Network Working Group R. Stewart Internet-Draft M. Ramalho Expires: December 30, 2002 Cisco Systems, Inc. Q. Xie Motorola, Inc. M. Tuexen Siemens AG P. Conrad Temple University July 2002 SCTP Partial Reliability Extension draft-stewart-tsvwg-prsctp-01.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http:// www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on December 30, 2002. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This memo describes an extension to the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) RFC2960 [4] that allows an SCTP endpoint to signal to its peer that it should move the cumulative ack point forward. When both sides of an SCTP association support this extension, it can be used by an SCTP implementation to provide partially reliable data Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 1] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 transmission service to an upper layer protocol. This memo describes (1) the protocol extensions, which consist of a new parameter for INIT and INIT ACK, and a new FORWARD TSN chunk type (2) one example partially reliable service that can be provided to the upper layer via this mechanism. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.1 Overview of Protocol Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.2 Overview of New Services Provided to the Upper Layer . . . . 5 1.3 Benefits of PR-SCTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3. Protocol Changes to support PR-SCTP . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.1 Forward-TSN-Supported Parameter For INIT and INIT ACK . . . 9 3.2 Forward Cumulative TSN Chunk Definition (FORWARD TSN) . . . 9 3.3 Negotiation of Forward-TSN-Supported parameter . . . . . . . 10 3.3.1 Sending Forward-TSN-Supported param in INIT . . . . . . . . 10 3.3.2 Receipt of Forward-TSN-Supported param in INIT or INIT-ACK . 11 3.3.3 Receipt of Op. Error for Forward-TSN-Supported Param . . . . 11 3.4 Definition of "dropped" in the context of PR-SCTP . . . . . 12 3.5 Sender Side Implementation of PR-SCTP . . . . . . . . . . . 12 3.6 Receiver Side Implementation of PR-SCTP . . . . . . . . . . 15 4. Services provided by PR-SCTP to the upper layer . . . . . . 17 4.1 PR-SCTP Service Definition for "timed reliability" . . . . . 17 4.2 PR-SCTP Association Establishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 4.3 Guidelines for defining other PR-SCTP Services . . . . . . . 20 4.4 Usage Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 2] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 1. Introduction This memo describes an extension to the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) RFC2960 [4] that allows an SCTP sender to signal to its peer that it should no longer expect to receive one or more Data chunks. 1.1 Overview of Protocol Extensions The protocol extension described in this document consists of two new elements: 1. a single new parameter in the INIT/INIT-ACK exchange that indicates whether the endpoint supports the extension 2. a single new chunk type, FORWARD TSN, that indicates that the receiver should move its cumulative ack point forward (possibly skipping past one or more Data chunks that may not yet have been received and/or acknowledged.) 1.2 Overview of New Services Provided to the Upper Layer When this extension is supported by both sides of an SCTP association, it can be used to provide partially reliable transport service over an SCTP association. We define partially reliable transport service as a service that allows the user to specify, on a per message basis, the rules governing how persistent the transport service should be in attempting to send the message to receiver. One example of partially reliable service is specified in this document, namely a "timed reliability" service. This service allows the service user to indicate a limit on the duration of time that the sender should try to transmit/retransmit the message (this is a natural extension of the "lifetime" parameter already in the base protocol). In addition to this example, we will also show that defining the semantics of a particular partially reliable service involves two elements, namely: 1. how the service user indicates the level of reliability required for a particular message, and 2. how the sender side implementation uses that reliability level to determine when to give up on further retransmissions of that message. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 3] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 Note that other than the fact that the FORWARD-TSN chunk is required, neither of these two elements impacts the "on-the-wire" protocol; only the API, and the sender side implementation is affected by the way in which the service is defined to the upper layer. Therefore, in principle, it is feasible to implement many varieties of partially reliable services in a particular SCTP implementation without changing the on-the-wire protocol. Also, the SCTP receiver does not necessarily need to know which semantics of partially reliable service are being used by the sender, since the receiver's only role is to correctly interpret FORWARD TSN chunks, thereby skipping past messages that the sender has decided to no longer transmit (or retransmit). Nevertheless, it is recommended that a limited number of standard definitions of partially reliable services be standardized by the IETF so that that the designers of IETF application layer protocols can match the requirements of their upper layer protocols to standard service definitions provided by a particular SCTP implementation. One such definition, "timed reliability" is included in this document. Given the extensions proposed in this document, other definitions may be standardized as the need arises without further changes to the on-the-wire protocol. 