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The Impact of Transport Header Confidentiality on Network Operation and Evolution of the Internet
draft-ietf-tsvwg-transport-encrypt-01

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9065.
Authors Gorry Fairhurst , Colin Perkins
Last updated 2018-11-05 (Latest revision 2018-10-22)
Replaces draft-fairhurst-tsvwg-transport-encrypt
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draft-ietf-tsvwg-transport-encrypt-01
TSVWG                                                       G. Fairhurst
Internet-Draft                                    University of Aberdeen
Intended status: Informational                                C. Perkins
Expires: April 25, 2019                            University of Glasgow
                                                        October 22, 2018

The Impact of Transport Header Confidentiality on Network Operation and
                       Evolution of the Internet
                 draft-ietf-tsvwg-transport-encrypt-01

Abstract

   This document describes implications of applying end-to-end
   encryption at the transport layer.  It identifies in-network uses of
   transport layer header information.  It then reviews the implications
   of developing end-to-end transport protocols that use authentication
   to protect the integrity of transport information or encryption to
   provide confidentiality of the transport protocol header and expected
   implications of transport protocol design and network operation.
   Since transport measurement and analysis of the impact of network
   characteristics have been important to the design of current
   transport protocols, it also considers the impact on transport and
   application evolution.

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 https://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 25, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 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
   (https://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.  Context and Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Current uses of Transport Headers within the Network  . . . .   9
     3.1.  Observing Transport Information in the Network  . . . . .   9
     3.2.  Transport Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     3.3.  Use for Network Diagnostics and Troubleshooting . . . . .  18
     3.4.  Observing Headers to Implement Network Policy . . . . . .  19
   4.  Encryption and Authentication of Transport Headers  . . . . .  19
   5.  Addition of Transport Information to Network-Layer Protocol
       Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
   6.  Implications of Protecting the Transport Headers  . . . . . .  24
     6.1.  Independent Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
     6.2.  Characterising "Unknown" Network Traffic  . . . . . . . .  25
     6.3.  Accountability and Internet Transport Protocols . . . . .  25
     6.4.  Impact on Research, Development and Deployment  . . . . .  26
   7.  Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
   10. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
   11. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
   Appendix A.  Revision information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37

1.  Introduction

   We are seeing increased interest in, and deployment of, new protocols
   that employ end-to-end encryption at the transport layer, including
   the transport layer headers.  An example of such a transport is the
   QUIC transport protocol [I-D.ietf-quic-transport], currently being
   standardised in the IETF.  Encryption of transport layer headers and
   payload data has many benefits in terms of protecting user privacy.
   These benefits have been widely discussed, and we strongly support
   them.  There are also, however, some costs, in that the wide use of
   transport encryption requires changes to network operations, and
   complicates network measurement for research, operational, and
   standardisation purposes.

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   This document discusses some consequences of applying end-to-end
   encryption at the transport layer.  It reviews the implications of
   developing end-to-end transport protocols that use encryption to
   provide confidentiality of the transport protocol header, and
   consider the effect of such changes on transport protocol design and
   network operation.  It also considers anticipated implications on
   transport and application evolution.

2.  Context and Rationale

   The transport layer provides end-to-end interactions between
   endpoints (processes) using an Internet path.  Transport protocols
   layer directly over the network-layer service and are sent in the
   payload of network-layer packets.  They support end-to-end
   communication between applications, supported by higher-layer
   protocols, running on the end systems (or transport endpoints).  This
   simple architectural view hides one of the core functions of the
   transport, however, to discover and adapt to the properties of the
   Internet path that is currently being used.  The design of Internet
   transport protocols is as much about trying to avoid the unwanted
   side effects of congestion on a flow and other capacity-sharing
   flows, avoiding congestion collapse, adapting to changes in the path
   characteristics, etc., as it is about end-to-end feature negotiation,
   flow control and optimising for performance of a specific
   application.

   To achieve stable Internet operations the IETF transport community
   has to date relied heavily on measurement and insights of the network
   operations community to understand the trade-offs, and to inform
   selection of appropriate mechanisms, to ensure a safe, reliable, and
   robust Internet (e.g., [RFC1273]).  In turn, the network operations
   community relies on being able to understand the pattern and
   requirements of traffic passing over the Internet, both in aggregate
   and at the flow level.

   There are many motivations for deploying encrypted transports
   [RFC7624] (i.e., transport protocols that use encryption to provide
   confidentiality of some or all of the transport-layer header
   information), and encryption of transport payloads (i.e.
   confidentiality of the payload data).  The increasing public concerns
   about the interference with Internet traffic have led to a rapidly
   expanding deployment of encryption to protect end-user privacy, in
   protocols like QUIC [I-D.ietf-quic-transport], but also expected to
   form a basis of future protocol designs.

   Some network operators and access providers have come to rely on the
   in-network measurement of transport properties and the functionality
   provided by middleboxes to both support network operations and

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   enhance performance.  There can therefore be implications when
   working with encrypted transport protocols that hide transport header
   information from the network.  These present architectural challenges
   and considerations in the way transport protocols are designed, and
   ability to characterise and compare different transport solutions
   [Measure].  Implementations of network devices are encouraged to
   avoid side-effects when protocols are updated.  Introducing
   cryptographic integrity checks to header fields can also prevent
   undetected manipulation of the field by network devices, or
   undetected addition of information to a packet.  However, this does
   not prevent inspection of the information by a device on path, and it
   is possible that such devices could develop mechanisms that rely on
   the presence of such a field, or a known value in the field.

   Reliance on the presence and semantics of specific header information
   leads to ossification.  An endpoint could be required to supply a
   specific header to receive the network service that it desires.  In
   some cases, this could be benign or advantageous to the protocol
   (e.g., recognising the start of a connection, or explicitly exposing
   protocol information can be expected to provide more consistent
   decisions by on-path devices than the use of diverse methods to infer
   semantics from other flow properties); in other cases this is not
   beneficial (e.g., a mechanism implemented in a network device, such
   as a firewall, that required a header field to have only a specific
   known set of values could prevent the device from forwarding packets
   using a different version of a protocol that introduces a new feature
   that changes the value present in this field, preventing evolution of
   the protocol).

   Examples of the impact of ossification on transport protocol design
   and ease of deployment can be seen in the case of Multipath TCP
   (MPTCP) and the TCP Fast Open option.  The design of MPTCP had to be
   revised to account for middleboxes, so called "TCP Normalizers", that
   monitor the evolution of the window advertised in the TCP headers and
   that reset connections if the window does not grow as expected.
   Similarly, TCP Fast Open has had issues with middleboxes that remove
   unknown TCP options, that drop segments with unknown TCP options,
   that drop segments that contain data and have the SYN bit set, that
   drop packets with SYN/ACK that acknowledge data, or that disrupt
   connections that send data before the three-way handshake completes.
   In both cases, the issue was caused by middleboxes that had a hard-
   coded understanding of transport behaviour, and that interacted
   poorly with transports that tried to change that behaviour.  Other
   examples have included middleboxes that rewrite TCP sequence and
   acknowledgement numbers but are unaware of the (newer) SACK option
   and don't correctly rewrite selective acknowledgements to match the
   changes made to the fixed TCP header; or devices that inspect, and
   change, TCP MSS options that can interfere with path MTU discovery.

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   A protocol design that uses header encryption can provide
   confidentiality of some or all of the protocol header information.
   This prevents an on-path device from knowledge of the header field.
   It therefore prevents mechanisms being built that directly rely on
   the information or seek to imply semantics of an exposed header
   field.  Using encryption to provide confidentiality of the transport
   layer brings some well-known privacy and security benefits and can
   therefore help reduce ossification of the transport layer.  In
   particular, it is important that protocols either do not expose
   information where the usage may change in future protocols, or that
   methods that utilise the information are robust to potential changes
   as protocols evolve over time.  To avoid unwanted inspection, a
   protocol could also intentionally vary the format and value of header
   fields (sometimes known as Greasing [I-D.thomson-quic-grease]).
   However, while encryption hides the protocol header information, it
   does not prevent ossification of the network service: People seeking
   understanding of network traffic could come to rely on pattern
   inferences and other heuristics as the basis for network decision and
   to derive measurement data, creating new dependencies on the
   transport protocol.

   A level of ossification of the transport header can offer trade-offs
   around authentication, and confidentiality of transport protocol
   headers and has the potential to explicitly support for other uses of
   this header information.  For example, a design that provides
   confidentiality of protocol header information can impact the
   following activities that rely on measurement and analysis of traffic
   flows:

   Network Operations and Research:  Observable transport headers enable
      both operators and the research community to measure and analyse
      protocol performance, network anomalies, and failure pathologies.

      This information can help inform capacity planning, and assist in
      determining the need for equipment and/or configuration changes by
      network operators.

      The data can also inform Internet engineering research, and help
      in the development of new protocols, methodologies, and
      procedures.  Concealing the transport protocol header information
      makes the stream performance unavailable to passive observers
      along the path, and likely leads to the development of alternative
      methods to collect or infer that data.

      Providing confidentiality of the transport payload, but leaving
      some, or all, of the transport headers unencrypted, possibly with
      authentication, can provide the majority of the privacy and
      security benefits while supporting operations and research.

