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

[William Chan (陈智昌) <[e-mail]>]

Remember we originally *had* a flag for UNIDIRECTIONAL, which we removed
because it was redundant in the traditional HTTP use cases.


On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Roberto Peon <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 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;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 :)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>