nwcrg                                                           I. Swett
Internet-Draft                                                    Google
Intended status: Informational                            M-J. Montpetit
Expires: September 10, 2020                               Triangle Video
                                                                 V. Roca
                                                                   INRIA
                                                               F. Michel
                                                               UCLouvain
                                                           March 9, 2020


                            Coding for QUIC
                  draft-swett-nwcrg-coding-for-quic-04

Abstract

   This document focuses on the integration of FEC coding in the QUIC
   transport protocol, in order to recover from packet losses.  This
   document does not specify any FEC code but defines mechanisms to
   negotiate and integrate FEC Schemes in QUIC.  By using proactive loss
   recovery, it is expected to improve QUIC performance in sessions
   impacted by packet losses.  More precisely it is expected to improve
   QUIC performance with real-time sessions (since FEC coding makes
   packet loss recovery insensitive to the round trip time), with short
   sessions (since FEC coding can help recovering from tail losses more
   rapidely than through retransmissions), with multicast sessions
   (since the same repair packet can recover several different losses at
   several receivers), and with multipath sessions (since repair packets
   add diversity and flexibility).

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 September 10, 2020.





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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 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  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Definitions and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  General Design Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  FEC Code versus FEC Scheme, Block Codes versus Sliding
           Window Codes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  FEC Scheme Negotiation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  FEC Protection Within an Encrypted Channel  . . . . . . .   5
     3.4.  About Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  FEC Protection Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Cross Packet Frames FEC Encoding  . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  Source Symbol Definition  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
       4.2.1.  Packet Payload to Packet Chunk Mapping  . . . . . . .   6
       4.2.2.  Packet Chunk to Source Symbol Mapping . . . . . . . .   7
         4.2.2.1.  Open questions: Content of Source Symbols
                   Metadata? Removing certain frames from FEC
                   protection? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       4.2.3.  Source Symbol Size (E) Considerations . . . . . . . .  10
     4.3.  Source Symbol Signaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     4.4.  Repair Symbol Signaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     4.5.  Signaling a Symbol Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     4.6.  About Gaps in the Set of Source Symbols Considered During
           Encoding  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   5.  FEC Scheme Negotiation in QUIC  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.1.  FEC Scheme Negotiation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   8.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16



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1.  Introduction

   QUIC is a new transport that aims at improving network performance by
   enabling out of order delivery, partial reliability, and methods of
   recovery besides retransmission, while also improving security.  This
   document specifies a framework to enable FEC codes to be used to
   recover from lost packets within a single QUIC stream or across
   several QUIC streams.

   The ability to add FEC coding in QUIC may be beneficial in several
   situations:

   o  for a robust transmission of latency sensitive traffic, for
      instance real-time flows, since it enables to recover packet
      losses independently of the round trip time;

   o  for short sessions, in order to protect the last few packets sent,
      since it enables to recover from tail losses more rapidely than
      through retransmissions;

   o  for the transmission of contents to a large set of QUIC reception
      endpoints, since the same repair frame may help recovering several
      different packet losses at different receivers;

   o  for multipath communications, since repair traffic adds diversity
      and flexibility.

   This framework does not mandate the use of any specific FEC code
   (i.e., how to encode and decode) nor FEC Scheme (i.e., that specifies
   both a FEC code and how to use it, in particular in terms of
   signaling).  Instead it allows to negotiate the FEC Scheme to use at
   session startup, assuming that more than one solution could
   potentially be offered concurrently.  Without loss of generality, we
   assume that the encoding operations compute a linear combination of
   QUIC packets, regardless of whether these codes are of block type (as
   with Reed-Solomon codes [RFC5510]) or sliding window type (as with
   RLC codes [RFC8681]).