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   Protection from Denial of Service:  Observable transport headers
      currently provide useful input to classify traffic and detect
      anomalous events (e.g., changes in application behaviour,
      distributed denial of service attacks).  To be effective, this
      protection needs to be able to uniquely disambiguate unwanted
      traffic.  An inability to separate this traffic using packet
      header information may result in less-efficient identification of
      unwanted traffic or development of different methods (e.g. rate-
      limiting of uncharacterised traffic).

   Network Troubleshooting and Diagnostics:   Encrypting transport
      header information eliminates the incentive for operators to
      troubleshoot what they cannot interpret.  A flow experiencing
      packet loss or jitter looks like an unaffected flow when only
      observing network layer headers (if transport sequence numbers and
      flow identifiers are obscured).  This limits understanding of the
      impact of packet loss or latency on the flows, or even localizing
      the network segment causing the packet loss or latency.  Encrypted
      traffic may imply "don't touch" to some, and could limit a
      trouble-shooting response to "can't help, no trouble found".  The
      additional mechanisms that will need to be introduced to help
      reconstruct transport-level metrics add complexity and operational
      costs (e.g., in deploying additional functions in equipment or
      adding traffic overhead).

   Network Traffic Analysis:  Hiding transport protocol header
      information can make it harder to determine which transport
      protocols and features are being used across a network segment and
      to measure trends in the pattern of usage.  This could impact the
      ability for an operator to anticipate the need for network
      upgrades and roll-out.  It can also impact the on-going traffic
      engineering activities performed by operators (such as determining
      which parts of the path contribute delay, jitter or loss).  While
      the impact may, in many cases, be small there are scenarios where
      operators directly support particular services (e.g., to
      troubleshoot issues relating to Quality of Service, QoS; the
      ability to perform fast re-routing of critical traffic, or support
      to mitigate the characteristics of specific radio links).  The
      more complex the underlying infrastructure the more important this
      impact.

   Open and Verifiable Network Data:   Hiding transport protocol header
      information can reduce the range of actors that can capture useful
      measurement data.  For example, one approach could be to employ an
      existing transport protocol that reveals little information (e.g.,
      UDP), and perform traditional transport functions at higher layers
      protecting the confidentiality of transport information.  Such a
      design, limits the information sources available to the Internet

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      community to understand the operation of new transport protocols,
      so preventing access to the information necessary to inform design
      decisions and standardisation of the new protocols and related
      operational practices.

      The cooperating dependence of network, application, and host to
      provide communication performance on the Internet is uncertain
      when only endpoints (i.e., at user devices and within service
      platforms) can observe performance, and performance cannot be
      independently verified by all parties.  The ability of other
      stakeholders to review code can help develop deeper insight.  In
      the heterogeneous Internet, this helps extend the range of
      topologies, vendor equipment, and traffic patterns that are
      evaluated.

      Independently captured data is important to help ensure the health
      of the research and development communities.  It can provide input
      and test scenarios to support development of new transport
      protocol mechanisms, especially when this analysis can be based on
      the behaviour experienced in a diversity of deployed networks.

      Independently verifiable performance metrics might also be
      important to demonstrate regulatory compliance in some
      jurisdictions, and provides an important basis for informing
      design decisions.

   The last point leads us to consider the impact of hiding transport
   headers in the specification and development of protocols and
   standards.  This has potential impact on:

   o  Understanding Feature Interactions: An appropriate vantage point,
      coupled with timing information about traffic flows, provides a
      valuable tool for benchmarking equipment, functions, and/or
      configurations, and to understand complex feature interactions.
      An inability to observe transport protocol information can limit
      the ability to diagnose and explore interactions between features
      at different protocol layers, a side-effect of not allowing a
      choice of vantage point from which this information is observed.

   o  Supporting Common Specifications: Transmission Control Protocol
      (TCP) is currently the predominant transport protocol used over
      Internet paths.  Its many variants have broadly consistent
      approaches to avoiding congestion collapse, and to ensuring the
      stability of the Internet.  Increased use of transport layer
      encryption can overcome ossification, allowing deployment of new
      transports and different types of congestion control.  This
      flexibility can be beneficial, but it can come at the cost of
      fragmenting the ecosystem.  There is little doubt that developers

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      will try to produce high quality transports for their intended
      target uses, but it is not clear there are sufficient incentives
      to ensure good practice that benefits the wide diversity of
      requirements for the Internet community as a whole.  Increased
      diversity, and the ability to innovate without public scrutiny,
      risks point solutions that optimise for specific needs, but
      accidentally disrupt operations of/in different parts of the
      network.  The social contract that maintains the stability of the
      Internet relies on accepting common specifications, and on the
      ability to verify that others also conform.

   o  Operational practice: Published transport specifications allow
      operators to check compliance.  This can bring assurance to those
      operating networks, often avoiding the need to deploy complex
      techniques that routinely monitor and manage TCP/IP traffic flows
      (e.g.  Avoiding the capital and operational costs of deploying
      flow rate-limiting and network circuit-breaker methods [RFC8084]).
      When it is not possible to observe transport header information,
      methods are still needed to confirm that the traffic produced
      conforms to the expectations of the operator or developer.

   o  Restricting research and development: Hiding transport information
      can impede independent research into new mechanisms, measurement
      of behaviour, and development initiatives.  Experience shows that
      transport protocols are complicated to design and complex to
      deploy, and that individual mechanisms need to be evaluated while
      considering other mechanisms, across a broad range of network
      topologies and with attention to the impact on traffic sharing the
      capacity.  If this results in reduced availability of open data,
      it could eliminate the independent self-checks to the
      standardisation process that have previously been in place from
      research and academic contributors (e.g., the role of the IRTF
      ICCRG, and research publications in reviewing new transport
      mechanisms and assessing the impact of their experimental
      deployment)

   In summary, there are trade offs.  On the one hand, protocol
   designers have often ignored the implications of whether the
   information in transport header fields can or will be used by in-
   network devices, and the implications this places on protocol
   evolution.  This motivates a design that provides confidentiality of
   the header information.  On the other hand, it can be expected that a
   lack of visibility of transport header information can impact the
   ways that protocols are deployed, standardised, and their operational
   support.  The choice of whether future transport protocols encrypt
   their protocol headers therefore needs to be taken based not solely
   on security and privacy considerations, but also taking into account
   the impact on operations, standards, and research.  Any new Internet

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   transport need to provide appropriate transport mechanisms and
   operational support to assure the resulting traffic can not result in
   persistent congestion collapse [RFC2914].  This document suggests
   that the balance between information exposed and concealed should be
   carefully considered when specifying new protocols.

3.  Current uses of Transport Headers within the Network

   Despite transport headers having end-to-end meaning, some of these
   transport headers have come to be used in various ways within the
   Internet.  In response to pervasive monitoring [RFC7624] revelations
   and the IETF consensus that "Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack"
   [RFC7258], efforts are underway to increase encryption of Internet
   traffic,.  Applying confidentiality to transport header fields would
   affect how protocol information is used [RFC8404].  To understand
   these implications, it is first necessary to understand how transport
   layer headers are currently observed and/or modified by middleboxes
   within the network.

   Transport protocols can be designed to encrypt or authenticate
   transport header fields.  Authentication at the transport layer can
   be used to detect any changes to an immutable header field that were
   made by a network device along a path.  The intentional modification
   of transport headers by middleboxes (such as Network Address
   Translation, NAT, or Firewalls) is not considered.  Common issues
   concerning IP address sharing are described in [RFC6269].

3.1.  Observing Transport Information in the Network

   If in-network observation of transport protocol headers is needed,
   this requires knowledge of the format of the transport header:

   o  Flows need to be identified at the level required to perform the
      observation;

   o  The protocol and version of the header need to be visible, e.g.,
      by defining the wire image [I-D.trammell-wire-image].  As
      protocols evolve over time and there may be a need to introduce
      new transport headers.  This could require interpretation of
      protocol version information or connection setup information;

   o  The location and syntax of any observed transport headers needs to
      be known.  IETF transport protocols can specify this information.

   The following subsections describe various ways that observable
   transport information has been utilised.

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3.1.1.  Flow Identification

   Transport protocol header information (together with information in
   the network header), has been used to identify a flow and the
   connection state of the flow, together with the protocol options
   being used.  In some usages, a low-numbered (well-known) transport
   port number has been used to identify a protocol (although port
   information alone is not sufficient to guarantee identification of a
   protocol, since applications can use arbitrary ports, multiple
   sessions can be multiplexed on a single port, and ports can be re-
   used by subsequent sessions).

   Transport protocols, such as TCP and Stream Control Transport
   Protocol (SCTP) specify a standard base header that includes sequence
   number information and other data, with the possibility to negotiate
   additional headers at connection setup, identified by an option
   number in the transport header.  UDP-based protocols can use, but
   sometimes do not use, well-known port numbers.  Some flows can
   instead be identified by signalling protocols or through the use of
   magic numbers placed in the first byte(s) of the datagram payload.

   Flow identification is a common function.  For example, performed by
   measurement activities, QoS classification, firewalls, Denial of
   Service, DOS, prevention.  It becomes more complex and less easily
   achieved when multiplexing is used at or above the transport layer.