1.3 Benefits of PR-SCTP Hereafter, we use the notation "PR-SCTP" to refer to the SCTP protocol extended as defined in this document. The following are some of the advantages for integrating partially reliable data service into SCTP, i.e., benefits of PR-SCTP: 1. Some application layer protocols may benefit from being able to use a single SCTP association to carry both reliable content, -- such as text pages, billing and accounting information, setup signaling -- and unreliable content, e.g. state that is highly sensitive to timeliness, where generating a new packet is more advantageous than transmitting an old one [1]. 2. Partially reliable data traffic carried by PR-SCTP will enjoy the same communication failure detection and protection capabilities as the normal reliable SCTP data traffic does. This includes the ability to: - quickly detect a failed destination address; - fail-over to an alternate destination address, and; - be notified if the data receiver becomes unreachable. 3. In addition to providing unordered unreliable data transfer as UDP does, PR-SCTP can provide ordered unreliable data transfer service. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 4] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 4. PR-SCTP employs the same congestion control and congestion avoidance for all data traffic, whether reliable or partially reliable - this is very desirable since SCTP enforces TCP- friendliness (unlike UDP.) 5. Because of the chunk bundling function of SCTP, reliable and unreliable messages can be multiplexed over a single PR-SCTP association. Therefore, the number of IP datagrams (and hence the network overhead) can be reduced versus having to send these different types of data using separate protocols. Additionally, this multiplexing allows for port savings versus using different ports for reliable and unreliable connections. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 5] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 2. Conventions The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, NOT RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this document, are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119 [3]. Comparisons and arithmetic on TSNs are governed by the rules in Section 1.6 of RFC2960 [4]. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 6] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 3. Protocol Changes to support PR-SCTP 3.1 Forward-TSN-Supported Parameter For INIT and INIT ACK The following new OPTIONAL parameter is added to the INIT and INIT ACK chunks. Parameter Name Status Type Value ------------------------------------------------------------- Forward-TSN-Supported OPTIONAL 0xC000 At the initialization of the association, the sender of the INIT or INIT ACK chunk shall include this OPTIONAL parameter to inform its peer that it is able to support the Forward TSN chunk. The format of this parameter is defined as follows: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Parameter Type = 0xC000 | Parameter Length = 4 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Type: 16 bit u_int 0xC000, indicating Forward-TSN-Supported parameter Length: 16 bit u_int Indicate the size of the parameter i.e. 4. 3.2 Forward Cumulative TSN Chunk Definition (FORWARD TSN) The following new chunk type is defined: Chunk Type Chunk Name ------------------------------------------------------ 0xC0 Forward Cumulative TSN (FORWARD TSN) This chunk shall be used by the data sender to inform the data receiver to adjust its cumulative received TSN point forward because some missing TSNs are associated with data chunks that SHOULD NOT be transmitted or retransmitted by the sender. Forward Cumulative TSN chunk has the following format: 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 7] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 | Type = 0xC0 | Flags = 0x00 | Length = Variable | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | New Cumulative TSN | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Stream-1 | Steam Sequence-1 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ \ / / \ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Stream-N | Stream Sequence-N | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Chunk Flags: Set to all zeros on transmit and ignored on receipt. New Cumulative TSN: 32 bit u_int This indicates the new cumulative TSN to the data receiver. Upon the reception of this value, the data receiver MUST consider any missing TSNs earlier than or equal to this value as received and stop reporting them as gaps in any subsequent SACKs. Stream-N: 16 bit u_int This field holds a stream number that was skipped by this FWD-TSN. Stream Sequence-N: 16 bit u_int This field holds the sequence number associated with the stream that was skipped. The receiver of the FWD-TSN's can use the Stream-N and Stream Sequence-N fields to enable delivery of any stranded TSN's that remain on the stream re-ordering queues. 