QoS and IP everywhere Was: Naive question

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 3:47 AM, <[e-mail]> wrote:

> As Brian pointed out,
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tsvwg-diffserv-intercon/
> proposes a method "how to get the labeling/queueing across the AS
> boundary". Input is welcome.
>
> Commercial DiffServ interconnection products are available. They may
> however not be be widespread.
>
> If you however ask the question how to transit the complete QoS concept
> and codepoints of a sending domain to a customer connected to another
> domain - that hasn't been standardized yet.
> If your expectation is that a consumer (device) sets priorities of packets
> and carriers honour these markings, a technical and commercial model
> accepted by all parties is required. I'm not aware of one (I'm not
> interested in discussing how to get one on this list).
> There's also no generally specified set of packet marks within the Best
> Effort class, which can transparently cross carrier boundaries on an end to
> end basis. That might offer a separation of WAN and LAN or application QoS
> marks (should this be useful).
>

Having had cause to look at Internet architecture in some detail of late
for a paper. I think we have actually lost something important with the
push for 'IP everywhere'.

IP everywhere does not mean that the difference between the network and the
inter-network goes away. Making QoS happen inside a network and across an
Inter-network are two very different problems.


One of the architectural questions that comes up is how do we define the
difference between the Network (packet) layer and the transport layer? I
think the best, cleanest definition is to say that the network layer is
stateless. If you have per packet state then you are doing transport.

Which gives a very clean distinction between IntServ and DiffServ
approaches to QoS. Both require modification of the switches on the path.
But IntServ requires the path to perform some transport layer functions
because it requires per session state.

IntServ:

A                                  A
T <--> t <--> t <--> t <--> t <--> T
N <--> N <--> N <--> N <--> N <--> N
P <--> P <--> P <--> P <--> P <--> P

(where t stands for just the QoS part of transport)

DiffServ:

A                                  A
T                                  T
N <--> N <--> N <--> N <--> N <--> N
P <--> P <--> P <--> P <--> P <--> P


That does not mean IntServ is some abomination denying the basic principles
of the Internet. Modern devices are far more capable than in 1983. There is
no reason to believe that the correct layer at which to cap Inter-network
complexity is some fixed universal constant. But it does show it is likely
to be harder to deploy.


Forgetting the distinction between the network and the inter-network gives
us a choice between only network layer everywhere or only packet layer
everywhere.

If we recognize the border, we might end up with a stack something like
this:

ZServ:

A                                   A
T             Q <-|-> Q             T
N <--> N <--> N <-|-> N <--> N <--> N
P <--> P <--> P <-|-> P <--> P <--> P

Any normal interaction is going to involve at least three networks, the
customer network, their ISP's network and the destination network of the
content provider. More usually there will be four networks.