Pre-congestion notification (PCN) provides feedback about load conditions in a network to its boundary nodes. The PCN working group of the IETF discusses the use of PCN to implement admission control (AC) and flow termination (FT) for prioritized realtime traffic in a DiffServ domain. Admission control (AC) is a well-known flow control function that blocks admission requests of new flows when they need to be carried over a link whose admitted PCN rate already exceeds an admissible rate. Flow termination (FT) is a new flow control function that terminates some already admitted flows when they are carried over a link whose admitted PCN rate exceeds a supportable rate. The latter condition can occur in spite of AC, e.g., when traffic is rerouted due to network failures. This survey gives an introduction to PCN and is a primer for this new technology. It presents and discusses the multitude of architectural design options in an early stage of the standardization process in a comprehensive and streamlined way before only a subset of them is standardized by the IETF. It brings PCN from the IETF to the research community and serves as historical record.

Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6663.

The objective of Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN) is to protect the quality of service (QoS) of inelastic flows within a Diffserv domain. On every link in the PCN-domain, the overall rate of PCN-traffic is metered, and PCN-packets are appropriately marked when certain configured rates are exceeded. Egress nodes provide decision points with information about the PCN-marks of PCN-packets that allows them to take decisions about whether to admit or block a new flow request, and to terminate some already admitted flows during serious pre-congestion.