A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Transport Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following draft charter was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg@ietf.org) by Tuesday, April 20, 2010. Congestion Exposure (conex) -------------------------------------------------- Current Status: Proposed Working Group Last Updated: 2010-04-08 Chair(s): TBD Transport Area Director(s): Lars Eggert <lars.eggert@nokia.com> David Harrington <ietfdbh@comcast.net> Transport Area Advisor: Lars Eggert <lars.eggert@nokia.com> Mailing Lists: TBD Description of Working Group: The purpose of the CONEX working group is to develop a mechanism by which senders inform the network about the congestion encountered by previous packets on the same flow. Today, the network may signal congestion by ECN markings or by dropping packets, and the receiver passes this information back to the sender in transport-layer acknowledgements, The mechanism to be developed by the CONEX WG will enable the sender to also relay the congestion information back into the IP layer, such that the total level of congestion is visible to all IP devices along the path. The primary goal of the CONEX WG is to develop experimental specifications to achieve the above in IPv6 networks. The WG will also develop an abstract, higher-level description of the congestion exposure mechanism. Primary work items are: * An Informational document containing an abstract description of the congestion exposure mechanism that is independent of specific transport protocols and congestion information encoding techniques needed for different IP protocol versions. * An Experimental specification of an IPv6 packet structure that encapsulates CONEX information, defining a packet format and an interpretation. * An Experimental specification of a modification to TCP, for the timely transport of congestion information from the destination to the sender. It is believed that the CONEX mechanism will be useful as a generative technology that can be applied as a key element of congestion management solutions in a wide variety of use cases. However, the CONEX WG will initially focus on one use case, where the end hosts and the network that contains the destination end host are CONEX-enabled but other networks need not be. CONEX information can assist the network operator's traffic management and, for example, incentivize LEDBAT-like applications. Experiments on such use cases are encouraged and the WG will solicit feedback from such deployments. The WG may decide to document the experience from such use cases in Informational documents, covering: * Assumptions made * Deployment considerations * Advice on how to use the CONEX mechanism as an element of a congestion management solution * Security threats and advice on mitigation approaches (detailed specifications of threat mitigation techniques are out of scope) * Descriptions of results from experiments with the use case The CONEX WG is only chartered to work a congestion exposure mechanism for IPv6 networks. When the output of the WG has seen adoption and has proven to be useful, the WG may propose to the IESG that it should be rechartered to extend this effort. Milestones Mar 2011 Submit abstract specification for the congestion exposure mechanism to IESG as Informational Mar 2011 Submit use case description to IESG as Informational Sep 2011 Submit specification of IPv6 packet structure to IESG as Experimental Sep 2011 Submit specification for modification to TCP to IESG as Experimental _______________________________________________ IETF-Announce mailing list IETF-Announce@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
