ECN++: Adding Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to TCP Control Packets

RFC 3168 specifies support of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) in IP (v4 and v6). By using the ECN capability, network elements (e.g. routers, switches) performing Active Queue Management (AQM) can use ECN marks instead of packet drops to signal congestion to the endpoints of a communication. This results in lower packet loss and increased performance. RFC 3168 also specifies support for ECN in TCP, but solely on data packets. For various reasons it precludes the use of ECN on TCP control packets (TCP SYN, TCP SYN-ACK, pure ACKs, Window probes) and on retransmitted packets. RFC 3168 is silent about the use of ECN on RST and FIN packets. RFC 5562 is an experimental modification to ECN that enables ECN support for TCP SYN-ACK packets. This document defines an experimental modification to ECN that shall be called ECN++. It enables ECN support on all the aforementioned types of TCP packet. ECN++ is a sender-side change. It works whether the two ends of the TCP connection use classic ECN feedback or experimental Accurate ECN feedback (AccECN ). Nonetheless, if the client does not implement AccECN, it cannot use ECN++ on the one packet that offers most benefit from it - the initial SYN. Therefore, implementers of ECN++ are RECOMMENDED to also implement AccECN. ECN++ is designed for compatibility with a number of latency improvements to TCP such as TCP Fast Open (TFO ), initial window of 10 SMSS (IW10 ) and Low latency Low Loss Scalable Transport (L4S ), but they can all be implemented and deployed independently. is a standards track procedural device that relaxes requirements in RFC 3168 and other standards track RFCs that would otherwise preclude the experimental modifications needed for ECN++ and other ECN experiments.

The absence of ECN support on TCP control packets and retransmissions has a potential harmful effect. In any ECN deployment, non-ECN-capable packets suffer a penalty when they traverse a congested bottleneck. For instance, with a drop probability of 1%, 1% of connection attempts suffer a timeout of about 1 second before the SYN is retransmitted, which is highly detrimental to the performance of short flows. TCP control packets, particularly TCP SYNs and SYN-ACKs, are important for performance, so dropping them is best avoided. Non-ECN control packets particularly harm performance in environments where the ECN marking level is high. For example, shows that in a controlled private data centre (DC) environment where ECN is used (in conjunction with DCTCP ), the probability of being able to establish a new connection using a non-ECN SYN packet drops to close to zero even when there are only 16 ongoing TCP flows transmitting at full speed. The issue is that DCTCP exhibits a much more aggressive response to packet marking (which is why it is only applicable in controlled environments). This leads to a high marking probability for ECN-capable packets, and in turn a high drop probability for non-ECN packets. Therefore non-ECN SYNs are dropped aggressively, rendering it nearly impossible to establish a new connection in the presence of even mild traffic load. Finally, there are ongoing experimental efforts to promote the adoption of a slightly modified variant of DCTCP (and similar congestion controls) over the Internet to achieve low latency, low loss and scalable throughput (L4S) for all communications . In such an approach, L4S packets identify themselves using an ECN codepoint . With L4S and potentially other similar cases, preventing TCP control packets from obtaining the benefits of ECN would not only expose them to the prevailing level of congestion loss, but it would also classify control packets into a different queue with different network treatment, which may also lead to reordering, further degrading TCP performance.

The goal of the experimental modifications defined in this document is to allow the use of ECN on all TCP packets. Experiments are expected in the public Internet as well as in controlled environments to understand the following issues: How SYNs, Window probes, pure ACKs, FINs, RSTs and retransmissions that carry the ECT(0), ECT(1) or CE codepoints are processed by the TCP endpoints and the network (including routers, firewalls and other middleboxes). In particular we would like to learn if these packets are frequently blocked or if these packets are usually forwarded and processed. The scale of deployment of the different flavours of ECN, including , , and . How much the performance of TCP communications is improved by allowing ECN marking of each packet type. To identify any issues (including security issues) raised by enabling ECN marking of these packets. The data gathered through the experiments described in this document, particularly under the first 2 bullets above, will help in the design of the final mechanism (if any) for adding ECN support to the different packet types considered in this document. Whenever data input is needed to assist in a design choice, it is spelled out throughout the document. Success criteria: The experiment will be a success if we obtain enough data to have a clearer view of the deployability and benefits of enabling ECN on all TCP packets, as well as any issues. If the results of the experiment show that it is feasible to deploy such changes; that there are gains to be achieved through the changes described in this specification; and that no other major issues may interfere with the deployment of the proposed changes; then it would be reasonable to adopt the proposed changes in a standards track specification that would update RFC 3168.