3.3 Negotiation of Forward-TSN-Supported parameter 3.3.1 Sending Forward-TSN-Supported param in INIT If an SCTP endpoint supports the FORWARD TSN chunk, then any time it sends an INIT during association establishment, it SHOULD include the Forward-TSN-supported parameter in the INIT chunk to indicate this fact to its peer. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 8] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 3.3.2 Receipt of Forward-TSN-Supported param in INIT or INIT-ACK When a receiver of an INIT detects a Forward-TSN-Supported parameter, and does not support the Forward-TSN chunk type, the receiver SHOULD treat this parameter as an invalid or unrecognized parameter and respond to the data sender with an unrecognized paramater in the INIT-ACK, following the rules defined in Section 3.3.3 of RFC2960 [4]. When a receiver of an INIT-ACK detects a Forward-TSN-Supported parameter, and does not support the Forward-TSN chunk type, the receiver SHOULD treat this parameter as an invalid or unrecognized parameter and respond to the data sender with an unrecognized paramater error, following the rules defined in Section 3.3.3 of RFC2960 [4]. This error SHOULD be reported in an ERROR chunk bundled with the COOKIE-ECHO. When a receiver of an INIT detects a Forward-TSN-Supported parameter, and does support the Forward-TSN chunk type, the receiver SHOULD respond with a Forward-TSN-supported parameter in the INIT-ACK chunk. When an endpoint that supports the FORWARD TSN chunk receives an INIT that does not contain the Forward-TSN-Supported Parameter, that endpoint: o MAY include the Forward-TSN-Supported parameter in the INIT-ACK, o SHOULD record the fact that the peer does not support the FORWARD TSN chunk, o MUST NOT send a FORWARD TSN chunk at any time during the associations life, o SHOULD inform the upper layer, if the upper layer has requested such notification. 3.3.3 Receipt of Op. Error for Forward-TSN-Supported Param When an SCTP endpoint that desires to use the FORWARD TSN chunk feature for partially reliable data transfer receives an operational error from the remote endpoint (either bundled with the COOKIE or as a unrecognized parameter in the INIT-ACK), indicating that the remote endpoint does not recognize the Forward-TSN-Supported parameter, the local endpoint SHOULD inform its upper layer of the remote endpoint's inability to support partially reliable data transfer. The local endpoint may then choose to either: Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 9] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 1) end the initiation process (in cases where the initiation process have already ended the endpoint may need to send an ABORT), in consideration of the peer's inability to supply the requested features for the new association, or 2) continue the initiation process (in cases where the initiation process has already completed the endpoint MUST just mark the association as not supporting partial reliablilty), but with the understanding that partially reliable data transmission is not supported. In this case, the endpoint receiving the operational error SHOULD note that the FORWARD TSN chunk is not supported, and MUST NOT transmit a FORWARD TSN chunk at any time during the life of the association. 3.4 Definition of "dropped" in the context of PR-SCTP At some point, a sending PR-SCTP implementation MAY determine that a particular data chunk SHOULD NOT be transmitted or retransmitted further, in accordance with the rules governing some particular PR- SCTP service definition (such as the definition of "timed reliability" in Section 4.1.) For purposes of this document, we define the term "dropped" to refer to any data chunk about which the SCTP sender has made this determination. Each PR-SCTP service defines the rules for determining when a TSN is "dropped", and accordingly, the rules that govern how, whether, and when to "drop" a TSN may vary from one service definition to another. However, the rules governing the actions taken when a TSN is "dropped" do NOT vary between service definitions; these rules are included in Section 3.5. 