On the State of ECN and TCP Options on the Internet

Kühlewind, Mirja; Neuner, Sebastian; Trammell, Brian

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-36516-4_14

Cited by 39 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…[14] conducted active probes of the Alexa Top million web servers list in 2014 and found 56.17% negotiated ECN when requested. Similar studies by Kühlewind et al [6] found 29.48% would negotiate ECN in 2012, while [1] found 17.2% would negotiate ECN. Langley [7] and Medina et al [9] present earlier data, showing negligible deployment.…”

Section: Reachability Using Ecn With Tcpsupporting

confidence: 63%

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Is Explicit Congestion Notification usable with UDP?

McQuistin

Perkins

2015

Proceedings of the 2015 Internet Measurement Conference

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We present initial measurements to determine if ECN is usable with UDP traffic in the public Internet. This is interesting because ECN is part of current IETF proposals for congestion control of UDPbased interactive multimedia, and due to the increasing use of UDP as a substrate on which new transport protocols can be deployed. Using measurements from the author's homes, their workplace, and cloud servers in each of the nine EC2 regions worldwide, we test reachability of 2500 servers from the public NTP server pool, using ECT(0) and not-ECT marked UDP packets. We show that an average of 98.97% of the NTP servers that are reachable using not-ECT marked packets are also reachable using ECT(0) marked UDP packets, and that~98% of network hops pass ECT(0) marked packets without clearing the ECT bits. We compare reachability of the same hosts using ECN with TCP, finding that 82.0% of those reachable with TCP can successfully negotiate and use ECN. Our findings suggest that ECN is broadly usable with UDP traffic, and that support for use of ECN with TCP has increased.

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Section: Reachability Using Ecn With Tcpsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…Kühlewind et al [6] also studied the Alexa top web servers, finding ECN support in 25.16% of servers tested in April 2012, rising to 29.48% in August 2012. Tests conducted against IPv6 hosts show 48.56% successfully negotiating ECN.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Explicit Congestion Notification usable with UDP?

McQuistin

Perkins

2015

Proceedings of the 2015 Internet Measurement Conference

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“…Current inferencebased passive measurement approaches [21], [22] generally use the TCP Timestamp Option [23], when available [13], [24]. In contrast, loss measurement requires inference about the loss detection and retransmission algorithms in use by the sender [25].…”

Section: Network Performance Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

A path layer for the Internet: Enabling network operations on encrypted protocols

Kühlewind

Bühler

Trammell

et al. 2017

2017 13th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM)

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Abstract-The deployment of encrypted transport protocols imposes new challenges for network operations. Key in-network functions such as those implemented by firewalls and passive measurement devices currently rely on information exposed by the transport layer. Encryption, in addition to improving privacy, helps to address ossification of network protocols caused by middleboxes that assume certain information to be present in the clear. However, "encrypting it all" risks diminishing the utility of these middleboxes for the traffic management tasks for which they were designed. A middlebox cannot use what it cannot see.We propose an architectural solution to this issue, by introducing a new "path layer" for transport-independent, in-band signaling between Internet endpoints and network elements on the paths between them, and using this layer to reinforce the boundary between the hop-by-hop network layer and the end-toend transport layer. We define a path layer header on top of UDP to provide a common wire image for new, encrypted transports. This path layer header provides information to a transportindependent on-path state machine that replaces stateful handling currently based on exposed header flags and fields in TCP; it enables explicit measurability of transport layer performance; and offers extensibility by sender-to-path and path-to-receiver communications for diagnostics and management. This provides not only a replacement for signals that are not available with encrypted traffic, but also allows integrity-protected, enhanced signaling under endpoint control. We present an implementation of this wire image integrated with the QUIC protocol, as well as a basic stateful middlebox built on Vector Packet Processing (VPP) provided by FD.io.

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“…As shown in Table 2, we find that 5.1% of IPv4 and 11.2% IPv6 paths systematically cleared the ECN Congestion Experienced (CE) bit of the IP layer. A previous study by Kühlewind et al found, with a completely different methodology, that 8.2% of the tested paths clear the CE bit as well [8]. This behavior makes it impossible for the client to report to the server that its incoming traffic experienced congestion, making ECN unusable.…”

Section: A Intended Functions/purposesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following packets are marked as ECN-Capable Transport (ECT) by both ends but the middlebox is systematically clearing both the ECT and CE (Congestion Experienced) bits in the IP header. If an intermediate router sets the CE bit (Congestion Encountered) of a packet, it will be cleared by the middlebox afterward [8].…”

Section: A Explicit Congestion Notificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a middlebox policy taxonomy: Path impairments

Edeline

Donnet

2015

2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS)

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Abstract-Recent years have seen the rise of middleboxes, such as firewalls, NATs, proxies, or Deep Packet Inspectors. Those middleboxes play an important role in today's Internet, including enterprise networks and cellular networks. However, despite their huge success in modern network architecture, they have a negative impact on the Internet evolution as they can slow down the TCP protocol evolution and its extensions. Making available a summary of the potential middlebox network interferences is of the highest importance as it could allow researchers to confront their new transport protocol to potential issues caused by middleboxes. And, consequently, allowing again innovation in the Internet.This is exactly what we tackle in this paper. We propose a path impairment oriented middlebox taxonomy that aims at categorizing the initial purpose of a middlebox policy as well as its potential unexpected complications. Based on a measurement campaign on IPv4 and IPv6 networks, we confront our taxonomy to the real world. Our dataset is freely available.

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On the State of ECN and TCP Options on the Internet

Cited by 39 publications

References 11 publications

Is Explicit Congestion Notification usable with UDP?

Is Explicit Congestion Notification usable with UDP?

A path layer for the Internet: Enabling network operations on encrypted protocols

Towards a middlebox policy taxonomy: Path impairments

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