Test Cases for Evaluating RMCAT Proposals
draft-ietf-rmcat-eval-test-02
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| Last updated | 2015-09-08 | ||
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draft-ietf-rmcat-eval-test-02
Network Working Group Z. Sarker
Internet-Draft Ericsson AB
Intended status: Informational V. Singh
Expires: March 11, 2016 Aalto University
X. Zhu
M. Ramalho
Cisco Systems
September 8, 2015
Test Cases for Evaluating RMCAT Proposals
draft-ietf-rmcat-eval-test-02
Abstract
The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is used to transmit media in
multimedia telephony applications, these applications are typically
required to implement congestion control. The RMCAT working group is
currently working on candidate algorithms for such interactive real-
time multimedia applications. This document describes the test cases
to be used in the performance evaluation of those candidate
algorithms.
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
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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 March 11, 2016.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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
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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. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Structure of Test cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Recommended Evaluation Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Evaluation metircs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. Path characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3. Media source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. Basic Test Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1. Variable Available Capacity with Single RMCAT flow . . . 10
5.2. Variable Available Capacity with Multiple RMCAT flows . . 13
5.3. Congested Feedback Link with Bi-directional RMCAT flows . 14
5.4. Competing Flows with Same RMCAT Algorithm . . . . . . . . 16
5.5. Round Trip Time Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.6. RMCAT Flow competing with a long TCP Flow . . . . . . . . 20
5.7. RMCAT Flow competing with short TCP Flows . . . . . . . . 23
5.8. Media Pause and Resume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6. Other potential test cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.1. Explicit Congestion Notification Usage . . . . . . . . . 26
6.2. Multiple Bottlenecks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7. Wireless Access Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1. Introduction
This memo describes a set of test cases for evaluating candidate
RMCAT congestion control algorithm proposals, it is based on the
guidelines enumerated in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria] and the
requirements discussed in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements]. The test
cases cover basic usage scenarios and are described using a common
structure, which allows for additional test cases to be added to
those described herein to accommodate other topologies and/or the
modeling of different path characteristics. It is the intention of
this work to capture the consensus of the RMCAT working group
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participants regarding the test cases upon which the performance of
the candidate RMCAT proposals should be evaluated.
2. Terminology
The terminology defined in RTP [RFC3550], RTP Profile for Audio and
Video Conferences with Minimal Control [RFC3551], RTCP Extended
Report (XR) [RFC3611], Extended RTP Profile for RTCP-based Feedback
(RTP/AVPF) [RFC4585], and Support for Reduced-Size RTCP [RFC5506]
apply.
3. Structure of Test cases
All test cases in this document follow a basic structure allowing
implementers to describe a new test scenario without repeatedly
explaining common attributes. The structure includes a general
description section that describes the test case and its motivation.
Additionally the test case defines a set of attributes that
characterize the testbed, i.e., the network path between
communicating peers and the diverse traffic sources.
o Define the test case:
* General description: describes the motivation and the goals of
the test case.
* Expected behavior: describe the desired rate adaptation
behaviour.
* Define a check-list to evaluate the desired behaviour: this
indicates the minimum set of metrics (e.g., link utilization,
media sending rate) that a proposed algorithm needs to measure
to validate the expected rate adaptation behaviour. It should
also indicate the time granularity (e.g., averaged over 10ms,
100ms, or 1s) for measuring certain metrics. Typical
measurement interval is 200ms.
o Define testbed topology: every test case needs to define an
evaluation testbed topology. Figure 1 shows such an evaluation
topology. In this evaluation topology, S1..Sn are traffic
sources. These sources generate media traffic and use either an
RMCAT candidate congestion control algorithm or other congestion
control algorithm designed for media, such as TFRC. R1..Rn are
the corresponding receivers. A test case can have one or more
such traffic sources (S) and corresponding receivers (R). The
path from the source to destination is denoted as forward and the
path from a destination to a source is denoted as backward. The
following basic structure of test case has been described from the
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perspective of media generating endpoints attached on the left-
hand side of Figure 1. In this setup, media flows in forward
direction and corresponding feedback/control messages flow in the
backward direction. However, it is also possible to set up the
test with media flowing in both forward and backward directions.
In that case, unless otherwise specified by the test case, it is
expected that the backward path does not introduce any congestion
related impairments and has enough capacity to accommodate both
media and feedback/control messages. It should be noted that
depending on the test cases it is possible to have different path
characteristics in of the either directions.
o
+---+ +---+
|S1 |====== \ Forward --> / =======|R1 |
+---+ \\ // +---+
\\ //
+---+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+
|S2 |=======| A |------------------------------>| B |=======|R2 |
+---+ | |<------------------------------| | +---+
+-----+ +-----+
(...) // \\ (...)
