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On 17/03/2017 21:56, Bob Hinden wrote:
Hi Stewart, Thanks for the detailed review. I am responding after reading the email thread that resulted, some issues were closed. Several of the reviews have suggested significant changes to this document. The working group was trying to make a few changes to bring it into alignment with some changes to rfc2460bis (based on updating documents). It was not attempting a major rewrite when advancing it to Internet Standard. The alternative that the working group discussed was to file errata on RFC1981 and leave it to a future document update. That might be the way to go. At the end of the day it is an IESG decision, but I was somewhat disquieted by the number of issues and comments raised across the set of reviewers. When we elevate a document to standard we are saying that it represents a fully baked idea that has no significant defects. The question given the level of comments is does this meet that bar? Given the level of discussion, I would think that the WG should seriously consider a revised version clearingI don’t think many of these changes can be done and still advance it to Internet Standard. If we can’t advance the current document, then the w.g. may want to just do the errata and withdraw the advancement request. Of course, if people want to work on a revision of IPv6 Path MTU Discovery, it would be welcomed, but it won’t be able to advanced to Internet Standard. up the full set of issues raised in discussion. Responses in line Best Regards Stewart OKComments below. Thanks, BobOn Feb 9, 2017, at 7:19 AM, Stewart Bryant <stewart@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Reviewer: Stewart Bryant Review result: Almost Ready I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft. The General Area Review Team (Gen-ART) reviews all IETF documents being processed by the IESG for the IETF Chair. Please treat these comments just like any other last call comments. For more information, please see the FAQ at <https://trac.ietf.org/trac/gen/wiki/GenArtfaq>. Document: draft-ietf-6man-rfc1981bis-04 Reviewer: Stewart Bryant Review Date: 9/Feb/2017 IETF LC End Date: 1/Mar/2017 IESG Telechat date: unknown Summary: This draft is on the right track but has open issues, described in the review. This review together with the lengthy discussion on the IETF list suggest that this draft has a number of issues that need to be addressed before publication. I wonder if we would best serve both our future and our heritage if we declared RFC1981 as historic, and either left the idea there, or declared it as historic and wrote a new text from a clean start?I think this was closed in the email thread. This is really an IESG decision.Major issues: Nits points out a number of faults with the document, but the only one of substance is: The text has a lot of RFC2119 language, but no RFC2119 declaration. The document could use a thorough RFC2119 scrubBased on in an earlier another review, our AD suggested an update to Shepard Writeup instead of adding something to the document. It says: This document is an update to RFC1981 that was published prior to RFC2119 being published. Consequently while it does use "should/must" style language in upper and lower case, the document does not cite the RFC2119 definitions. Since the changes in this update were very limited, the w.g. concluded to not change any of this language. The document lists the three original authors one with an affiliation change, but no email addresses. Has this been agreed with the original authors, and have arrangements been put in place for the RFC editor to process auth48?I contacted the original authors and they didn’t express any interest in being involved in this update. They haven’t participated in the IETF for many years. I can contact them during AUTH48, or the AD can override this requirement for this document. So long as you have an arrangement in place that is acceptable to the RFC Editor and IESG. It is concerning that the draft does not talk in any detail about how modern ECMP works, i.e. using the five tuple, and noting that the PMTU may be different depending on the transport layer port numbers.I think this is out of scope. So long as PMTU is bound to the five tuple (which I think it is), then the mechanism works, but given the prevalence of ECMP (pretty much every packet going across the core will be sujected to it) I don't think I agree that a discussion is out of scope. Given that a very large fraction of packets will traverse an MPLS network at some point, I am surprised that there is no text talking about the importance of providing support for this feature in the MPLS domain. RFC3988 talks to this point, but is only experimental.I think this was closed in the email thread. It was ruled out of scope on the basis that tunnel were out of scope, but this tunnel type does need some special consideration, particularly as nearly every packet crossing the Internet goes across this tunnel type a number of times in its passage. For me it is ore a question of providing the best advice to the reader, rather than minimising change. ====== If flows [I-D.ietf-6man-rfc2460bis] are in use, an implementation could use the flow id as the local representation of a path. Packets sent to a particular destination but belonging to different flows may use different paths, with the choice of path depending on the flow id. This approach will result in the use of optimally sized packets on a per-flow basis, providing finer granularity than PMTU values maintained on a per-destination basis. SB> How widely is flow-id supported in networks? I thought that the SB> current position was that it was unreliable as an ECMP indicator SB> and thus routers tended to glean information from the packet themselves.I think this was closed in the email thread. .. or really doesn't break them any more than they discussion on this draft suggests that they are already broken. ======= 5.3. Purging stale PMTU information Internetwork topology is dynamic; routes change over time. While the local representation of a path may remain constant, the actual path(s) in use may change. Thus, PMTU information cached by a node