3.1.2.  Metrics derived from Transport Layer Headers

   Some actors manage their portion of the Internet by characterizing
   the performance of link/network segments.  Passive monitoring uses
   observed traffic to makes inferences from transport headers to derive
   these measurements.  A variety of open source and commercial tools
   have been deployed that utilise this information.  The following
   metrics can be derived from transport header information:

   Traffic Rate and Volume:  Header information e.g., (sequence number,
      length) allows derivation of volume measures per-application, to
      characterise the traffic that uses a network segment or the
      pattern of network usage.  This may be measured per endpoint or
      for an aggregate of endpoints (e.g., by an operator to assess
      subscriber usage).  It can also be used to trigger measurement-
      based traffic shaping and to implement QoS support within the
      network and lower layers.  Volume measures can be valuable for
      capacity planning (providing detail of trends rather than the
      volume per subscriber).

   Loss Rate and Loss Pattern:  Flow loss rate may be derived (e.g.,
      from sequence number) and has been used as a metric for

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      performance assessment and to characterise transport behaviour.
      Understanding the root cause of loss can help an operator
      determine whether this requires corrective action.  Network
      operators have used the variation in patterns of loss as a key
      performance metric, utilising this to detect changes in the
      offered service.

      There are various causes of loss, including: corruption of link
      frames (e.g., interference on a radio link), buffer overflow
      (e.g., due to congestion), policing (traffic management), buffer
      management (e.g., Active Queue Management, AQM [RFC7567]),
      inadequate provision of traffic preemption.  Understanding flow
      loss rate requires either maintaining per flow packet counters or
      by observing sequence numbers in transport headers.  Loss can be
      monitored at the interface level by devices in the network.  It is
      often important to understand the conditions under which packet
      loss occurs.  This usually requires relating loss to the traffic
      flowing on the network node/segment at the time of loss.

      Observation of transport feedback information (observing loss
      reports, e.g., RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) [RFC3550], TCP SACK)
      can increase understanding of the impact of loss and help identify
      cases where loss may have been wrongly identified, or the
      transport did not require the lost packet.  It is sometimes more
      important to understand the pattern of loss, than the loss rate,
      because losses can often occur as bursts, rather than randomly-
      timed events.

   Throughput and Goodput:  The throughput achieved by a flow can be
      determined even when a flow is encrypted, providing the individual
      flow can be identified.  Goodput [RFC7928] is a measure of useful
      data exchanged (the ratio of useful/total volume of traffic sent
      by a flow).  This requires ability to differentiate loss and
      retransmission of packets (e.g., by observing packet sequence
      numbers in the TCP or the Real-time Transport Protocol, RTP,
      headers [RFC3550]).

   Latency:  Latency is a key performance metric that impacts
      application response time and user-perceived response time.  It
      often indirectly impacts throughput and flow completion time.
      Latency determines the reaction time of the transport protocol
      itself, impacting flow setup, congestion control, loss recovery,
      and other transport mechanisms.  The observed latency can have
      many components [Latency].  Of these, unnecessary/unwanted queuing
      in network buffers has often been observed as a significant
      factor.  Once the cause of unwanted latency has been identified,
      this can often be eliminated.

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      To measure latency across a part of a path, an observation point
      can measure the experienced round trip time (RTT) using packet
      sequence numbers, and acknowledgements, or by observing header
      timestamp information.  Such information allows an observation
      point in the network to determine not only the path RTT, but also
      to measure the upstream and downstream contribution to the RTT.
      This has been used to locate a source of latency, e.g., by
      observing cases where the ratio of median to minimum RTT is large
      for a part of a path.

      The service offered by operators can benefit from latency
      information to understand the impact of deployment and tune
      deployed services.  Latency metrics are key to evaluating and
      deploying AQM [RFC7567], DiffServ [RFC2474], and Explicit
      Congestion Notification (ECN) [RFC3168] [RFC8087].  Measurements
      could identify excessively large buffers, indicating where to
      deploy or configure AQM.  An AQM method is often deployed in
      combination with other techniques, such as scheduling [RFC7567]
      [RFC8290] and although parameter-less methods are desired
      [RFC7567], current methods [RFC8290] [RFC8289] [RFC8033] often
      cannot scale across all possible deployment scenarios.

   Variation in delay:  Some network applications are sensitive to small
      changes in packet timing.  To assess the performance of such
      applications, it can be necessary to measure the variation in
      delay observed along a portion of the path [RFC3393] [RFC5481].
      The requirements resemble those for the measurement of latency.

   Flow Reordering:  Significant flow reordering can impact time-
      critical applications and can be interpreted as loss by reliable
      transports.  Many transport protocol techniques are impacted by
      reordering (e.g., triggering TCP retransmission, or re-buffering
      of real-time applications).  Packet reordering can occur for many
      reasons (from equipment design to misconfiguration of forwarding
      rules).  Since this impacts transport performance, network tools
      are needed to detect and measure unwanted/excessive reordering.

      There have been initiatives in the IETF transport area to reduce
      the impact of reordering within a transport flow, possibly leading
      to a reduction in the requirements for preserving ordering.  These
      have promise to simplify network equipment design as well as the
      potential to improve robustness of the transport service.
      Measurements of reordering can help understand the present level
      of reordering within deployed infrastructure, and inform decisions
      about how to progress such mechanisms.

   Operational tools to detect mis-ordered packet flows and quantify the
   degree or reordering.  Key performance indicators are retransmission

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   rate, packet drop rate, sector utilisation level, a measure of
   reordering, peak rate, the ECN congestion experienced (CE) marking
   rate, etc.

   Metrics have been defined that evaluate whether a network has
   maintained packet order on a packet-by-packet basis [RFC4737] and
   [RFC5236].

   Techniques for measuring reordering typically observe packet sequence
   numbers.  Some protocols provide in-built monitoring and reporting
   functions.  Transport fields in the RTP header [RFC3550] [RFC4585]
   can be observed to derive traffic volume measurements and provide
   information on the progress and quality of a session using RTP.  As
   with other measurement, metadata is often important to understand the
   context under which the data was collected, including the time,
   observation point, and way in which metrics were accumulated.  The
   RTCP protocol directly reports some of this information in a form
   that can be directly visible in the network.  A user of summary
   measurement data needs to trust the source of this data and the
   method used to generate the summary information.

3.1.3.  Metrics derived from Network Layer Headers

   Some transport information is made visible in the network-layer
   protocol header.  These header fields are not encrypted and have been
   utilised to make flow observations.

   Use of IPv6 Network-Layer Flow Label:  Endpoints are encouraged
      expose flow information in the IPv6 Flow Label field of the
      network-layer header (e.g., [RFC8085]).  This can be used to
      inform network-layer queuing, forwarding (e.g., for Equal Cost
      Multi-Path, ECMP, routing, and Link Aggregation, LAG).  This can
      provide useful information to assign packets to flows in the data
      collected by measurement campaigns.  Although important to
      characterising a path, it does not directly provide performance
      data.

   Use Network-Layer Differentiated Services Code Point Point:
      Applications can expose their delivery expectations to the network
      by setting the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) field of
      IPv4 and IPv6 packets.  This can be used to inform network-layer
      queuing and forwarding, and can also provide information on the
      relative importance of packet information collected by measurement
      campaigns, but does not directly provide performance data.

      This field provides explicit information that can be used in place
      of inferring traffic requirements (e.g., by inferring QoS
      requirements from port information via a multi-field classifier).

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      The DSCP value can therefore impact the quality of experience for
      a flow.  Observations of service performance need to consider this
      field when a network path has support for differentiated service
      treatment.

   Use of Explicit Congestion Marking:  ECN [RFC3168] is an optional
      transport mechanism that uses a code point in the network-layer
      header.  Use of ECN can offer gains in terms of increased
      throughput, reduced delay, and other benefits when used over a
      path that includes equipment that supports an AQM method that
      performs Congestion Experienced (CE) marking of IP packets
      [RFC8087].

      ECN exposes the presence of congestion on a network path to the
      transport and network layer.  The reception of CE-marked packets
      can therefore be used to monitor the presence and estimate the
      level of incipient congestion on the upstream portion of the path
      from the point of observation (Section 2.5 of [RFC8087]).  Because
      ECN marks are carried in the IP protocol header, it is much easier
      to measure ECN than to measure packet loss.  However, interpreting
      the marking behaviour (i.e., assessing congestion and diagnosing
      faults) requires context from the transport layer (path RTT,
      visibility of loss - that could be due to queue overflow,
      congestion response, etc) [RFC7567].

      Some ECN-capable network devices can provide richer (more frequent
      and fine-grained) indication of their congestion state.  Setting
      congestion marks proportional to the level of congestion (e.g.,
      Data Center TCP, DCTP [RFC8257], and Low Latency Low Loss Scalable
      throughput, L4S, [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch].

      Use of ECN requires a transport to feed back reception information
      on the path towards the data sender.  Exposure of this Transport
      ECN feedback provides an additional powerful tool to understand
      ECN-enabled AQM-based networks [RFC8087].

