RFC 3168 (rfc3168) - Page 2 of 63


The Addition of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP



Alternative Format: Original Text Document



RFC 3168               The Addition of ECN to IP          September 2001


   6.1.6.  TCP Window Probes......................................... 22
   7.  Non-compliance by the End Nodes............................... 22
   8.  Non-compliance in the Network................................. 24
   8.1.  Complications Introduced by Split Paths..................... 25
   9.  Encapsulated Packets.......................................... 25
   9.1.  IP packets encapsulated in IP............................... 25
   9.1.1.  The Limited-functionality and Full-functionality Options.. 27
   9.1.2.  Changes to the ECN Field within an IP Tunnel.............. 28
   9.2.  IPsec Tunnels............................................... 29
   9.2.1.  Negotiation between Tunnel Endpoints...................... 31
   9.2.1.1.  ECN Tunnel Security Association Database Field.......... 32
   9.2.1.2.  ECN Tunnel Security Association Attribute............... 32
   9.2.1.3.  Changes to IPsec Tunnel Header Processing............... 33
   9.2.2.  Changes to the ECN Field within an IPsec Tunnel........... 35
   9.2.3.  Comments for IPsec Support................................ 35
   9.3.  IP packets encapsulated in non-IP Packet Headers............ 36
   10.  Issues Raised by Monitoring and Policing Devices............. 36
   11.  Evaluations of ECN........................................... 37
   11.1.  Related Work Evaluating ECN................................ 37
   11.2.  A Discussion of the ECN nonce.............................. 37
   11.2.1.  The Incremental Deployment of ECT(1) in Routers.......... 38
   12.  Summary of changes required in IP and TCP.................... 38
   13.  Conclusions.................................................. 40
   14.  Acknowledgements............................................. 41
   15.  References................................................... 41
   16.  Security Considerations...................................... 45
   17.  IPv4 Header Checksum Recalculation........................... 45
   18.  Possible Changes to the ECN Field in the Network............. 45
   18.1.  Possible Changes to the IP Header.......................... 46
   18.1.1.  Erasing the Congestion Indication........................ 46
   18.1.2.  Falsely Reporting Congestion............................. 47
   18.1.3.  Disabling ECN-Capability................................. 47
   18.1.4.  Falsely Indicating ECN-Capability........................ 47
   18.2.  Information carried in the Transport Header................ 48
   18.3.  Split Paths................................................ 49
   19.  Implications of Subverting End-to-End Congestion Control..... 50
   19.1.  Implications for the Network and for Competing Flows....... 50
   19.2.  Implications for the Subverted Flow........................ 53
   19.3.  Non-ECN-Based Methods of Subverting End-to-end Congestion
          Control.................................................... 54
   20.  The Motivation for the ECT Codepoints........................ 54
   20.1.  The Motivation for an ECT Codepoint........................ 54
   20.2.  The Motivation for two ECT Codepoints...................... 55
   21.  Why use Two Bits in the IP Header?........................... 57
   22.  Historical Definitions for the IPv4 TOS Octet................ 58
   23.  IANA Considerations.......................................... 60
   23.1.  IPv4 TOS Byte and IPv6 Traffic Class Octet................. 60
   23.2.  TCP Header Flags........................................... 61



Ramakrishnan, et al.        Standards Track