Internet Engineering Task Force                                M. Allman
INTERNET-DRAFT                                                      ICSI
File: draft-ietf-tcpm-rto-consider-03.txt                 April 15, 2016
Intended Status: Best Current Practice
Expires: October 15, 2016


                 Retransmission Timeout Considerations

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Abstract

    Each implementation of a retransmission timeout mechanism represents
    a balance between correctness and timeliness and therefore no
    implementation suits all situations.  This document provides
    high-level requirements for retransmission timeout schemes

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    appropriate for general use in the Internet.  Within the
    requirements, implementations have latitude to define particulars
    that best address each situation.

Terminology

    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 BCP 14, RFC 2119
    [RFC2119].

   Introduction

    Despite our best intentions and most robust mechanisms, reliability
    in networking ultimately requires a timeout and re-try mechanism.
    Often there are more timely and precise mechanisms than a timeout
    for repairing loss (e.g., TCP's fast retransmit [RFC5681], NewReno
    [RFC6582] or selective acknowledgment scheme [RFC2018,RFC6675])
    which require information exchange between components in the system.
    Such communication cannot be guaranteed.  Alternatively, information
    coding---e.g., FEC---can allow the recipient to recover from some
    amount of lost information without use of a retransmission.  This
    latter provides probabilistic reliability.  Finally, negative
    acknowledgment schemes exist that do not depend on continuous
    feedback to trigger retransmissions (e.g., [RFC3940]).  However,
    regardless of these useful alternatives, the only thing we can truly
    depend on is the passage of time and therefore our ultimate backstop
    to ensuring reliability is a timeout.  (Note: There is a case when
    we cannot count on the passage of time, but in this case we believe
    repairing loss will be a moot point and hence we do not further
    consider this case in this document.)

    Various protocols have defined their own timeout mechanisms (e.g.,
    TCP [RFC6298], SCTP [RFC4960], SIP [RFC3261]).  Ideally, if we know
    a segment will be lost before reaching the destination, a second
    copy of it would be sent immediately after the first transmission.
    However, in reality the specifics of retransmission timeouts often
    represent a particular tradeoff between correctness and
    responsiveness [AP99].  In other words we want to simultaneously:

      - Wait long enough to ensure the decision to retransmit is
        correct.

      - Bound the delay we impose on applications before
        retransmitting.

    However, serving both of these goals is difficult as they pull in
    opposite directions.  I.e., towards either (a) withholding needed
    retransmissions too long to ensure the retransmissions are truly
    needed or (b) not waiting long enough to help application
    responsiveness and sending spurious retransmissions.  Given this
    fundamental tradeoff [AP99], we have found that even though the
    retransmission timeout (RTO) procedures are standardized,
    implementations often add their own subtle imprint on the specifics

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    of the process to tilt the tradeoff between correctness and
    responsiveness in some particular way.

    At this point we recognize that often these specific tweaks are not
    crucial for network safety.  Hence, in this document we outline the
    high-level requirements that are crucial for any retransmission
    timeout scheme to follow.  The intent is to then allow
    implementations to instantiate mechanisms that best realize their
    specific goals within this framework.  These specific mechanisms
    could be standardized by the IETF or ad-hoc, but as long as they
    adhere to the requirements given in this document they would be
    considered consistent with the standards.

    Finally, we note the requirements in this document are applicable to
    any protocol that uses a retransmission timeout mechanism.  The
    examples and discussion are framed in terms of TCP, however, that is
    an artifact of where much of our experience with RTOs comes from and
    should not be read as narrowing the scope of the requirements.

   Scope

    This document offers high-level requirements based on experience
    with retransmission timer algorithms.  However, this document
    explicitly does not update or obsolete currently standardized
    algorithms nor limit future standardization of specific RTO
    mechanisms.  Specifically:

    (a) RTO mechanisms that are currently standardized are not updated
        or obsoleted by this document.  This holds even in cases where
        the existing specification differs from the requirements in this
        document (e.g., [RFC3261] uses a smaller initial RTO than this
        document specifies).  Existing standard specifications enjoy
        their own consensus which this document does not change.