can become stale. If the stale PMTU value is too large, this will be discovered almost immediately once a large enough packet is sent on the path. No such mechanism exists for realizing that a stale PMTU value is too small, so an implementation should "age" cached values. When a PMTU value has not been decreased for a while (on the order of 10 minutes), the PMTU estimate should be set to the MTU of the first-hop link, and the packetization layers should be notified of the change. This will cause the complete Path MTU Discovery process to take place again. SB> Should that be an RFC2119 SHOULD? SB> The impact of this advice is going to be a disruption to what might SB> be a critical service every 10 mins. SB> Should there be some advice along the lines of noting the SB> importance of service delivery as part of deciding whether to SB> test for bigger PMTU vs improving efficiency? ======= Minor issues: IPv6 defines a standard mechanism for a node to discover the PMTU of an arbitrary path. SB> Do you mean "This document defines ....."? Otherwise this needs SB> a reference.Will fix.======= An extension to Path MTU Discovery defined in this document can be found in [RFC4821]. It defines a method for Packetization Layer Path SB> Rather than have the reader figure out what "It" is, perhaps SB> s/It/RFC4821/The w.g. noodled on this text for a long time. I think the “it” is clear, but will change to RFC4821.======= Upon receipt of such a message, the source node reduces its assumed PMTU for the path based on the MTU of the constricting hop as reported in the Packet Too Big message. SB> We should perhaps state up front that this procedure SB> hunts for the worst case of the ECMP set associated with the SB> ingress nodes PMTU classifier.I think getting into ECMP is out of scope for moving this to IS. Yes, but I don't think you should set elevation to standard above providing the best advice, which is what seems to be proposed here. In a well managed network the point is probably moot since all paths should have the same PMTU except======= If a node receives a Packet Too Big message reporting a next-hop MTU that is less than the IPv6 minimum link MTU, it should discard it. SB> Should that be an RFC2119 SHOULD?See note above.======= 5.2. Storing PMTU information Ideally, a PMTU value should be associated with a specific path traversed by packets exchanged between the source and destination nodes. However, in most cases a node will not have enough information to completely and accurately identify such a path. Rather, a node must associate a PMTU value with some local representation of a path. It is left to the implementation to select the local representation of a path. SB> Is it worth noting the five tuple since that is how a lot of SB> load balancers work?I think getting into ECMP is out of scope for moving this to IS.======= The set of paths in use to a particular destination is expected to be small, in many cases consisting of a single path. SB> I am not sure that remains true in modern networks.Do we have any data on this? I wonder if there will be much difference in the PMTU in this case. under error conditions, but the path set can be quite large, and certainly more that a single path. ======= One approach to implementing PMTU aging is to associate a timestamp field with a PMTU value. This field is initialized to a "reserved" value, indicating that the PMTU is equal to the MTU of the first hop link. Whenever the PMTU is decreased in response to a Packet Too Big message, the timestamp is set to the current time. Once a minute, a timer-driven procedure runs through all cached PMTU values, and for each PMTU whose timestamp is not "reserved" and is older than the timeout interval: - The PMTU estimate is set to the MTU of the first hop link. - The timestamp is set to the "reserved" value. - Packetization layers using this path are notified of the increase. SB> Such detailed implementation advice is uncommon in modern RFCs. It has SB> the disadvantage of de-facto standardizing something that should be left to SB> the innovation of the implementer.Can you point to any harm this has caused? It is very widely implemented. It tends to result in people treating the example complete with any artifacts as normative. Which gives implementors less scope for optimisation, and can result in restrictions beyond the true intent of the WG. Now I am not sure if there is a problem here, but I think it is bad practise in general. It really depends on whether the goal is to elevate what was originally written or to provide best current======= 5.4. TCP layer actions SB> TCP implementations have moved on a lot since this section was SB> written. Is this still current best practise? ======= 5.5. Issues for other transport protocols Some transport protocols (such as ISO TP4 [ISOTP]) are not allowed to repacketize when doing a retransmission. SB> How much TP4 is there going over IPv6? Doesn't this example SB> show the IETF as not being in the modern age?I have no information one way or another. I have heard there is some TP4 on airplanes, may they will move it to IPv6 :-) advice.
I stand by my original view that we should use modern examples and leave it to the IESG to decide which path they prefer.
A really minor point. A RFC usually expresses this as the maximum send transport-message size (MMS_S), but that is a house style thing. OK======== The Sun Network File System (NFS) uses a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol [RPC] that, when used over UDP, in many cases will generate payloads that must be fragmented even for the first-hop link. This might improve performance in certain cases, but it is known to cause reliability and performance problems, especially when the client and server are separated by routers. SB> Perhaps this should point to RFC7530 (the current NFS Spec), assuming SB> the behaviour description is still correct.Will do.========= The former can be accomplished by associating a flag with the path; when a packet is sent on a path with this flag set, the IP layer does not send packets larger than the IPv6 minimum link MTU. SB> We do not normally give this level of implementation adviceI think it varies a lot. ======================== |