// <-- Backward \\
+---+ // \\ +---+
|Sn |====== / \ ======|Rn |
+---+ +---+
Figure 1: Example of A Testbed Topology
In a laboratory testbed environment there may exist a significant
amount of traffic on portions of the network path between the
endpoints that is not desired for the purposes of these RMCAT
tests. Some of this traffic may be generated by other processes
on the endpoints themselves (e.g., discovery protocols) or by
other endpoints not presently under test. It is recommended not
to route traffic generated by endpoints that are not under test
through the test bed. Additionally, it is recommended to route
non-RMCAT traffic generated by the endpoints under test around the
bottleneck links specified herein.
o Define testbed attributes:
* Duration: defines the duration of the test.
* Path characteristics: defines the end-to-end transport level
path characteristics of the testbed in a particular test case.
Two sets of attributes describe the path characteristics, one
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for the forward path and the other for the backward path. The
path characteristics for a particular path direction is
applicable to all the Sources "S" sending traffic on that path.
If only one attribute is specified, it is used for both path
directions, however, unless specified the reverse path has no
capacity restrictions and no path loss.
+ Path direction: forward or backward.
+ Bottleneck-link capacity: defines minimum capacity of the
end-to-end path
+ Reference bottleneck capacity: defines a reference value for
the bottleneck capacity for test cases with time-varying
bottleneck capacities. All bottleneck capacities will be
specified as a ratio with respect to the reference capacity
value.
+ One-way propagation delay: describes the end-to-end latency
along the path when network queues are empty, i.e., the time
it takes for a packet to go from the sender to the receiver
without encountering any queuing delay.
+ Maximum end-to-end jitter: defines the maximum jitter that
can be observed along the path.
+ Bottleneck queue type: for example, Droptail, FQ-CoDel, or
PIE.
+ Bottleneck queue size: defines size of queue in terms of
queuing time when the queue is full (in milliseconds).
+ Path loss ratio: characterizes the non-congested, additive,
losses to be generated on the end-to-end path. MUST
describe the loss pattern or loss model used to generate the
losses.
+ Values for some characteristics are described in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria].
* Application-related: defines the traffic source behaviour for
implementing the test case
+ Media traffic Source: defines the characteristics of the
media sources. When using more than one media source, the
different attributes are enumerated separately for each
different media source.
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- Media type: Video/Voice
- Media flow direction: forward, backward or both.
- Number of media sources: defines the total number of
media sources
- Media codec: Constant Bit Rate (CBR) or Variable Bit Rate
(VBR)
- Media source behaviour: describes the media encoder
behavior. It defines the main parameters that affect the
adaptation behaviour. This may include but not limited
to:
o Adaptability: describes the adaptation options. For
example, in the case of video it defines the following
ranges of adaptation: bit rate, frame rate, video
resolution. Similarly, in the case of voice, it
defines the range of bit rate adaptation, the sampling
rate variation, and the variation in packetization
interval.
o Output variation : for a VBR encoder it defines the
encoder output variation from the average target rate
over a particular measurement interval. For example,
on average the encoder output may vary between 5% to
15% above or below the average target bit rate when
measured over a 100 ms time window. The time interval
over which the variation is specified must be
provided.
o Responsiveness to a new bit rate request: the lag in
time between a new bit rate request and actual rate
changes in encoder output. Depending on the encoder,
this value may be specified in absolute time (e.g.
10ms to 1000ms) or other appropriate metric (next
frame interval time).
- Media content: describes the chosen media sequences; For
example, test sequences are available at: [xiph-seq] and
[HEVC-seq].
- Media timeline: describes the point when the media source
is introduced and removed from the testbed. For example,
the media source may start transmitting immediately when
the test case begins, or after a few seconds.
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- Startup behaviour: the media starts at a defined bit
rate, which may be the minimum, maximum bit rate, or a
value in between (in Kbps).
+ Competing traffic source: describes the characteristics of
the competing traffic source, the different types of
competing flows are enumerated in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria].
- Traffic direction: forward, backward or both.
- Type of sources: defines the types of competing traffic
sources. Types of competing traffic flows are listed in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria]. For example, the number
of TCP flows connected to a web browser, the mean size
and distribution of the content downloaded.
- Number of sources: defines the total number of competing
sources of each media type.
- Congestion control: enumerates the congestion control
used by each type of competing traffic.
- Traffic timeline: describes when the competing traffic
starts and ends in the test case.
* Additional attributes: describes attributes essential for
implementing a test case which are not included in the above
structure. These attributes MUST be well defined, so that
other implementers are able to implement it.
Any attribute can have a set of values (enclosed within "[]"). Each
member value of such a set MUST be treated as different value for the
same attribute. It is desired to run separate tests for each such
attribute value.
The test cases described in this document follow the above structure.
4. Recommended Evaluation Settings
This section describes recommended test case settings and could be
overwritten by the respective test cases.
4.1. Evaluation metircs
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the following metrics
at a fine enough time granularity:
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1. Flow level:
A. End-to-end delay for the RMCAT flow.
B. Variation in sending bit rate and goodput. Mainly observing
the frequency and magnitude of oscillations.