The remainder of this document is structured as follows. In , we present the terminology used in the rest of the document. In , we specify the modifications to provide ECN support to TCP SYNs, pure ACKs, Window probes, FINs, RSTs and retransmissions. We describe both the network behaviour and the endpoint behaviour. discusses variations of the specification that will be necessary to interwork with a number of popular variants or derivatives of TCP. RFC 3168 provides a number of specific reasons why ECN support is not appropriate for each packet type. In , we revisit each of these arguments for each packet type to justify why it is reasonable to conduct this experiment.

The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this document, are to be interpreted as described in . Pure ACK: A TCP segment with the ACK flag set and no data payload. SYN: A TCP segment with the SYN (synchronize) flag set. Window probe: Defined in , a window probe is a TCP segment with only one byte of data sent to learn if the receive window is still zero. FIN: A TCP segment with the FIN (finish) flag set. RST: A TCP segment with the RST (reset) flag set. Retransmission: A TCP segment that has been retransmitted by the TCP sender. ECT: ECN-Capable Transport. One of the two codepoints ECT(0) or ECT(1) in the ECN field of the IP header (v4 or v6). An ECN-capable sender sets one of these to indicate that both transport end-points support ECN. When this specification says the sender sets an ECT codepoint, by default it means ECT(0). Optionally, it could mean ECT(1), which is in the process of being redefined for use by L4S experiments . Not-ECT: The ECN codepoint set by senders that indicates that the transport is not ECN-capable. CE: Congestion Experienced. The ECN codepoint that an intermediate node sets to indicate congestion . A node sets an increasing proportion of ECT packets to CE as the level of congestion increases.

Previously the specification of ECN for TCP required the sender to set not-ECT on TCP control packets and retransmissions. Some readers of RFC 3168 might have erroneously interpreted this as a requirement for firewalls, intrusion detection systems, etc. to check and enforce this behaviour. Section 4.3 of updates RFC 3168 to remove this ambiguity. It require firewalls or any intermediate nodes not to treat certain types of ECN-capable TCP segment differently (except potentially in one attack scenario). This is likely to only involve a firewall rule change in a fraction of cases (at most 0.4% of paths according to the tests reported in ). In case a TCP sender encounters a middlebox blocking ECT on certain TCP segments, the specification below includes behaviour to fall back to non-ECN. However, this loses the benefit of ECN on control packets. So operators are RECOMMENDED to alter their firewall rules to comply with the requirement referred to above (section 4.3 of ).

The changes to the specification of TCP over ECN defined here solely alter the behaviour of the sending host for each half-connection. All changes can be deployed at each end-point independently of others and independent of any network behaviour. The feedback behaviour at the receiver depends on whether classic ECN TCP feedback or Accurate ECN (AccECN) TCP feedback has been negotiated. Nonetheless, neither receiver feedback behaviour is altered by the present specification. For each type of control packet or retransmission, the following sections detail changes to the sender's behaviour in two respects: i) whether it sets ECT; and ii) its response to congestion feedback. summarises these two behaviours for each type of packet, but the relevant subsection below should be referred to for the detailed behaviour. The subsection on the SYN is more complex than the others, because it has to include fall-back behaviour if the ECT packet appears not to have got through, and caching of the outcome to detect persistent failures. TCP packet type ECN field if AccECN f/b negotiated* ECN field if RFC3168 f/b negotiated* Congestion Response SYN ECT not-ECT Reduce IW SYN-ACK ECT ECT Reduce IW Pure ACK ECT ECT Usual cwnd response and optionally W Probe ECT ECT Usual cwnd response FIN ECT ECT None or optionally RST ECT ECT N/A Re-XMT ECT ECT Usual cwnd response Window probe and retransmission are abbreviated to W Probe an Re-XMT. * For a SYN, "negotiated" means "requested". It can be seen that the sender can set ECT in all cases, except if it is not requesting AccECN feedback on the SYN. Therefore it is RECOMMENDED that the experimental AccECN specification is implemented (as well as the present specification), because it is expected that ECT on the SYN will give the most significant performance gain, particularly for short flows. Nonetheless, this specification also caters for the case where AccECN feedback is not implemented.

