Re: [tsvwg] UDP-Options: UDP has two ???maximums???

[Joseph Touch <[e-mail]>]

> On Apr 3, 2021, at 8:31 PM, Paul Vixie <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Apr 03, 2021 at 06:49:46PM -0700, Joseph Touch wrote:
>>> On Apr 3, 2021, at 6:29 PM, Paul Vixie <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> you're implicitly positing a situation wherein a DNS speaker could know
>>> that the far endpoint knew about UDP options and could reassemble, and
>>> that the local endpoint (kernel) knows about UDP options and could
>>> fragment, and that using UDP Fragmentation would be seen as a better
>>> choice than leaving out optional data or signalling a need to retry
>>> with TCP.
>> 
>> Yes. Note though that the fragmentation in UDP can be used safely;
>> legacy endpoints just see (at most) packets with zero data.
> 
> i wasn't considering it unsafe. some kind of initiation signal would
> be required though, or else the initiator would see a small set of
> apparently empty UDP payloads coming back, and wonder why.

The same could happen for nearly any new variant of DNS, too.

>>> i worry about microbursts. ...
>>> 
>>> what we've learned from NFS, and high volume authoriative UDP DNS,
>>> is that the network doesn't love minimum-spaced back-to-back packets,
>>> and that if an 8KiB NFS result gets chopped into ~1500B chunks, tail
>>> drop is likely. this is the biggest source of operator pain from IP
>>> fragmentation, fwiw.
>> 
>> Although I appreciate this concern, TCP does the same kind of bursts --
> 
> TCP has a congestion window that commonly keeps burst size within "range”.

The window isn’t based on the ability to burst an entire window’s worth of messages back-to-back.

It represents an entire round trip's worth of transmissions; when the source goes idle, the next active period can burst up to that entire window.

>> I had thought we knew about this long enough that vendors didn???t use
>> tail drop; they should have been doing AQM or at least something akin
>> to RED.
> 
> in routers and endpoints, yes. in switches, no. to a switch (multiport
> bridge), the problem is felt too late and too near to the copper. in a fan-in
> topology there can be too many gozinta for the gozouta, and this doesn't even
> depend on link-layer flow control or whether it works, just ten gallons of
> water trying to fit into a five gallon hat.

If you’re speaking of Ethernet, there is link layer flow control, e.g., congestion notification messages or explicit on/off flow control intended to push this feedback to routers and endpoints. 

> ….
>>> further digression: the framer of messages (like TCP, or DNS, or NFS)
>>> ought to know the PMTU, which is why PMTUD was originally a non-optional
>>> feature of IPv6 until we learned that ICMPv6 was dangerous as hell and
>>> threw out PMTUD, thus leaving us with the pessimal and never-expected-
>>> to-be-used 1280 and 1232 numbers. if we can get PLPMTUD then we can make
>>> IPv6 better than IPv4 in terms of header amortization rather than (as it
>>> currently is) worse.
>> 
>> Agreed; that???s aided in UDP with options as per Gorry???s draft.
> 
> if we implement PLPMTUD/UDP for DNS, we're going to have a decades-long
> period during which the far end doesn't understand UDP options,

s/UDP options/{TCP, QUIC, etc.}/

Yes, all new mechanisms take time. 

> ...
> the original IPng PMTUD model whereby the endpoint's routing table would
> remember a discovered MTU for each endpoint was a shinier city than this
> on a better hill. i hope to see this outcome in the PLPMTUD world,

PLPMTUD intends to cache MTUs per-endpoint exactly the same way that PMTUD did.

> so that
> (for example) TCP, QUIC, NFS, and UDP can all set their MSS accordingly,
> without each service having to do its own discovery work per endpoint.

Sure, but someone has to figure it out for others to use it. That’s why we’re working on a mechanism native to UDP - so it doesn’t rely on TCP or QUIC connections that precede its use.

Joe