devices (namely the IP
         routers) will be DiffServ-capable, as per [3]. In particular, these
      
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         routers support Per Hop Behaviors (PHB), like the Assured Forwarding
         (AF) PHB ([4]) and the Expedited Forwarding (EF) PHB ([5]).
      
         In this document, ISPs are in charge of the exploitation of the
         underlying IP infrastructure that will support the QoS-based IP
         service offerings customers will have the ability to subscribe to,
         while the level of quality associated to these services is
         technically described in SLS templates.
      
         Furthermore, the DiffServ-related terminology used in this document
         fully complies with [6].
      
      4.2. Positioning SLS Templates in a Layered Model
      
         The Differentiated Services specification effort has yielded the
         identification of a set of elementary functions and concepts, whose
         respective interactions can be depicted according to a layered
         approach, as per the following figure 1.
      
               +----------------------------------------------------------+
               | Service Level Agreement (SLA)                            |
               |      * Administrative terms and conditions               |
               +----------------------------------------------------------+
               | Service Level Specification (SLS)                        |
               |      * QoS guarantees                                    |
               |      * Performance indicators                            |
               |      * IP traffic characteristics                        |
               +----------------------------------------------------------+
               | Per Domain Behaviors (PDB)                               |
               |      * QoS capabilities of the DiffServ domain           |
               |      * Edge-to-edge DiffServ aggregates                  |
               +----------------------------------------------------------+
               | Per Hop Behaviors (PHB)                                  |
               |      * QoS capabilities of DiffServ-enabled routers      |
               +----------------------------------------------------------+
               | DiffServ-inferred QoS Functions (implementation-specific)|
               |      * Schedulers                                        |
               |      * Algorithmic droppers                              |
               |      * Markers                                           |
               |      * Policers                                          |
               +----------------------------------------------------------+
                         Fig. 1: A Layered Model of DiffServ.
      
         As per figure 1, each of the layer displays its own QoS capabilities.
         According to the definition of a Per-Domain Behavior (PDB, [7]), the
         specification of such PDBs should include the reference to the (lower
         layer) PHB(s) the PDB "layer" relies upon.
      
         Furthermore, the mapping between instantiated SLS templates and PDBs
         remains an unexplored area: for example, a SLS is service-oriented
         and customer-specific, whereas a PDB is customer-unaware.
      
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      5. Service Level Specification Template
      
         The following sub-sections provide a description of the attributes
         that MAY be conveyed and valued in a given SLS template.
      
      5.1. The Scope Attribute
      
         The Scope attribute of a SLS template indicates where the QoS policy
         for the corresponding IP service offering is to be enforced.
         Therefore, the scope uniquely identifies the network region where the
         QoS policy will be enforced, by defining the boundaries of such
         region.
      
         The scope of a SLS MUST be expressed by a couple of ingress and
         egress interfaces. Ingress and egress respectively denote the entry
         and exit points of the network region that will convey the IP
         datagrams associated to the corresponding service offering.
      
         The introduction of the notion of ingress and egress interfaces
         implicitly states that SLS templates refer to uni-directional IP
         flows, where an IP flow is a set of IP datagrams that share at least
         one common characteristic, e.g. the same destination address.
         Obviously, the direction dimension of a SLS template does not exclude
         the provisioning of bi-directional SLS templates, thanks to the
         combination of at least two SLS templates.
      
      5.1.1. Semantics of the Scope Attribute
      
         Scope = (ingress, egress), where:
      
         - Ingress = Interface (I/F) Identifier | Set of I/F Identifiers | Any
      
         - Egress = Interface Identifier | Set of I/F Identifiers | Any
      
         Note that "|" denotes an exclusive OR, while "Any" is logically
         equivalent to "Unspecified".
      
      5.1.2. Possible Combinations of the Scope Attribute
      
         The following combinations are permitted:
      
         (1, 1), which reflects a one-to-one (peer-to-peer) communication.
         This kind of scope refers to "Pipe" SLS templates in the rest of the
         document,
      
         (1, N), which reflects a one-to-many communication (N > 1), e.g. a
         videoconferencing service. This kind of scope refers to "Hose" SLS
         templates in the rest of the document,
      
      
      
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         (1, Any), which reflects a one-to-any communication, e.g. a
         broadcasting service,
      
         (N, 1), which reflects a many-to-one communication, e.g. an IP
         Virtual Private Network (VPN) service offering, deployed according to
         a hub-and-spoke topology. This kind of scope refers to "Funnel" SLS
         templates in the rest of the document,
      
         (Any, 1), which reflects an any-to-one communication (e.g. all the IP
         traffic of a stub domain that has a single exit point towards the
         Internet).
      