With classic ECN feedback, the SYN was never expected to be ECN-capable, so the flag provided to feed back congestion was put to another use (it is used in combination with other flags to indicate that the responder supports ECN). In contrast, Accurate ECN (AccECN) feedback provides two codepoints in the SYN-ACK for the responder to feed back whether or not the SYN arrived marked CE. Therefore, a TCP initiator MUST NOT set ECT on a SYN unless it also attempts to negotiate Accurate ECN feedback in the same SYN. For the experiments proposed here, if the SYN is requesting AccECN feedback, the TCP sender will also set ECT on the SYN. It can ignore the prohibition in section 6.1.1 of RFC 3168 against setting ECT on such a SYN. The following subsections about the SYN solely apply to this case where the initiator sent an ECT SYN.

Until AccECN servers become widely deployed, a TCP initiator that sets ECT on a SYN (which implies the same SYN also requests AccECN, as required above) SHOULD also maintain a cache entry per server to record that the server does not support AccECN and therefore has no logic for congestion markings on the SYN. Mobile hosts MAY maintain a cache entry per access network to record lack of AccECN support by proxies (see ). The initiator will record any server's SYN-ACK response that does not support AccECN. Subsequently the initiator will not set ECT on a SYN to such a server, but it can still always request AccECN support (because the response will state any earlier stage of ECN evolution that the server supports with no performance penalty). The initiator will discover a server that has upgraded to support AccECN as soon as it next connects, then it can remove the server from its cache and subsequently always set ECT for that server. If the initiator times out without seeing a SYN-ACK, it will also cache this fact (see fall-back in for details). There is no need to cache successful attempts, because the default ECT SYN behaviour performs optimally on success anyway. Servers that do not support ECN as a whole probably do not need to be recorded separately from non-support of AccECN because the response to a request for AccECN immediately states which stage in the evolution of ECN the server supports (AccECN , classic ECN or no ECN). The above strategy is named "optimistic ECT and cache failures". It is believed to be sufficient based on initial measurements and assumptions detailed in , which also gives alternative strategies in case larger scale measurements uncover different scenarios.

If the SYN-ACK returned to the TCP initiator confirms that the server supports AccECN, it will also indicate whether or not the SYN was CE-marked. If the SYN was CE-marked, the initiator MUST reduce its Initial Window (IW) and SHOULD reduce it to 1 SMSS (sender maximum segment size). If ECT has been set on the SYN and if the SYN-ACK shows that the server does not support AccECN, the TCP initiator MUST conservatively reduce its Initial Window and SHOULD reduce it to 1 SMSS. A reduction to greater than 1 SMSS MAY be appropriate (see ). Conservatism is necessary because a non-AccECN SYN-ACK cannot show whether the SYN was CE-marked. If the TCP initiator (host A) receives a SYN from the remote end (host B) after it has sent a SYN to B, it indicates the (unusual) case of a simultaneous open. Host A will respond with a SYN-ACK. Host A will probably then receive a SYN-ACK in response to its own SYN, after which it can follow the appropriate one of the two paragraphs above. In all the above cases, the initiator does not have to back off its retransmission timer as it would in response to a timeout following no response to its SYN , because both the SYN and the SYN-ACK have been successfully delivered through the network. Also, the initiator does not need to exit slow start or reduce ssthresh, which is not even required when a SYN is lost . If an initial window of 10 (IW10 ) is implemented, gives additional recommendations.

An ECT SYN might be lost due to an over-zealous path element (or server) blocking ECT packets that do not conform to RFC 3168. Some evidence of this was found in a 2014 study , but in a more recent 2017 study {ToDo: Add reference (under submission)} extensive measurements found no case where ECT on TCP control packets was treated any differently from ECT on TCP data packets. Loss is commonplace for numerous other reasons, e.g. congestion loss at a non-ECN queue on the forward or reverse path, transmission errors, etc. Alternatively, the cause of the loss might be the attempt to negotiate AccECN, or possibly other unrelated options on the SYN. Therefore, if the timer expires after the TCP initiator has sent the first ECT SYN, it SHOULD make one more attempt to retransmit the SYN with ECT set (backing off the timer as usual). If the retransmission timer expires again, it SHOULD retransmit the SYN with the not-ECT codepoint in the IP header, to expedite connection set-up. If other experimental fields or options were on the SYN, it will also be necessary to follow their specifications for fall-back too. It would make sense to coordinate all the strategies for fall-back in order to isolate the specific cause of the problem. If the TCP initiator is caching failed connection attempts, it SHOULD NOT give up using ECT on the first SYN of subsequent connection attempts until it is clear that a blockage persistently and specifically affects ECT on SYNs. This is because loss is so commonplace for other reasons. Even if it does eventually decide to give up setting ECT on the SYN, it will probably not need to give up on AccECN on the SYN. In any case, if a cache is used, it SHOULD be arranged to expire so that the initiator will infrequently attempt to check whether the problem has been resolved. Other fall-back strategies MAY be adopted where applicable (see for suggestions, and the conditions under which they would apply).