3.5 Sender Side Implementation of PR-SCTP The sender side implementation of PR-SCTP is identical to that of the base SCTP protocol, except for: o actions a sending side PR-SCTP implementation must take when a TSN is "dropped" (as per the rules of whatever PR-SCTP service definition is in effect) o special actions that a PR-SCTP implementation must take upon receipt of SACK o rules governing generation of FORWARD TSN chunks. In detail, these exceptions are as follows: Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 10] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 A1) The sender maintains an "Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point" for each peer to track a theoretical cumulative TSN point of the peer (Note, this is a _new_ protocol variable and its value is NOT necessarily the same as the SCTP "Cumulative TSN Ack Point" as defined in Section 1.4 of RFC2960 [4]) and discussed throughout that document. A2) From time to time, as governed by the rules of a particular PR- SCTP service definition (see Section 4), the SCTP data sender may make a determination that a particular data chunk that has already been assigned a TSN SHOULD be "dropped". When a data chunk is "dropped", the sender MUST treat the data chunk as being finally acked and no longer outstanding. Moreover, the sender MUST stop the T3-rtx timer if there are no other data chunks outstanding. However, the sender MUST NOT credit a "dropped" data chunk to the partial_bytes_acked as defined in Section 7.2.2 of RFC2960 [4], and the MUST NOT advance the cwnd based on this "dropped" data chunk. A3) Whenever the data sender receives a SACK from the data receiver, it MUST first process the SACK using the normal procedures as defined in Section 6.2.1 of RFC2960 [4]. The data sender MUST then perform the following additional steps : C1) Let SackCumAck be the Cumulative TSN ACK carried in the received SACK. If (Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point < SackCumAck), then update Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point to be equal to SackCumAck. C2) Try to further advance the "Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point" locally, that is, to move "Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point" up as long as the chunk next in the out-queue space is marked as "dropped" as shown in the following example: Assuming that a SACK arrived with the Cumulative TSN ACK = 102 and the Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point is updated to this value: out-queue at the end of ==> out-queue after Adv.Ack.Point normal SACK processing local advancement Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 11] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 ... ... Adv.Ack.Pt-> 102 acked 102 acked 103 dropped 103 dropped 104 dropped Adv.Ack.P-> 104 dropped 105 105 106 acked 106 acked ... ... In this example, the data sender successfully advanced the "Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point" from 102 to 104 locally. C3) If, after step C1 and C2, the "Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point" is greater than the Cumulative TSN ACK carried in the received SACK, the data sender MUST send the data receiver a FORWARD TSN chunk containing the latest value of the "Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point". C4) For each "dropped" TSN the sender of the FORWARD TSN SHOULD list each stream and sequence number in the forwarded TSN. This dropped information will enable the receiver to easily find any stranded TSN's waiting on stream reorder queues. Each stream SHOULD only be reported once, this means that if multiple drop's occur in the same stream then only the highest dropped stream sequence number is reported. If the total size of the FORWARD TSN does NOT fit in a single MTU then the sender of the FORWARD TSN MAY either apply IP fragmentation OR lower the Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point to the last TSN that will fit in a single MTU. The following additional rules govern the generation of FORWARD TSN chunks: F1) An endpoint MUST NOT use the FORWARD TSN for any purposes other than circumstances described in this document. F2) The data sender SHOULD always attempt to bundle an outgoing FORWARD TSN with outbound DATA chunks for efficiency. A sender MAY even choose to delay the sending of the FORWARD TSN in the hope of bundling it with an outbound DATA chunk. IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: An implementation may allow the maximum delay for generating a forward TSN to be configured either statically or dynamically in order to meet the specific timing requirements of the protocol being carried, but see the next rule: F3) Any delay applied to the sending of FORWARD TSN chunk SHOULD NOT Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 12] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 exceed 200ms and MUST NOT exceed 500ms. In other words an implementation MAY lower this value below 500ms but MUST NOT raise it above 500ms. NOTE: Delaying the sending of FORWARD TSN chunks may cause delays in the receiver's ability to deliver earlier unreliable data being held at the receiver for re-ordering. F4) The detection criterion for out-of-order SACKs MUST remain the same as stated in RFC2960, that is, a SACK is only considered out- of-order if the Cumulative TSN ACK carried in the SACK is earlier than that of the previous received SACK (i.e., the comparison MUST NOT be made against "Advanced.Peer.Ack.Point"). 