Re: Design Issue: Max Concurrent Streams Limit and Unidirectional Streams

[Roberto Peon <[e-mail]>]

At worst, we burn a flag which states it is half-closed or unidirectional,
or provide some other information which identifies the IANA port number for
the overlayed protocol or something.
Anyway, *shrug*.
-=R


On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 2:32 PM, William Chan (陈智昌)
<[e-mail]>wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 6:17 PM, James M Snell <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> +1 on this.  I like this approach.
>>  On Apr 29, 2013 2:15 PM, "Roberto Peon" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> I had thought to provide no explicit limit for PUSH_PROMISE, just as
>>> there is no limit to the size of a webpage, or the number of links upon it.
>>> The memory requirements for PUSH are similar or the same (push should
>>> consume a single additional bit of overhead per url, when one considers
>>> that the URL should be parsed, enqueued, etc.).
>>> If the browser isn't done efficiently, or, the server is for some
>>> unknown reason being stupid and attempting to DoS the browser with many
>>> resources that it will never use, then the client sends RST_STREAM for the
>>> ones it doesn't want, and makes a request on its own. all tidy.
>>>
>>
> I don't feel too strongly here. I do feel like this is more of an edge
> case, possibly important for forward proxies (or reverse proxies speaking
> to backends over a multiplexed channel like HTTP/2). It doesn't really
> matter for my browser, so unless servers chime in and say they'd prefer a
> limit, I'm fine with this.
>
>
>>> As for PUSH'd streams, the easiest solution is likely to assume that the
>>> stream starts out in a half-closed state.
>>>
>>
> I looked into our earlier email threads and indeed this is what we agreed
> on (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2013JanMar/1106.html).
> I voiced some mild objection since if you view the HTTP/2 framing layer as
> a transport for another application protocol, then bidirectional server
> initiated streams might be nice. But in absence of any such protocol, this
> is a nice simplification.
>
>
>> -=R
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 12:33 PM, William Chan (陈智昌) <
>>> [e-mail]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 3:46 PM, James M Snell <[e-mail]>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Apr 29, 2013 11:36 AM, "William Chan (陈智昌)" <[e-mail]>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> >
>>>>> [snip]
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Oops, forgot about that. See, the issue with that is now we've made
>>>>> PUSH_PROMISE as potentially expensive as a HEADERS frame, since it does
>>>>> more than just simple stream id allocation. I guess it's not really a huge
>>>>> issue, since if it's used correctly (in the matter you described), then it
>>>>> shouldn't be too expensive. If clients attempt to abuse it, then servers
>>>>> should probably treat it in a similar manner as they treat people trying to
>>>>> abuse header compression in all other frames with the header block, and
>>>>> kill the connection accordingly.
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> Not just "potentially" as expensive..   As soon as we get a push
>>>>> promise we need to allocate state and hold onto it for an indefinite period
>>>>> of time. We do not yet know exactly when that compression context can be
>>>>> let go because it has not yet been bound to stream state.  Do push streams
>>>>> all share the same compression state? Do those share the same compression
>>>>> state as the originating stream? The answers might be obvious but they
>>>>> haven't yet been written down.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I guess I don't see per-stream state as being that expensive.
>>>> Compression contexts are a fixed state on a per-connection basis, meaning
>>>> that additional streams don't add to that state. The main cost, as I see
>>>> it, is the decompressed headers. I said potentially since that basically
>>>> only means the URL (unless there are other headers important for caching
>>>> due to Vary), and additional headers can come in the HEADERS frame. Also,
>>>> PUSH_PROMISE doesn't require allocating other state, like backend/DB
>>>> connections, if you only want to be able to handle
>>>> (#MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMs) of those backend connections in parallel.
>>>>
>>>> If they're not specified, then we should specify it, but I've always
>>>> understood the header compression contexts to be directional and apply to
>>>> all frames sending headers in a direction. Therefore there should be two
>>>> compression contexts in a connection, one for header blocks being sent and
>>>> one for header blocks being received. If this is controversial, let's fork
>>>> a thread and discuss it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>  >>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> > As far as the potential problem above, the root problem is that
>>>>> when you
>>>>> >> > have limits you can have hangs. We see this all the time today
>>>>> with browsers
>>>>> >> > (it's only reason people do domain sharding so they can bypass
>>>>> limits). I'm
>>>>> >> > not sure I see the value of introducing the new proposed limits.
>>>>> They don't
>>>>> >> > solve the hangs, and I don't think the granularity addresses any
>>>>> of the
>>>>> >> > costs in a finer grained manner. I'd like to hear clarification
>>>>> on what
>>>>> >> > costs the new proposed limits will address.
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> I don't believe that the proposal improves the situation enough (or
>>>>> at
>>>>> >> all) to justify the additional complexity.  That's something that
>>>>> you
>>>>> >> need to assess for yourself.  This proposal provides more granular
>>>>> >> control, but it doesn't address the core problem, which is that you
>>>>> >> and I can only observe each other actions after some delay, which
>>>>> >> means that we can't coordinate those actions perfectly.  Nor can be
>>>>> >> build a perfect model of the other upon which to observe and act
>>>>> upon.
>>>>> >>  The usual protocol issue.
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > OK then. My proposal is to add a new limit for PUSH_PROMISE frames
>>>>> though, separately from the MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS limit, since
>>>>> PUSH_PROMISE exists as a promise to create a stream, explicitly so we don't
>>>>> have to count it toward the existing MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS limit (I
>>>>> searched the spec and this seems to be inadequately specced). Roberto and I
>>>>> discussed that before and may have written an email somewhere in spdy-dev@,
>>>>> but I don't think we've ever raised it here.
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> Well,  there is an issue tracking it in the github repo now, at
>>>>> least.  As currently defined in the spec,  it definitely needs to be
>>>>> addressed.
>>>>>
>>>> Great. You guys are way better than I am about tracking all known
>>>> issues. I just have it mapped fuzzily in my head :)
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>