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Hybrid Two-Step Performance Measurement Method
draft-mirsky-ippm-hybrid-two-step-02

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Replaced".
Authors Greg Mirsky , Wang Lingqiang , Guo Zhui
Last updated 2018-10-17
Replaced by draft-ietf-ippm-hybrid-two-step
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draft-mirsky-ippm-hybrid-two-step-02
IPPM Working Group                                             G. Mirsky
Internet-Draft                                                 ZTE Corp.
Intended status: Standards Track                            W. Lingqiang
Expires: April 20, 2019                                          G. Zhui
                                                         ZTE Corporation
                                                        October 17, 2018

             Hybrid Two-Step Performance Measurement Method
                  draft-mirsky-ippm-hybrid-two-step-02

Abstract

   Development of, and advancements in, automation of network operations
   brought new requirements for measurement methodology.  Among them is
   the ability to collect instant network state as the packet being
   processed by the networking elements along its path through the
   domain.  This document introduces a new hybrid measurement method,
   referred to as hybrid two-step, as it separates the act of measuring
   and/or calculating the performance metric from the act of collecting
   and transporting network state.

Status of This Memo

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

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 20, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents

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   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.  Conventions used in this document . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Problem Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Theory of Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.1.  Operation of the HTS Ingress Node . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  Operation of the HTS Transient Node . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.3.  Operation of the HTS Egress Node  . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.4.  Considerations for HTS Timers . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   Successful resolution of challenges of automated network operation,
   as part of, for example, overall service orchestration or data center
   operation, relies on a timely collection of accurate information that
   reflects the state of network elements on an unprecedented scale.
   Because performing the analysis and act upon the collected
   information requires considerable computing and storage resources,
   the network state information is unlikely to be processed by the
   network elements themselves but will be relayed into the data storage
   facilities, e.g., data lakes.  The process of producing, collecting
   network state information also referred to in this document as
   network telemetry, and transporting it for post-processing should
   work equally well with data flows or injected in the network test
   packets.  RFC 7799 [RFC7799] describes a combination of elements of
   passive and active measurement as a hybrid measurement.

   Several technical methods have been proposed to enable collection of
   network state information instantaneous to the packet processing,
   among them [P4.INT] and [I-D.ietf-ippm-ioam-data].

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   This document introduces Hybrid Two-Step (HTS) as a new hybrid
   measurement method that separates measuring or calculating the
   performance metric from the collecting and transporting this
   information.  The Hybrid Two-Step method extends the two-step mode of
   Residence Time Measurement (RTM) defined in [RFC8169] to on-path
   network state collection and transport.

2.  Conventions used in this document

2.1.  Terminology

   RTM Residence Time Measurement

   ECMP Equal Cost Multipath

   MTU Maximum Transmission Unit

   HTS Hybrid Two-Step

   Network telemetry - the process of collecting and reporting of
   network state

2.2.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  Problem Overview

   Performance measurements are meant to provide data that characterize
   conditions experienced by traffic flows in the network and possibly
   trigger operational changes (e.g., re-route of flows, or changes in
   resource allocations).  Modifications to a network are determined
   based on the performance metric information available at the time
   that a change is to be made.  The correctness of this determination
   is based on the quality of the collected metrics data.  The quality
   of collected measurement data is defined by:

   o  the resolution and accuracy of each measurement;

   o  predictability of both the time at which each measurement is made
      and the timeliness of measurement collection data delivery for
      use.

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   Consider the case of delay measurement that relies on collecting time
   of packet arrival at the ingress interface and time of the packet
   transmission at the egress interface.  The method includes recording
   a local clock value on receiving the first octet of an affected
   message at the device ingress, and again recording the clock value on
   transmitting the first byte of the same message at the device egress.
   In this ideal case, the difference between the two recorded clock
   times corresponds to the time that the message spent in traversing
   the device.  In practice, the time that has been recorded can differ
   from the ideal case by any fixed amount and a correction can be
   applied to compute the same time difference taking into account the
   known fixed time associated with the actual measurement.  In this
   way, the resulting time difference reflects any variable delay
   associated with queuing.

   Depending on the implementation, it may be a challenge to compute the
   difference between message arrival and departure times and - on the
   fly - add the necessary residence time information to the same
   message.  And that task may become even more challenging if the
   packet is encrypted.  Implementations SHOULD NOT record a message
   departure time that may be significantly inaccurate in the same
   message, as the result of estimating the departure time that includes
   the variable time component (such as that associated with buffering
   and queuing of the message).  A similar problem may cause a lower
   quality of, for example, information that characterizes utilization
   of the egress interface.  If unable to obtain the data consistently,
   without variable delays for additional processing, information may
   not accurately reflect the state at the egress interface.  To
   mitigate this problem [RFC8169] defined an RTM two-step mode.