3.6 Receiver Side Implementation of PR-SCTP The receiver side implementation of PR-SCTP at an SCTP endpoint A is capable of supporting any PR-SCTP service definition used by the sender at end point B, even if that service definition is not supported by the sending side functionality of host A. All that is necessary is that the receiving side correctly handle the Forward- TSN-Supported parameter as specified in Section 3.3, and correctly handle the receipt of FORWARD TSN chunks as specified below. DATA chunk arrival at a PR-SCTP receiver proceeds exactly as for DATA chunk arrival at a base protocol SCTP receiver---that is, the receiver MUST perform the same TSN handling including duplicate detection, gap detection, SACK generation, cumulative TSN advancement, etc. as defined in RFC2960 [4]---with the following exceptions and additions. When a FORWARD TSN chunk arrives, the data receiver MUST first update its cumulative TSN point to the value carried in the FORWARD TSN chunk, and then MUST further advance its cumulative TSN point locally if possible, as shown by the following example: Assuming that the new cumulative TSN carried in the arrived FORWARD TSN is 103: in-queue before processing in-queue after processing the the FORWARD TSN ==> the FORWARD TSN and further advancement cum.TSN.Pt-> 102 received 102 -- Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 13] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 103 missing 103 -- 104 received 104 -- 105 received cum.TSN.Pt-> 105 received 106 missing 106 missing 107 received 107 received ... ... In this example, the receiver's cumulative TSN point is first updated to 103 and then further advanced to 105. After the above processing, the data receiver MUST stop reporting any missing TSNs earlier than or equal to the new cumulative TSN point. Note, if the "New Cumulative TSN" value carried in the arrived FORWARD TSN chunk is found to be behind the current cumulative TSN point, the data receiver MUST treat this FORWARD TSN as out-of-date and silently discard it. Whenever a DATA chunk arrives with the 'U' bit set to '0' (indicating ordered delivery) and is out of order, the receiver must hold the chunk for reordering. Since it is possible with PR-SCTP that a DATA chunk being waited upon will not be retransmitted, special actions will need to be taken upon the arrival of a FORWARD TSN. In particular, during processing of a FORWARD TSN, the receiver MUST use the stream sequence information to examine all of the listed stream reordering queues, and immediately make available for delivery stream sequence numbers earlier than or equal to the stream sequence number listed inside the FORWARD TSN. After receiving and processing a FORWARD TSN, the data receiver MUST take cautions in updating its re-assembly queue. The receiver MUST remove any partially reassembled message which is still missing one or more TSNs earlier than or equal to the new cumulative TSN point. In the event that the receiver has invoked the partial delivery API a notification SHOULD also be generated to inform the upper layer API that the message being partially delivered will NOT be completed. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 14] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 4. Services provided by PR-SCTP to the upper layer As described in Section 1.2, it is feasible to implement a variety of partially reliable transport services using the new protocol mechanisms introduced in Section 3; introducing these new services requires making changes only at the sending side API, and the sending side protocol implementation. Thus, there may be a temptation to standardize only the protocol, and leave the service definition as "implementation specific" or leave it to be defined in "informational" documents. However, for those who may wish to write IETF standards for upper layer protocols implemented over PR-SCTP, it is important to be able to refer to a standard definition of services provided. Therefore, this section provides an example definitions of one such service, while also providing guidelines for the definition of additional services as required. Each such service may be proposed as a separate new standard. Section 4 is organized as follows: Section 4.1 provides the definition of one specific PR-SCTP service: timed reliability. Section 4.2 describes how a particular PR-SCTP service definition is requested by the upper layer during association establishment, and how the upper layer is notified if that request cannot be satisfied. Section 4.3 then provides guidelines for the specification of PR- SCTP services other then the one defined in this memo. Finally, Section 4.4 describes some additional usage notes that upper layer protocol designers and implementors may find helpful. 4.1 PR-SCTP Service Definition for "timed reliability" The "timed reliability" service is a natural extension of the "lifetime" concept already present in the base SCTP protocol. When this service is requested for an SCTP association, it changes the meaning of the lifetime parameter specified in the SEND primitive (see Section 10.1, part (E) of RFC2960 [4]; note that the parameter is spelled "life time" in that document.) In the base SCTP protocol, the lifetime parameter is used to avoid sending stale data. When a lifetime value is indicated for a Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 15] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 particular message, SCTP cancels the sending of this message, and notifies the ULP if the first transmission of the data does not take place (because