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Using the IPv6 Flow Label for Server Load Balancing
draft-ietf-intarea-flow-label-balancing-02

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7098.
Authors Brian E. Carpenter , Sheng Jiang , Willy Tarreau
Last updated 2013-10-10 (Latest revision 2013-10-07)
Replaces draft-carpenter-flow-label-balancing
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
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Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Suresh Krishnan
Shepherd write-up Show Last changed 2013-08-26
IESG IESG state Became RFC 7098 (Informational)
Consensus boilerplate Yes
Telechat date (None)
Needs a YES.
Responsible AD Ted Lemon
Send notices to intarea-chairs@tools.ietf.org, draft-ietf-intarea-flow-label-balancing@tools.ietf.org
IANA IANA review state IANA OK - No Actions Needed
draft-ietf-intarea-flow-label-balancing-02
IntArea                                                     B. Carpenter
Internet-Draft                                         Univ. of Auckland
Intended status: Informational                                  S. Jiang
Expires: April 10, 2014                     Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
                                                              W. Tarreau
                                                              Exceliance
                                                        October 07, 2013

          Using the IPv6 Flow Label for Server Load Balancing
               draft-ietf-intarea-flow-label-balancing-02

Abstract

   This document describes how the IPv6 flow label as currently
   specified can be used to enhance layer 3/4 load distribution and
   balancing for large server farms.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   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."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 10, 2014.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Summary of Flow Label Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Summary of Load Balancing Techniques  . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Applying the Flow Label to L3/L4 Load Balancing . . . . . . .   7
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   8.  Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove]  . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12

1.  Introduction

   The IPv6 flow label has been redefined [RFC6437] and is now a
   recommended IPv6 node requirement [RFC6434].  Its use for load
   sharing in multipath routing has been specified [RFC6438].  Another
   scenario in which the flow label could be used is in load
   distribution for large server farms.  Load distribution is a slightly
   more general term than load balancing, but the latter is more
   commonly used.  Both terms refer to mechanisms that distribute the
   workload of a server farm among different servers in order to
   optimize performance.  Server load balancing commonly applies to HTTP
   traffic, but most of the techniques described would apply to other
   upper layer applications as well.  This document starts with brief
   introductions to the flow label and to load balancing techniques, and
   then describes how the flow label can be used to enhance load
   balancers operating on IP packets and TCP sessions, commonly known as
   layer 3/4 load balancers.

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   The motivation for this approach is to improve the performance of
   most types of layer 3/4 load balancers, especially for traffic
   including multiple IPv6 extension headers and in particular for
   fragmented packets.  Fragmented packets, often the result of
   customers reaching the load balancer via a VPN with a limited MTU,
   are a common performance problem.

2.  Summary of Flow Label Specification

   The IPv6 flow label [RFC6437] is a 20 bit field included in every
   IPv6 header [RFC2460].  It is recommended to be supported in all IPv6
   nodes by [RFC6434].  There is additional background material in
   [RFC6436] and [RFC6294].  According to its definition, the flow label
   should be set to a constant value for a given traffic flow (such as
   an HTTP connection), and that value will belong to a uniform
   statistical distribution, making it potentially valuable for load
   balancing purposes.

   Any device that has access to the IPv6 header has access to the flow
   label, and it is at a fixed position in every IPv6 packet.  In
   contrast, transport layer information, such as the port numbers, is
   not always in a fixed position, since it follows any IPv6 extension
   headers that may be present.  In fact, the logic of finding the
   transport header is always more complex for IPv6 than for IPv4, due
   to the absence of an Internet Header Length field in IPv6.
   Additionally, if packets are fragmented, the flow label will be
   present in all fragments, but the transport header will only be in
   one packet.  Therefore, within the lifetime of a given transport
   layer connection, the flow label can be a more convenient "handle"
   than the port number for identifying that particular connection.

   According to RFC 6437, source hosts should set the flow label, but,
   if they do not (i.e., its value is zero), forwarding nodes (such as
   the first-hop router) may set it instead.  In both cases, the flow
   label value must be constant for a given transport session, normally
   identified by the IPv6 and Transport header 5-tuple.  By default, the
   flow label value should be calculated by a stateless algorithm.  The
   resulting value should form part of a statistically uniform
   distribution, regardless of which node sets it.

