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IPv6 Benchmarking Methodology for Network Interconnect Devices
RFC 5180

Revision differences

Document history

Date Rev. By Action
2020-01-21
05 (System) Received changes through RFC Editor sync (added Verified Errata tag)
2017-05-16
05 (System) Changed document authors from "Chip Popoviciu" to "Chip Popoviciu, Diego Dugatkin, Ahmed Hamza, Gunter Van de Velde"
2015-10-14
05 (System) Notify list changed from bmwg-chairs@ietf.org, draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth@ietf.org to (None)
2012-08-22
05 (System) post-migration administrative database adjustment to the No Objection position for Jari Arkko
2012-08-22
05 (System) post-migration administrative database adjustment to the No Objection position for Dan Romascanu
2008-05-20
05 Amy Vezza State Changes to RFC Published from RFC Ed Queue by Amy Vezza
2008-05-20
05 Amy Vezza [Note]: 'RFC 5180' added by Amy Vezza
2008-05-19
05 (System) RFC published
2008-04-09
05 (System) IANA Action state changed to RFC-Ed-Ack from Waiting on RFC Editor
2008-04-09
05 (System) IANA Action state changed to Waiting on RFC Editor from In Progress
2008-04-09
05 (System) IANA Action state changed to In Progress from Waiting on Authors
2008-04-08
05 (System) IANA Action state changed to Waiting on Authors from In Progress
2008-04-07
05 (System) IANA Action state changed to In Progress
2008-04-07
05 Cindy Morgan State Changes to RFC Ed Queue from Approved-announcement sent by Cindy Morgan
2008-04-07
05 Amy Vezza IESG state changed to Approved-announcement sent
2008-04-07
05 Amy Vezza IESG has approved the document
2008-04-07
05 Amy Vezza Closed "Approve" ballot
2008-02-28
05 Ron Bonica State Changes to Approved-announcement to be sent from IESG Evaluation::AD Followup by Ron Bonica
2008-02-25
05 Jari Arkko [Ballot comment]
2008-02-25
05 Jari Arkko [Ballot Position Update] Position for Jari Arkko has been changed to No Objection from Discuss by Jari Arkko
2008-02-14
05 Dan Romascanu [Ballot Position Update] Position for Dan Romascanu has been changed to No Objection from Discuss by Dan Romascanu
2008-02-07
05 (System) Sub state has been changed to AD Follow up from New Id Needed
2008-02-07
05 (System) New version available: draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-05.txt
2008-01-11
05 (System) Removed from agenda for telechat - 2008-01-10
2008-01-10
05 Amy Vezza State Changes to IESG Evaluation::Revised ID Needed from IESG Evaluation by Amy Vezza
2008-01-10
05 Ross Callon [Ballot Position Update] New position, No Objection, has been recorded by Ross Callon
2008-01-10
05 Magnus Westerlund [Ballot Position Update] New position, No Objection, has been recorded by Magnus Westerlund
2008-01-10
05 Dan Romascanu
[Ballot discuss]
w.r.t.

5.1.1.  Frame Sizes to be used on Ethernet

  Ethernet in all its types has become the most commonly deployed media
  …
[Ballot discuss]
w.r.t.

5.1.1.  Frame Sizes to be used on Ethernet

  Ethernet in all its types has become the most commonly deployed media
  in today's networks.  The following frame sizes SHOULD be used for
  benchmarking over this media type: 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 1280,
  1518 bytes.

  Note: The recommended 1518 bytes frame size represents the maximum
  size of an untagged Ethernet frame.  According to the IEEE 802.3as
  standard [12], the frame size can be increased up to 2048 bytes to
  accommodate frame tags.

First the current increased maximal frame size accomodates not only tags but also other encapsulation required by the IEEE 802.1AE MAC security protocol. The other more significant aspect is that I believe that the recommended frame size choice should include 1522 (max size of a max length frame VLAN-tagged as per IEEE 802.1D) and 2048. My suggestion is to include these here and also in the table in Annex A.1
2008-01-10
05 Dan Romascanu [Ballot Position Update] New position, Discuss, has been recorded by Dan Romascanu
2008-01-10
05 Mark Townsley [Ballot Position Update] New position, No Objection, has been recorded by Mark Townsley
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko
[Ballot comment]
> Tests with traffic containing each individual extension header MUST
> be complemented with tests containing a chain of two or more
> …
[Ballot comment]
> Tests with traffic containing each individual extension header MUST
> be complemented with tests containing a chain of two or more
> extension headers (the chain MUST not contain the hop-by-hop
> extension header).

I was surprised by the strength of the requirement here (MUST).