of rwnd or cwnd limitations, or for any other reason) before the lifetime expires. However, in the base protocol, if SCTP has sent the first transmission before the lifetime expires, then the message MUST be sent as a normal reliable message. During episodes of congestion this is particularly unfortunate, as retransmission wastes bandwidth that could have been used for other (non-lifetime expired) messages. When the "timed reliability" service is invoked, this latter restriction is removed. Specifically, when the "timed reliability" service is in effect, the following rules govern all messages that are sent with a lifetime parameter: TR1) If the lifetime parameter of a message is SCTP_LIFETIME_RELIABLE (or unspecified) that message is treated as a normal reliable SCTP message, just as in the base SCTP protocol. TR2) If the lifetime parameter is not SCTP_LIFETIME_RELIABLE, then the SCTP sender MUST treat the message just as if it were a normal reliable SCTP message as long as the lifetime has not yet expired. TR3) Before assigning a TSN to any message, the SCTP sender MUST evaluate the lifetime of that message. If it is expired, the SCTP sender MUST NOT assign a TSN to that message, but instead, SHOULD issue a notification to the upper layer and drop the message. TR4) Before transmitting or retransmitting a message for which a TSN is already assigned, the SCTP sender MUST evaluate the lifetime of the message. If the lifetime of the message is expired, the SCTP sender MUST "drop" the message, as per the rules specified in Section 3.5. TR5) The sender MAY evaluate the lifetime of messages at anytime. Expired messages that have not been assigned a TSN MAY be handled as per rule TR3. Expired messages that HAVE been assigned a TSN MAY be handled as per rule TR4. Implementation Note: Rules TR1 through TR4 are designed in such as way to avoid requiring the implementer to maintain a separate timer for each message; instead, the lifetime need only be evaluated at points in the life of the message where actions are already being taken, such as TSN assignment, transmission, or expiration of a retransmission timeout. Rule TR5 is intended to give the implementor flexibility to evaluate lifetime at any other convenient opportunity, WITHOUT requiring that lifetime be evaluated immediately at the point in time where it expires. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 16] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 4.2 PR-SCTP Association Establishment An upper layer protocol (ULP) that uses PR-SCTP may need to know whether PR-SCTP can be supported on a given association. Therefore, the ULP needs to have some indiciation of whether the FORWARD-TSN chunk is supported by its peer. Section 10.1 of RFC2960 [4] describes abstract primitives for the ULP-to-SCTP interface, while noting that "individual implementations must define their own exact format, and may provide combinations or subsets of the basic functions in single calls." In this section, we describe one additional return value that may be added to the ASSOCIATE primitive to allow an SCTP service user to indicate whether the FORWARD-TSN chunk is supported by its peer. RFC2960 indicates that the associate primitive "allows the upper layer to initiate an association to a specific peer endpoint". It is structured as follows: Format: ASSOCIATE(local SCTP instance name, destination transport addr, outbound stream count) -> association id [,destination transport addr list] [,outbound stream count] This extension adds one new OPTIONAL return value, such that the new primitive reads as follows: Format: ASSOCIATE(local SCTP instance name, destination transport addr, outbound stream count ) -> association id [,destination transport addr list] [,outbound stream count] [,forward tsn supported] NOTE: As per RFC2960, if the ASSOCIATE primitive is implemented as a non-blocking call, the new OPTIONAL return value shall be passed with the association parameters using the COMMUNICATION UP notification. The new OPTIONAL parameter "forward tsn supported" is a boolean flag: (0) false [default] indicates that FORWARD TSN is not supported by the peer. (1) true indicates that FORWARD TSN is supported by the peer. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 17] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 4.3 Guidelines for defining other PR-SCTP Services Other PR-SCTP services may be defined and implemented as dictated by the needs of upper layer protocols. If such upper layer protocols are to be standardized and require some particular PR-SCTP service other than the one defined in this document (i.e. "timed reliability") than those additional PR-SCTP services should also be specified and standardized. It is suggested that any such additional service definitions be modeled after the contents of Section 4.1 . In particular, the service definition should provide: 1. A description of how the service user specifies any parameters that need to be associated with a particular message (and/or any other communication that takes place between the application and the SCTP transport sender) that provides the SCTP transport sender with the information needed to determine when to give up on transmission of a particular message. Preferably this description should reference the primitives in the abstract API provided in Section 10 of RFC2960 [4], indicating any: * changes to the interpretation of the existing parameters of existing primitives, * additional parameters to be added to existing primitives (these should be OPTIONAL, and default values should be indicated), * additional primitives that may be needed. 