Internet DRAFT - draft-bagnulo-tcpm-esn

draft-bagnulo-tcpm-esn







Network Working Group                                         M. Bagnulo
Internet-Draft                                                      UC3M
Intended status: Experimental                                 Y. Nishida
Expires: April 2, 2018                                GE Global Research
                                                      September 29, 2017


               TCP ESN: Extended Sequence Numbers for TCP
                     draft-bagnulo-tcpm-esn-00.txt

Abstract

   This note defines the Extended Sequence Number (ESN) experimental
   modification to TCP to increase TCP's sequence number using the
   TimeStamp (TS) option.  It also modifies the Window Scale (WS) option
   to support larger receiver window enable by the extended sequence
   number space.  At this stage, the purpose of this document is to
   discuss different design choices to generate discussion about the
   approach to follow.

Status of This Memo

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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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Table of Contents

   1.  Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Design rationale  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Reduced option space consumption in the SYN and graceful
           fallback  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.2.  Deployability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  RTTM With Extended Sequence Number Prefix . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Middleboxes Implications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  SACK for Extended Sequence Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Impacts On Other TCP Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     6.1.  PAWS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     6.2.  Eifel Detection Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Overview

   The proposed Extended Sequence Number (ESN) mechanism re-purposes the
   TS option [RFC7323] to carry a prefix for the sequence number and a
   prefix for the Acknowledgement number, increasing the sequence number
   used in TCP connections.

   As currently defined, the TS option contains two 32-bit fields, TSval
   and TSecr.  The current ESN proposal re-defines TSval to carry a
   prefix for the sequence number and TSecr to carry a prefix for the
   Acknowledgment number.  In this way, the actual sequence number
   corresponding to the first data byte contained in the segment would
   the the concatenation of the value contained in the TSval and the
   value of the Sequence Number field of the TCP header.  The
   Acknowledgment sequence number would be the concatenation of the
   value contained in the TSecr and the value of the Acknowledgment
   Number field of the TCP header.

   The proposed ESN mechanism also modifies the WS option as follows:
   First, values up to 46 are allowed (enabling a RCV window up to
   2^62).  These are encoded in the 6 less significant bits of the
   shift.count.  Second, the remaining two (most significant) bits are
   turned into flags.  In particular, the most significant bit is used



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   as the ESN flag to indicate the ESN support in the connection.
   Specifically, when the ESN bit is set to 1 in the WS carried in a SYN
   or a SYN/ACK, it means that: i) the TS option is being used for
   extended sequence numbers, as defined above, and ii) that the sender
   of the WS option with the ESN bit set supports receiver window up to
   2^62 in this connection.  The ESN flag defined this way allows
   endpoints to express and negotiate ESN support during the TCP 3-way
   handshake.

   The sequence number of a TCP segment using ESN is the result of
   prepending the prefix carried in the TS Value and the sequence number
   contained in the Sequence Number field of the TCP header.  Similarly,
   the ACK number is the result of prepending the value in the TS Echo
   Reply value and the value in the ACK field of the TCP header.

   When a client wants to use the extended sequence number for a new
   connection, it sends a SYN with both the TS and the WS options.  In
   the WS option, it sets the ESN flag to inform that it wants to use
   ESN for this connection.  It encodes the most significant bits of the
   sequence number in the TS Value and the remaining bits of the
   extended sequence number in the sequence number field in the TCP
   header.  Since the ACK flag is not set in the TCP header of the SYN
   packet, the TS Echo Value is set to zero (as defined in [RFC7323]).

   If the server also supports the extended sequence number mechanism,
   the server replies with a SYN/ACK carrying both the TS and WS
   options.  In the WS option it sets the ESN flag to confirm the ESN
   support.  It encodes the prefix of its own extended sequence number
   in the TS Value and the prefix of the ACK in the TS Echo Reply.

   If the server does not support ESN, it will respond with a SYN/ACK
   containing a WS option carrying a value lower then 14 i.e. with the
   most significant bit set to 0.  It may also include the TS option
   indicating its willingness to use timestamps as defined in RFC7323 in
   this connection.  Upon the reception of the SYN/ACK, the client can
   gracefully fall back to use TS are defined in RFC7323, in particular,
   PAWS can be used.

2.  Design rationale

   Our proposal is to re-utilize the TCP TS option to carry a sequence
   number offset in addition to the existing 32 bits sequence number.
   This approach is similar to [I-D.looney-tcpm-64-bit-seqnos] although
   it has distinct difference.  while [I-D.looney-tcpm-64-bit-seqnos]
   proposes to allocate a new TCP option, we propose to utilize existing
   TS option instead.  We believe this approach will have the following
   advantages.