Overall, with the exception of hbh on routers and packet inspection
features on any device, extension headers should not affect routing
and forwarding performance.

>      [permit|deny]  [protocol] [SA] [DA]

The syntax for defining this is rather loose.

> where permit or deny indicates the action to allow or deny a packet
> through the interface the filter is applied to.  The protocol field
> is defined as:
> o  ipv6: any IP Version 6 traffic
> o  tcp: Transmission Control Protocol
> o  udp: User Datagram Protocol

Does "udp" mean "udp over IPv6" in this context? Or "udp over
either IPv4 or IPv6"?
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed: …
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed:

> Note: During testing, either static or dynamic options for neighbor
> discovery can be used.  The static option can be used as long as it
> is supported by the test tool.  The dynamic option is preferred
> wherein the test tool interacts with the DUT for the duration of the
> test to maintain the respective neighbor caches in an active state.
> To avoid neighbor solicitation (NS) and neighbor advertisement (NA)
> storms due to the neighbor unreachability detection (NUD) mechanism
> [3], the test scenarios assume test traffic simulates end points and
> IPv6 source and destination addresses are one hop beyond the DUT.

Static and dynamic are not defined here or in the ND RFCs. Please
define what you mean.

Also, given the assumption about addresses on the directly
attached subnets, presumably the only ND traffic, if any,
would relate to address resolution of the router's address.

> Special care needs to be taken about the neighbor unreachability
> detection (NUD) [3] process. 

What care? Be more specific. Note that as the test traffic is not
from directly connected subnets, all parties involved in the test
are either routers or test equipment pretending to be routers. Why
would they invoke NUD?

> The IPv6 prefix reachable time in the
> router advertisement SHOULD be set to 30 seconds and allow 50%
> jitter.

Jitter is not a term recognized by RFC 4861 that defines router
advertisements. What specific recommendation do you have regarding
the parameters that should be configured to the router advertisements?


> IANA reserved prefix xxxxx/48 for IPv6 benchmarking similar to
> 198.18.0.0/15 in RFC 3330 [9].  This prefix length provides similar
> flexibility as the range allocated for IPv4 benchmarking and it is
> taking into consideration address conservation and simplicity of
> usage concerns.  The requested size meets the requirements for
> testing large network elements and large emulated networks.
>
> Note to IANA: Replace "xxxxx" with assigned prefix.

If this is the instruction that IANA uses to make the allocation (?),
it has too little instruction. Presumably you meant to say something
along the lines of:

  The IANA is instructed to allocate a prefix of size N from the
  space defined in RFC 4773 for use in ...
2008-01-10
05 Chris Newman [Ballot Position Update] New position, No Objection, has been recorded by Chris Newman
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko
[Ballot comment]
> Tests with traffic containing each individual extension header MUST
> be complemented with tests containing a chain of two or more
> …
[Ballot comment]
> Tests with traffic containing each individual extension header MUST
> be complemented with tests containing a chain of two or more
> extension headers (the chain MUST not contain the hop-by-hop
> extension header).

I was surprised by the strength of the requirement here (MUST).

>      [permit|deny]  [protocol] [SA] [DA]

The syntax for defining this is rather loose.

> where permit or deny indicates the action to allow or deny a packet
> through the interface the filter is applied to.  The protocol field
> is defined as:
> o  ipv6: any IP Version 6 traffic
> o  tcp: Transmission Control Protocol
> o  udp: User Datagram Protocol

Does "udp" mean "udp over IPv6" in this context? Or "udp over
either IPv4 or IPv6"?
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed: …
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed:

> Special care needs to be taken about the neighbor unreachability
> detection (NUD) [3] process. 

What care? Be more specific. Note that as the test traffic is not
from directly connected subnets, all parties involved in the test
are either routers or test equipment pretending to be routers. Why
would they invoke NUD?

> The IPv6 prefix reachable time in the
> router advertisement SHOULD be set to 30 seconds and allow 50%
> jitter.

Jitter is not a term recognized by RFC 4861 that defines router
advertisements. What specific recommendation do you have regarding
the parameters that should be configured to the router advertisements?


> IANA reserved prefix xxxxx/48 for IPv6 benchmarking similar to
> 198.18.0.0/15 in RFC 3330 [9].  This prefix length provides similar
> flexibility as the range allocated for IPv4 benchmarking and it is
> taking into consideration address conservation and simplicity of
> usage concerns.  The requested size meets the requirements for
> testing large network elements and large emulated networks.
>
> Note to IANA: Replace "xxxxx" with assigned prefix.