      AQM and ECN offer a range of algorithms and configuration options,
      it is therefore important for tools to be available to network
      operators and researchers to understand the implication of
      configuration choices and transport behaviour as use of ECN
      increases and new methods emerge [RFC7567] [RFC8087].  ECN-
      monitoring is expected to become important as AQM is deployed that
      supports ECN [RFC8087].

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3.2.  Transport Measurement

   The common language between network operators and application/content
   providers/users is packet transfer performance at a layer that all
   can view and analyse.  For most packets, this has been transport
   layer, until the emergence of QUIC, with the obvious exception of
   Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and IPsec.

   When encryption conceals more layers in each packet, people seeking
   understanding of the network operation rely more on pattern
   inferences and other heuristics reliance on pattern inferences and
   accuracy suffers.  For example, the traffic patterns between server
   and browser are dependent on browser supplier and version, even when
   the sessions use the same server application (e.g., web e-mail
   access).  It remains to be seen whether more complex inferences can
   be mastered to produce the same monitoring accuracy (see section
   2.1.1 of [RFC8404]).

   When measurement datasets are made available by servers or client
   endpoints, additional metadata, such as the state of the network, is
   often required to interpret this data.  Collecting and coordinating
   such metadata is more difficult when the observation point is at a
   different location to the bottleneck/device under evaluation.

   Packet sampling techniques can be used to scale the processing
   involved in observing packets on high rate links.  This exports only
   the packet header information of (randomly) selected packets.  The
   utility of these measurements depends on the type of bearer and
   number of mechanisms used by network devices.  Simple routers are
   relatively easy to manage, a device with more complexity demands
   understanding of the choice of many system parameters.  This level of
   complexity exists when several network methods are combined.

   This section discusses topics concerning observation of transport
   flows, with a focus on transport measurement.

3.2.1.  Point of Observation

   On-path measurements are particularly useful for locating the source
   of problems or to assess the performance of a network segment or a
   particular device configuration.  Often issues can only be understood
   in the context of the other flows that share a particular path,
   common network device, interface port, etc.  A simple example is
   monitoring of a network device that uses a scheduler or active queue
   management technique [RFC7567], where it may be desirable to
   understand whether algorithms are correctly controlling latency, or
   overload protection.  This understanding implies knowledge of how
   traffic is assigned to any sub-queues used for flow scheduling, but

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   can also require information about how the traffic dynamics impact
   active queue management, starvation prevention mechanisms and
   circuit-breakers.

   Sometimes multiple on-path observation points are needed.  By
   correlating observations of headers at multiple points along the path
   (e.g., at the ingress and egress of a network segment), an observer
   can determine the contribution of a portion of the path to an
   observed metric (to locate a source of delay, jitter, loss,
   reordering, congestion marking, etc.).

3.2.2.  Use by Operators to Plan and Provision Networks

   Traffic measurements (e.g., traffic volume, loss, latency) is used by
   operators to help plan deployment of new equipment and configurations
   in their networks.  Data is also important to equipment vendors who
   need to understand traffic trends and patterns of usage as inputs to
   decisions about planning products and provisioning for new
   deployments.  This measurement information can also be correlated
   with billing information when this is also collected by an operator.

   A network operator supporting traffic that uses transport header
   encryption may not have access to per-flow measurement data.  Trends
   in aggregate traffic can be observed and can be related to the
   endpoint addresses being used, but it may not be possible to
   correlate patterns in measurements with changes in transport
   protocols (e.g., the impact of changes in introducing a new transport
   protocol mechanism).  This increases the dependency on other indirect
   sources of information to inform planning and provisioning.

3.2.3.  Service Performance Measurement

   Traffic measurements (e.g., traffic volume, loss, latency) can be
   used by various actors to help analyse the performance offered to the
   users of a network segment, and inform operational practice.

   While active measurements may be used in-network, passive
   measurements can have advantages in terms of eliminating unproductive
   test traffic, reducing the influence of test traffic on the overall
   traffic mix, and the ability to choose the point of observation
   Section 3.2.1.  However, passive measurements may rely on observing
   transport headers.

3.2.4.  Measuring Transport to Support Network Operations

   Information provided by tools observing transport headers can help
   determine whether mechanisms are needed in the network to prevent
   flows from acquiring excessive network capacity.  Operators can

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   implement operational practices to manage traffic flows (e.g., to
   prevent flows from acquiring excessive network capacity under severe
   congestion) by deploying rate-limiters, traffic shaping or network
   transport circuit breakers [RFC8084].

   Congestion Control Compliance of Traffic:  Congestion control is a
      key transport function [RFC2914].  Many network operators
      implicitly accept that TCP traffic complies with a behaviour that
      is acceptable for use in the shared Internet.  TCP algorithms have
      been continuously improved over decades, and they have reached a
      level of efficiency and correctness that custom application-layer
      mechanisms will struggle to easily duplicate [RFC8085].

      A standards-compliant TCP stack provides congestion control may
      therefore be judged safe for use across the Internet.
      Applications developed on top of well-designed transports can be
      expected to appropriately control their network usage, reacting
      when the network experiences congestion, by back-off and reduce
      the load placed on the network.  This is the normal expected
      behaviour for IETF-specified transport (e.g., TCP and SCTP).

      However, when anomalies are detected, tools can interpret the
      transport protocol header information to help understand the
      impact of specific transport protocols (or protocol mechanisms) on
      the other traffic that shares a network.  An observation in the
      network can gain understanding of the dynamics of a flow and its
      congestion control behaviour.  Analysing observed packet sequence
      numbers can be used to help build confidence that an application
      flow backs-off its share of the network load in the face of
      persistent congestion, and hence to understand whether the
      behaviour is appropriate for sharing limited network capacity.
      For example, it is common to visualise plots of TCP sequence
      numbers versus time for a flow to understand how a flow shares
      available capacity, deduce its dynamics in response to congestion,
      etc.

   Congestion Control Compliance for UDP traffic  UDP provides a minimal
      message-passing datagram transport that has no inherent congestion
      control mechanisms.  Because congestion control is critical to the
      stable operation of the Internet, applications and other protocols
      that choose to use UDP as a transport are required to employ
      mechanisms to prevent congestion collapse, avoid unacceptable
      contributions to jitter/latency, and to establish an acceptable
      share of capacity with concurrent traffic [RFC8085].

      A network operator needs tools to understand if datagram flows
      comply with congestion control expectations and therefore whether
      there is a need to deploy methods such as rate-limiters, transport

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      circuit breakers or other methods to enforce acceptable usage for
      the offered service.

      UDP flows that expose a well-known header by specifying the format
      of header fields can allow information to be observed to gain
      understanding of the dynamics of a flow and its congestion control
      behaviour.  For example, tools exist to monitor various aspects of
      the RTP and RTCP header information of real-time flows (see
      Section 3.1.2.

3.3.  Use for Network Diagnostics and Troubleshooting

   Transport header information can be useful for a variety of
   operational tasks [RFC8404]: to diagnose network problems, assess
   network provider performance, evaluate equipment/protocol
   performance, capacity planning, management of security threats
   (including denial of service), and responding to user performance
   questions.  Sections 3.1.2 and 5 of [RFC8404] provide further
   examples.  These tasks seldom involve the need to determine the
   contents of the transport payload, or other application details.

   A network operator supporting traffic that uses transport header
   encryption can see only encrypted transport headers.  This prevents
   deployment of performance measurement tools that rely on transport
   protocol information.  Choosing to encrypt all the information
   reduces the ability of an operator to observe transport performance,
   and may limit the ability of network operators to trace problems,
   make appropriate QoS decisions, or response to other queries about
   the network service.  For some this will be blessing, for others it
   may be a curse.  For example, operational performance data about
   encrypted flows needs to be determined by traffic pattern analysis,
   rather than relying on traditional tools.  This can impact the
   ability of the operator to respond to faults, it could require
   reliance on endpoint diagnostic tools or user involvement in
   diagnosing and troubleshooting unusual use cases or non-trivial
   problems.  A key need here is for tools to provide useful information
   during network anomalies (e.g., significant reordering, high or
   intermittent loss).  Although many network operators utilise
   transport information as a part of their operational practice, the
   network will not break because transport headers are encrypted, and
   this may require alternative tools may need to be developed and
   deployed.

3.3.1.  Examples of measurements

   Measurements can be used to monitor the health of a portion of the
   Internet, to provide early warning of the need to take action.  They
   can assist in debugging and diagnosing the root causes of faults that

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   concern a particular user's traffic.  They can also be used to
   support post-mortem investigation after an anomaly to determine the
   root cause of a problem.

   In some case, measurements may involve active injection of test
   traffic to complete a measurement.  However, most operators do not
   have access to user equipment, and injection of test traffic may be
   associated with costs in running such tests (e.g., the implications
   of bandwidth tests in a mobile network are obvious).  Some active
   measurements (e.g., response under load or particular workloads)
   perturb other traffic, and could require dedicated access to the
   network segment.  An alternative approach is to use in-network
   techniques that observe transport packet headers in operational
   networks to make the measurements.