C. Packet losses observed at the receiving endpoint
D. Feedback message overhead
E. Convergence time.
2. Transport level:
A. Bandwidth utilization
B. Queue length (milliseconds at specified path capacity):
+ average over the length of the session
+ 5 and 95 percentile
+ median, maximum, minimum
4.2. Path characteristics
Each path between a sender and receiver as described in Figure 1 have
the following characteristics unless otherwise specified in the test
case.
o Path direction: forward and backward.
o Reference bottleneck capacity: 1Mbps.
o One-Way propagation delay: 50ms. Implementers are encouraged to
run the experiment with additional propagation delays mentioned in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria]
o Maximum end-to-end jitter: 30ms. Jitter models are described in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria]
o Bottleneck queue type: Drop tail. Implementers are encouraged to
run the experiment with other AQM schemes, such as FQ-CoDel and
PIE.
o Bottleneck queue size: 300ms.
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o Path loss ratio: 0%.
Examples of additional network parameters are discussed in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria].
For test cases involving time-varying bottleneck capacity, all
capacity values are specified as a ratio with respect to a reference
capacity value, so as to allow flexible scaling of capacity values
along with media source rate range. There exist two different
mechanisms for inducing path capacity variation: a) by explicitly
modifying the value of physical link capacity; or b) by introducing
background non-adaptive UDP traffic with time-varying traffic rate.
Implementers are encouraged run the experiments with both mechanisms
for test cases specified in Section 5.1, Section 5.2, and
Section 5.3.
4.3. Media source
Unless otherwise specified, each test case will include one or more
media sources as described below.
o Media type: Video
* Media codec: VBR
* Media source behaviour:
+ Adaptability:
- Bit rate range: 150 Kbps - 1.5 Mbps. In real-life
applications the bitrate range can vary a lot depending
on the provided service, for example, the maximum bitrate
can be up to 4Mbps. However, for running tests to
evaluate the congestion control algorithms it is more
important to have a look at how they are reacting to
certain amount of bandwidth change. Also it is possible
that the media traffic generator used in a particular
simulator or testbed if not capable of generating higher
bitrate. Hence we have selected a suitable bitrate range
typical of consumer-grade video conferencing applications
in designing the test case. If a different bitrate range
is used in the test cases, the end-to-end path capacity
values will also need to be scaled accordingly.
- Frame resolution: 144p - 720p (or 1080p)
- Frame rate: 10fps - 30fps
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+ Variation from target bitrate: +/-5%. Unless otherwise
specified in the test case, bitrate variation SHOULD be
calculated over one (1) second period of time.
+ Responsiveness to new bit rate request: 100ms
* Media content: The media content should represent a typical
video conversational scenario with head and shoulder movement.
We recommend to use Foreman video sequence.
* Media startup behaviour: 150Kbps. It should be noted that
applications can use smart ways to select an optimal startup
bitrate values for a certain network condition. In such cases
the candidate proposals MAY show the effectiveness of such
smart approach as an additional information for the evaluation
process.
o Media type: Audio
* Media codec: CBR
* Media bitrate: 20Kbps
5. Basic Test Cases
5.1. Variable Available Capacity with Single RMCAT flow
In this test case the bottleneck-link capacity between the two
endpoints varies over time. This test is designed to measure the
responsiveness of the candidate algorithm. This test tries to
address the requirements in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements], which
requires the algorithm to adapt the flow(s) and provide lower end-to-
end latency when there exists:
o an intermediate bottleneck
o change in available capacity (e.g., due to interface change,
routing change, abrupt arrival/departure of background non-
adaptive traffic).
o maximum Media Bit Rate is Greater than Link Capacity. In this
case, the application will attempt to ramp up to its maximum bit
rate, since the link capacity is limited to a value lower, the
congestion control scheme is expected to stabilize the sending bit
rate close to the available bottleneck capacity. This situation
can occur when the endpoints are connected via thin long networks
even though the advertised capacity of the access network may be
higher.
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It should be noted that the exact variation in available capacity due
to any of the above depends on the under-lying technologies. Hence,
we describe a set of known factors, which may be extended to devise a
more specific test case targeting certain behaviour in a certain
network environment.
Expected behavior: the candidate algorithm is expected to detect the
path capacity constraint, converges to bottleneck link's capacity and
adapt the flow to avoid unwanted oscillation when the sending bit
rate is approaching the bottleneck link's capacity. The oscillations
occur when the media flow(s) attempts to reach its maximum bit rate,
overshoots the usage of the available bottleneck capacity, to rectify
it reduces the bit rate and starts to ramp up again.
Testbed topology: One media source S1 is connected to corresponding
R1. The media traffic is transported over the forward path and
corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the
backward path.
