Re: [tsvwg] SCReAM (RFC8298) with CoDel-ECN and L4S

[Sebastian Moeller <[e-mail]>]

Hi Bob,


> On Mar 17, 2020, at 02:12, Bob Briscoe <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Sebastian
> 
> On 10/03/2020 10:07, Ingemar Johansson S wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>> For the future studies we will only focus on L4S as the scope is to study the performance gain that L4S give for instance for AR/VR, gaming and remote control applications.
>> Flow aware AQMs with RTT estimates as metadata in the packets is outside the scope as it would require packet inspection, which is not feasible if queues build up on the RLC layer in the 3GPP stack.
>> 
>> /Ingemar
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Sebastian Moeller <[e-mail]>
>>> Sent: den 10 mars 2020 10:45
>>> To: Ingemar Johansson S
>>> <ingemar.s.johansson=[e-mail]>
>>> Cc: [e-mail]; Ingemar Johansson S
>>> <[e-mail]>; [e-mail]
>>> Subject: Re: [tsvwg] SCReAM (RFC8298) with CoDel-ECN and L4S
>>> 
>>> Hi Ingemar,
>>> 
>>> thanks for posting this interesting piece of data!
> 
> [BB] Yes, thanks, @Ingemar...
> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mar 10, 2020, at 09:02, Ingemar Johansson S
>>> <ingemar.s.johansson=[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>> Hi
>>>> 
>>>> I recently updated the readme on the SCReAM github with a comparison with
>>> SCReAM in three different settings
>>>> 	• No ECN
>>>> 	• CoDel ECN
>>>> 	• L4S
>>>> https://protect2.fireeye.com/v1/url?k=63019d27-3f884737-6301ddbc-0cc47
>>>> ad93e2a-489fa99c3277fb8a&q=1&e=5aab95a7-4aab-4a64-99a5-
>>> 5b55606e303b&u=
>>>> https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FEricssonResearch%2Fscream%23ecn-explicit-congestion-notification
>>>> 
>>>> Even though it is more than a magnitude difference in queue delay
>>>> between CoDel-ECN and L4S,
>>> 
>>> 	[SM] So, in this simulations of a 20ms path, SCReAM over L4S gives ~10
>>> times less queueing delay, but also only ~2 less bandwidth compared to SCReAM
>>> over codel. You describe this as "L4S reduces the delay considerably more" and
>>> "L4S gives a somewhat lower media rate". I wonder how many end-users would
>>> tradeoff these 25ms in queueing delay against the decrease in video quality from
>>> halving the bitrate?
> 
> [BB] This does seem more harsh than I would have imagined - so a useful data point; thx Ingemar. Nonetheless, this is the end-system taking bandwidth away from itself in order to give itself lower latency in the presence of varying network capacity. Nothing to stop other applications making different tradeoffs.
> 
> It is worth thinking about the complexity of the policy control and signalling system needed for Ingemar's video to express the tradeoffs it is making here;... if it had to get an FQ scheduler to allow these tradeoffs instead. The scheduler would not necessarily have to make all the tradeoffs itself - for instance the app could underutilize it's 'fair' share, but it would need to be able to take more than its 'fair' share during periods of lower capacity.

	[SM] I fail to see it that way, in Codel for example, it is the burst tolerance that allows exactly that kind of bandwidth trading with one self (send more now, make up for it a bit later by sending less). In fq_codel it is the FQ component that decides when a flow/bucket/tin is eligible to send something, and inside each flow/bucket/tin is a codel instance that decides what/when to mark/drop. But as Ingemar's example shows, his application gets significantly more bandwidth with Codel than with L4S, it would be interesting to see a plot of video quality (measured at the receiver). Any thing longer than a "burst" will get into tricky accounting territory if one wants to actually enforce long-term adherence to a set bandwidth share.


> 
> In the list of SCE issues,
> https://github.com/heistp/sce-l4s-bakeoff/blob/master/README.md#list-of-sce-issues
> it says "Another argument is the perception that FQ can do harm to periodic bursty flows, however we have not yet shown this to be the case with hard evidence". I don't recognize that argument, but I would if it had said "...can do harm to flows needing variable throughput or smooth throughput in the presence of variable available capacity". If Ingemar had run a TCP flow in parallel here, I think that would go some way towards the hard evidence sought here?

	[SM] Only if we assume that the video stream would be more important to the link's user, what if the TCP flow's speedy completion would actually be more important to the user? 
	That is, to be blunt, where I believe you fail to see the forrest for the trees, the AQM has no chance of being able to optimally split bandwidth between eligible flows without additional information to base its optimization upon. So either you supply that information (say explicit DSCP marking within a well-managed DSCP-domain) or you ned to accept that all you can do is aim for good enough and "do no harm". 
IMHO FQ strikes a decent balance here, it might rarely be optimal, but it also is equally rarely pessimal (while any unequal sharing mechanism will result in optimal and pessimal sharing, depending on whom you ask). In addition FQ allows much simpler prediction of what to expect from a link und saturating load. 
Of course this is just an opinion, and everybody here is entitled to their own opinion on this matter...

Best Regards
	Sebastian

> 
> 
> Bob
> 
>>> Could you repeat the Codel test with interval set to 20 and target to 1ms,
>>> please?
>>> 
>>> If that improves things considerably it would argue for embedding the current
>>> best RTT estimate into SCReAM packets, so an AQM could tailor its signaling
>>> better to individual flow properties (and yes, that will require a flow-aware
>>> AQM).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> it is fair to say that these simple simulations should of course be seen as just a
>>> snapshot.
>>> 
>>> 	[SM] Fair enough.
>>> 
>>>> We hope to present some more simulations with 5G access, and not just
>>> simple bottlenecks with one flow, after the summer.
>>> 
>>> 	[Looking] forward to that.
>>> 
>>>> Meanwhile, the SCReAM code on github is freely available for anyone who
>>> wish to make more experiments.
>>>> /Ingemar
>>>> ================================
>>>> Ingemar Johansson  M.Sc.
>>>> Master Researcher
>>>> 
>>>> Ericsson Research
>>>> RESEARCHER
>>>> GFTL ER NAP NCM Netw Proto & E2E Perf
>>>> Labratoriegränd 11
>>>> 971 28, Luleå, Sweden
>>>> Phone [phone]
>>>> SMS/MMS [phone]
>>>> [e-mail]
>>>> www.ericsson.com
>>>> 
>>>>   Reality, is the only thing… That’s real!
>>>>       James Halliday, Ready Player One
>>>> =================================
> 
> -- 
> ________________________________________________________________
> Bob Briscoe                               http://bobbriscoe.net/
>