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   It is recognised that at the time of writing, very few traffic flows
   include a non-zero flow label value.  The mechanism described below
   is one that can be added to existing load balancing mechanisms, so
   that it will become effective as more and more flows contain a non-
   zero label.  If the flow label is in fact set to zero, it will not
   affect the information entropy of the IPv6 header.  Even if the flow
   label is chosen from an imperfectly uniform distribution, it will
   nevertheless increase the header entropy.  These facts allow for
   progressive introduction of load balancing based on the flow label.

   A careful reading of RFC 6437 shows that for a given source accessing
   a well-known TCP port at a given destination, the flow label is, in
   effect, a substitute for the source port number, found at a fixed
   position in the layer 3 header.

   The flow label is defined as an end-to-end component of the IPv6
   header, but there are three qualifications to this:

   1.  Until the RFC 6437 standard is widely implemented as recommended
       by RFC 6434, the flow label will often be set to the default
       value of zero.

   2.  Because of the recommendation to use a stateless algorithm to
       calculate the label, there is a low (but non-zero) probability
       that two simultaneous flows from the same source to the same
       destination have the same flow label value despite having
       different transport protocol port numbers.

   3.  The flow label field is in an unprotected part of the IPv6
       header, which means that intentional or unintentional changes to
       its value cannot be easily detected by a receiver.

   The first two points are addressed below in Section 4 and the third
   in Section 5.

3.  Summary of Load Balancing Techniques

   Load balancing for server farms is achieved by a variety of methods,
   often used in combination [Tarreau].  This section gives a general
   overview of common methods, although the flow label is not relevant
   to all of them.  The actual load balancing algorithm (the choice of
   which server to use for a new client session) is irrelevant to this
   discussion.

   o  The simplest method is simply using the DNS to return different
      server addresses for a single name such as www.example.com to
      different users.  This is typically done by rotating the order in
      which different addresses within the server site are listed by the

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      relevant authoritative DNS server, on the assumption that the
      client will pick the first one.  Routing may be configured such
      that the different addresses are handled by different ingress
      routers.  Several variants of this load balancing mechanism exist,
      such as expecting some clients to use all the advertised addresses
      when multiple connections are involved, or directing the traffic
      to multiple sites, also known as global load balancing.  None of
      these mechanisms are in the scope of this document, and what this
      document proposes does not affect their usability nor aim to
      replace them, so they will not be discussed further.

   o  Another method, for HTTP servers, is to operate a layer 7 reverse
      proxy in front of the server farm.  The reverse proxy will present
      a single IP address to the world, communicated to clients by a
      single AAAA record.  For each new client session (an incoming TCP
      connection and HTTP request), it will pick a particular server and
      proxy the session to it.  The act of proxying should be more
      efficient and less resource-intensive than the act of serving the
      required content.  The proxy must retain TCP state and proxy state
      for the duration of the session.  This TCP state could,
      potentially, include the incoming flow label value.

   o  A component of some load balancing systems is an SSL reverse proxy
      farm.  The individual SSL proxies handle all cryptographic aspects
      and exchange unencrypted HTTP with the actual servers.  Thus, from
      the load balancing point of view, this really looks just like a
      server farm, except that it's specialised for HTTPS.  Each proxy
      will retain SSL and TCP and maybe HTTP state for the duration of
      the session, and the TCP state could potentially include the flow
      label.

   o  Finally the "front end" of many load balancing systems is a layer
      3/4 load balancer.  While it can be a dedicated device, it is also
      a standard function of some network switches or routers (e.g.
      using Equal Cost Multipath Routing (ECMP) [RFC2991]).  In this
      case, it is the layer 3/4 load balancer whose IP address is
      published as the primary AAAA record for the service.  All client
      sessions will pass through this device.  Depending on the specific
      scenario, the balancer will assign new sessions among the actual
      application servers, across an SSL proxy farm, or among a set of
      layer 7 proxies.  In all cases, the layer 3/4 load balancer has to
      recognize incoming packets as belonging to new or existing client
      sessions, and choose the target server or proxy so as to ensure
      persistence.  'Persistence' is defined as the guarantee that a
      given session will run to completion on a single server.  The
      layer 3/4 load balancer therefore needs to inspect each incoming
      packet to identify the session.  There are two common types of
      layer 3/4 load balancers, the totally stateless ones which only

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      act on packets, generally involving a per-packet hashing of easy-
      to-find information such as the source address and/or port into a
      server number, and the stateful ones which take the routing
      decision on the very first packets of a session and maintain the
      same direction for all packets belonging to the same session.
      Clearly, both types of layer 3/4 balancers could inspect and make
      use of the flow label value.