         This scope taxonomy currently excludes the case of many-to-many
         communication types, which would be denoted as (M, N) according to
         the above semantics: either the ingress or the egress interfaces MUST
         be unique, whereas scopes of the (M, N) type could be de-composed
         into M instances of scopes of the (1, N) types, a.k.a. M instances of
         Hose SLSes.
      
         Also, there SHOULD be a 1:1 relationship between the interface
         identifier and the link the interface is attached to. The
         corresponding link identifier MAY be an IP address, but it may also
         be any other identification means both parties (customer and
         provider) would have agreed upon: for example, layer 2 link
         identifiers could be used in either Ethernet or PPP (Point-to-Point
         Protocol, [8]) access links.
      
      5.2. The Flow Identifier (Flow ID) Attribute
      
         The Flow Identifier (Flow ID) attribute of a SLS template refers to
         the IP flow, defined as a set of IP datagrams that share at least one
         common characteristic, and which corresponds to the IP service
         offering whose level of quality is technically depicted in the
         aforementioned SLS. This parameter provides an input for IP datagram
         classification to be performed by a DiffServ boundary node. Such a
         classification can either reflect a Behavior Aggregate (BA) or a
         Multi-Field (MF) taxonomy.
      
         The MF-based classification may either depict micro-flows or macro-
         flows, based on the source prefix attribute, for example (see section
         5.2.1 below).
      
      5.2.1. Semantics of the Flow ID Attribute
      
         A given SLS template MUST contain one and only one Flow ID attribute,
         which MAY formally be described by one or a combination of the
         following attribute.
      
         Flow ID = {DiffServ Information, Source information, Destination
         Information, Application Information}, where:
      
      
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         - DiffServ Information = DSCP Value | Set of DSCP Values | Any
      
         - Source Information = Source IP address | Set of source IP addresses
           | Source Prefix | Set of Source Prefixes | Source AS | Any
      
         - Destination Information = Destination IP address | Set of
           destination IP addresses | Destination Prefix | Set of Destination
           Prefixes | Destination AS | Any
      
         - Application Information = Protocol number | Source Port |
           Destination Port | (Source Port, Destination Port) | Any
      
      5.2.2. Usage of the Flow ID Attribute
      
         In the case of a BA-based classification, the DiffServ information
         MUST be provided, while the remaining information of the Flow ID
         attribute MUST NOT be specified. As an example, an Ordered Aggregate
         (OA) that defines a stream of AF-marked IP datagrams could be
         described by a single Flow ID attribute using several DSCP values,
         indicating as many drop precedence levels. Note that the DSCP value
         of the Flow ID's DiffServ information does not necessarily relate to
         a specific PHB, but rather is a means (among others) for identifying
         an IP flow.
      
         In the case where the Flow IP attribute is valued with the (IP source
         address, IP destination address) pair while the Scope attribute is
         left unspecified, there is therefore no specific assumption about the
         ingress and egress points that the corresponding traffic will cross.
         Furthermore, it is the responsibility of the service provider to
         select the route (thanks to the enforcement of a routing if not a
         traffic engineering policy) that will convey this traffic across the
         DiffServ domain.
      
         On the other hand, if both the Scope and Flow ID attributes of a SLS
         template have been specified so that the (Ingress I/F, Egress I/F)
         pair as well as the (Source IP Address, Destination IP Address) pair
         have been explicitly valued, then the route followed by the flow
         between the two hosts MUST go through the Ingress and Egress
         interfaces.
      
      5.3. The Performance Attribute
      
         The Performance attribute describes the network level of quality that
         is associated to the transportation of an IP flow, as it has been
         defined by the Flow ID attribute of the SLS template, and within the
         limits defined by the Scope attribute of the same SLS template.
      
         The Performance attribute is a set of indicators, and four indicators
         have been defined so far, according to the following semantics.
      