Forward -->
+---+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+
|S1 |=======| A |------------------------------>| B |=======|R1 |
+---+ | |<------------------------------| | +---+
+-----+ +-----+
<-- Backward
Figure 2: Testbed Topology for Limited Link Capacity
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the metrics described
in Section 4.1 at a fine enough time granularity.
Testbed attributes:
o Test duration: 100s
o Path characteristics: as described in Section 4.2
o Application-related:
* Media Traffic:
+ Media type: Video
- Media direction: forward.
- Number of media sources: One (1)
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- Media timeline:
o Start time: 0s.
o End time: 99s.
+ Media type: Audio
- Media direction: forward.
- Number of media sources: One (1)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 0s.
o End time: 99s.
* Competing traffic:
+ Number of sources : Zero (0)
o Test Specific Information:
* This test uses the following one way propagation delays of 50
ms and 100 ms.
* This test uses bottleneck path capacity variation as listed in
Table 1
* When using background non-adaptive UDP traffic to induce time-
varying bottleneck for the RMCAT flow, the physical path
capacity is 4Mbps and the UDP traffic source rate changes over
time as (4-x)Mbps, where x is the bottleneck capacity specified
in Table 1
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| Variation pattern | Path | Start | Path capacity |
| index | direction | time | ratio |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| One | Forward | 0s | 1.0 |
| Two | Forward | 40s | 2.5 |
| Three | Forward | 60s | 0.6 |
| Four | Forward | 80s | 1.0 |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
Table 1: Path capacity variation pattern for forward direction
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5.2. Variable Available Capacity with Multiple RMCAT flows
This test case is similar to Section 5.1. However in addition this
test will also consider persistent network load due to competing
traffic.
Expected behavior: the candidate algorithms is expected to detect the
variation in available capacity and adapt the media stream(s)
accordingly. The flows stabilize around their maximum bitrate as the
as the maximum link capacity is large enough to accommodate the
flows. When the available capacity drops, the flow(s) adapts by
decreasing its sending bit rate, and when congestion disappears, the
flow(s) are again expected to ramp up.
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the metrics described
in Section 4.1 at a fine enough time granularity:
Testbed Topology: Two (2) media sources S1 and S2 are connected to
their corresponding destinations R1 and R2. The media traffic is
transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control
traffic is transported over the backward path.
+---+ +---+
|S1 |===== \ / =======|R1 |
+---+ \\ Forward --> // +---+
\\ //
+-----+ +-----+
| A |------------------------------>| B |
| |<------------------------------| |
+-----+ +-----+
// \\
// <-- Backward \\
+---+ // \\ +---+
|S2 |====== / \ ======|R2 |
+---+ +---+
Figure 3: Testbed Topology for Variable Available Capacity
Testbed attributes:
Testbed attributes are similar as described in Section 5.1 except the
test specific capacity variation setup.
Test Specific Information: This test uses path capacity variation as
listed in Table 2 with a corresponding end time of 125 seconds. The
reference bottleneck capacity is 2Mbps. When using background non-
adaptive UDP traffic to induce time-varying bottleneck for RMCAT
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flows, the physical path capacity is 4Mbps and the UDP traffic source
rate changes over time as (4-x)Mbps, where x is the bottleneck
capacity specified in Table 2.
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| Variation pattern | Path | Start | Path capacity |
| index | direction | time | ratio |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| One | Forward | 0s | 2.0 |
| Two | Forward | 25s | 1.0 |
| Three | Forward | 50s | 1.75 |
| Four | Forward | 75s | 0.5 |
| Five | Forward | 100s | 1.0 |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
Table 2: Path capacity variation pattern for forward direction
5.3. Congested Feedback Link with Bi-directional RMCAT flows
RMCAT WG has been chartered to define algorithms for RTP hence it is
assumed that RTCP, RTP header extension or such would be used by the
congestion control algorithm in the backchannel. Due to asymmetric
nature of the link between communicating peers it is possible for a
participating peer to not receive such feedback information due to an
impaired or congested backchannel (even when the forward channel
might not be impaired). This test case is designed to observe the
candidate congestion control behaviour in such an event.
It is expected that the candidate algorithms is able to cope with the
lack of feedback information and adapt to minimize the performance
degradation of media flows in the forward channel.
It should be noted that for this test case: logs are compared with
the reference case, i.e, when the backward channel has no impairments
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the metrics described
in Section 4.1 at a fine-grained time intervals:
Testbed topology: One (1) media source S1 is connected to
corresponding R1, but both endpoints are additionally receiving and
sending data, respectively. The media traffic (S1->R1) is
transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control
traffic is transported over the backward path. Likewise media
traffic (S2->R2) is transported over the backward path and
corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the
forward path.