      Our focus is on how the balancer identifies a particular flow.
      For clarity, note that two aspects of layer 3/4 load balancers are
      not affected by use of the flow label to identify sessions:

      1.  Balancers use various techniques to redirect traffic to a
          specific target server.

          - All servers are configured with the same IP address, they
          are all on the same LAN, and the load balancer sends directly
          to their individual MAC addresses.  In this case, return
          packets from the server to the client are sent back without
          passing through the balancer, a technique known as direct
          server return, but we are not concerned here with the return
          packets.

          - Each server has its own IP address, and the balancer uses an
          IP-in-IP tunnel to reach it.

          - Each server has its own IP address, and the balancer
          performs NAPT (network address and port translation) to
          deliver the client's packets to that address.

          The choice between these methods is not affected by use of the
          flow label.

      2.  A layer 3/4 balancer must correctly handle Path MTU Discovery
          by forwarding relevant ICMPv6 packets in both directions.
          This too is not affected by use of the flow label.

   The following diagram, inspired by [Tarreau], shows a layout with
   various methods in use together.

       ___________________________________________
      (                                           )
      (          Clients in the Internet          )
      (___________________________________________)
             |                            |
        ------------                ------------

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        | Ingress  |                | Ingress  |
        | router   |                | router   |
        ------------                ------------
          ___|_______DNS-based____________|___
               |     load splitting     |
               |     (if used) occurs   |
               |     here               |
          ------------             ------------
          | L3/4 ASIC|             | L3/4 ASIC|
          | balancer |             | balancer |
          ------------             ------------
               |          load          |
               |        spreading       |
     __________|________________________|___________
         |              |            |          |
   ------------   ------------   --------   --------
   |HTTP proxy|...|HTTP proxy|   | SSL  |...| SSL  |
   | balancer |   | balancer |   | proxy|   | proxy|
   ------------   ------------   --------   --------
     ____|_____________|_____________|_________|_____
       |          |          |          |          |
   --------   --------   --------   --------   --------
   |HTTP  |   |HTTP  |   |HTTP  |   |HTTP  |   |HTTP  |
   |server|   |server|   |server|   |server|   |server|
   --------   --------   --------   --------   --------

   From the previous paragraphs, we can identify several points in this
   diagram where the flow label might be relevant:

   1.  Layer 3/4 load balancers.

   2.  SSL proxies.

   3.  HTTP proxies.

   However, usage by the proxies seems unlikely to be cost-effective,
   because they must in any case process the application layer header,
   so in this document we focus only on layer 3/4 balancers.

4.  Applying the Flow Label to L3/L4 Load Balancing

   The suggested model for using the flow label to enhance a L3/L4 load
   balancing mechanism is as follows:

   o  We are only concerned with IPv6 traffic in which the flow label
      value has been set at or near the source according to [RFC6437].
      If the flow label of an incoming packet is zero, load balancers

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      will continue to use the transport header in the traditional way.
      As the use of the flow label becomes more prevalent according to
      RFC 6434, load balancers, and therefore users, will reap a growing
      performance benefit.

   o  If the flow label of an incoming packet is non-zero, layer 3/4
      load balancers can use the 2-tuple {source address, flow label} as
      the session key for whatever load distribution algorithm they
      support.  If any IPv6 extension headers, including fragment
      headers, are present, this will be significantly quicker than
      searching for the transport port numbers later in the packet.
      Moreover, the transport layer information such as the source port
      is not repeated in fragments, which generally prevents stateless
      load balancers from supporting fragmented traffic since they
      generally cannot reassemble fragments.

      A stateless layer 3/4 load balancer would simply apply a hash
      algorithm to the 2-tuple {source address, flow label} on all
      packets, in order to select the same target server consistently
      for a given flow.  Needless to say, the hash algorithm has to be
      well chosen for its purpose, but this problem is common to several
      forms of stateless load balancing.  The discussion in [RFC6438]
      applies.

      A stateful layer 3/4 load balancer would apply its usual load
      distribution algorithm to the first packet of a session, and store
      the {2-tuple, server} association in a table so that subsequent
      packets belonging to the same session are forwarded to the same
      server.  Thus, for all subsequent packets of the session, it can
      ignore all IPv6 extension headers, which should lead to a
      performance benefit.  Whether this benefit is valuable will depend
      on engineering details of the specific load balancer.

