Greasing the QUIC Bit
draft-thomson-quic-bit-grease-01
quic M. Thomson
Internet-Draft Mozilla
Intended status: Standards Track 18 November 2020
Expires: 22 May 2021
Greasing the QUIC Bit
draft-thomson-quic-bit-grease-01
Abstract
This document describes a method for negotiating the ability to send
an arbitrary value for the second-to-most significant bit in QUIC
packets.
Discussion Venues
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Discussion of this document takes place on the QUIC Working Group
mailing list (quic@ietf.org), which is archived at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/quic/
(https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/quic/).
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/martinthomson/quic-bit-grease
(https://github.com/martinthomson/quic-bit-grease).
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 22 May 2021.
Thomson Expires 22 May 2021 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Greasing the QUIC Bit November 2020
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 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 carefully, as they describe your rights
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. The Grease QUIC Bit Transport Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Clearing the QUIC Bit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Using the QUIC Bit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
QUIC [QUIC] intentionally describes a very narrow set of fields that
are visible to entities other than endpoints. Beyond those
characteristics that are defined as invariant [QUIC-INVARIANTS], very
little about the "wire image" [RFC8546] of QUIC is visible.
The second-to-most significant bit of the first byte in every QUIC
packet is defined as having a fixed value in QUIC version 1 [QUIC].
The purpose of having a fixed value is to allow intermediaries and
endpoints to efficiently distinguish between QUIC and other
protocols; see [DEMUX] for a description of a scheme that QUIC can
integrate with as a result. As this bit effectively identifies a
packet as QUIC, it is sometimes referred to as the "QUIC Bit".
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Where endpoints and the intermediaries that support them do not
depend on the QUIC Bit having a fixed value, sending the same value
in every packet is more of liability than an asset. If systems come
to depend on a fixed value, then it might become infeasible to define
a version of QUIC that attributes semantics to this bit.
In order to safeguard future use of this bit, this document defines a
QUIC transport parameter that indicates that an endpoint is willing
to receive QUIC packets containing any value for this bit. By
sending different values for this bit, the hope is that the value
will remain available for future use [USE-IT].
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