    (b) Future standardization efforts that specify RTO mechanisms
        SHOULD follow the requirements in this document.  This follows
        the definition of "SHOULD" [RFC2119] and is explicitly not a
        "MUST".  That is, the requirements in this document hold unless
        the community has consensus that specific deviations in a
        particular context are warranted.

    (c) RTO mechanisms that are not standardized but adhere to the
        requirements in the following section are deemed consistent with
        the standards.  This includes RTO mechanisms that are deviations
        from a specific standardized algorithm, but are still within the
        requirements below.

    More colloquially we note that each RTO implementation can be placed
    into one of the following four categories:

    - The implementation precisely follows a standard RTO mechanism
      (e.g., [RFC6298]), as well as adhering to the requirements in this
      document.


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      This document represents no change for this situation as such an
      implementation is clearly standards compliant.

    - The implementation does not precisely follow a standard RTO
      mechanism and does not adhere to the requirements in this
      document.

      This document makes no change to this situation as such an
      implementation is clearly not standards compliant.

    - The implementation precisely follows a standard RTO mechanism
      (e.g., [RFC3261]), but does not precisely adhere to the
      requirements in this document.

      This document represents no change for this situation as such an
      implementation is considered standards compliant by virtue of
      precisely implementing a standard mechanism that has community
      consensus as a reasonable approach.  That is, this document's
      stance is to not limit the community's ability to make exceptions
      to the requirements herein for particular cases.

    - The implementation does not precisely follow a standard RTO
      mechanism, yet does adhere to the requirements in this document.

      This document represents a change for these implementations and
      considers them to be consistent with the standards by virtue of
      following the requirements herein that provide for an RTO safe for
      operation in the Internet.

    In other words, the requirements in this document can be viewed as
    specifying the default properties of an RTO mechanism.
    Specifications can more concretely nail down specifics within these
    defaults or work outside the defaults as necessary.  However,
    implementations that fall within the defaults do not require
    explicit specifications to be considered consistent with the
    standards.

   Requirements

    We now list the requirements that SHOULD apply when designing
    retransmission timeout (RTO) mechanisms.

    (1) In the absence of any knowledge about the latency of a path, the
        RTO MUST be conservatively set to no less than 1 second.

        This requirement ensures two important aspects of the RTO.
        First, when transmitting into an unknown network,
        retransmissions will not be sent before an ACK would reasonably
        be expected to arrive and hence possibly waste scarce network
        resources.  Second, as noted below, sometimes retransmissions
        can lead to ambiguities in assessing the latency of a network
        path.  Therefore, it is especially important for the first
        latency sample to be free of ambiguities such that there is a
        baseline for the remainder of the communication.

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        The specific constant (1 second) comes from the analysis of
        Internet RTTs found in Appendix A of [RFC6298].

    (2) We specify three requirements that pertain to the sampling of
        the latency across a path.

        Often measuring the latency is framed as assessing the
        round-trip time (RTT)---e.g., in TCP's RTO computation
        specification [RFC6298].  This is somewhat mis-leading as the
        latency is better framed as the "feedback time" (FT).  In other
        words, it is not simply a network property, but the length of
        time before a sender should reasonably expect a response to a
        query.

        For instance, consider a DNS request from a client to a
        resolver.  When the request can be served from the resolver's
        cache the FT likely well approximates the network RTT between
        the client and resolver.  However, on a cache miss the resolver
        will have to request the needed information from authoritative
        DNS servers, which will non-trivially increase the FT and
        therefore the FT between the client and resolver does not well
        match the network-based RTT between the two hosts.

        (a) In steady state the RTO MUST be set based on recent
            observations of both the FT and the variance of the FT.

            In other words, the RTO should be based on a reasonable
            amount of time that the sender should wait for an
            acknowledgment of the data before retransmitting the given
            data.