      
      
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      5.3.1. Semantics of the Performance Attribute
      
         The following indicators compose the Performance attribute of a SLS
         template.
      
         - One-way delay ([9]), measurement period, optional quantile
      
         - Inter-packet delay variation ([10]), measurement period, optional
           quantile
      
         - Packet loss rate ([11]), measurement period
      
         - Throughput, measurement period
      
         For a given SLS template, all these indicators refer to an IP flow
         which has been described by the valued Flow ID attribute of the SLS,
         and within the ingress and egress domain boundaries, as per the Scope
         attribute of the SLS. Such indicators are measured during a period of
         time which is specified by the "measurement period" indication
         associated to each indicator.
      
         The quantile indication is an optional parameter that is relevant to
         reflect an empirical gauge of the corresponding performance
         indicators. For example, a SLS template whose Performance attribute
         would contain the triplet (delay = 10 ms, measurement period = 5 min,
         quantile = 10E-3) means that the customer's expectation is that the
         probability of delays greater than 10 ms is less than 10E-3 for any
         measurement period of 5 minutes.
      
         Such Performance attribute semantics therefore yields the
         specification of arrays like N (delay/loss, quantile) pairs. The more
         pairs, the better the delay probability can be approximated as a tail
         distribution.
      
         As for the throughput indicator, it is measured at the egress point
         (as defined in the Scope attribute of the SLS), by counting all the
         outgoing IP datagrams described by the Flow ID attribute of the SLS.
      
      5.3.2. Quantitative aspects of the Performance Attribute
      
         One of the performance indicators of the Performance attribute is
         said to be quantitative whenever its value is expressed as a numeric
         value. Then, the QoS reflected by an instantiated SLS is said to be
         quantitative when at least one of the indicators of the Performance
         attribute of the SLS is quantified.
      
      5.3.3. Qualitative aspects of the Performance Attribute
      
         If none of the indicators of the Performance attribute of a given SLS
         has been quantified, then such indicators MAY be valued so that they
         reflect a qualitative QoS. The corresponding values of these
      
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         indicators MAY therefore be of the following kind: "low", "medium",
         "high".
      
         From a commercial perspective, such values MAY be associated to the
         definition of QoS-based IP service offerings, such as the "Bronze"
         service (e.g. with a delay indicator valued at "high"), the "Silver"
         service, (e.g. with a loss indicator valued at "medium"), and the
         "Gold" service (e.g. with a (delay, loss) pair valued at "low").
      
      5.4. The Traffic Conformance Attribute
      
         The Traffic Conformance attribute of a SLS template is a set of
         indicators that aim at describing how an IP flow (as depicted by the
         Flow ID attribute of the SLS) should "look like" (e.g. in terms of
         volume (per unit of time)) so that the customer be serviced according
         to the level of quality that has been described in the Performance
         attribute of the SLS for this traffic.
      
         The indicators of the Traffic Conformance attribute are the input
         data for traffic conformance algorithms, whereas traffic conformance
         testing functions are operated at the boundaries of a DiffServ
         domain, thanks to the contents of the Traffic Conformance attribute
         and the aforementioned algorithm.
      
         Basic traffic conformance testing relies upon a set of actions that
         yield the identification of "in-profile" and "out-of-profile" IP
         datagrams of a given IP flow (as depicted by the Flow ID attribute of
         the SLS). From this standpoint, the indicators that have been valued
         in the Traffic Conformance attribute of a given SLS describe the
         reference values the IP flow will have to comply with, hence the
         notions of "in-profile" and "out-of-profile" traffics.
      
         The traffic conformance algorithm is the means that unambiguously
         identifies in-profile and out-of-profile IP datagrams, based upon the
         valued indicators of the Traffic Conformance attribute of the SLS.
      
         Furthermore, there MAY be cases where traffic conformance testing
         actions are iterative, hence the notion of multi-level traffic
         conformance testing, where an IP datagram of a given flow will be
         tagged (thanks to a particular action taken by the traffic
         conformance algorithm) to reflect its belonging to a specific level.
      
         In such cases, the Traffic Conformance attribute of the SLS template
         MUST indicate the level the indicators refer to.
      