   In other cases, measurement involves dissecting network traffic
   flows.  The observed transport layer information can help identify
   whether the link/network tuning is effective and alert to potential
   problems that can be hard to derive from link or device measurements
   alone.  The design trade-offs for radio networks are often very
   different to those of wired networks.  A radio-based network (e.g.,
   cellular mobile, enterprise WiFi, satellite access/back-haul, point-
   to-point radio) has the complexity of a subsystem that performs radio
   resource management,s with direct impact on the available capacity,
   and potentially loss/reordering of packets.  The impact of the
   pattern of loss and congestion, differs for different traffic types,
   correlation with propagation and interference can all have
   significant impact on the cost and performance of a provided service.
   The need for this type of information is expected to increase as
   operators bring together heterogeneous types of network equipment and
   seek to deploy opportunistic methods to access radio spectrum.

3.4.  Observing Headers to Implement Network Policy

   Information from the transport protocol can be used by a multi-field
   classifier as a part of policy framework.  Policies are commonly used
   for management of the QoS or Quality of Experience (QoE) in resource-
   constrained networks and by firewalls that use the information to
   implement access rules (see also section 2.2.2 of [RFC8404]).
   Traffic that cannot be classified, will typically receive a default
   treatment.

4.  Encryption and Authentication of Transport Headers

   End-to-end encryption can be applied at various protocol layers.  It
   can be applied above the transport to encrypt the transport payload.
   Encryption methods can hide information from an eavesdropper in the
   network.  Encryption can also help protect the privacy of a user, by

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   hiding data relating to user/device identity or location.  Neither an
   integrity check nor encryption methods prevent traffic analysis, and
   usage needs to reflect that profiling of users, identification of
   location and fingerprinting of behaviour can take place even on
   encrypted traffic flows.  Any header information that has a clear
   definition in the protocol's message format(s), or is implied by that
   definition, and is not cryptographically confidentiality-protected
   can be unambiguously interpreted by on-path observers
   [I-D.trammell-wire-image].

   There are several motivations:

   o  One motive to use encryption is a response to perceptions that the
      network has become ossified by over-reliance on middleboxes that
      prevent new protocols and mechanisms from being deployed.  This
      has lead to a perception that there is too much "manipulation" of
      protocol headers within the network, and that designing to deploy
      in such networks is preventing transport evolution.  In the light
      of this, a method that authenticates transport headers may help
      improve the pace of transport development, by eliminating the need
      to always consider deployed middleboxes
      [I-D.trammell-plus-abstract-mech], or potentially to only
      explicitly enable middlebox use for particular paths with
      particular middleboxes that are deliberately deployed to realise a
      useful function for the network and/or users[RFC3135].

   o  Another motivation stems from increased concerns about privacy and
      surveillance.  Some Internet users have valued the ability to
      protect identity, user location, and defend against traffic
      analysis, and have used methods such as IPsec Encapsulated
      Security Payload (ESP), Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and other
      encrypted tunnel technologies.  Revelations about the use of
      pervasive surveillance [RFC7624] have, to some extent, eroded
      trust in the service offered by network operators, and following
      the Snowden revelation in the USA in 2013 has led to an increased
      desire for people to employ encryption to avoid unwanted
      "eavesdropping" on their communications.  Concerns have also been
      voiced about the addition of information to packets by third
      parties to provide analytics, customization, advertising, cross-
      site tracking of users, to bill the customer, or to selectively
      allow or block content.  Whatever the reasons, there are now
      activities in the IETF to design new protocols that may include
      some form of transport header encryption (e.g., QUIC
      [I-D.ietf-quic-transport]).

   Authentication methods (that provide integrity checks of protocols
   fields) have also been specified at the network layer, and this also
   protects transport header fields.  The network layer itself carries

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   protocol header fields that are increasingly used to help forwarding
   decisions reflect the need of transport protocols, such as the IPv6
   Flow Label [RFC6437], the DSCP and ECN.

   The use of transport layer authentication and encryption exposes a
   tussle between middlebox vendors, operators, applications developers
   and users.

   o  On the one hand, future Internet protocols that enable large-scale
      encryption assist in the restoration of the end-to-end nature of
      the Internet by returning complex processing to the endpoints,
      since middleboxes cannot modify what they cannot see.

   o  On the other hand, encryption of transport layer header
      information has implications for people who are responsible for
      operating networks and researchers and analysts seeking to
      understand the dynamics of protocols and traffic patterns.

   Whatever the motives, a decision to use pervasive of transport header
   encryption will have implications on the way in which design and
   evaluation is performed, and which can in turn impact the direction
   of evolution of the TCP/IP stack.  While the IETF can specify
   protocols, the success in actual deployment is often determined by
   many factors [RFC5218] that are not always clear at the time when
   protocols are being defined.

   The following briefly reviews some security design options for
   transport protocols.  A Survey of Transport Security Protocols
   [I-D.ietf-taps-transport-security] provides more details concerning
   commonly used encryption methods at the transport layer.

   Authenticating the Transport Protocol Header:  Transport layer header
      information can be authenticated.  An integrity check that
      protects the immutable transport header fields, but can still
      expose the transport protocol header information in the clear,
      allowing in-network devices to observes these fields.  An
      integrity check can not prevent in-network modification, but can
      avoid a receiving accepting changes and avoid impact on the
      transport protocol operation.

      An example transport authentication mechanism is TCP-
      Authentication (TCP-AO) [RFC5925].  This TCP option authenticates
      the IP pseudo header, TCP header, and TCP data.  TCP-AO protects
      the transport layer, preventing attacks from disabling the TCP
      connection itself and provides replay protection.  TCP-AO may
      interact with middleboxes, depending on their behaviour [RFC3234].

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      The IPsec Authentication Header (AH) [RFC4302] was designed to
      work at the network layer and authenticate the IP payload.  This
      approach authenticates all transport headers, and verifies their
      integrity at the receiver, preventing in-network modification.

   Encrypting the Transport Payload:  The transport layer payload can be
      encrypted to protect the content of transport segments.  This
      leaves transport protocol header information in the clear.  The
      integrity of immutable transport header fields could be protected
      by combining this with an integrity check.

      Examples of encrypting the payload include Transport Layer
      Security (TLS) over TCP [RFC8446] [RFC7525], Datagram TLS (DTLS)
      over UDP [RFC6347] [RFC7525], and TCPcrypt
      [I-D.ietf-tcpinc-tcpcrypt], which permits opportunistic encryption
      of the TCP transport payload.

   Encrypting the Transport Headers and Payload:  The network layer
      payload could be encrypted (including the entire transport header
      and the payload).  This method provides confidentiality of the
      entire transport packet.  It therefore does not expose any
      transport information to devices in the network, which also
      prevents modification along a network path.

      One example of encryption at the network layer is use of IPsec
      Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) [RFC4303] in tunnel mode.
      This encrypts and authenticates all transport headers, preventing
      visibility of the transport headers by in-network devices.  Some
      Virtual Private Network (VPN) methods also encrypt these headers.

   Selectively Encrypting Transport Headers and Payload:  A transport
      protocol design can encrypt selected header fields, while also
      choosing to authenticate the entire transport header.  This allows
      specific transport header fields to be made observable by network
      devices.  End-to end integrity checks can prevent an endpoint from
      undetected modification of the immutable transport headers.

      Mutable fields in the transport header provide opportunities for
      middleboxes to modify the transport behaviour (e.g., the extended
      headers described in [I-D.trammell-plus-abstract-mech]).  This
      considers only immutable fields in the transport headers, that is,
      fields that may be authenticated End-to-End across a path.

      An example of a method that encrypts some, but not all, transport
      information is GRE-in-UDP [RFC8086] when used with GRE encryption.

   Optional Encryption of Header Information:  There are implications to
      the use of optional header encryption in the design of a transport

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      protocol, where support of optional mechanisms can increase the
      complexity of the protocol and its implementation and in the
      management decisions that are required to use variable format
      fields.  Instead, fields of a specific type ought to always be
      sent with the same level of confidentiality or integrity
      protection.

5.  Addition of Transport Information to Network-Layer Protocol Headers

   Transport protocol information can be made visible in a network-layer
   header.  This has the advantage that this information can then be
   observed by in-network devices.  This has the advantage that a single
   header can support all transport protocols, but there may also be
   less desirable implications of separating the operation of the
   transport protocol from the measurement framework.

   Some measurements may be made by adding additional protocol headers
   carrying operations, administration and management (OAM) information
   to packets at the ingress to a maintenance domain (e.g., an Ethernet
   protocol header with timestamps and sequence number information using
   a method such as 802.11ag or in-situ OAM [I-D.ietf-ippm-ioam-data])
   and removing the additional header at the egress of the maintenance
   domain.  This approach enables some types of measurements, but does
   not cover the entire range of measurements described in this
   document.  In some cases, it can be difficult to position measurement
   tools at the required segments/nodes and there can be challenges in
   correlating the downsream/upstream information when in-band OAM data
   is inserted by an on-path device.

   Another example of a network-layer approach is the IPv6 Performance
   and Diagnostic Metrics (PDM) Destination Option [RFC8250].  This
   allows a sender to optionally include a destination option that
   caries header fields that can be used to observe timestamps and
   packet sequence numbers.  This information could be authenticated by
   receiving transport endpoints when the information is added at the
   sender and visible at the receiving endpoint, although methods to do
   this have not currently been proposed.  This method needs to be
   explicitly enabled at the sender.

