RFC 2481 (rfc2481) - Page 1 of 25

A Proposal to add Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP

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Network Working Group                                    K. Ramakrishnan
Request for Comments: 2481                            AT&T Labs Research
Category: Experimental                                          S. Floyd
                                                                    LBNL
                                                            January 1999


     A Proposal to add Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP

Status of this Memo

   This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
   community.  It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
   Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This note describes a proposed addition of ECN (Explicit Congestion
   Notification) to IP.  TCP is currently the dominant transport
   protocol used in the Internet. We begin by describing TCP's use of
   packet drops as an indication of congestion.  Next we argue that with
   the addition of active queue management (e.g., RED) to the Internet
   infrastructure, where routers detect congestion before the queue
   overflows, routers are no longer limited to packet drops as an
   indication of congestion.  Routers could instead set a Congestion
   Experienced (CE) bit in the packet header of packets from ECN-capable
   transport protocols.  We describe when the CE bit would be set in the
   routers, and describe what modifications would be needed to TCP to
   make it ECN-capable.  Modifications to other transport protocols
   (e.g., unreliable unicast or multicast, reliable multicast, other
   reliable unicast transport protocols) could be considered as those
   protocols are developed and advance through the standards process.

1.  Conventions and Acronyms

   The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD,
   SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this
   document, are to be interpreted as described in [B97].








Ramakrishnan & Floyd          Experimental
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