   Another challenge associated with methods that collect network state
   information into the actual data packet is the risk to exceed the
   Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size, especially if the packet
   traverses overlay domains or VPNs.  Since the fragmentation is not
   available at the transport network, operators may have to reduce MTU
   size advertised to client layer or risk missing network state data
   for the part, most probably the latter part, of the path.

4.  Theory of Operation

   The HTS method consists of the two phases:

   o  performing a measurement or obtaining network state information,
      one or more than one type, on a node;

   o  collecting and transporting the measurement.

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   HTS uses HTS Trigger carried in a data packet or a specially
   constructed test packet.  Nature of the HTS Trigger is transport
   network layer specific, and its description is outside the scope of
   this document.  The packet that includes the HTS Trigger in this
   document also referred to as the trigger packet.

   The HTS method uses the HTS Follow-up packet, in this document also
   referred to as the follow-up packet, to collect measurement and
   network state data from the nodes.  The node that creates the HTS
   Trigger also generates the HTS Follow-up packet.  The follow-up
   packet contains characteristic information, copied from the trigger
   packet, sufficient for participating HTS nodes to associate it with
   the original packet.  The exact composition of the characteristic
   information is specific for each transport network, and its
   definition is outside the scope of this document.  The follow-up
   packet also uses the same encapsulation as the data packet.  If not
   payload but only network information used to load-balance flows in
   equal cost multipath (ECMP), use of the network encapsulation
   identical to the trigger packet should guarantee that the follow-up
   packet remains in-band, i.e., traverses the same set of network
   elements, with the original data packet with the HTS Trigger.  Only
   one outstanding follow-up packet MUST be on the node for the given
   path.  That means that if the node receives an HTS Trigger for the
   flow on which it still waits for the follow-up packet to the previous
   HTS Trigger, the node will originate the follow-up packet to
   transport the former set of the network state data and transmit it
   before it sends the follow-up packet with the latest collection of
   network state information.

4.1.  Operation of the HTS Ingress Node

   A node that originates the HTS Trigger is referred to as HTS ingress
   node.  As stated, the ingress node originates the follow-up packet.
   The follow-up packet has the transport network encapsulation
   identical with the trigger packet followed by the HTS shim and one or
   more telemetry information elements encoded as Type-Length-Value
   {TLV}. Figure 1 displays the example of the follow-up packet format.

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        0                   1                   2                   3
        0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |                                                               |
       ~                      Transport Network                        ~
       |                        Encapsulation                          |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |Ver|HTS Shim Len|    Flags     |       Sequence Number         |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |                    Telemetry Data Profile                     |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |                                                               |
       ~                     Telemetry Data TLVs                       ~
       |                                                               |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

                     Figure 1: Follow-up Packet Format

   Fields of the HTS shim are as follows:

      Version (Ver) is the two-bits long field.  It specifies the
      version of the HTS shim format.  This document defines the format
      for the 0b00 value of the field.

      HTS Shim Length is the six bits-long field.  It defines the length
      of the HTS shim in bytes.  The minimal value of the field is four
      bytes.

      Flags is eight-bits long field.  The format of the Flags field
      displayed in Figure 2.

         Full (F) flag MUST be set to zero by the node originating the
         HTS follow-up packet and MUST be set to one by the node that
         does not add its telemetry data to avoid exceeding MTU size.

         The node originating the follow-up packet MUST zero the
         Reserved field and ignore it on the receipt.

      Sequence Number is 16 bits-long field.  The value of the field
      reflects the number of the HTS follow-up packet in the sequence of
      the HTS follow-up packets originated in response to the same HTS
      trigger.  The ingress node MUST set the value of the field to
      zero.

      Telemetry Data Profile is the optional variable length field of
      bit-size flags.  Each flag indicates requested type of telemetry
      data to be collected at the each HTS node.  The increment of the
      field is four bytes with a minimum length of zero.

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        0
        0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |F|  Reserved   |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

                       Figure 2: Flags Field Format

4.2.  Operation of the HTS Transient Node

   Upon receiving the trigger packet the HTS transient node MUST:

   o  copy the transport information;

   o  start the HTS Follow-up Timer for the obtained flow.