If this is the instruction that IANA uses to make the allocation (?),
it has too little instruction. Presumably you meant to say something
along the lines of:

  The IANA is instructed to allocate a prefix of size N from the
  space defined in RFC 4773 for use in ...
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed: …
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed:

> Special care needs to be taken about the neighbor unreachability
> detection (NUD) [3] process. 

What care? Be more specific. Note that as the test traffic is not
from directly connected subnets, all parties involved in the test
are either routers or test equipment pretending to be routers. Why
would they invoke NUD?

> The IPv6 prefix reachable time in the
> router advertisement SHOULD be set to 30 seconds and allow 50%
> jitter.

Jitter is not a term recognized by RFC 4861 that defines router
advertisements. What specific recommendation do you have regarding
the parameters that should be configured to the router advertisements?

>      [permit|deny]  [protocol] [SA] [DA]
>
>
> where permit or deny indicates the action to allow or deny a packet
> through the interface the filter is applied to.  The protocol field
> is defined as:
> o  ipv6: any IP Version 6 traffic
> o  tcp: Transmission Control Protocol
> o  udp: User Datagram Protocol

> IANA reserved prefix xxxxx/48 for IPv6 benchmarking similar to
> 198.18.0.0/15 in RFC 3330 [9].  This prefix length provides similar
> flexibility as the range allocated for IPv4 benchmarking and it is
> taking into consideration address conservation and simplicity of
> usage concerns.  The requested size meets the requirements for
> testing large network elements and large emulated networks.
>
> Note to IANA: Replace "xxxxx" with assigned prefix.

If this is the instruction that IANA uses to make the allocation (?),
it has too little instruction. Presumably you meant to say something
along the lines of:

  The IANA is instructed to allocate a prefix of size N from the
  space defined in RFC 4773 for use in ...
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed: …
[Ballot discuss]
This is an overall good document and well worth publishing. However, there were a number of specific technical issues that should be addressed:

> Special care needs to be taken about the neighbor unreachability
> detection (NUD) [3] process. 

What care? Be more specific. Note that as the test traffic is not
from directly connected subnets, all parties involved in the test
are either routers or test equipment pretending to be routers. Why
would they invoke NUD?

> The IPv6 prefix reachable time in the
> router advertisement SHOULD be set to 30 seconds and allow 50%
> jitter.

Jitter is not a term recognized by RFC 4861 that defines router
advertisements. What specific recommendation do you have regarding
the parameters that should be configured to the router advertisements?

>      [permit|deny]  [protocol] [SA] [DA]
>
>
> where permit or deny indicates the action to allow or deny a packet
> through the interface the filter is applied to.  The protocol field
> is defined as:
> o  ipv6: any IP Version 6 traffic
> o  tcp: Transmission Control Protocol
> o  udp: User Datagram Protocol
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko
[Ballot comment]
> Tests with traffic containing each individual extension header MUST
> be complemented with tests containing a chain of two or more
> …
[Ballot comment]
> Tests with traffic containing each individual extension header MUST
> be complemented with tests containing a chain of two or more
> extension headers (the chain MUST not contain the hop-by-hop
> extension header).

I was surprised by the strength of the requirement here (MUST).
2008-01-10
05 Jari Arkko [Ballot Position Update] New position, Discuss, has been recorded by Jari Arkko
2008-01-09
05 Tim Polk [Ballot Position Update] New position, No Objection, has been recorded by Tim Polk
2008-01-09
05 David Ward [Ballot Position Update] New position, Yes, has been recorded by David Ward
2008-01-08
05 Amanda Baber
IANA Evaluation comments:

Note: It would be helpful to have some language added to the IANA
section or somewhere in the document about why ULA …
IANA Evaluation comments:

Note: It would be helpful to have some language added to the IANA
section or somewhere in the document about why ULA space in not
appropriate and why special use space is preferred.

Upon approval of this document, the IANA will make the following
assignment in the "IANA IPv6 Special Purpose Address Registry –
per [RFC4773]" registry located at http://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-ipv6-special-registry

Prefix:
TBD/48

Assignment:
BMWG

Date Designated:
DD MMM YY

Termination Date:
never

Purpose:
Benchmarking

Contact Details:
BMWG

Routing Scope:
Not Routed

Reference:
[RFC-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-04.txt]

(registration data will be formatted per existing registry format)

We understand the above to be the only IANA Action for this
document.
2008-01-08
05 Lars Eggert
[Ballot comment]
Section 4., paragraph 2:
>    Throughout the test, the DUT can be monitored for relevant resource