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2.1.  Reduced option space consumption in the SYN and graceful fallback

   The maximum size of the TCP header (including options) is 60 bytes
   (this is because the Data Offset field of the TCP header is 4 bits
   and can expresses the offset in 32-bit words).  Since the TCP basic
   header is 20 bytes, a segment can carry 40 bytes of options at most.
   This is particularly pressing for the TCP SYN and TCP SYN/ACK
   packets.  Currently, there is a fair number of options that are
   frequently carried in SYN packets, especially in high performance
   communications.  In particular, the MSS option (2 bytes) [RFC0793],
   the SACK permitted option (2 bytes)[RFC2018], the Window Scale option
   (3 bytes) and the TimeStamp option (used for PAWS) (10 bytes)
   [RFC7323].  All these options account for 17 bytes.  The are other
   options that are becoming increasingly popular.  For instance, The
   option length of TCP Fast Open (TFO) [RFC7413] is 6 bytes or 18 bytes
   depending on the length of the cookie used.  There are other options
   that require SYN and SYN/ACK option space such as MP_CAPABLE in
   [RFC6824], or TCP-AO [RFC5925].

   This means that for instance, a TCP client that would like to
   initiate a connection including the MSS option, SACK permitted option
   the WS and TS options and also carry a TFO option would not have room
   to carry an additional 10 byte long option for the extended sequence
   number.  Since our approach utilizes TS option, additional option
   space for extended sequence number is not needed.

   The proposed ESN approach allows for using the extended sequence
   number if both endpoints support it while enabling graceful fall-
   back.  A client supporting ESN would include the TS option and set
   the flag in the WS option indicating the ESN support.  If the server
   does not support ESN, the connection can still be established using
   32 bit sequence numbers and the TS and WS options as defined in
   RFC7323 (in particular PAWS can be used in the connection).

2.2.  Deployability

   [HONDA11] reported that unknown options in the SYN prone to be
   removed with higher probability than known options.  Hence, we
   believe utilizing existing options will have better chances to avoid
   unwanted middleboxes' interferences.  Although it would be useful to
   perform some other measurements specifically about how frequently the
   TS option is removed.

3.  RTTM With Extended Sequence Number Prefix

   [RFC7323] defined two uses for the TS option: PAWS and RTTM.  When
   re-purposing the TS option for ESN, we argue that the use of TS for
   carrying extended sequence number subsumes the uses of PAWS.



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   However, this is not the case for RTTM.  We identify the following
   alternatives in order to archive RTTM when re-purposing the TS option
   for ESN.

   Option 1:
       This approach uses the most significant bit (MSB) of both TSval
       and TSecr as a flag as depicted in Figure 1.  If the MSB is set
       to 1, it means the field contained a sequence number prefix.  If
       it is reset, it means that it contains a timestamp.  This means
       that we use 31 bits for the extended sequence number prefix,
       resulting in 63 bit long sequence numbers.  The main problem here
       is that the segments containing the timestamp lack the sequence
       number prefix information.  So, for instance, it is not possible
       to have more that 2^32 bytes in flight if any of the segments in
       flight is carrying and actual timestamp, since there is the
       possibility of confusion (in particular is the receive window is
       large enough to accommodate two packets with the same 32 bit
       sequence number, then the receiver would not be able to figure
       out the right place for the packet that carries the timestamp and
       does not carry the sequence number prefix).  So, if we want to
       use this option, the receiver window cannot be larger than 2^32.
       However, this restriction does not address all the problems.  If
       a duplicated packet carrying a timestamp in the TS option gets
       delay one RTT or more and the 32 bit sequence number wraps
       around, then the receiver can potentially take this old
       duplicated packet for a new packet with the same sequence number
       suffix.  It would be possible to rely on PAWS for detecting and
       eliminating this packets.  However, in order for PAWS to be used,
       it is necessary to keep the timestamp information stored in
       TS.recent updated.  This requires that at least a few actual
       timestamps are exchanged every 2^31 sequence numbers.
       Summarizing, the constraints to use this option are first that
       the light-size is less than 2^32 and that at least n (n=4?)
       timestamps are exchanged every 2^32 bytes of data.  We believe
       this is poor alternative, especially due to the flight-size
       constraint.