        (b) FT observations MUST be taken regularly.

            The exact definition of "regularly" is deliberately left
            vague.  TCP takes a FT sample roughly once per RTT, or if
            using the timestamp option [RFC7323] on each acknowledgment
            arrival.  [AP99] shows that both these approaches result in
            roughly equivalent performance for the RTO estimator.
            Additionally, [AP99] shows that taking only a single FT
            sample per TCP connection is suboptimal and hence the
            requirement that the FT be sampled continuously throughout
            the lifetime of a connection.  For the purpose of this
            requirement, we state that FT samples SHOULD be taken at
            least once per RTT or as frequently as data is exchanged and
            ACKed if that happens less frequently than every RTT.
            However, we also recognize that it may not always be
            practical to take a FT sample this often in all cases.
            Hence, this once-per-RTT sampling requirement is explicitly
            a "SHOULD" and not a "MUST".

        (c) FT samples used in the computation of the RTO MUST NOT be
            ambiguous.


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            Assume two copies of some segment X are transmitted at times
            t0 and t1 and then segment X is acknowledged at time t2.  In
            some cases, it is not clear which copy of X triggered the
            ACK and hence the actual FT is either t2-t1 or t2-t0, but
            which is a mystery.  Therefore, in this situation an
            implementation MUST use Karn's algorithm [KP87,RFC6298] and
            use neither version of the FT sample and hence not update
            the RTO.

            There are cases where two copies of some data are
            transmitted in a way whereby the sender can tell which is
            being acknowledged by an incoming ACK.  E.g., TCP's
            timestamp option [RFC7323] allows for segments to be
            uniquely identified and hence avoid the ambiguity.  In such
            cases there is no ambiguity and the resulting samples can
            update the RTO.

    (3) Each time the RTO fires and causes a retransmission the value of
        the RTO MUST be exponentially backed off such that the next
        firing requires a longer interval.  The backoff may be removed
        after the successful transmission of non-retransmitted data.

        A maximum value MAY be placed on the RTO provided it is at least
        60 seconds (a la [RFC6298]).

        This ensures network safety.

    (4) Retransmission timeouts MUST be taken as indications of
        congestion in the network and the sending rate adapted using a
        standard mechanism (e.g., TCP collapses the congestion window to
        one segment [RFC5681]).

        This ensures network safety.

        An exception is made to this rule if an IETF standardized
        mechanism is used to determine that a particular loss is due to
        a non-congestion event (e.g., packet corruption).  In such a
        case a congestion control action is not required.  Additionally,
        RTO-triggered congestion control actions may be reversed when a
        standard mechanism determines that the cause of the loss was not
        congestion after all.

   Discussion

    We note that research has shown the tension between the
    responsiveness and correctness of retransmission timeouts seems to
    be a fundamental tradeoff [AP99].  That is, making the RTO more
    aggressive (e.g., via changing TCP's EWMA gains, lowering the
    minimum RTO, etc.) can reduce the time spent waiting on needed
    retransmissions.  However, at the same time, such aggressiveness
    leads to more needless retransmissions.  Therefore, being as
    aggressive as the requirements given in the previous section allow
    in any particular situation may not be the best course of action
    because an RTO expiration carries a requirement to slow down.

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    While the tradeoff between responsiveness and correctness seems
    fundamental, the tradeoff can be made less relevant if the sender
    can detect and recover from spurious RTOs.  Several mechanisms have
    been proposed for this purpose, such as Eifel [RFC3522], F-RTO
    [RFC5682] and DSACK [RFC2883,RFC3708].  Using such mechanisms may
    allow a data originator to tip towards being more responsive without
    incurring (as much of) the attendant costs of needless retransmits.

    Also, note, that in addition to the experiments discussed in [AP99],
    the Linux TCP implementation has been using various non-standard RTO
    mechanisms for many years seemingly without large scale problems
    (e.g., using different EWMA gains).  Further, a number of
    implementations use minimum RTOs that are less than the 1 second
    specified in [RFC6298].  While the implication of these deviations
    from the standard may be more spurious retransmits (per [AP99]), we
    are aware of no large scale problems caused by this change to the
    minimum RTO.