   It can be undesirable to rely on methods requiring the presence of
   network options or extension headers.  IPv4 network options are often
   not supported (or are carried on a slower processing path) and some
   IPv6 networks are also known to drop packets that set an IPv6 header
   extension (e.g., [RFC7872]).  Another disadvantage is that protocols
   that separately expose header information do not necessarily have an
   advantage to expose the information that is utilised by the protocol
   itself, and could manipulate this header information to gain an
   advantage from the network.

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6.  Implications of Protecting the Transport Headers

   The choice of which fields to expose and which to encrypt is a design
   choice for the transport protocol.  Any selective encryption method
   requires trading two conflicting goals for a transport protocol
   designer to decide which header fields to encrypt.  Security work
   typically employs a design technique that seeks to expose only what
   is needed.  However, there can be performance and operational
   benefits in exposing selected information to network tools.

   This section explores key implications of working with encrypted
   transport protocols.

6.1.  Independent Measurement

   Independent observation by multiple actors is important for
   scientific analysis.  Encrypting transport header encryption changes
   the ability for other actors to collect and independently analyse
   data.  Internet transport protocols employ a set of mechanisms.  Some
   of these need to work in cooperation with the network layer - loss
   detection and recovery, congestion detection and congestion control,
   some of these need to work only End-to-End (e.g., parameter
   negotiation, flow-control).

   When encryption conceals information in the transport header, it
   could be possible for an applications to provide summary data on
   performance and usage of the network.  This data could be made
   available to other actors.  However, this data needs to contain
   sufficient detail to understand (and possibly reconstruct the network
   traffic pattern for further testing) and to be correlated with the
   configuration of the network paths being measured.

   Sharing information between actors needs also to consider the privacy
   of the user and the incentives for providing accurate and detailed
   information.  Protocols that expose the state information used by the
   transport protocol in their header information (e.g., timestamps used
   to calculate the RTT, packet numbers used to asses congestion and
   requests for retransmission) provide an incentive for the sending
   endpoint to provide correct information, increasing confidence that
   the observer understands the transport interaction with the network.
   This becomes important when considering changes to transport
   protocols, changes in network infrastructure, or the emergence of new
   traffic patterns.

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6.2.  Characterising "Unknown" Network Traffic

   The patterns and types of traffic that share Internet capacity
   changes with time as networked applications, usage patterns and
   protocols continue to evolve.

   If "unknown" or "uncharacterised" traffic patterns form a small part
   of the traffic aggregate passing through a network device or segment
   of the network the path, the dynamics of the uncharacterised traffic
   may not have a significant collateral impact on the performance of
   other traffic that shares this network segment.  Once the proportion
   of this traffic increases, the need to monitor the traffic and
   determine if appropriate safety measures need to be put in place.

   Tracking the impact of new mechanisms and protocols requires traffic
   volume to be measured and new transport behaviours to be identified.
   This is especially true of protocols operating over a UDP substrate.
   The level and style of encryption needs to be considered in
   determining how this activity is performed.  On a shorter timescale,
   information may also need to be collected to manage denial of service
   attacks against the infrastructure.

6.3.  Accountability and Internet Transport Protocols

   Information provided by tools observing transport headers can be used
   to classify traffic, and to limit the network capacity used by
   certain flows.  Operators can potentially use this information to
   prioritise or de-prioritise certain flows or classes of flow, with
   potential implications for network neutrality, or to rate limit
   malicious or otherwise undesirable flows (e.g., for Distributed
   Denial of Service, DDOS, protection, or to ensure compliance with a
   traffic profile Section 3.2.4).  Equally, operators could use
   analysis of transport headers and transport flow state to demonstrate
   that they are not providing differential treatment to certain flows.
   Obfuscating or hiding this information using encryption is expected
   to lead operators and maintainers of middleboxes (firewalls, etc.) to
   seek other methods to classify, and potentially other mechanisms to
   condition, network traffic.

   A lack of data reduces the level of precision with which flows can be
   classified and conditioning mechanisms are applied (e.g., rate
   limiting, circuit breaker techniques [RFC8084], or blocking of
   uncharacterised traffic), and this needs to be considered when
   evaluating the impact of designs for transport encryption [RFC5218].

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6.4.  Impact on Research, Development and Deployment

   The majority of present Internet applications use two well-known
   transport protocols: e.g., TCP and UDP.  Although TCP represents the
   majority of current traffic, some important real-time applications
   use UDP, and much of this traffic utilises RTP format headers in the
   payload of the UDP datagram.  Since these protocol headers have been
   fixed for decades, a range of tools and analysis methods have became
   common and well-understood.  Over this period, the transport protocol
   headers have mostly changed slowly, and so also the need to develop
   tools track new versions of the protocol.

   Looking ahead, there will be a need to update these protocols and to
   develop and deploy new transport mechanisms and protocols.  There are
   both opportunities and also challenges to the design, evaluation and
   deployment of new transport protocol mechanisms.

   Integrity checks can protect an endpoint from undetected modification
   of protocol fields by network devices, whereas encryption and
   obfuscation can further prevent these headers being utilised by
   network devices.  Hiding headers can therefore provide the
   opportunity for greater freedom to update the protocols and can ease
   experimentation with new techniques and their final deployment in
   endpoints.

   Hiding headers can limit the ability to measure and characterise
   traffic.  Measurement data is increasingly being used to inform
   design decisions in networking research, during development of new
   mechanisms and protocols and in standardisation.  Measurement has a
   critical role in the design of transport protocol mechanisms and
   their acceptance by the wider community (e.g., as a method to judge
   the safety for Internet deployment).  Observation of pathologies are
   also important in understanding the interactions between cooperating
   protocols and network mechanism, the implications of sharing capacity
   with other traffic and the impact of different patterns of usage.

   Evolution and the ability to understand (measure) the impact need to
   proceed hand-in-hand.  Attention needs to be paid to the expected
   scale of deployment of new protocols and protocol mechanisms.
   Whatever the mechanism, experience has shown that it is often
   difficult to correctly implement combination of mechanisms [RFC8085].
   These mechanisms therefore typically evolve as a protocol matures, or
   in response to changes in network conditions, changes in network
   traffic or changes to application usage.

   New transport protocol formats are expected to facilitate an
   increased pace of transport evolution, and with it the possibility to
   experiment with and deploy a wide range of protocol mechanisms.

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   There has been recent interest in a wide range of new transport
   methods, e.g., Larger Initial Window, Proportional Rate Reduction
   (PRR), congestion control methods based on measuring bottleneck
   bandwidth and round-trip propagation time, the introduction of AQM
   techniques and new forms of ECN response (e.g., Data Centre TCP,
   DCTP, and methods proposed for L4S).The growth and diversity of
   applications and protocols using the Internet also continues to
   expand.  For each new method or application it is desirable to build
   a body of data reflecting its behaviour under a wide range of
   deployment scenarios, traffic load, and interactions with other
   deployed/candidate methods.

   Open standards motivate a desire for this evaluation to include
   independent observation and evaluation of performance data, which in
   turn suggests control over where and when measurement samples are
   collected.  This requires consideration of the appropriate balance
   between encrypting all and no transport information.

7.  Conclusions

   The majority of present Internet applications use two well-known
   transport protocols: e.g., TCP and UDP.  Although TCP represents the
   majority of current traffic, some important real-time applications
   have used UDP, and much of this traffic utilises RTP format headers
   in the payload of the UDP datagram.  Since these protocol headers
   have been fixed for decades, a range of tools and analysis methods
   have became common and well-understood.  Over this period, the
   transport protocol headers have mostly changed slowly, and so also
   the need to develop tools track new versions of the protocol.

   Confidentiality and strong integrity checks have properties that are
   being incorporated into new protocols and which have important
   benefits.  The pace of development of transports using the WebRTC
   data channel and the rapid deployment of QUIC transport protocol can
   both be attributed to using the combination of UDP as a substrate
   while providing confidentiality and authentication of the
   encapsulated transport headers and payload.

   The traffic that can be observed by on-path network devices is a
   function of transport protocol design/options, network use,
   applications, and user characteristics.  In general, when only a
   small proportion of the traffic has a specific (different)
   characteristic, such traffic seldom leads to operational concern,
   although the ability to measure and monitor it is less.  The desire
   to understand the traffic and protocol interactions typically grows
   as the proportion of traffic increases in volume.  The challenges
   increase when multiple instances of an evolving protocol contribute
   to the traffic that share network capacity.

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   An increased pace of evolution therefore needs to be accompanied by
   methods that can be successfully deployed and used across operational
   networks.  This leads to a need for network operators (at various
   level (ISPs, enterprises, firewall maintainer, etc) to identify
   appropriate operational support functions and procedures.

   Protocols that change their transport header format (wire format) or
   their behaviour (e.g., algorithms that are needed to classify and
   characterise the protocol), will require new tooling to be developed
   to catch-up with the changes.  If the currently deployed tools and
   methods are no longer relevant then performance may not be correctly
   measured.  This can increase the response-time after faults, and can
   impact the ability to manage the network resulting in traffic causing
   traffic to be treated inappropriately (e.g., rate limiting because of
   being incorrectly classified/monitored).  There are benefits in
   exposing consistent information to the network that avoids traffic
   being mis-classified and then receiving a default treatment by the
   network.