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+---+ +---+
|S1 |===== \ Forward --> / =======|R1 |
+---+ \\ // +---+
\\ //
+-----+ +-----+
| A |------------------------------>| B |
| |<------------------------------| |
+-----+ +-----+
// \\
// <-- Backward \\
+---+ // \\ +---+
|R2 |===== / \ ======|S2 |
+---+ +---+
Figure 4: Testbed Topology for Congested Feedback Link
Testbed attributes:
o Test duration: 100s
o Path characteristics:
* Reference bottleneck capacity: 1Mbps.
o Application-related:
* Media Source:
+ Media type: Video
- Media direction: forward and backward
- Number of media sources: Two (2)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 0s.
o End time: 99s.
+ Media type: Audio
- Media direction: forward and backward
- Number of media sources: Two (2)
- Media timeline:
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o Start time: 0s.
o End time: 99s.
* Competing traffic:
+ Number of sources : Zero (0)
o Test Specific Information: This test uses path capacity variations
to create congested feedback link. Table 3 lists the variation
patterns applied to the forward path and Table 4 lists the
variation patterns applied to the backward path. When using
background non-adaptive UDP traffic to induce time-varying
bottleneck for RMCAT flows, the physical path capacity is 4Mbps
for both directions and the UDP traffic source rate changes over
time as (4-x)Mbps in each direction, where x is the bottleneck
capacity specified in Table 4.
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| Variation pattern | Path | Start | Path capacity |
| index | direction | time | ratio |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| One | Forward | 0s | 2.0 |
| Two | Forward | 20s | 1.0 |
| Three | Forward | 40s | 0.5 |
| Four | Forward | 60s | 2.0 |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
Table 3: Path capacity variation pattern for forward direction
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| Variation pattern | Path | Start | Path capacity |
| index | direction | time | ratio |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
| One | Backward | 0s | 2.0 |
| Two | Backward | 35s | 0.8 |
| Three | Backward | 70s | 2.0 |
+--------------------+--------------+-----------+-------------------+
Table 4: Path capacity variation pattern for backward direction
5.4. Competing Flows with Same RMCAT Algorithm
In this test case, more than one RMCAT media flow shares the
bottleneck link and each of them uses the same congestion control
algorithm. This is a typical scenario where a real-time interactive
application sends more than one media flows to the same destination
and these flows are multiplexed over the same port. In such a
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scenario it is likely that the flows will be routed via the same path
and need to share the available bandwidth amongst themselves. For
the sake of simplicity it is assumed that there are no other non-
RMCAT competing traffic sources in the bottleneck link and that there
is sufficient capacity to accommodate all the flows individually.
While this appears to be a variant of the test case defined in
Section 5.2, it focuses on the capacity sharing aspect of the
candidate algorithm. The previous test case, on the other hand,
measures adaptability, stability, and responsiveness of the candidate
algorithm.
Expected behavior: It is expected that the competing flows will
converge to an optimum bit rate to accommodate all the flows with
minimum possible latency and loss. Specifically, the test introduces
three media flows at different time instances, when the second flow
appears there should still be room to accommodate another flow on the
bottleneck link. Lastly, when the third flow appears the bottleneck
link should be saturated.
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the metrics described
in Section 4.1 at a fine enough time granularity:
Testbed topology: Three media sources S1, S2, S3 are connected to
respective R1, R2, R3. The media traffic is transported over the
forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is
transported over the backward path.
+---+ +---+
|S1 |===== \ Forward --> / =======|R1 |
+---+ \\ // +---+
\\ //
+---+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+
|S2 |=======| A |------------------------------>| B |=======|R2 |
+---+ | |<------------------------------| | +---+
+-----+ +-----+
// \\
// <-- Backward \\
+---+ // \\ +---+
|S3 |====== / \ ======|R3 |
+---+ +---+
Figure 5: Testbed Topology for Multiple RMCAT Flows
Testbed attributes:
o Test duration: 120s
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o Path characteristics:
* Reference bottleneck capacity: 3.5Mbps
* Path capacity ratio: 1.0
o Application-related:
* Media Source:
+ Media type: Video
- Media direction: forward.
- Number of media sources: Three (3)
- Media timeline: New media flows are added sequentially,
at short time intervals. See test specific setup below.
+ Media type: Audio
- Media direction: forward.
- Number of media sources: Three (3)
- Media timeline: New media flows are added sequentially,
at short time intervals. See test specific setup below.
* Competing traffic:
+ Number of sources : Zero (0)
o Test Specific Information: Table 5 defines the media timeline for
both media type.
+---------+------------+------------+----------+
| Flow IF | Media type | Start time | End time |
+---------+------------+------------+----------+
| 1 | Video | 0s | 119s |
| 2 | Video | 20s | 119s |
| 3 | Video | 40s | 119s |
| 4 | Audio | 0s | 119s |
| 5 | Audio | 20s | 119s |
| 6 | Audio | 40s | 119s |
+---------+------------+------------+----------+
Table 5: Media Timeline for Video and Audio media sources
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5.5. Round Trip Time Fairness
In this test case, multiple RMCAT media flows share the bottleneck
link, but the end-to-end path latency for each RMCAT flow is
different. For the sake of simplicity it is assumed that there are
no other non-RMCAT competing traffic sources in the bottleneck link
and that there is sufficient capacity to accommodate all the flows.