    Finally, we note that while allowing implementations to be more
    aggressive may in fact increase the number of needless
    retransmissions the above requirements fail safe in that they insist
    on exponential backoff of the RTO and a transmission rate reduction.
    Therefore, allowing implementers latitude in their instantiations of
    an RTO mechanism does not somehow open the flood gates to aggressive
    behavior.  Since there is a downside to being aggressive the
    incentives for proper behavior are retained in the mechanism.

   Security Considerations

    This document does not alter the security properties of
    retransmission timeout mechanisms.  See [RFC6298] for a discussion
    of these within the context of TCP.

Acknowledgments

    This document benefits from years of discussions with Ethan Blanton,
    Sally Floyd, Jana Iyengar, Shawn Ostermann, Vern Paxson, and the
    members of the TCPM and TCP-IMPL working groups.  Ran Atkinson,
    Yuchung Cheng, Jonathan Looney and Michael Scharf provided useful
    comments on a previous version of this draft.

Normative References

    [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
        Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

Informative References

    [AP99] Allman, M., V. Paxson, "On Estimating End-to-End Network Path
        Properties", Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Technical Symposium,
        September 1999.

    [KP87] Karn, P. and C. Partridge, "Improving Round-Trip Time

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        Estimates in Reliable Transport Protocols", SIGCOMM 87.

    [RFC2018] Mathis, M., Mahdavi, J., Floyd, S., and A. Romanow, "TCP
        Selective Acknowledgment Options", RFC 2018, October 1996.


    [RFC2883] Floyd, S., Mahdavi, J., Mathis, M., and M. Podolsky, "An
        Extension to the Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) Option for
        TCP", RFC 2883, July 2000.

    [RFC3261] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
        A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E. Schooler,
        "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002.

    [RFC3522] Ludwig, R., M. Meyer, "The Eifel Detection Algorithm for
        TCP", RFC 3522, april 2003.

    [RFC3708] Blanton, E., M. Allman, "Using TCP Duplicate Selective
        Acknowledgement (DSACKs) and Stream Control Transmission
        Protocol (SCTP) Duplicate Transmission Sequence Numbers (TSNs)
        to Detect Spurious Retransmissions", RFC 3708, February 2004.

    [RFC3940] Adamson, B., C. Bormann, M. Handley, J. Macker,
        "Negative-acknowledgment (NACK)-Oriented Reliable Multicast
        (NORM) Protocol", November 2004, RFC 3940.

    [RFC4960] Stweart, R., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC
        4960, September 2007.

    [RFC5682] Sarolahti, P., M. Kojo, K. Yamamoto, M. Hata, "Forward
        RTO-Recovery (F-RTO): An Algorithm for Detecting Spurious
        Retransmission Timeouts with TCP", RFC 5682, September 2009.

    [RFC6298] Paxson, V., M. Allman, H.K. Chu, M. Sargent, "Computing
        TCP's Retransmission Timer", June 2011, RFC 6298.

    [RFC6582] Henderson, T., S. Floyd, A. Gurtov, Y. Nishida, "The
        NewReno Modification to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm", April
        2012, RFC 6582.

    [RFC6675] Blanton, E., M. Allman, L. Wang, I. Jarvinen, M.  Kojo,
        Y. Nishida, "A Conservative Loss Recovery Algorithm Based on
        Selective Acknowledgment (SACK) for TCP", August 2012, RFC 6675.

    [RFC7323] Borman D., B. Braden, V. Jacobson, R. Scheffenegger, "TCP
        Extensions for High Performance", September 2014, RFC 7323.

Authors' Addresses

   Mark Allman
   International Computer Science Institute
   1947 Center St.  Suite 600
   Berkeley, CA  94704


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   EMail: mallman@icir.org
   http://www.icir.org/mallman





















































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