2.  Definitions and Abbreviations

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

   Terms and definitions that apply to coding are available in
   [nc-taxonomy].  More specifically, this document uses the following
   definitions:




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   Packet versus Symbol:  a Packet is the unit of data that is exchanged
      over the network while a Symbol is the unit of data that is
      manipulated during the encoding and decoding operations

   Source Symbol:  a unit of data originating from the source that is
      used as input to encoding operations

   Repair Symbol:  a unit of data that is the result of a coding
      operation

   This document uses the following abbreviations:

   E: size of an encoding symbol (i.e., source or repair symbol),
      assumed fixed (in bytes)

3.  General Design Considerations

   This section lists a few general considerations that govern the
   framework for FEC coding support in QUIC.

3.1.  FEC Code versus FEC Scheme, Block Codes versus Sliding Window
      Codes

   A FEC code specifies the details of encoding and decoding operations.
   In addition to that, a FEC Scheme defines the additional protocol
   aspects required to use a particular FEC code [nc-taxonomy].  In
   particular the FEC Scheme defines signaling (e.g., information
   contained in Source and Repair Packet header or trailers) needed to
   synchronize encoders and decoders.

   Block coding (e.g., Reed-Solomon [RFC5510]) and sliding window coding
   (e.g., RLC [RFC8681]) are two broad classes of FEC codes
   [nc-taxonomy].  In the first case, the input flow must be first
   segmented into a sequence of blocks, FEC encoding and decoding being
   performed independently on a per-block basis.  In the second case
   rely, a sliding encoding window continuously slides over the input
   flow.  It is envisioned that the two classes of codes could be used
   to bring FEC protection to QUIC, usually with an advantage for
   sliding window codes when it comes to low latency communications.

3.2.  FEC Scheme Negotiation

   There are multiple FEC Scheme candidates.  Therefore a negotiation
   step is needed to select one or more codes to be used over a QUIC
   session.  This will be implemented using the one step negotiation of
   the new QUIC negotiation mechanism [QUIC-transport], during the QUIC
   handshake.




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   Editor's notes:

       *  It is likely that FEC Scheme negotiation requires the use of a
          new dedicated Extension Frame Type.  To Be Clarified and text
          updated.

       *  It is not clear whether negotiation is meant to select a
          **single** FEC Scheme or **multiple** FEC Schemes.  In the
          second case (multiple FEC) it is required to have a
          complementary mechanism to indicate which FEC Scheme is used
          in a given REPAIR frame (which could be done through as many
          REPAIR frame type values as potential FEC Scheme negotiated).
          Is it what we want to achieve?  Not sure.

3.3.  FEC Protection Within an Encrypted Channel

   FEC encoding is applied before any QUIC encryption and authentication
   processing.  Source symbols, that constitute the data units used by
   the FEC codec, contain cleartext data (application and/or QUIC data).

3.4.  About Middleboxes

   The coding approach described in this document does not allow on path
   elements (middleboxes) to take part in FEC protection.  The traffic
   being encrypted end-to-end, the middleboxes are not in position to
   perform FEC decoding, nor to add any redundant traffic.

4.  FEC Protection Principles

   The present section explains how FEC encoding can be applied to QUIC.
   It defines the general ideas for mapping QUIC packet frames to source
   symbols, as well as the associated signaling.  This section does not
   define the FEC Scheme specific details that need to be specified in a
   companion document.

4.1.  Cross Packet Frames FEC Encoding

   A QUIC packet payload consists in a set of QUIC frames.  These frames
   either carry application data (e.g., in a STREAM or DATAGRAM frame)
   or control information (e.g., a MAX_DATA frame).  Each packet is
   either entirely received or lost, and is uniquely identified by a
   monotonically increasing Packet Number.

   Through the use of FEC encoding, application data can be protected
   proactively against packet losses, without requiring to go through
   packet retransmission.  In addition to application data, QUIC
   transfers might benefit from protecting control frames having a
   potential impact on the transmission throughput, such as MAX_DATA or



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   MAX_STREAM_DATA frames.  Therefore this document introduces an FEC
   protection across all -- or a subset of -- the frames of a given QUIC
   packet.  This design choice impacts the QUIC packet to source symbols
   mapping, as well as signaling aspects, both of them being discussed
   hereafter.