2. A description of the rules used by the sender side implementation to determine when to give up on messages that have not yet been assigned a TSN. This description should also indicate what protocol events trigger the evaluation, and what actions to take (e.g. notifications.) 3. A description of the rules used by the sender side implementation to determine when to give up on the transmission or retransmission of messages that have already been assigned a TSN, and may have been transmitted and possibly retransmitted zero or more times. Items (2) and (3) in the list above should also indicate what protocol events trigger the evaluation, and what actions to take if the determination is made that the sender should give up on Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 18] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 transmitting the message (e.g. notifications to the ULP.) Note that in any PR-SCTP service, the following rule MUST be specified to avoid a protocol deadlock: (G1) When the sender side implementation gives up on transmitting a message that has been assigned a TSN (i.e., when that message is "dropped", as defined in Section 3.4) the sender side MUST mark that TSN as eligible for forward TSN, and the rules in Section 3.4 regarding the sending of FORWARD TSN chunks MUST be followed. Finally, a PR-SCTP service definition should specify a "canonical service name" to uniquely identify the service, and distinguish it from other PR-SCTP services. This name can then be used in upper layer protocol standards, to indicate which PR-SCTP service definition is required by that upper layer protocol. It can also be used in the documentation of APIs of PR-SCTP implementations to indicate how an upper layer indicates which definition of PR-SCTP service should apply. The canonical service name for the PR-SCTP service defined in Section 4.1 is "timed reliability". 4.4 Usage Notes Detecting missing data in a PR-SCTP stream is useful for some applications (e.g. Fiber channel or SCSI over IP). With PR-SCTP this becomes possible - the upper layer simply needs to examine the stream sequence number of the arrived user messages of that stream to detect any missing data. Note, this detection only works when all the messages on that stream are sent in order, i.e. the "U" bit is not set. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 19] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 5. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Brian Bidulock, Scott Bradner, Jon Berger, Armando L. Caro Jr., John Loughney, Ivan Arias Rodriguez, Ian Rytina, Chip Sharp, and others for their comments. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 20] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 6. Security Considerations [Open Issue TBD: Security issues are not discussed in this memo at this time, but will be added in a later version of this draft.] Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 21] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 7. IANA Considerations One new chunk type is added to SCTP ('0xC0') by this document. Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 22] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 References [1] Clark, D. and D. Tennenhouse, "Architectural Considerations for a New Generation of Protocols", SIGCOMM 1990 pp. 200-208, September 1990. [2] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996. [3] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [4] Stewart, R., Xie, Q., Morneault, K., Sharp, C., Schwarzbauer, H., Taylor, T., Rytina, I., Kalla, M., Zhang, L. and V. Paxson, "Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC 2960, October 2000. Authors' Addresses Randall R. Stewart Cisco Systems, Inc. 8725 West Higgins Road Suite 300 Chicago, IL 60631 USA Phone: +1-815-477-2127 EMail: rrs@cisco.com Michael A. Ramalho Cisco Systems, Inc. 1802 Rue de la Porte Wall Township, NJ 07719-3784 USA Phone: +1.732.449.5762 EMail: mramalho@cisco.com Qiaobing Xie Motorola, Inc. 1501 W. Shure Drive, #2309 Arlington Heights, IL 60004 USA Phone: +1-847-632-3028 EMail: qxie1@email.mot.com Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 23] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 Michael Tuexen Siemens AG ICN WN CS SE 5 D-81359 Munich Germany Phone: +49 89 722 47210 EMail: Michael.Tuexen@icn.siemens.de Phillip T. Conrad Temple University CIS Department Room 303, Computer Building (038-24) 1805 N. Broad St. Philadelphia, PA 19122 US Phone: +1 215 204 7910 EMail: conrad@acm.org URI: http://www.cis.temple.edu/~conrad Stewart, et al. Expires December 30, 2002 [Page 24] Internet-Draft SCTP Partial Reliability Extension July 2002 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. 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