   As a part of its design a new protocol specification therefore needs
   to weigh the benefits of ossifying common headers, versus the
   potential demerits of exposing specific information that could be
   observed along the network path, to provide tools to manage new
   variants of protocols.  Several scenarios to illustrate different
   ways this could evolve are provided below:

   o  One scenario is when transport protocols provide consistent
      information to the network by intentionally exposing a part of the
      transport header.  The design fixes the format of this information
      between versions of the protocol.  This ossification of the
      transport header allows an operator to establish tooling and
      procedures that enable it to provide consistent traffic management
      as the protocol evolves.  In contrast to TCP (where all protocol
      information is exposed), evolution of the transport is facilitated
      by providing cryptographic integrity checks of the transport
      header fields (preventing undetected middlebox changes) and
      encryption of other protocol information (preventing observation
      within the network, or incentivising the use of the exposed
      information, rather than inferring information from other
      characteristics of the flow traffic).  The exposed transport
      information can be used by operators to provide troubleshooting,
      measurement and any necessary functions appropriate to the class
      of traffic (priority, retransmission, reordering, circuit
      breakers, etc).

   o  An alternative scenario adopts different design goals, with a
      different outcome.  A protocol that encrypts all header
      information forces network operators to act independently from

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      apps/transport developments to extract the information they need
      to manage their network.  A range of approaches may proliferate,
      as in current networks.  Some operators can add a shim header to
      each packet as a flow as it crosses the network; other operators/
      managers could develop heuristics and pattern recognition to
      derive information that classifies flows and estimates quality
      metrics for the service being used; some could decide to rate-
      limit or block traffic until new tooling is in place.  In many
      cases, the derived information can be used by operators to provide
      necessary functions appropriate to the class of traffic (priority,
      retransmission, reordering, circuit breakers, etc).
      Troubleshooting, and measurement becomes more difficult, and more
      diverse.  This could require additional information beyond that
      visible in the packet header and when this information is used to
      inform decisions by on-path devices it can lead to dependency on
      other characteristics of the flow.  In some cases, operators might
      need access to keying information to interpret encrypted data that
      they observe.  Some use cases could demand use of transports that
      do not use encryption.

   The outcome could have significant implications on the way the
   Internet architecture develops.  It exposes a risk that significant
   actors (e.g., developers and transport designers) achieve more
   control of the way in which the Internet architecture develops.In
   particular, there is a possibility that designs could evolve to
   significantly benefit of customers for a specific vendor, and that
   communities with very different network, applications or platforms
   could then suffer at the expense of benefits to their vendors own
   customer base.  In such a scenario, there could be no incentive to
   support other applications/products or to work in other networks
   leading to reduced access for new approaches.

8.  Security Considerations

   This document is about design and deployment considerations for
   transport protocols.  Issues relating to security are discussed in
   the various sections of the document.

   Authentication, confidentiality protection, and integrity protection
   are identified as Transport Features by [RFC8095].  As currently
   deployed in the Internet, these features are generally provided by a
   protocol or layer on top of the transport protocol
   [I-D.ietf-taps-transport-security].

   Confidentiality and strong integrity checks have properties that can
   also be incorporated into the deisgn of a transport protocol.
   Integrity checks can protect an endpoint from undetected modification
   of protocol fields by network devices, whereas encryption and

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   obfuscation can further prevent these headers being utilised by
   network devices.  Hiding headers can therefore provide the
   opportunity for greater freedom to update the protocols and can ease
   experimentation with new techniques and their final deployment in
   endpoints.  A protocol specification needs to weigh the benefits of
   ossifying common headers, versus the potential demerits of exposing
   specific information that could be observed along the network path to
   provide tools to manage new variants of protocols.

   A protocol design that uses header encryption can provide
   confidentiality of some or all of the protocol header information.
   This prevents an on-path device from knowledge of the header field.
   It therefore prevents mechanisms being built that directly rely on
   the information or seeks to imply semantics of an exposed header
   field.  Hiding headers can limit the ability to measure and
   characterise traffic.

   Exposed transport headers are sometimes utilised as a part of the
   information to detect anomalies in network traffic.  This can be used
   as the first line of defence yo identify potential threats from DOS
   or malware and redirect suspect traffic to dedicated nodes
   responsible for DOS analysis, malware detection, or to perform packet
   "scrubbing" (the normalization of packets so that there are no
   ambiguities in interpretation by the ultimate destination of the
   packet).  These techniques are currently used by some operators to
   also defend from distributed DOS attacks.

   Exposed transport headers are sometimes also utilised as a part of
   the information used by the receiver of a transport protocol to
   protect the transport layer from data injection by an attacker.  In
   evaluating this use of exposed header information, it is important to
   consider whether it introduces a significant DOS threat.  For
   example, an attacker could construct a DOS attack by sending packets
   with a sequence number that falls within the currently accepted range
   of sequence numbers at the receiving endpoint, this would then
   introduce additional work at the receiving endpoint, even though the
   data in the attacking packet may not finally be delivered by the
   transport layer.  This is sometimes known as a "shadowing attack".
   An attack can, for example, disrupt receiver processing, trigger loss
   and retransmission, or make a receiving endpoint perform unproductive
   decryption of packets that cannot be successfully decrypted (forcing
   a receiver to commit decryption resources, or to update and then
   restore protocol state).

   One mitigation to off-path attack is to deny knowledge of what header
   information is accepted by a receiver or obfusticate the accepted
   header information, e.g., setting a non-predictable initial value for
   a sequence number during a protocol handshake, as in [RFC3550] and

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   [RFC6056], or a port value that can not be predicted (see section 5.1
   of [RFC8085]).  A receiver could also require additional information
   to be used as a part of check before accepting packets at the
   transport layer (e.g., utilising a part of the sequence number space
   that is encrypted; or by verifying an encrypted token not visible to
   an attacker).  This would also mitigate on-path attacks.  An
   additional processing cost can be incurred when decryption needs to
   be attempted before a receiver is able to discard injected packets.

   Open standards motivate a desire for this evaluation to include
   independent observation and evaluation of performance data, which in
   turn suggests control over where and when measurement samples are
   collected.  This requires consideration of the appropriate balance
   between encrypting all and no transport information.  Open data, and
   accessibility to tools that can help understand trends in application
   deployment, network traffic and usage patterns can all contribute to
   understanding security challenges.

9.  IANA Considerations

   XX RFC ED - PLEASE REMOVE THIS SECTION XXX

   This memo includes no request to IANA.

10.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Mohamed Boucadair, Spencer Dawkins,
   Jana Iyengar, Mirja Kuehlewind, Kathleen Moriarty, Al Morton, Chris
   Seal, Joe Touch, Brian Trammell, and other members of the TSVWG for
   their comments and feedback.

   This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020
   research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 688421.The
   opinions expressed and arguments employed reflect only the authors'
   view.  The European Commission is not responsible for any use that
   may be made of that information.

   This work has received funding from the UK Engineering and Physical
   Sciences Research Council under grant EP/R04144X/1.

11.  Informative References

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              Brockners, F., Bhandari, S., Pignataro, C., Gredler, H.,
              Leddy, J., Youell, S., Mizrahi, T., Mozes, D., Lapukhov,
              P., Chang, R., daniel.bernier@bell.ca, d., and J. Lemon,
              "Data Fields for In-situ OAM", draft-ietf-ippm-ioam-
              data-03 (work in progress), June 2018.

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   [I-D.ietf-quic-transport]
              Iyengar, J. and M. Thomson, "QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed
              and Secure Transport", draft-ietf-quic-transport-14 (work
              in progress), August 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-taps-transport-security]
              Pauly, T., Perkins, C., Rose, K., and C. Wood, "A Survey
              of Transport Security Protocols", draft-ietf-taps-
              transport-security-02 (work in progress), June 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-tcpinc-tcpcrypt]
              Bittau, A., Giffin, D., Handley, M., Mazieres, D., Slack,
              Q., and E. Smith, "Cryptographic protection of TCP Streams
              (tcpcrypt)", draft-ietf-tcpinc-tcpcrypt-12 (work in
              progress), June 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch]
              Briscoe, B., Schepper, K., and M. Bagnulo, "Low Latency,
              Low Loss, Scalable Throughput (L4S) Internet Service:
              Architecture", draft-ietf-tsvwg-l4s-arch-02 (work in
              progress), March 2018.

   [I-D.thomson-quic-grease]
              Thomson, M., "More Apparent Randomization for QUIC",
              draft-thomson-quic-grease-00 (work in progress), December
              2017.

   [I-D.trammell-plus-abstract-mech]
              Trammell, B., "Abstract Mechanisms for a Cooperative Path
              Layer under Endpoint Control", draft-trammell-plus-
              abstract-mech-00 (work in progress), September 2016.

   [I-D.trammell-wire-image]
              Trammell, B. and M. Kuehlewind, "The Wire Image of a
              Network Protocol", draft-trammell-wire-image-04 (work in
              progress), April 2018.