4.2.  Source Symbol Definition

   The cross packet frames FEC encoding approach considers the sequence
   of frames (or a sub-sequence of them) transmitted within a given QUIC
   packet, seen as the QUIC packet payload.  From this payload, it
   defines a mapping to source symbols (see Section 4.2.1 and
   Section 4.2.2).  Source symbols are then used for encoding purposes,
   producing one or more repair symbols, the details of which depend on
   the FEC Scheme considered.  However source symbols are never sent per
   se on the network.  Instead the original QUIC packet, plus a
   dedicated signaling header, are sent and therefore implicitely carry
   those source symbols.  The QUIC packets, containing one or more
   repair symbols, are sent on the network.

   The only modification to the original QUIC packet is the addition of
   a dedicated FEC_SRC_FPI frame type, meant to carry source symbol
   signaling (known as Source FEC Payload Information, or FPI).  On the
   opposite, frames that carry one or more repair symbols use a
   dedicated REPAIR frame type.  In both cases, in order to facilitate
   experiments and enable backward compatibility, the FEC_SRC_FPI and
   REPAIR frame types are chosen within the type range dedicated to
   "Extension Frames".  Thereby, a legacy receiver will automatically
   ignore these unknown frame types.  As QUIC packets can be of
   different lengths, a special care must be taken to ensure having a
   fixed Source Symbol size to ease FEC Scheme implementations.

4.2.1.  Packet Payload to Packet Chunk Mapping

   This section defines a mechanism to segment a QUIC packet payload,
   composed of several frames, into fixed-size payload chunks, of size
   E-1 bytes or E-1-4 bytes for the first chunk when the QUIC Packet
   Number needs to be added ((Section 4.2.2).  Depending on the relative
   value of E-1 (or E-1-4) and the QUIC packet payload size, a packet
   can potentially contain more than one chunks.  This is a first step
   into producing source symbols.  Figure 1 illustrates this process.










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                     |<E-1-4>|< E-1 >|< E-1 >|< E-1 >|
                     |       |       |       |       |
              +------|-------|-------|-------|-------|
   QUIC pkt 0 |Header|      Packet Payload           | chunks 0, 1, 2, 3
              +------|-----+-|-------|-------|-------+
   QUIC pkt 1 |Header| 0   | Packet Payload  |         chunks 4, 5, 6
              +------|---+-+-|-------|-------|
   QUIC pkt 2 |Header| 0 |  Packet Payload   |         chunks 7, 8, 9
              +------|---+---|-------|-------|

   Figure 1: Example of QUIC packet to chunk mapping, when the E-1 value
    is relatively small, with prepended zero padding when needed (here
     packets 1 and 2), and assuming the first chunk contains the QUIC
               Packet Number in 4 bytes compressed version.

4.2.2.  Packet Chunk to Source Symbol Mapping

   The second step consists in producing the source symbols.  A source
   symbols is the concatenation of a single byte of metadata,
   potentially followed by the Packet Number of the associated source,
   plus a packet chunk.  Figure 2 illustrates the situation where a
   compressed QUIC packet number is added (in general for the first
   chunk of a QUIC packet).  Figure 3 illustrates the situation where
   there is no QUIC packet number (in general for the following chunk(s)
   of a QUIC packet).  When the QUIC packet number is present, this
   identifier can be recovered by a receiver after successful FEC
   decoding.  It means that a RECOVERED frame can be generated to the
   sender to indicated that this packet (identified by the QUIC packet
   number) has been recovered.  Each source symbol is of fixed-size E
   bytes.  These source symbols are only used during encoding and
   decoding and are not sent as-is on the network.

    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
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |  meta data    |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                    Packet Number (4 bytes)                    |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                    Packet chunk (E-1-4 bytes)               ...
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   Figure 2: Source symbol format with Packet Number information (e.g.,
                           first packet chunk).







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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
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |  meta data    |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |                    Packet chunk (E-1 bytes)               ...
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

     Figure 3: Source symbol format without Packet Number information
                (e.g., packet chunks except the first one).

    7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |Resvd (0)|N|S|E|
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

                 Figure 4: Source symbol metadata format.