  Expand acronym: DUT


Section 5.3., …
[Ballot comment]
Section 4., paragraph 2:
>    Throughout the test, the DUT can be monitored for relevant resource

  Expand acronym: DUT


Section 5.3., paragraph 4:
>    extension headers (the chain MUST not contain the hop-by-hop

  Nit: s/MUST not/MUST NOT/
2008-01-08
05 Lars Eggert [Ballot Position Update] New position, No Objection, has been recorded by Lars Eggert
2008-01-04
05 Ron Bonica Placed on agenda for telechat - 2008-01-10 by Ron Bonica
2007-12-27
05 Ron Bonica State Changes to IESG Evaluation from Waiting for Writeup by Ron Bonica
2007-12-27
05 Ron Bonica [Ballot Position Update] New position, Yes, has been recorded for Ronald Bonica
2007-12-27
05 Ron Bonica Ballot has been issued by Ron Bonica
2007-12-27
05 Ron Bonica Created "Approve" ballot
2007-12-27
05 (System) Ballot writeup text was added
2007-12-27
05 (System) Last call text was added
2007-12-27
05 (System) Ballot approval text was added
2007-12-27
05 Ron Bonica State Changes to Waiting for Writeup from Publication Requested by Ron Bonica
2007-10-29
05 Dinara Suleymanova
PROTO Write-up

(1.a) Who is the Document Shepherd for this document? Has the
Document Shepherd personally reviewed this version of the
document and, in particular, …
PROTO Write-up

(1.a) Who is the Document Shepherd for this document? Has the
Document Shepherd personally reviewed this version of the
document and, in particular, does he or she believe this
version is ready for forwarding to the IESG for publication?
Al Morton, chair of BMWG, has personally reviewed the document and will
be the document shepherd. The document is ready for publication.

(1.b) Has the document had adequate review both from key WG members
and from key non-WG members? Does the Document Shepherd have
any concerns about the depth or breadth of the reviews that
have been performed?
The document has received extensive review and generated considerable
discussion over the last year and a half. Key people from the v6ops WG
have reviewed the draft at various stages, including Pekka Savola,
Brian Carpenter, Athanassios Liakopoulos and Benoit Lourdelet.

The Doc Shepherd has no concerns about the extent of review.

(1.c) Does the Document Shepherd have concerns that the document
needs more review from a particular or broader perspective,
e.g., security, operational complexity, someone familiar with
AAA, internationalization, or XML?
No.

(1.d) Does the Document Shepherd have any specific concerns or
issues with this document that the Responsible Area Director
and/or the IESG should be aware of? For example, perhaps he
or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of the document, or
has concerns whether there really is a need for it. In any
event, if the WG has discussed those issues and has indicated
that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those
concerns here. Has an IPR disclosure related to this document
been filed? If so, please include a reference to the
disclosure and summarize the WG discussion and conclusion on
this issue.
There are no known concerns.
No IPR disclosures related to draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth have been submitted
as of Oct 24, 2007.

(1.e) How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it
represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with
others being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and
agree with it?
The Working Group consensus behind this document is very strong.
The document benefits from extensive comments provided by many WG members
during three WG Last Calls. Comment resolutions have been tracked and may
be reviewed here:
http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/BMWG/IPv6-meth-comment-resolution.pdf
http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/BMWG/IPv6-Meth-Last-Call-resolution2.pdf
Scott Bradner, Bill Cerveny, and Rajiv Asati completed the BMWG review template
(see http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/BMWG/LastCallTemplate.txt ).
David Newman and Dan Romascanu (as a participant) also provided comments
and participated in discussions. The third WG Last call was relatively silent
with only two minor comments that were easily resolved.

(1.f) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
discontent? If so, please summarize the areas of conflict in
separate email messages to the Responsible Area Director. (It
should be in a separate email because this questionnaire is
entered into the ID Tracker.)
No.

(1.g) Has the Document Shepherd personally verified that the
document satisfies all ID nits? (See
http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html and
http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/.) Boilerplate checks are
not enough; this check needs to be thorough. Has the document
met all formal review criteria it needs to, such as the MIB
Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews? If the document
does not already indicate its intended status at the top of
the first page, please indicate the intended status here.

The single nits error in this document:
tmp/draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-04.txt(708): Found possible IPv4
address '198.18.0.0'
in position 4; this doesn't match RFC3330's suggested 192.0.2.0/24
address range.

is a reference to the address range that IANA assigned to BMWG as part of
the IANA section (where a new IPv6 address range assignment is requested)

The document does not require MIB Doctor review, etc.