      Layer 3/4 balancers that redirect the incoming packets by NAPT are
      not expected to obtain any saving of time by using the flow label,
      because they have no choice but to follow the extension header
      chain, in order to locate and modify the port number and transport
      checksum.  The same would apply to balancers that perform TCP
      state tracking for any reason.

   o  Note that correct handling of ICMPv6 for Path MTU Discovery
      requires the layer 3/4 balancer to keep state for the client
      source address, independently of either the port numbers or the
      flow label.

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   o  SSL and HTTP proxies, if present, should forward the flow label
      value towards the server.  This usually has no performance
      benefit, but is consistent with the general RFC 6437 model for the
      flow label.

   It should be noted that the performance benefit, if any, depends
   entirely on engineering trade-offs in the design of the L3/L4
   balancer.  An extra test is needed (is the label non-zero?), but if
   there is a non-zero label, all logic for handling extension headers
   can be skipped except for the first packet of a new flow.  Since the
   only state to be stored is the 2-tuple and the server identifier,
   storage requirements will be reduced.  Additionally, the method will
   work for fragmented traffic and for flows where the transport
   information is missing (unknown transport protocol) or obfuscated
   (e.g., IPsec).  Traffic reaching the load balancer via a VPN is
   particularly prone to the fragmentation issue, due to MTU size
   issues.  For some load balancer designs, these are very significant
   advantages.

   In the unlikely event of two simultaneous flows from the same source
   address having the same flow label value, the two flows would end up
   assigned to the same server, where they would be distinguished as
   normal by their port numbers.  There are approximately one million
   possible flow label values, and if the rules for flow label
   generation [RFC6437] are followed, this would be a statistically rare
   event, and would not damage the overall load balancing effect.
   Moreover, with a million possible label values, it is very likely
   that there will be many more flow label values than servers at most
   sites, so it is already expected that multiple flow label values will
   end up on the same server for a given client IP address.

   In the case that many thousands of clients are hidden behind the same
   large-scale NAPT (network address and port translator) with a single
   shared IP address, the assumption of low probability of conflicts
   might become incorrect, unless flow label values are random enough to
   avoid following similar sequences for all clients.  This is not
   expected to be a factor for IPv6 anyway, since there is no need to
   implement large-scale NAPT with address sharing [RFC4864].  The
   probability of conflicts is low for sites that implement network
   prefix translation [RFC6296], since this technique provides a
   different address for each client.

5.  Security Considerations

   Security aspects of the flow label are discussed in [RFC6437].  As
   noted there, a malicious source or man-in-the-middle could disturb
   load balancing by manipulating flow labels.  This risk already exists
   today where the source address and port are used as hashing key in

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   layer 3/4 load balancers, as well as where a persistence cookie is
   used in HTTP to designate a server.  It even exists on layer 3
   components which only rely on the source address to select a
   destination, making them more DDoS-prone.  Nevertheless, all these
   methods are currently used because the benefits for load balancing
   and persistence hugely outweigh the risks.  The flow label does not
   significantly alter this situation.

   Specifically, the standard [RFC6437] states that "stateless
   classifiers should not use the flow label alone to control load
   distribution, and stateful classifiers should include explicit
   methods to detect and ignore suspect flow label values."  The former
   point is answered by also using the source address.  The latter point
   is more complex.  If the risk is considered serious, the site ingress
   router or the layer 3/4 balancer should use a suitable heuristic to
   verify incoming flows with non-zero flow label values.  If a flow
   from a given source address and port number does not have a constant
   flow label value, it is suspect and should be dropped.  This would
   deal with both intentional and accidental changes to the flow label.

   RFC 6437 notes in its Security Considerations that if the covert
   channel risk is considered significant, a firewall might rewrite non-
   zero flow labels.  As long as this is done as described in RFC 6437,
   it will not invalidate the mechanisms described above.

   The flow label may be of use in protecting against distributed denial
   of service (DDOS) attacks against servers.  As noted in RFC 6437, a
   source should generate flow label values that are hard to predict,
   most likely by including a secret nonce in the hash used to generate
   each label.  The attacker does not know the nonce and therefore has
   no way to invent flow labels which will all target the same server,
   even with knowledge of both the hash algorithm and the load balancing
   algorithm.  Still, it is important to understand that it is always
   trivial to force a load balancer to stick to the same server during
   an attack, so the security of the whole solution must not rely on the
   unpredicatability of the flow label values alone, but should include
   defensive measures like most load balancers already have against
   abnormal use of source address or session cookies.