   Figure 4 shows the format of the 1 byte metadata.  The fields are the
   following:

   Reserved field (5 bits):  for this specification, this field MUST be
       equal to zero.

   Packet Number (N) field (1 bit):  this field indicates that the
       following 4 bytes contain the Packet Number (short 32-bit
       representation) of the associated QUIC packet ([QUIC-transport]
       section 17.1., Packet Number Encoding and Decoding).

   Start (S) bit (1 bit):  this field, when set to 1, indicates that
       this source symbol contains the first chunk of the packet
       payload.

   End bit (E) (1 bit):  this field, when set to 1, indicates that this
       source symbol contains the last chunk of the packet payload.

   Note that with a QUIC packet containing a single chunk, the
   associated metadata will contain S=E=1.  On the opposite, a source
   symbol containing a intermediate chunk (i.e., neither the first nor
   the last chunk of the QUIC packet), the associated metadata will
   contain S=E=0.










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   QUIC packet
             |<E-1-4>|< E-1 >|< E-1 >|< E-1 >|
      +------|----+--|-------|-------|-------|
      |Header| 0  |   Packet Payload         | 4 packet chunks
      +------|----+--|-------|-------|-------|
             /         |          |          \
            v          v          v           v
   +-+--+----+  +-+-------+  +-+-------+  +-+-------+
   |m|pn|chnk|  |m|  chunk|  |m|  chunk|  |m|  chunk| 4 source symbols
   +-+--+----+  +-+-------+  +-+-------+  +-+-------+
   |         |  |         |  |         |  |         |
   |< --E-- >|  |< --E-- >|  |< --E-- >|  |< --E-- >|

   Figure 5: Example of packet chunk to source symbol mapping, when the
    E value is relatively small, in presence of the QUIC Packet Number
                           for the first chunk.

   Figure 5 shows an example where the 4 source symbols are created from
   the payload of a given QUIC packet.  The first chunk may contain zero
   padding at the beginning in order to align the protected packet
   payload size to a multiple of E-1, and the first source symbol may
   contain the QUIC Packet Number.

   Each source symbol is uniquely identified allowing to determine
   unambiguously its position in the source symbol flow.  What
   information to associate to a source symbol to uniquely identify it
   is FEC Scheme dependent.  Section 4.3 gives insight on this topic.

4.2.2.1.  Open questions: Content of Source Symbols Metadata?  Removing
          certain frames from FEC protection?

   NB: section to remove once fixed.

   During the FEC encoding phase, additional data can be added to the
   source symbol.  These data are only added during the encoding and
   MUST NOT be transmitted on the network.  The encoder and decoder MUST
   agree on the addition of these data to the source symbol in order to
   avoid decoding errors.  Here are some examples of data that can be
   added to a source symbol during encoding and that will be decoded
   upon a source symbol recovery:

   o  The packet number: adding the packet number allows the decoder to
      know which packet has been recovered and potentially send a
      feedback of which packet has been recovered to the QUIC sender.

   o  Additional QUIC frames: the FEC encoder can for example add
      PADDING frames to a source symbol before proceeding to encoding.
      Adding PADDING frames to source symbols before encoding allows



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      protecting packets of different sizes.  The smaller packet payload
      will be added PADDING frames to reach a size that is a multiple of
      E-1.

   Note:  Maybe the decision of adding data such as padding in the
       source symbols should be left to the underlying FEC Scheme.

   Besides adding data to source symbols before encoding, some frames
   can be removed from the source symbol if their protection is not
   crucial for the transmission in order to reduce the size of the
   source symbol.  For example, ACK frames can be systematically
   stripped out of the source symbols.  Stream frames of non-delay-
   sensitive streams could also be removed from the source symbol.  The
   encoder and decoder MUST agree on which frames must be stripped out
   of packet payloads.  This information might for example be encoded in
   the Source Symbol ID by the FEC encoder.

   Note:  We might want to propose standard ways/algorithms to add/
       remove data before the encoding ?

   TODO:  Add a mechanism to add QUIC packet identifier to the metadata.
       It's useful.