   Upon receiving the follow-up packet the HTS transient node MUST:

   o  verify that the matching transport information exists and the Full
      flag is cleared, then stop the associated HTS Follow-up timer;

   o  collect telemetry data requested in the Telemetry Data Profile
      field or defined by the local HTS policy;

   o  if adding the collected telemetry would not exceed MTU, then
      append data into Telemetry Data TLVs field and transmit the
      follow-up packet;

   o  otherwise, set the value of the Full flag to one and transmit the
      received a follow-up packet;

   o  originate the new follow-up packet using the same transport
      information.  The value of the Sequence Number field in the HTS
      shim MUST be set to the value of the field in the received follow-
      up packet incremented by one.  Copy collected telemetry data and
      transmit the packet.

   If the follow-up timer expires the transient node MUST:

   o  originate the follow-up packet using transport information
      associated with the expired timer;

   o  initialize the HTS shim by setting Version field to 0b00 and
      Sequence Number field to 0.  Values of HTS Shim Length and
      Telemetry Data Profile fields MAY be set according to the local
      policy.

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   o  copy telemetry information into Telemetry Data TLVs field and
      transmit the packet.

4.3.  Operation of the HTS Egress Node

   Upon receiving the trigger packet the HTS egress node MUST:

   o  copy the transport information;

   o  start the HTS Collection timer for the obtained flow.

   When the egress node receives the follow-up packet for the known
   flow, i.e., the flow to which the Collection timer is running, the
   node MUST:

   o  copy telemetry information;

   o  restart the corresponding Collection timer.

   When the Collection timer expires the egress relays the collected
   telemetry information for processing and analysis to a local or
   remote agent.

4.4.  Considerations for HTS Timers

   This specification defines two timers - HTS Follow-up and HTS
   Collection.  Because for the particular flow there MUST be not more
   than one HTS Trigger, values of HTS timers bounded by the rate of the
   trigger generation for that flow.

5.  IANA Considerations

   TBD

6.  Security Considerations

   Nodes that practice HTS method are presumed to share a trust model
   that depends on the existence of a trusted relationship among nodes.
   This is necessary as these nodes are expected to correctly modify the
   specific content of the data in the follow-up packet, and the degree
   to which HTS measurement is useful for network operation depends on
   this ability.  In practice, this means either confidentiality or
   integrity protection cannot cover those portions of messages that
   contain the network state data.  Though there are methods that make
   it possible in theory to provide either or both such protections and
   still allow for intermediate nodes to make detectable yet
   authenticated modifications, such methods do not seem practical at

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   present, particularly for protocols that used to measure latency and/
   or jitter.

   The ability to potentially authenticate and/or encrypt the network
   state data for scenarios both with and without the participation of
   intermediate nodes that participate in HTS measurement is left for
   further study.

   While it is possible for a supposed compromised node to intercept and
   modify the network state information in the follow-up packet, this is
   an issue that exists for nodes in general - for all data that to be
   carried over the particular networking technology - and is therefore
   the basis for an additional presumed trust model associated with an
   existing network.

7.  Acknowledgments

   Authors express their gratitude and appreciation to Joel Halpern for
   the most helpful and insightful discussion on the applicability of
   HTS in a Service Function Chaining domain.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-ippm-ioam-data]
              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.

   [P4.INT]   "In-band Network Telemetry (INT)", P4.org Specification,
              October 2017.

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   [RFC7799]  Morton, A., "Active and Passive Metrics and Methods (with
              Hybrid Types In-Between)", RFC 7799, DOI 10.17487/RFC7799,
              May 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7799>.

   [RFC8169]  Mirsky, G., Ruffini, S., Gray, E., Drake, J., Bryant, S.,
              and A. Vainshtein, "Residence Time Measurement in MPLS
              Networks", RFC 8169, DOI 10.17487/RFC8169, May 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8169>.

Authors' Addresses

   Greg Mirsky
   ZTE Corp.

   Email: gregimirsky@gmail.com

   Wang Lingqiang
   ZTE Corporation
   No 19 ,East Huayuan Road
   Beijing   100191
   P.R.China

   Phone: +86 10 82963945
   Email: wang.lingqiang@zte.com.cn

   Guo Zhui
   ZTE Corporation
   No 19 ,East Huayuan Road
   Beijing   100191
   P.R.China

   Phone: +86 10 82963945
   Email: guo.zhui@zte.com.cn

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