    +-------+-------+-+---------------------+-+----------------------+
    |Kind=8 |  10   |F|   TSval or Prefix   |F| TSecr or Prefix      |
    +-------+-------+-+---------------------+-+----------------------+
        8       8    1          31           1           31


              Figure 1: Time Stamp Option format for Option 1

   Option 2:




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       This approach uses the TSecr in some packets to exchange
       timestamps.  The idea here is that all data segments carry the
       extended sequence number prefix in the TSval but that some
       packets do not carry ACK information, which is acceptable because
       we use cumulative ACKs as long as this only affects a few packets
       (e.g. one packet per RTT do not carry ACK information).  In order
       to enable both uses of the TSecr (timestamp or sequence number
       prefix), we need to use 2 bits to encode whether the TSecr
       carries either an extended sequence number prefix for the ACK, a
       timestamp or a timestamp echo.  This implies that there are 30
       bits left in TSecr for the actual value, resulting in 30 bit
       timestamps and 62 bit sequence numbers The receiver of a packet
       carrying the TS option carrying an actual timestamp or timestamp
       echo should discard the ACK information since it cannot know the
       the prefix of the seq number carried in the ACK field.  This
       option seems a reasonable trade-off.  If this option is adopted,
       RTTM could only be used sporadically.  However, this may not be a
       concern, since it is likely that it would be possible to measure
       the RTT at least once every RTT which is likely to be enough for
       estimating the RTT for the RTO calculation (see [RFC7323] for
       further details).


    +-------+-------+--+--------------------+--+---------------------+
    |Kind=8 |  10   |F |   TSval or Prefix  |F |   TSecr or Prefix   |
    +-------+-------+--+--------------------+--+---------------------+
        8       8    2          30            2          30


              Figure 2: Time Stamp Option format for Option 2

   Option 3:
       This approach splits the TSval and the TSecr into two 16-bit
       fields resulting in 16 bit timestamps and 48 bit sequence
       numbers.  48 bit sequence numbers are a significant improvement
       from the current 32 bit sequence numbers, so it is probably
       enough.  It is possible to encode the timestamp information using
       16 bits.  For example, [I-D.trammell-tcpm-timestamp-interval]
       proposes to encode timestamp information using 16 bits, which
       could be used in this option.











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    +-------+-------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
    |Kind=8 |  10   |  Prefix   |   TSval   |   Prefix   |   TSecr   |
    +-------+-------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
        8       8        16          16           16           16


              Figure 3: Time Stamp Option format for Option 3

   Option 4:
       This approach Only uses the TS for one single purpose per
       connection either the original purpose or ESN.  This will be less
       attractive because the RTTM cannot be used with ESN in the same
       connection.


    +-------+-------+-----------------------+------------------------+
    |Kind=8 |  10   |        Prefix         |         Prefix         |
    +-------+-------+-----------------------+------------------------+
        8       8              32                        32


              Figure 4: Time Stamp Option format for Option 4

   Based on the observations above, we believe option 2 and 3 would be
   worth for further discussions while option 1 and 4 can be discarded
   due to major drawbacks.

4.  Middleboxes Implications

   It has been observed in [HONDA11] that some middleboxes insert the TS
   Option.  Also, there may be boxes out there that modify the sequence
   number, while not terminating the connection.  In order to detect
   these cases that would break the proposed mechanism, it would be
   beneficial to add an extra safety measure requiring that the prefix
   encoded in the TS Option replicates the most significant bits of the
   value included in the Sequence number field.  In this way, a server
   supporting the extended sequence number mechanism cannot only verify
   the flag in the WS option, but also check if the TS value matches
   with the 31 most significant bits in the Sequence Number field in the
   TCP header.  If they do not match, the server should not negotiate
   the use of the extended sequence number mechanism (i.e. it replies
   with the WS option resetting the flag for the extended sequence
   number mechanism).  This is adopted from
   [I-D.looney-tcpm-64-bit-seqnos].

   In case that the server is a legacy server, it will reply without the
   WS option or with the WS option with a shift.count value lower than




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   15.  In this case, the client falls back to regular TCP without the
   extended sequence number and regular timestamps.