4.2.3.  Source Symbol Size (E) Considerations

   The source symbol size, E, MUST be strictly greater than zero bytes
   and strictly smaller than the minimum PMTU value allowed by QUIC.
   The packet header is not part of the FEC-protected data.  When the
   packet payload size is not a multiple of E-1, zero-padding MUST be
   added at the beginning of the first chunk of the packet payload.
   This is equivalent to inserting PADDING frames at the beginning of
   the payload.  This zero-padding, only used for FEC encoding, SHOULD
   NOT be sent on the wire.

   The choice of an appropriate value for E may depends on the use case
   (in particular on the nature of application data).  A reasonably
   small value reduces the expected value of the added padding needed to
   align the payload size with a multiple of E-1, which can be a good
   approach when dealing with QUIC packets whose size significantly
   vary.  However an overly small value also increases processing
   complexity (FEC encoding and decoding are performed over a larger
   linear system since there are more source symbols), so there is an
   incentive to use a larger value.  An appropriate balance should be
   found, and this choice is considered as out of scope for this
   document.  Since a repair symbol will transit through a frame, the E
   value must take this into account to avoid having REPAIR frames that
   do not fit into a single QUIC packet.




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4.3.  Source Symbol Signaling

   An explicit signaling is needed by a decoder to identify the source
   symbols and their position in the block (i.e., for block codes) or
   coding window (i.e., for sliding window codes).  While the QUIC
   packet number increases monotonically, it cannot be used to identify
   the position of a packet in the coding window as the packet number is
   not needed to increase by 1 for each new packet.  There is thus an
   ambiguity on the decoder-side between lost packets and packets that
   do not exist.  Similarly to FECFRAME, we propose to assign a
   identifier to source symbols to avoid this ambiguity.  This
   identifier is opaque to the protocol and will be defined by the
   underlying FEC schemes.  This is out of the scope of this document.
   An example of identifier could be an integer increasing by 1 for each
   new source symbol

   In order to announce the source symbol identifier to the FEC decoder,
   we propose to add a new frame, the FEC_SRC_FPI frame to packets whose
   payload will contain one or more source symbols from the FEC decoder
   point of view.  The FEC_SRC_FPI frame is part of the packet payload
   itself.  Any packet containing a FEC_SRC_FPI frame MUST see its
   payload considered as one or more source symbol(s).

   The FEC_SRC_FPI frame format is FEC Scheme specific and MUST be
   specified in the associated document.

4.4.  Repair Symbol Signaling

   An explicit signaling is needed by a decoder for each repair symbol
   received through a REPAIR frame.  The goals are manyfold: identifying
   the repair symbols and their position in the block (i.e., for block
   codes) or coding window (i.e., for sliding window codes); carrying
   information on the way this repair symbol has been produced (e.g.,
   with sliding window codes, it can indicate the encoding window
   composition).

   One or more repair symbols can be present in a given QUIC packet.
   When there are multiple symbols, they SHOULD be concatenated in the
   same REPAIR frame.  How to achieve this goal is FEC Scheme specific
   and therefore must be defined in the document describing this FEC
   Scheme.

4.5.  Signaling a Symbol Recovery

   When all the source symbols of a given QUIC packet have been lost but
   are recovered during FEC decoding, a QUIC receiver SHOULD advertise
   it to the sender in order to avoid the retransmission of already
   available data.  However, the QUIC receiver MUST NOT acknowledge this



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   recovered packet through a regular acknowledement, as it would
   interfere with the behaviour of loss-based congestion controls such
   as [Cubic].  Therefore this document introduces a dedicated RECOVERED
   frame, that enables a receiver to indicate that a specific QUIC
   packet has been recovered through FEC decoding.

   The RECOVERED frame works at the packet level.  It is therefore
   required to be able to identify to which packet the recovered source
   symbols belong to.  This is made possible by the QUIC packet
   identifier field added to the meta data prior to FEC encoding
   (Section 4.2.2).