While this appears to be a variant of test case 5.2, it focuses on
the capacity sharing aspect of the candidate algorithm under
different RTTs.
It is expected that the competing flows will converge to bit rates to
accommodate all the flows with minimum possible latency and loss.
Specifically, the test introduces five media flows at the same time
instance.
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the metrics described
in Section 4.1 at a fine enough time granularity:
Testbed Topology: Five (5) media sources S1,S2,..,S5 are connected to
their corresponding media sinks R1,R2,..,R5. The media traffic is
transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control
traffic is transported over the backward path. The topology is the
same as in Section 5.4. The end-to-end path delays are: 10ms for
S1-R1, 25ms for S2-R2, 50ms for S3-R3, 100ms for S4-R4, and 150ms
S5-R5, respectively.
Testbed attributes:
o Test duration: 300s
o Path characteristics:
* One-Way propagation delay for each flow: 10ms, 25ms, 50ms,
100ms, 150ms.
o Application-related:
* Media Source:
+ Media type: Video
- Media direction: forward
- Number of media sources: Five (5)
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- Media timeline: New media flows are added sequentially,
at short time intervals. See test specific setup below.
+ Media type: Audio
- Media direction: forward.
- Number of media sources: Five (5)
- Media timeline: New media flows are added sequentially,
at short time intervals. See test specific setup below.
* Competing traffic:
+ Number of sources : Zero (0)
o Test Specific Information: Table 6 defines the media timeline for
both media type.
+---------+------------+------------+----------+
| Flow IF | Media type | Start time | End time |
+---------+------------+------------+----------+
| 1 | Video | 0s | 299s |
| 2 | Video | 10s | 299s |
| 3 | Video | 20s | 299s |
| 4 | Video | 30s | 299s |
| 5 | Video | 40s | 299s |
| 6 | Audio | 0 | 299s |
| 7 | Audio | 10s | 299s |
| 8 | Audio | 20s | 299s |
| 9 | Audio | 30s | 299s |
| 10 | Audio | 40s | 299s |
+---------+------------+------------+----------+
Table 6: Media Timeline for Video and Audio media sources
5.6. RMCAT Flow competing with a long TCP Flow
In this test case, one or more RMCAT media flows share the bottleneck
link with at least one long lived TCP flows. Long lived TCP flows
download data throughout the session and are expected to have
infinite amount of data to send and receive. This is a scenario
where a multimedia application co-exists with a large file download.
The test case measures the adaptivity of the candidate algorithm to
competing traffic. It addresses the requirement 3 in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements].
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Expected behavior: depending on the convergence observed in test case
5.1 and 5.2, the candidate algorithm may be able to avoid congestion
collapse. In the worst case, the media stream will fall to the
minimum media bit rate.
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the following metrics
in addition to the metrics described in Section 4.1 at a fine enough
time granularity:
1. Flow level:
A. TCP throughput.
Testbed topology: One (1) media source S1 is connected to
corresponding media sink, R1. In addition, there is a long-live TCP
flow sharing the same bottleneck link. The media traffic is
transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control
traffic is transported over the backward path. The TCP traffic goes
over the forward path from, S_tcp with acknowledgement packets
flowing along the backward path from, R_tcp.
+--+ +--+
|S1|===== \ Forward --> / =======|R1|
+--+ \\ // +--+
\\ //
+-----+ +-----+
| A |---------------------------->| B |
| |<----------------------------| |
+-----+ +-----+
// \\
// <-- Backward \\
+-----+ // \\ +-----+
|S_tcp|=== / \ ===|R_tcp|
+-----+ +-----+
Figure 6: Testbed Topology for TCP vs RMCAT Flows
Testbed attributes:
o Test duration: 120s
o Path characteristics:
* Reference bottleneck capacity: 2Mbps
* Path capacity ratio: 1.0
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* Bottleneck queue size: [300ms, 1000ms]
o Application-related:
* Media Source:
+ Media type: Video
- Media direction: forward
- Number of media sources: One (1)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 5s.
o End time: 119s.
+ Media type: Audio
- Media direction: forward
- Number of media sources: One (1)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 5s.
o End time: 119s.
* Additionally, implementers are encouraged to run the experiment
with multiple media sources.
* Competing traffic:
+ Number and Types of sources : one (1), long-lived TCP
+ Traffic direction : forward
+ Congestion control: Default TCP congestion control.
+ Traffic timeline:
- Start time: 0s.
- End time: 119s.
o Test Specific Information: None
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5.7. RMCAT Flow competing with short TCP Flows
In this test case, one or more RMCAT media flow shares the bottleneck
link with multiple short-lived TCP flows. Short-lived TCP flows
resemble the on/off pattern observed in the web traffic, wherein
clients (browsers) connect to a server and download a resource
(typically a web page, few images, text files, etc.) using several
TCP connections (up to 4). This scenario shows the performance of
the multimedia application when several browser windows are active.