   New flows are assigned to a server according to any of the usual
   algorithms available on the load balancer (e.g., least connections,
   round robin, etc.).  The association between the flow label value and
   the server is stored in a table (often called stick table) so that
   future connections using the same flow label can be sent to the same
   server.  This method is more robust against a loss of server and also
   makes it harder for an attacker to target a specific server, because
   the association between a flow label value and a server is not known
   externally.

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   In the case that a stateless hash function is used to assign client
   packets to specific servers, it may be advisable to use a
   cryptographic hash function of some kind, to ensure that an attacker
   cannot predict the behaviour of the load balancer.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document requests no action by IANA.

7.  Acknowledgements

   Valuable comments and contributions were made by Fred Baker, Olivier
   Bonaventure, Ben Campbell, Lorenzo Colitti, Linda Dunbar, Donald
   Eastlake, Joel Jaeggli, Gurudeep Kamat, Warren Kumari, Julia
   Renouard, Julius Volz, and others.

   This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool [RFC2629].

8.  Change log [RFC Editor: Please remove]

   draft-ietf-intarea-flow-label-balancing-02: Last Call comments,
   2013-10-07.

   draft-ietf-intarea-flow-label-balancing-01: clarifications based on
   WG comments, 2013-05-25.

   draft-ietf-intarea-flow-label-balancing-00: WG adoption, minor WG
   comments, 2013-01-15.

   draft-carpenter-flow-label-balancing-02: updates based on external
   review, 2012-12-05.

   draft-carpenter-flow-label-balancing-01: update following comments,
   2012-06-12.

   draft-carpenter-flow-label-balancing-00: restructured after IETF83,
   2012-05-08.

   draft-carpenter-v6ops-label-balance-02: clarified after WG
   discussions, 2012-03-06.

   draft-carpenter-v6ops-label-balance-01: updated with community
   comments, additional author, 2012-01-17.

   draft-carpenter-v6ops-label-balance-00: original version, 2011-10-13.

9.  References

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9.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2460]  Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
              (IPv6) Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.

   [RFC6434]  Jankiewicz, E., Loughney, J., and T. Narten, "IPv6 Node
              Requirements", RFC 6434, December 2011.

   [RFC6437]  Amante, S., Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and J. Rajahalme,
              "IPv6 Flow Label Specification", RFC 6437, November 2011.

9.2.  Informative References

   [RFC2629]  Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
              June 1999.

   [RFC2991]  Thaler, D. and C. Hopps, "Multipath Issues in Unicast and
              Multicast Next-Hop Selection", RFC 2991, November 2000.

   [RFC4864]  Van de Velde, G., Hain, T., Droms, R., Carpenter, B., and
              E. Klein, "Local Network Protection for IPv6", RFC 4864,
              May 2007.

   [RFC6294]  Hu, Q. and B. Carpenter, "Survey of Proposed Use Cases for
              the IPv6 Flow Label", RFC 6294, June 2011.

   [RFC6296]  Wasserman, M. and F. Baker, "IPv6-to-IPv6 Network Prefix
              Translation", RFC 6296, June 2011.

   [RFC6436]  Amante, S., Carpenter, B., and S. Jiang, "Rationale for
              Update to the IPv6 Flow Label Specification", RFC 6436,
              November 2011.

   [RFC6438]  Carpenter, B. and S. Amante, "Using the IPv6 Flow Label
              for Equal Cost Multipath Routing and Link Aggregation in
              Tunnels", RFC 6438, November 2011.

   [Tarreau]  Tarreau, W., "Making applications scalable with load
              balancing", 2006, <http://1wt.eu/articles/2006_lb/>.

Authors' Addresses

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   Brian Carpenter
   Department of Computer Science
   University of Auckland
   PB 92019
   Auckland  1142
   New Zealand

   Email: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com

   Sheng Jiang
   Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd
   Q14, Huawei Campus
   No.156 Beiqing Road
   Hai-Dian District, Beijing  100095
   P.R. China

   Email: jiangsheng@huawei.com

   Willy Tarreau
   Exceliance
   R&D Produits reseau
   3 rue du petit Robinson
   78350 Jouy-en-Josas
   France

   Email: w@1wt.eu

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