4.6.  About Gaps in the Set of Source Symbols Considered During Encoding

   A given FEC Scheme MAY support or not the presence of gaps in the set
   of source symbols that constitute a block (for Block codes) or an
   encoding window (for Sliding Window codes).  A potential cause for
   non contiguous sets of source symbols is the acknowledgment of one of
   them.  When this happens, the QUIC sending endpoint may want to
   remove this source symbol from further FEC encodings.  This is
   particularly true with Sliding Window codes because of their
   flexibility during FEC encoding (i.e., the encoding window can change
   between two consecutive FEC encodings).

   Supporting gaps can be motivated by the desire to reduce encoding and
   decoding complexity since there are fewer variables.  However this
   choice has major consequences in terms of signaling.  Indeed each
   repair symbol transmitted MUST be accompanied by enough information
   for the QUIC decoding endpoint to unambiguously identify the exact
   composition of the block or encoding window.  Without any gap, the
   identity of the first source symbol plus the number of symbols in the
   block or encoding window is sufficient.  With gaps, a more complex
   encoding needs to be used, perhaps similar to the encoding used for
   selective acknowledgments.

   Whether gaps are supported MUST be clarified in each FEC Scheme.

5.  FEC Scheme Negotiation in QUIC

   FEC Scheme negotiation has two goals:

   o  Selecting a FEC Scheme (or FEC Schemes) that can be used by the
      QUIC transmission and reception endpoints.  This process requires
      an exchange between them;

   o  Communicating a certain number of parameters, the "Configuration
      Information", that are not expected to change over the session
      lifetime.  For instance, this is the case of the symbol size



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      parameter, E (in bytes), that needs either to be agreed between
      the endpoints, or chosen by the sender and communicated to the
      receiver(s);

   Editor's notes:

       *  It is likely that FEC Scheme negotiation requires the use of a
          new dedicated Extension Frame Type.  The details remain TBD.

       *  The Negotiation Frame Type format remains TBD.

       *  How to communicate the parameters remains TBD.

       *  The present document only provides high level principles, the
          details are of course the responsibility of the FEC Scheme.

       *  In case negotiation is different when protecting a single
          versus several streams, this section may be moved to the
          respective sections.

       *  How does it work in case of a multicast session?

       *  Do we negotiate here a FEC Scheme on a per-Stream basis (or
          group of Streams to be protected jointly)?  Or do we negotiate
          a FEC Scheme on a QUIC session basis, therefore to be used for
          all the Streams that need FEC protection?

5.1.  FEC Scheme Negotiation

   Before defining the transport parameters, we define two structures,
   encoder_fec_scheme_t and decoder_fec_scheme_t, in Figure 6.  The
   config field is an opaque field allowing the decoder to define
   supported configuration information for the associated FEC Scheme.  A
   FEC Scheme specification MUST define the set of valid configurations
   for the FEC Scheme.
















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   struct {
       varint fec_scheme_id;
   } encoder_fec_scheme_t

   struct {
       varint   fec_scheme_id;
       uint16_t config_length;
       uint8_t  config[config_length];
   } decoder_fec_scheme_t



    Figure 6: encoder_fec_scheme_t and decoder_fec_scheme_t structures.

   The following three transport parameters are used by the QUIC
   endpoints to negotiate the FEC Scheme used during the connection.

   o  supported_encoder_fec_schemes: list of supported FEC schemes for
      the encoding part listed from the most to the least preferred.
      The value of this parameter consists in a list of
      encoder_fec_scheme_t.  When announcing a FEC Scheme, the encoder
      MUST be able handle every FEC Scheme configuration considered
      valid.

   o  supported_decoder_fec_schemes: list of supported FEC schemes for
      the decoding part listed from the most to the least preferred.
      The value of this parameter consists in a list of
      decoder_fec_scheme_t, each one representing the ID of a supported
      FEC Scheme.

   o  receiving_symbol_size: the size in bytes of the symbols the peer
      is willing to receive and recover.  The value is a 16-bits
      integer.