The test case measures the adaptivity of the candidate algorithm to
competing web traffic, it addresses the requirements 1.E in
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements].
Depending on the number of short TCP flows, the cross-traffic either
appears as a short burst flow or resembles a long TCP flow. The
intention of this test is to observe the impact of short-term burst
on the behaviour of the candidate algorithm.
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the following metrics
in addition to the metrics described in Section 4.1 at a fine enough
time granularity:
1. Flow level:
A. Variation in the sending rate of the TCP flow.
B. TCP throughput.
Testbed topology: The topology described here is same as the one
described in Figure 6.
Testbed attributes:
o Test duration: 300s
o Path characteristics:
* Reference bottleneck capacity: 2.0Mbps
* Path capacity ratio: 1.0
o Application-related:
* Media Source:
+ Media type: Video
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- Media direction: forward
- Number of media sources: two (2)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 5s.
o End time: 299s.
+ Media type: Audio
- Media direction: forward
- Number of media sources: two (2)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 5s.
o End time: 299s.
* Competing traffic:
+ Number and Types of sources : Ten (10), short-lived TCP
flows.
+ Traffic direction : forward
+ Congestion algorithm: Default TCP Congestion control.
+ Traffic timeline: Each short TCP flow is modeled as a
sequence of file downloads interleaved with idle periods.
See test specific setup. Not all short TCPs start at the
same time, 2 start in the ON state while 8 start in an OFF
stats. The model for the idle times for the OFF state is
discussed in the Short-TCP model.
o Test Specific Information:
* Short-TCP traffic model:
+ File sizes: uniform distribution between 100KB to 1MB
+ Idle period: the duration of the OFF state is derived from
an exponential distribution with the mean value of 10
seconds.
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5.8. Media Pause and Resume
In this test case, more than one real-time interactive media flows
share the link bandwidth and all flows reach to a steady state by
utilizing the link capacity in an optimum way. At these stage one of
the media flow is paused for a moment. This event will result in
more available bandwidth for the rest of the flows and as they are on
a shared link. When the paused media flow will resume it would no
longer have the same bandwidth share on the link. It has to make
it's way through the other existing flows in the link to achieve a
fair share of the link capacity. This test case is important
specially for real-time interactive media which consists of more than
one media flows and can pause/resume media flow at any point of time
during the session. This test case directly addresses the
requirement number 5 in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements]. One can
think it as a variation of test case defined in Section 5.4.
However, it is different as the candidate algorithms can use
different strategies to increase its efficiency, for example the
fairness, convergence time, reduce oscillation etc, by capitalizing
the fact that they have previous information of the link.
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms it is
expected to log enough information to visualize the following metrics
in addition to the metrics described in Section 4.1 at a fine enough
time granularity:
1. Flow level:
A. Variation in sending bit rate and goodput. Mainly observing
the frequency and magnitude of oscillations.
Testbed Topology: Same as test case defined in Section 5.4
Testbed attributes: The general description of the testbed parameters
are same as Section 5.4 with changes in the test specific setup as
below-
o Other test specific setup:
* Media flow timeline:
+ Flow ID: One (1)
+ Start time: 0s
+ Flow duration: 119s
+ Pause time: not required
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+ Resume time: not required
* Media flow timeline:
+ Flow ID: Two (2)
+ Start time: 0s
+ Flow duration: 119s
+ Pause time: at 40s
+ Resume time: at 60s
* Media flow timeline:
+ Flow ID: Three (3)
+ Start time: 0s
+ Flow duration:119s
+ Pause time: not required
+ Resume time: not required
6. Other potential test cases
It has been noticed that there are other interesting test cases
besides the basis test cases listed above. In many aspects, these
additional test cases can help to further evaluate the candidate
algorithm. They are listed as below.
6.1. Explicit Congestion Notification Usage
This test case requires to run all the basic test cases with the
availability of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) [RFC6679]
feature enabled. The goal of this test is to exhibit that the
candidate algorithms does not fail when ECN signals are available.
With ECN signals enabled the algorithms are expected to perform
better than their delay based variants.
6.2. Multiple Bottlenecks
In this test case one RMCAT flow, S1->R2 traverse a path with
multiple bottlenecks. As illustrated in Figure 7, the first flow
(S1->R1) competes with the second RMCAT flow (S2->R2) over the link
between A and B which is close to the sender side; again, that flow
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(S1->R1) competes with the third RMCAT flow (S3->R3) over the link
between C and D which is close to the receiver side. The goal of
this test is to ensure that the candidate algorithms work properly in
the presence of multiple bottleneck links on the end to end path.
Expected behavior: the candidate algorithm is expected to achieve
full utilization at both bottleneck links without starving any of the
three RMCAT flows.