      5.4.1. Semantics of the Traffic Conformance attribute
      
         Indicators that MAY be conveyed by the Traffic Conformance attribute
         include:
      
         - Multi-Level Conformance Testing n (n being an integer)
      
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         - Peak Rate p (expressed in bits per second or kilobits per second)
      
         - Token Bucket Rate r (expressed in bits per second or kilobits per
           second)
      
         - Bucket Depth b (expressed in bytes)
      
         - Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) M (expressed in bytes)
      
         - Minimum Packet Size m (expressed in bytes).
      
      5.4.2. Usage of the Traffic Conformance attribute
      
      5.4.2.1. Basic Conformance Testing
      
         Basic conformance testing MAY rely upon the use of a token bucket
         algorithm, whereas the indicators of the Traffic Conformance
         attribute of the SLS template will be the token bucket rate r and the
         bucket depth b.
      
         Also, when defining the MTU indicator of the Traffic Conformance
         attribute of the SLS, then the corresponding conformance algorithm
         will consist in the following:
      
         - If the size of the incoming IP datagram is smaller or equal to MTU,
           then the datagram will be forwarded,
      
         - If the size of the incoming datagrams is strictly greater than the
           MTU, then the datagram will be dropped.
      
      5.4.2.2. Two-Level Conformance Testing
      
         A two-rate three-colour marker relies upon the use of two token
         buckets, whose respective rates are denoted r1 and r2 (with r2 > r1).
         Both buckets contain green and yellow tokens, respectively. In this
         case (where the indicators of the Traffic Conformance attribute of
         the SLS are the (r1, b1) and (r2, b2) characteristics of the token
         buckets), a simple traffic conformance algorithm is the following:
      
         - If there are green and yellow tokens left in the respective
           buckets, an incoming datagram will be tagged "green",
      
         - If there are yellow tokens left only, an incoming datagram will be
           tagged "yellow",
      
         - The incoming datagram will be tagged "red" otherwise.
      
      5.5. The Excess Treatment Attribute
      
      
      
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         The SLS template MUST describe how out-of-profile traffic flows will
         be processed, and this is the role of the Excess Treatment attribute.
         By default, if the Excess Treatment attribute is not specified in the
         SLS template, in excess traffic will be dropped.
         As a consequence, the semantics of the Excess Treatment attribute of
         the SLS template will consist in describing a specific action to be
         taken by the (DiffServ-enabled) router: such actions MAY consist in
         re-marking the IP datagrams (i.e. modifying the value of the DSCP
         bits), storing in-excess traffic in specific queues, etc. (a
         combination of elementary actions, e.g. "re-mark then store" SHOULD
         also be possible).
      
      5.6. The Service Schedule Attribute
      
         The Service Schedule attribute of a SLS template reflects the
         "working hours" of the corresponding service, by indicating both
         start and end times of the service. This attribute might be expressed
         as a collection of the following indicators:
      
         - Time of the day range, e.g. a service is available from 08:00 to
           17:00,
      
         - Day of the week range, e.g. a service available from Monday to
           Friday,
      
         - Month of the year range, e.g. the service is available from June
           2003.
      
      5.7. The Reliability Attribute
      
         The Reliability attribute of a SLS reflects the maximum Mean Down
         Time (MDT) per year, as well as the maximum Mean Time To Repair
         (MTTR) as far as the availability of the service is concerned.
         Reference units for the Reliability attribute SHOULD be minutes per
         year for the MDT indicator, and seconds for the MTTR indicator.
      
      5.8. Additional Attributes
      
         The current version of this draft has proposed and defined a set of
         attributes that SHOULD be conveyed in a SLS template. Obviously,
         there may be a need for conveying additional information, and updated
         versions of this document should reflect such requirement as
         appropriate.
      
      6. Examples of Instantiated SLS Templates
      
      6.1. SLS for a Virtual Leased Line Service
      
         Let us assume the availability of a (unidirectional) Virtual Leased
         Line (VLL) service offering, provided with a guaranteed throughput of
      
      
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         1 Mbit/s, a guaranteed one-way transit delay of 20 ms for a 10E-3
         quantile, as well as a guaranteed packet loss rate of 0%.
      
         Therefore, the value attributes of the corresponding SLS template
         will be the following:
      
         - Scope = (1, 1)
      
         - Flow ID = ((Set of) Source Addresses, (Set of) Destination
           Addresses, EF marking) - there may be several IP networks that may
           communicate through this virtual leased line, and all the IP
           traffic that will be conveyed by this VLL will be EF-marked.
      
