Design Considerations for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Overload Control
RFC 6357
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) V. Hilt
Request for Comments: 6357 Bell Labs/Alcatel-Lucent
Category: Informational E. Noel
ISSN: 2070-1721 AT&T Labs
C. Shen
Columbia University
A. Abdelal
Sonus Networks
August 2011
Design Considerations for
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Overload Control
Abstract
Overload occurs in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) networks when
SIP servers have insufficient resources to handle all SIP messages
they receive. Even though the SIP protocol provides a limited
overload control mechanism through its 503 (Service Unavailable)
response code, SIP servers are still vulnerable to overload. This
document discusses models and design considerations for a SIP
overload control mechanism.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6357.
Hilt Informational [Page 1]
RFC 6357 Overload Control Design August 2011
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. SIP Overload Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Explicit vs. Implicit Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Degree of Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.1. Hop-by-Hop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2. End-to-End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3. Local Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7. Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8. Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. Explicit Overload Control Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.1. Rate-Based Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.2. Loss-Based Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
9.3. Window-Based Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
9.4. Overload Signal-Based Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . 19
9.5. On-/Off Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
10. Implicit Overload Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
11. Overload Control Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
12. Message Prioritization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
13. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
14. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
15. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Appendix A. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Hilt Informational [Page 2]
RFC 6357 Overload Control Design August 2011
1. Introduction
As with any network element, a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
[RFC3261] server can suffer from overload when the number of SIP
messages it receives exceeds the number of messages it can process.
Overload occurs if a SIP server does not have sufficient resources to
Show full document text