   Since communications can be bidirectional, each QUIC endpoint can
   provide the three parameters.  Conversely, providing an empty list
   indicates this endpoint does not support FEC for the associated
   communication path (e.g., an empty supported_decoder_fec_schemes list
   indicates this endpoint cannot perform FEC decoding).

   The decoding FEC Scheme of a QUIC endpoint is set to the first FEC
   Scheme listed in its own supported_decoder_fec_schemes that also
   appears in the peer's supported_encoder_fec_schemes.  The encoding
   FEC Scheme of a QUIC endpoint is set to the first FEC Scheme listed
   in the peer's supported_decoder_fec_schemes that also appears in its
   own supported_encoder_fec_schemes.  The encoder-side symbol size (E)
   of a QUIC endpoint is set to the value announced by the peer's
   receiving_symbol_size transport parameter.  The decoder-side symbol



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   size of a QUIC endpoint is set to the value announced in its own
   receiving_symbol_size transport parameter.

   Host 1                                                         Host 2
         < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
               supported_encoder_fec_schemes{RLC_GF256,REED_SOLOMON,XOR}
                         supported_decoder_fec_schemes{REED_SOLOMON,XOR}
                                              receiving_symbol_size{500}

         - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >
   supported_encoder_fec_schemes{RLC_GF256,REED_SOLOMON,XOR}
   supported_decoder_fec_schemes{RLC_GF256,REED_SOLOMON}
   receiving_symbol_size{200}

   ENCODER_FEC_SCHEME = REED_SOLOMON
   DECODER_FEC_SCHEME = RLC_GF256
   ENCODER_SYMBOL_SIZE = 500
   DECODER_SYMBOL_SIZE = 200

                                          ENCODER_FEC_SCHEME = RLC_GF256
                                       DECODER_FEC_SCHEME = REED_SOLOMON
                                               ENCODER_SYMBOL_SIZE = 200
                                               DECODER_SYMBOL_SIZE = 500

   Figure 7: Example FEC Schemes negotiation during the QUIC handshake.

   It is possible that the QUIC endpoint that receives one or more FEC
   Scheme proposals from the initiator cannot select any of them.  In
   that case the negotiation process fails and no FEC protection is
   used.

6.  Security Considerations

   TBD

7.  IANA Considerations

   TBD

8.  Acknowledgments

   TBD

9.  References







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9.1.  Normative References

   [Cubic]    Rhee, I., Xu, L., Ha, S., Zimmermann, A., Eggert, L., and
              R. Scheffenegger, "CUBIC for Fast Long-Distance Networks",
              RFC 8312, DOI 10.17487/RFC8312, February 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8312>.

   [QUIC-transport]
              Iyengar, J., Ed. and M. Thomson, Ed., "QUIC: A UDP-Based
              Multiplexed and Secure Transport", draft-ietf-quic-
              transport (Work in Progress) (work in progress), January
              2019, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-quic-
              transport/>.

   [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>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [nc-taxonomy]
              Roca (Ed.) et al., V., "Taxonomy of Coding Techniques for
              Efficient Network Communications", Request For
              Comments RFC 8406, June 2018,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-irtf-nwcrg-
              network-coding-taxonomy/>.

   [RFC5510]  Lacan, J., Roca, V., Peltotalo, J., and S. Peltotalo,
              "Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction (FEC) Schemes",
              RFC 5510, DOI 10.17487/RFC5510, April 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5510>.

   [RFC8681]  Roca, V. and B. Teibi, "Sliding Window Random Linear Code
              (RLC) Forward Erasure Correction (FEC) Schemes for
              FECFRAME", RFC 8681, DOI 10.17487/RFC8681, January 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8681>.

Authors' Addresses

   Ian Swett
   Google
   Cambridge, MA
   US

   Email: ianswett@google.com





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   Marie-Jose Montpetit
   Triangle Video
   Boston, MA
   US

   Email: marie@mjmontpetit.com


   Vincent Roca
   INRIA
   Univ. Grenoble Alpes
   France

   Email: vincent.roca@inria.fr


   Francois Michel
   UCLouvain
   Louvain-la-Neuve
   Belgium

   Email: francois.michel@uclouvain.be





























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