(1.h) Has the document split its references into normative and
informative? Are there normative references to documents that
are not ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear
state? If such normative references exist, what is the
strategy for their completion? Are there normative references
that are downward references, as described in [RFC3967]? If
so, list these downward references to support the Area
Director in the Last Call procedure for them [RFC3967].
The references are split, and all normative references are RFCs.

(1.i) Has the Document Shepherd verified that the document's IANA
Considerations section exists and is consistent with the body
of the document? If the document specifies protocol
extensions, are reservations requested in appropriate IANA
registries? Are the IANA registries clearly identified? If
the document creates a new registry, does it define the
proposed initial contents of the registry and an allocation
procedure for future registrations? Does it suggest a
reasonable name for the new registry? See [RFC2434]. If the
document describes an Expert Review process, has the Document
Shepherd conferred with the Responsible Area Director so that
the IESG can appoint the needed Expert during IESG Evaluation?
The IANA section requests a dedicated IPv6 address range for BMWG lab testing,
using the existing range as an example. The size of the requested range
reached consensus in the BMWG. No expert review should be necessary.

(1.j) Has the Document Shepherd verified that sections of the
document that are written in a formal language, such as XML
code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, etc., validate correctly in
an automated checker?
NA

(1.k) The IESG approval announcement includes a Document
Announcement Write-Up. Please provide such a Document
Announcement Write-Up. Recent examples can be found in the
"Action" announcements for approved documents. The approval
announcement contains the following sections:

Technical Summary
Relevant content can frequently be found in the abstract
and/or introduction of the document. If not, this may be
an indication that there are deficiencies in the abstract
or introduction.


Working Group Summary
Was there anything in the WG process that is worth noting?
For example, was there controversy about particular points
or were there decisions where the consensus was
particularly rough?

Document Quality
Are there existing implementations of the protocol? Have a
significant number of vendors indicated their plan to
implement the specification? Are there any reviewers that
merit special mention as having done a thorough review,
e.g., one that resulted in important changes or a
conclusion that the document had no substantive issues? If
there was a MIB Doctor, Media Type, or other Expert Review,
what was its course (briefly)? In the case of a Media Type
Review, on what date was the request posted?

Personnel
Who is the Document Shepherd for this document? Who is the
Responsible Area Director? If the document requires IANA
experts(s), insert 'The IANA Expert(s) for the registries
in this document are <TO BE ADDED BY THE AD>.'

Technical Summary

The Benchmarking Methodologies defined in RFC2544 [8] are IP version
independent. However, RFC 2544 does not address some of the
specificities of IPv6. This document provides additional
benchmarking guidelines, which in conjunction with RFC2544, lead to a
more complete and realistic evaluation of the IPv6 performance of
network interconnect devices. IPv6 transition mechanisms are outside
the scope of this document.

Working Group Summary

The Working Group consensus behind this document is very strong.
The document benefits from extensive comments provided by many WG members
during three WG Last Calls. Comment resolutions have been tracked and may
be reviewed here:
http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/BMWG/IPv6-meth-comment-resolution.pdf
http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/BMWG/IPv6-Meth-Last-Call-resolution2.pdf
Scott Bradner, Bill Cerveny, and Rajiv Asati completed the BMWG review template
(see http://home.comcast.net/~acmacm/BMWG/LastCallTemplate.txt ).
David Newman and Dan Romascanu (as a participant) also provided comments
and participated in discussions. The third WG Last call was relatively silent
with only two minor comments that were easily resolved.

Document Quality

At least one test equipment vendor has already implemented this specification.

Personnel

Al Morton is the Document Shepherd.
Ron Bonica is the AD responsible for the BMWG

The Document Shepherd MUST send the Document Shepherd Write-Up to the
Responsible Area Director and iesg-secretary@ietf.org together with
the request to publish the document. The Document Shepherd SHOULD
also send the entire Document Shepherd Write-Up to the working group
mailing list. If the Document Shepherd feels that information which
may prove to be sensitive, may lead to possible appeals, or is
personal needs to be written up, it SHOULD be sent in direct email to
the Responsible Area Director, because the Document Shepherd Write-Up
is published openly in the ID Tracker. Question (1.f) of the
Write-Up covers any material of this nature and specifies this more
confidential handling.
2007-10-29
05 Dinara Suleymanova Draft Added by Dinara Suleymanova in state Publication Requested
2007-10-12
04 (System) New version available: draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-04.txt
2007-08-30
03 (System) New version available: draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-03.txt
2007-07-05
02 (System) New version available: draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-02.txt
2007-02-20
01 (System) New version available: draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-01.txt
2007-01-02
00 (System) New version available: draft-ietf-bmwg-ipv6-meth-00.txt