5.  SACK for Extended Sequence Number

   In the case of SACK blocks, there are two possible complementary
   approaches:

   1.  we use the currently defined SACK options identifying bits using
       32 bit sequence numbers.  These are used in a connection that has
       successfully negotiated ESN, the prefix carried in the TSecr of
       the message applies also to the sequence numbers identifying the
       SACK blocks.  The limitation of such approach is that all SACK
       blocks in a single SACK option must use to the same prefix, which
       prevents from SACKing older blocks.  However, it is not certain
       that if we really need to report wide range of SACK blocks in a
       single SACK option.  Another issue would be the case where a SACK
       option is detached from the original packet and attached to a
       different one.  One possible mitigation for this would be
       discarding SACK info in case of suspicious as SACK is optional
       info and a SACK info usually is carried in multiple ACKs.

   2.  define a new SACK block option for extended sequence numbers as
       proposed in [I-D.looney-tcpm-64-bit-seqnos].

   There are a couple of observations regarding the last option using
   the new SACK block option.  First, note that the currently SACK
   permitted option could still be used.  Hence, if a connection
   negotiated both SACK and ESN, we may presume that it supports the new
   SACK block option.  If the ESN negotiation fails, it means that
   32-bit SACK are to be used for that connection, providing graceful
   fallback.

6.  Impacts On Other TCP Extensions

   Since this proposal repurpose the existing use of timestamp option,
   some other proposals that use the option will be affected.  We
   investigated the impacts on the following TCP extensions and propose
   modifications to make them work with the proposal.

6.1.  PAWS

   In order to perform PAWS, receives need to check if the timestamp
   option in an arrived packet contains sequence number prefix or
   timestamp info by checking the most significant bit.  If it contains
   timestamp info, it process the timestamp info as described
   Section 5.3 in [RFC7323].  If it contains sequence number prefix, it
   can know the extended sequence number of the packet based on the



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   into.  If the extended sequence number is outside of the window, the
   packet will be discarded as PAWS.

6.2.  Eifel Detection Algorithm

   If Eifel detection algorithm [RFC3522] is activated, senders performs
   the logics described in Section 3.2 of [RFC3522] with the following
   two modifications.  First, TCP sender MUST set timestamp info when it
   retransmit packets.  Second, if TCP sender receives the ACK with
   sequence number prefix for the retransmitted packet, it should treat
   as if the timestamp is smaller than the value of RetransmitTS.

7.  Acknowledgments

8.  Security Considerations

9.  IANA Considerations

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [RFC0793]  Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
              RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc793>.

   [RFC7323]  Borman, D., Braden, B., Jacobson, V., and R.
              Scheffenegger, Ed., "TCP Extensions for High Performance",
              RFC 7323, DOI 10.17487/RFC7323, September 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7323>.

10.2.  Informative References

   [HONDA11]  Honda, M., Nishida, Y., Raiciu, C., Greenhalgh, A.,
              Handley, M., and H. Tokuda, "Is it still possible to
              extend TCP?", ACM IMC 2011, 2011.

   [I-D.looney-tcpm-64-bit-seqnos]
              jlooney@juniper.net, j., "64-bit Sequence Numbers for
              TCP", draft-looney-tcpm-64-bit-seqnos-00 (work in
              progress), March 2017.

   [I-D.trammell-tcpm-timestamp-interval]
              Scheffenegger, R., Kuehlewind, M., and B. Trammell,
              "Encoding of Time Intervals for the TCP Timestamp Option",
              draft-trammell-tcpm-timestamp-interval-01 (work in
              progress), July 2013.




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   [RFC2018]  Mathis, M., Mahdavi, J., Floyd, S., and A. Romanow, "TCP
              Selective Acknowledgment Options", RFC 2018,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2018, October 1996,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2018>.

   [RFC3522]  Ludwig, R. and M. Meyer, "The Eifel Detection Algorithm
              for TCP", RFC 3522, DOI 10.17487/RFC3522, April 2003,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3522>.

   [RFC5925]  Touch, J., Mankin, A., and R. Bonica, "The TCP
              Authentication Option", RFC 5925, DOI 10.17487/RFC5925,
              June 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5925>.

   [RFC6824]  Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., and O. Bonaventure,
              "TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple
              Addresses", RFC 6824, DOI 10.17487/RFC6824, January 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6824>.

   [RFC7413]  Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Radhakrishnan, S., and A. Jain, "TCP
              Fast Open", RFC 7413, DOI 10.17487/RFC7413, December 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7413>.

Authors' Addresses

   Marcelo Bagnulo
   UC3M

   Email: marcelo@it.uc3m.es


   Yoshifumi Nishida
   GE Global Research
   2623 Camino Ramon
   San Ramon, CA  94583
   USA

   Email: nishida@wide.ad.jp














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