   [Latency]  Briscoe, B., "Reducing Internet Latency: A Survey of
              Techniques and Their Merits, IEEE Comm. Surveys &
              Tutorials. 26;18(3) p2149-2196", November 2014.

   [Measure]  Fairhurst, G., Kuehlewind, M., and D. Lopez, "Measurement-
              based Protocol Design, Eur. Conf. on Networks and
              Communications, Oulu, Finland.", June 2017.

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   [RFC1273]  Schwartz, M., "Measurement Study of Changes in Service-
              Level Reachability in the Global TCP/IP Internet: Goals,
              Experimental Design, Implementation, and Policy
              Considerations", RFC 1273, DOI 10.17487/RFC1273, November
              1991, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1273>.

   [RFC2474]  Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black,
              "Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
              Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2474, December 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2474>.

   [RFC2914]  Floyd, S., "Congestion Control Principles", BCP 41,
              RFC 2914, DOI 10.17487/RFC2914, September 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2914>.

   [RFC3135]  Border, J., Kojo, M., Griner, J., Montenegro, G., and Z.
              Shelby, "Performance Enhancing Proxies Intended to
              Mitigate Link-Related Degradations", RFC 3135,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3135, June 2001,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3135>.

   [RFC3168]  Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S., and D. Black, "The Addition
              of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP",
              RFC 3168, DOI 10.17487/RFC3168, September 2001,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3168>.

   [RFC3234]  Carpenter, B. and S. Brim, "Middleboxes: Taxonomy and
              Issues", RFC 3234, DOI 10.17487/RFC3234, February 2002,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3234>.

   [RFC3393]  Demichelis, C. and P. Chimento, "IP Packet Delay Variation
              Metric for IP Performance Metrics (IPPM)", RFC 3393,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3393, November 2002,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3393>.

   [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, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3550>.

   [RFC4302]  Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4302, December 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4302>.

   [RFC4303]  Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
              RFC 4303, DOI 10.17487/RFC4303, December 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4303>.

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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,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4585>.

   [RFC4737]  Morton, A., Ciavattone, L., Ramachandran, G., Shalunov,
              S., and J. Perser, "Packet Reordering Metrics", RFC 4737,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4737, November 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4737>.

   [RFC5218]  Thaler, D. and B. Aboba, "What Makes for a Successful
              Protocol?", RFC 5218, DOI 10.17487/RFC5218, July 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5218>.

   [RFC5236]  Jayasumana, A., Piratla, N., Banka, T., Bare, A., and R.
              Whitner, "Improved Packet Reordering Metrics", RFC 5236,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5236, June 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5236>.

   [RFC5481]  Morton, A. and B. Claise, "Packet Delay Variation
              Applicability Statement", RFC 5481, DOI 10.17487/RFC5481,
              March 2009, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5481>.

   [RFC5925]  Touch, J., Mankin, A., and R. Bonica, "The TCP
              Authentication Option", RFC 5925, DOI 10.17487/RFC5925,
              June 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5925>.

   [RFC6056]  Larsen, M. and F. Gont, "Recommendations for Transport-
              Protocol Port Randomization", BCP 156, RFC 6056,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6056, January 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6056>.

   [RFC6269]  Ford, M., Ed., Boucadair, M., Durand, A., Levis, P., and
              P. Roberts, "Issues with IP Address Sharing", RFC 6269,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6269, June 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6269>.

   [RFC6347]  Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
              Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, DOI 10.17487/RFC6347,
              January 2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6347>.

   [RFC6437]  Amante, S., Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and J. Rajahalme,
              "IPv6 Flow Label Specification", RFC 6437,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6437, November 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6437>.

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   [RFC7258]  Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
              Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
              2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.

   [RFC7525]  Sheffer, Y., Holz, R., and P. Saint-Andre,
              "Recommendations for Secure Use of Transport Layer
              Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security
              (DTLS)", BCP 195, RFC 7525, DOI 10.17487/RFC7525, May
              2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7525>.

   [RFC7567]  Baker, F., Ed. and G. Fairhurst, Ed., "IETF
              Recommendations Regarding Active Queue Management",
              BCP 197, RFC 7567, DOI 10.17487/RFC7567, July 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7567>.

   [RFC7624]  Barnes, R., Schneier, B., Jennings, C., Hardie, T.,
              Trammell, B., Huitema, C., and D. Borkmann,
              "Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance: A
              Threat Model and Problem Statement", RFC 7624,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7624, August 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7624>.

   [RFC7872]  Gont, F., Linkova, J., Chown, T., and W. Liu,
              "Observations on the Dropping of Packets with IPv6
              Extension Headers in the Real World", RFC 7872,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7872, June 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7872>.

   [RFC7928]  Kuhn, N., Ed., Natarajan, P., Ed., Khademi, N., Ed., and
              D. Ros, "Characterization Guidelines for Active Queue
              Management (AQM)", RFC 7928, DOI 10.17487/RFC7928, July
              2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7928>.

   [RFC8033]  Pan, R., Natarajan, P., Baker, F., and G. White,
              "Proportional Integral Controller Enhanced (PIE): A
              Lightweight Control Scheme to Address the Bufferbloat
              Problem", RFC 8033, DOI 10.17487/RFC8033, February 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8033>.

   [RFC8084]  Fairhurst, G., "Network Transport Circuit Breakers",
              BCP 208, RFC 8084, DOI 10.17487/RFC8084, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8084>.

   [RFC8085]  Eggert, L., Fairhurst, G., and G. Shepherd, "UDP Usage
              Guidelines", BCP 145, RFC 8085, DOI 10.17487/RFC8085,
              March 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8085>.

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   [RFC8086]  Yong, L., Ed., Crabbe, E., Xu, X., and T. Herbert, "GRE-
              in-UDP Encapsulation", RFC 8086, DOI 10.17487/RFC8086,
              March 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8086>.

   [RFC8087]  Fairhurst, G. and M. Welzl, "The Benefits of Using
              Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)", RFC 8087,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8087, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8087>.

   [RFC8095]  Fairhurst, G., Ed., Trammell, B., Ed., and M. Kuehlewind,
              Ed., "Services Provided by IETF Transport Protocols and
              Congestion Control Mechanisms", RFC 8095,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8095, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8095>.

   [RFC8250]  Elkins, N., Hamilton, R., and M. Ackermann, "IPv6
              Performance and Diagnostic Metrics (PDM) Destination
              Option", RFC 8250, DOI 10.17487/RFC8250, September 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8250>.

   [RFC8257]  Bensley, S., Thaler, D., Balasubramanian, P., Eggert, L.,
              and G. Judd, "Data Center TCP (DCTCP): TCP Congestion
              Control for Data Centers", RFC 8257, DOI 10.17487/RFC8257,
              October 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8257>.

   [RFC8289]  Nichols, K., Jacobson, V., McGregor, A., Ed., and J.
              Iyengar, Ed., "Controlled Delay Active Queue Management",
              RFC 8289, DOI 10.17487/RFC8289, January 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8289>.

   [RFC8290]  Hoeiland-Joergensen, T., McKenney, P., Taht, D., Gettys,
              J., and E. Dumazet, "The Flow Queue CoDel Packet Scheduler
              and Active Queue Management Algorithm", RFC 8290,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8290, January 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8290>.

   [RFC8404]  Moriarty, K., Ed. and A. Morton, Ed., "Effects of
              Pervasive Encryption on Operators", RFC 8404,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8404, July 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8404>.

   [RFC8446]  Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
              Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.

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Appendix A.  Revision information

   -00 This is an individual draft for the IETF community.

   -01 This draft was a result of walking away from the text for a few
   days and then reorganising the content.

   -02 This draft fixes textual errors.

   -03 This draft follows feedback from people reading this draft.

   -04 This adds an additional contributor and includes significant
   reworking to ready this for review by the wider IETF community Colin
   Perkins joined the author list.

   Comments from the community are welcome on the text and
   recommendations.

   -05 Corrections received and helpful inputs from Mohamed Boucadair.

   -06 Updated following comments from Stephen Farrell, and feedback via
   email.  Added a draft conclusion section to sketch some strawman
   scenarios that could emerge.

   -07 Updated following comments from Al Morton, Chris Seal, and other
   feedback via email.

   -08 Updated to address comments sent to the TSVWG mailing list by
   Kathleen Moriarty (on 08/05/2018 and 17/05/2018), Joe Touch on
   11/05/2018, and Spencer Dawkins.

   -09 Updated security considerations.

   -10 Updated references, split the Introduction, and added a paragraph
   giving some examples of why ossification has been an issue.

   -00 This is the first revision submitted as a working group document.

   -01 This resolved some reference issues.  Updated section on
   observation by devices on the path.

Authors' Addresses

Fairhurst & Perkins      Expires April 25, 2019                [Page 37]
Internet-Draft            Transport Encryption              October 2018

   Godred Fairhurst
   University of Aberdeen
   Department of Engineering
   Fraser Noble Building
   Aberdeen  AB24 3UE
   Scotland

   EMail: gorry@erg.abdn.ac.uk
   URI:   http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/

   Colin Perkins
   University of Glasgow
   School of Computing Science
   Glasgow  G12 8QQ
   Scotland

   EMail: csp@csperkins.org
   URI:   https://csperkins.org//

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