Re: [tcpm] Possible error in accurate-ecn

See my suggestion; The critical requirement for the 2nd bullet point is,
to have n > 1 for pure, CE-marked ACKs. The exponential decay, after how
many ACKs triggered by CE-marked ACKs these ACK-for-ACK stop, strongly
depends on "n", so the recommendation should be to use a higher value of
n in the case where you only observe a stream of pure ACKs (with or
without marks; only those marked would account against "n" though).

In the case of data packets mixed in, you don't want to delay
excessively, thus "n" may be choosen lower...

Richard

Am 10.11.2020 um 17:38 schrieb Bob Briscoe:
>
> Moving on to the second bullet...
>>> The second bullet doesn't consider the possibility that the 'n'th CE
>>> mark might arrive on a pure ACK. Then, the wording as it stands says
>>> the Data Receiver MUST immediately ACK a pure ACK. I know TCP never
>>> ACKs a pure ACK, but I'm not actually sure it does any harm to do so
>>> in this case (it cannot cause an infinite loop of ACKs). However,
>>> given it would be unorthodox, we maybe ought to rule it out by
>>> rewording anyway?
>> [MK] I think we also can leave this as it is because if that ’n’
>> packet is a pure ACK that still means that you have unacked data
>> packets with CE marks and you should trigger an ACK for those packet
>> now (rather than waiting for the delayed ACK timer to expire). However
>> this case is less important. Also we should probably make sure that
>> this doesn’t apply if there are only pure ACKs with CE marks, maybe by
>> add “if unacknowledged data are outstanding” or something.
>
> [BB] By the end of your last para you start to realize that, if the n'th
> CE mark arrives on pure ACK, it doesn't say anything about whether the
> previous (n-1) CE marks were on data or pure ACKs.
>
> Consider another common scenario; a server delivering chunks of video
> over a high BDP path (e.g. 500 packets per RTT), and going idle between
> times (perhaps in response to an "exceeded high watermark" data packet
> from the server). Now consider the possibility that the reverse path
> bottleneck builds a queue during each chunk, and starts CE marking
> towards the end of each chunk. Then, after the server stops sending a
> chunk, it continues to see a couple of hundred CE-marked pure ACKs
> arriving.
>
> However, by your proposed rule, it doesn't send any feedback, 'cos it
> has no data to acknowledge. So the client cannot regulate its ACK
> stream. That's just tough, 'cos the client will stop sending more pure
> ACKs after it has received the last data, which is before any later
> feedback from the server can reach it.
>
> However, if the client later sends a data packet that the server can
> acknowledge (e.g. "a low watermark" message), the server's ACE counter
> will have wrapped dozens of times, and the client won't be able to work
> out how many. That doesn't matter if a few round trips have elapsed -
> the congestion info will have become stale. But it does matter if it's
> fairly soon.
>
> Instead, if we keep the text of the second bullet... if the server's 'n'
> was 2, it would send a pure ACK for every other pure ACK it received.
> But, what if these pure ACKs from the server were also CE-marked? Then
> the client would feed back pure ACKs using its 'n'. This regression
> would eventually die out, but I don't like it.
>
> This conversation about the second bullet presumes AccECN is being used
> for ACK congestion control. I'm not comfortable with writing anything
> specific about ACK congestion control into a draft on the standards
> track. But I don't want to preclude AccECN being used for ACK CC.
>
>
> I believe the second bullet needs something changed to limit the ACKing
> of pure ACKs. However, before we put effort into wordsmithing, I'd like
> to hear whether you agree with the general idea of not defining what to
> do for ACK CC, but not precluding it.
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
>
> Bob
>
>>
>> Mirja
>>
>>
>>
>>> Thoughts anyone?
>>>
>>>
>>> Bob
>>>
>>> --
>>> ________________________________________________________________
>>> Bob Briscoe
>>> http://bobbriscoe.net/
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>