         - Traffic Conformance = (b, r, drop), where r = 1 Mbit/s (token
           bucket algorithm), and out-of-profile traffic will be dropped.
      
         - Performance = (20 ms, 5 min, 10E-3, 0%), where delay = 20 ms,
           measured during a period of 5 minutes with an associated quantile
           of 10E-3, and with a 0% of packet loss rate (which implies that the
           throughput guarantee is identical to the token bucket rate r, hence
           1 Mbit/s.
      
         - Service Schedule = (24/24, 7/7) - for example.
      
         - Reliability = (MTTR = 30 s) - for example.
      
         In this example, it's worth mentioning that the throughput guarantee
         has been derived from the packet loss rate, the token bucket rate and
         the action to be taken for out-of-profile traffic (drop).
      
      6.2. The Funnel Service
      
         The Funnel service would aim at protecting local traffic (within an
         enterprise) from Internet traffic, such as HTTP. An example of such
         service is depicted in figure 2 below:
      
                              /-------------------\
                              |                   |
                              | Network    -------|-- B
                              |           /       |
                   A ---------|-------------------|-- C
                              |           \       |
                     <-a(out) |            -------|-- D
                              |                   |
                              \-------------------/
      
                         Fig. 2: Example of a Funnel Service.
      
         In figure 2, customer A requires that the traffic entering his
         network and coming from B, C or D, does not exceed the a(out) rate.
      
      
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         The attributes of the corresponding SLS would therefore be the
         following:
      
         - Scope = (N, 1)
      
         - Flow ID = (DSCP). The filter for incoming traffic will be applied
           on the DSCP marking.
      
         - Traffic Conformance = (b, r, drop). The token bucket algorithm
           reflects the maximum allowed (incoming) throughput (r = a(out)) on
           the specified egress interface, as defined in the Scope attribute.
           Out-of-profile traffic will be dropped.
      
      6.3. SLS for Best Effort Traffic
      
         The attributes of a Best Effort (BE) SLS would be the following:
      
         - Scope = all combinations that have been defined in section 5.1.2 of
           the document.
      
         There would be no indication of the Flow ID attribute, nor the
         Traffic Conformance, nor the Performance attributes. Nevertheless,
         both the Service Schedule and the Reliability attributes MAY be
         valued.
      
      7. SLS Negotiation Protocol Requirements
      
         The information that is conveyed in SLS templates by means of
         specific attributes will be negotiated between the customer and the
         service provider parties. As such, this information will be exchanged
         thanks to a communication protocol, which SHOULD address the
         following requirements.
      
         - The SLS negotiation protocol should use of a reliable transport
           mode, given the importance of the QoS information to be exchanged
           between the customer and the service provider,
      
         - The protocol architecture should provide a means for a dynamic SLS
           negotiation and subscription procedure, so that it may introduce a
           high level of automation in the actual negotiation and invocation
           of the corresponding IP service offerings,
      
         - The protocol should support a reporting mechanism that may be used
           for statistical information retrieval,
      
         - The protocol should support the appropriate security mechanisms to
           provide some guarantees as far as the preservation of the
           confidentiality of the information contained in a SLS template is
           concerned.
      
      
      
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      8. Security Considerations
      
         This draft has identified a set of information that will be exchanged
         between a customer and a service provider by means of a SLS template
         negotiation and instantiation procedure. As such, it raises the issue
         of the security associated to the provisioning of such information,
         by means of a protocol which should be able to address the
         requirements discussed in the previous section 7. In particular, the
         following security features SHOULD be considered:
      
         - Identification and authentication of the requesting entity (a.k.a.
           the customer), if not both parties,
      
         - Identification and authentication of the peering entities that will
           participate in the SLS negotiation process,
      
         - Preservation of the confidentiality of the information to be
           exchanged between both parties during the SLS negotiation and
           instantiation procedures.
      