Forward ---->
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
|S2 | |R2 | |S3 | |R3 |
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
| | | |
| | | |
+---+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+
|S1 |=======| A |------>| B |----->| C |---->| D |=======|R1 |
+---+ | |<------| |<-----| |<----| | +---+
+-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+
1st 2nd
Bottleneck (A->B) Bottleneck (C->D)
<------ Backward
Figure 7: Testbed Topology for Multiple Bottlenecks
Testbed topology: Three media sources S1, S2, and S3 are connected to
respective destinations R1, R2, and R3. For all three flows the
media traffic is transported over the forward path and corresponding
feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path.
Testbed attributes:
o Test duration: 120s
o Path characteristics:
* Reference bottleneck capacity between A and B = 2Mbps.
* Path capacity ratio between A and B: 1.0
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* Path capacity ratio between B and C: 4.0.
* Path capacity ratio between C and D: 0.75.
* One-Way propagation delay:
1. Between S1 and R1: 100ms
2. Between S2 and R2: 40ms
3. Between S3 and R3: 40ms
o Application-related:
* Media Source:
+ Media type: Video
- Media direction: Forward
- Number of media sources: Three (3)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 0s.
o End time: 119s.
+ Media type: Audio
- Media direction: Forward
- Number of media sources: Three (3)
- Media timeline:
o Start time: 0s.
o End time: 119s.
* Competing traffic:
+ Number of sources : Zero (0)
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7. Wireless Access Links
Additional wireless network (both cellular network and WiFi network)
specific test cases are define in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-wireless-tests]
8. Security Considerations
Security issues have not been discussed in this memo.
9. IANA Considerations
There are no IANA impacts in this memo.
10. Acknowledgements
Much of this document is derived from previous work on congestion
control at the IETF.
The content and concepts within this document are a product of the
discussion carried out in the Design Team.
11. References
11.1. Normative References
[RFC6679] Westerlund, M., Johansson, I., Perkins, C., O'Hanlon, P.,
and K. Carlberg, "Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)
for RTP over UDP", RFC 6679, DOI 10.17487/RFC6679, August
2012, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6679>.
[RFC3550] Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R., and V.
Jacobson, "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time
Applications", STD 64, RFC 3550, DOI 10.17487/RFC3550,
July 2003, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3550>.
[RFC3551] Schulzrinne, H. and S. Casner, "RTP Profile for Audio and
Video Conferences with Minimal Control", STD 65, RFC 3551,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3551, July 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3551>.
[RFC3611] Friedman, T., Ed., Caceres, R., Ed., and A. Clark, Ed.,
"RTP Control Protocol Extended Reports (RTCP XR)", RFC
3611, DOI 10.17487/RFC3611, November 2003,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3611>.
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[RFC4585] Ott, J., Wenger, S., Sato, N., Burmeister, C., and J. Rey,
"Extended RTP Profile for Real-time Transport Control
Protocol (RTCP)-Based Feedback (RTP/AVPF)", RFC 4585, DOI
10.17487/RFC4585, July 2006,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4585>.
[RFC5506] Johansson, I. and M. Westerlund, "Support for Reduced-Size
Real-Time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP): Opportunities
and Consequences", RFC 5506, DOI 10.17487/RFC5506, April
2009, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5506>.
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria]
Singh, V. and J. Ott, "Evaluating Congestion Control for
Interactive Real-time Media", draft-ietf-rmcat-eval-
criteria-03 (work in progress), March 2015.
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-wireless-tests]
Sarker, Z. and I. Johansson, "Evaluation Test Cases for
Interactive Real-Time Media over Wireless Networks",
draft-ietf-rmcat-wireless-tests-00 (work in progress),
June 2015.
11.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements]
Jesup, R. and Z. Sarker, "Congestion Control Requirements
for Interactive Real-Time Media", draft-ietf-rmcat-cc-
requirements-09 (work in progress), December 2014.
[xiph-seq]
Xiph.org, , "Video Test Media",
http://media.xiph.org/video/derf/ .
[HEVC-seq]
HEVC, , "Test Sequences",
http://www.netlab.tkk.fi/~varun/test_sequences/ .
Authors' Addresses
Zaheduzzaman Sarker
Ericsson AB
Luleae, SE 977 53
Sweden
Phone: +46 10 717 37 43
Email: zaheduzzaman.sarker@ericsson.com
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Varun Singh
Aalto University
School of Electrical Engineering
Otakaari 5 A
Espoo, FIN 02150
Finland
Email: varun@comnet.tkk.fi
URI: http://www.netlab.tkk.fi/~varun/
Xiaoqing Zhu
Cisco Systems
510 McCarthy Blvd
Milpitas, CA 95134
USA
Email: xiaoqzhu@cisco.com
Michael A. Ramalho
Cisco Systems, Inc.
6310 Watercrest Way Unit 203
Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202-5211
USA
Phone: +1 919 476 2038
Email: mramalho@cisco.com
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