Technical Summary
This memo updates RFC 3168, which specifies Explicit Congestion
Notification (ECN) as a replacement for packet drops as indicators of
network congestion. It relaxes restrictions in RFC 3168 that would
otherwise hinder experimentation towards benefits beyond just removal
of loss. The memo summarizes the anticipated areas of
experimentation and updates RFC 3168 to enable experimentation in
these areas. An Experimental RFC is required to take advantage of
any of these enabling updates. In addition, this memo makes related
updates to the ECN specifications for RTP in RFC 6679 and for DCCP in
RFC 4341, RFC 4342 and RFC 5622. The memo also records the
conclusion of the ECN Nonce experiment in RFC 3540, and provides the
rationale for reclassification of RFC 3540 as Historic; this
reclassification enables new experimental use of the ECT(1)
codepoint.
Working Group Summary
The document was adopted by the working group to enable
two specific pieces of work - ABE (now in TCPM) and L4S
(now a working group item in TSVWG). Both these items of work
currently have experimental status, yet seek to modify the
ECN specification produced by TSVWG - specifically to obsolete
the ECN NONCE. This topic has been discussed in TSVWG
over many years and it is finally the consensus that the
experiment has concluded and that the ECN NONCE
specification is no longer recommended for deployment.
Note that this specification is the supporting RFC for a
change of RFC 3540 (EXP) status to Historic. The actual
status change document is
status-change-ecn-signaling-with-nonces-to-historic.
Document Quality
The document has received significant review by several people
in TSVWG - both as an individual submission and as as WG draft,
including detailed feedback from M Welzl and B Briscoe.
Minor updates were made in response to last call comments
and this document is therefore ready to proceed.
Personnel
The Document Shepherd is Gorry Fairhurst.
The responsible Area Director is Spencer Dawkins.