      9. References
      
         [1]  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP
            9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
         [2]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
            Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997
         [3]  Blake, S., et al., "An Architecture for Differentiated
            Services", RFC 2475, December 1998.
         [4]  Heinanen, J., et al., "Assured Forwarding PHB Group", RFC 2597,
            June 1999.
         [5]  Davie, B., et al., "An Expedited Forwarding PHB (Per-Hop
            Behavior)", RFC 3246, March 2002.
         [6]  Grossman, D., "New Terminology and Clarifications for Diffserv",
            RFC 3260, April 2002.
         [7]  Nichols, K., Carpenter, B., "Definition of Differentiated
            Services Per Domain Behaviors and Rules for their Specification",
            RFC 3086, April 2001.
         [8]  Simpson, W., et al., "The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)", RFC
            1661, STD 0051, July 1994.
         [9]  Almes, G., Kalidindi, S., "A One-Way-Delay Metric for IPPM", RFC
            2679, September 1999.
         [10] Demichelis, C., Chimento, P., "IP Packet Delay Variation Metric
            for IP Performance Metrics (IPPM)", RFC 3393, November 2002.
         [11] Almes, G., et al., "One-way Packet Loss Metric for IPPM", RFC
            2680, September 1999.
      
      10. Acknowledgments
      
         Part of this work has been funded by the European Commission, within
         the context of the TEQUILA (Traffic Engineering for Quality of
      
      
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         Service in the Internet At Large Scale, www.ist-tequila.org) project,
         which was itself part of the IST (Information Society Technologies)
         research program.
      
         The authors would also like to thank W. Almesberger, M. Brunner, S.
         De Cnodder, S. Salsano, A. Kamienski, as well as A. Malick for their
         useful comments and suggestions that have been sent on the sls@ist-
         tequila.org mailing list, and also during private conversations.
      
      11. Authors' Addresses
      
         Maarten Buchli
         Alcatel Corporate Research Center
         Fr. Wellesplein 1,
         2018 Antwerpen
         Belgium
         Phone: +32 3 240 7081
         Email: maarten.buchli@alcatel.be
      
         Richard Egan
         Thales Research and Technology Ltd.
         Worton Drive
         Worton Grange Industrial Estate
         Reading, Berkshire RG2 OSB
         United Kingdom
         Phone: +44 118 923 8375
         Email: richard.egan@thalesgroup.com
      
         Panos Georgatsos
         Algonet S.A.
         206, Sygrou Avenue,
         176 72 Kalithea
         Athens
         Greece
         Phone: +30 210 955 8356
         Email: pgeorgat@egreta.gr
      
         Leonidas Georgiadis
         Aristotel Univ. of Thessaloniki
         PO Box 435, Thessaloniki, 54006,
         Greece
         Phone: +30 31 996385
         Email: leonid@eng.auth.gr
      
         Danny Goderis
         Alcatel Corporate Research Center
         Fr. Wellesplein 1,
         2018 Antwerpen
         Belgium
         Phone: +32 3 240 7853
         Email: Danny.Goderis@Alcatel.be
      
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         David Griffin
         Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
         University College London
         Torrington Place, London WC1E 7JE
         United Kingdom
         Phone: +44 (0)20 7679 7606
         Email: dgriffin@ee.ucl.ac.uk
      
         Christian Jacquenet
         France Telecom
         3, avenue Fran‡ois Ch‚teau
         CS 36901
         35069 Rennes Cedex
         France
         Phone: +33 2 99 87 63 31
         Email: christian.jacquenet@francetelecom.com
      
         George Memenios
         Algonet S.A.
         206, Sygrou Avenue,
         176 72 Kalithea
         Athens
         Greece
         Phone: +30 210 955 8331
         Email: memenios@egreta.gr
      
         George Pavlou
         Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR)
         Univ. of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH,
         United Kingdom
         Phone: +44 1483 689480
         Email: G.Pavlou@eim.surrey.ac.uk
      
         Olivier Poupel
         Alcatel Research and Innovation
         Route de Nozay
         91461 Marcoussis
         France
         Phone: +33 1 69 63 47 07
         Email: olivier.poupel@alcatel.fr
      
         Yves T'Joens
         Alcatel Corporate Research Center
         Fr. Wellesplein 1, 2018 Antwerpen
         Belgium
         Phone: +32 3 240 7890
         Email: Yves.TJoens@alcatel.be
      
         Sven Van den Bosch
         Alcatel Corporate Research Center
      
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         Fr. Wellesplein 1, 2018 Antwerpen
         Belgium
         Phone: +32 3 240 8103
         Email: sven.van_den_bosch@alcatel.be
      
      
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