For the experiments proposed here, the TCP implementation will set ECT on SYN-ACKs. It can ignore the requirement in section 6.1.1 of RFC 3168 to set not-ECT on a SYN-ACK. The feedback behaviour by the initiator in response to a CE-marked SYN-ACK from the responder depends on whether classic ECN feedback or AccECN feedback has been negotiated. In either case no change is required to RFC 3168 or the AccECN specification. Some classic ECN implementations might ignore a CE-mark on a SYN-ACK, or even ignore a SYN-ACK packet entirely if it is set to ECT or CE. This is a possibility because an RFC 3168 implementation would not necessarily expect a SYN-ACK to be ECN-capable. FOR DISCUSSION: To eliminate this problem, the WG could decide to prohibit setting ECT on SYN-ACKs unless AccECN has been negotiated. However, this issue already came up when the IETF first decided to experiment with ECN on SYN-ACKs and it was decided to go ahead without any extra precautionary measures because the risk was low. This was because the probability of encountering the problem was believed to be low and the harm if the problem arose was also low (see Appendix B of RFC 5562). MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Server-side experiments could determine whether this specific problem is indeed rare across the current installed base of clients that support ECN.

A host that sets ECT on SYN-ACKs MUST reduce its initial window in response to any congestion feedback, whether using classic ECN or AccECN. It SHOULD reduce it to 1 SMSS. This is different to the behaviour specified in an earlier experiment that set ECT on the SYN-ACK . This is justified in . The responder does not have to back off its retransmission timer because the ECN feedback proves that the network is delivering packets successfully and is not severely overloaded. Also the responder does not have to leave slow start or reduce ssthresh, which is not even required when a SYN-ACK has been lost. The congestion response to CE-marking on a SYN-ACK for a server that implements either the TCP Fast Open experiment (TFO ) or the initial window of 10 experiment (IW10 ) is discussed in .

After the responder sends a SYN-ACK with ECT set, if its retransmission timer expires it SHOULD retransmit one more SYN-ACK with ECT set (and back-off its timer as usual). If the timer expires again, it SHOULD retransmit the SYN-ACK with not-ECT in the IP header. If other experimental fields or options were on the initial SYN-ACK, it will also be necessary to follow their specifications for fall-back. It would make sense to co-ordinate all the strategies for fall-back in order to isolate the specific cause of the problem. This fall-back strategy attempts to use ECT one more time than the strategy for ECT SYN-ACKs in (which is made obsolete, being superseded by the present specification). Other fall-back strategies MAY be adopted if found to be more effective, e.g. fall-back to not-ECT on the first retransmission attempt. The server MAY cache failed connection attempts, e.g. per client access network. An client-based alternative to caching at the server is given in . If the TCP server is caching failed connection attempts, it SHOULD NOT give up using ECT on the first SYN-ACK of subsequent connection attempts until it is clear that the blockage persistently and specifically affects ECT on SYN-ACKs. This is because loss is so commonplace for other reasons (see ). If a cache is used, it SHOULD be arranged to expire so that the server will infrequently attempt to check whether the problem has been resolved.

For the experiments proposed here, the TCP implementation will set ECT on pure ACKs. It can ignore the requirement in section 6.1.4 of RFC 3168 to set not-ECT on a pure ACK. A host that sets ECT on pure ACKs MUST reduce its congestion window in response to any congestion feedback, in order to regulate any data segments it might be sending amongst the pure ACKs. {ToDo: Reconsider this requirement in the light of WG comments.} It MAY also implement AckCC to regulate the pure ACK rate, but this is not required. Note that, in comparison, TCP Congestion Control does not require a TCP to detect or respond to loss of pure ACKs at all; it requires no reduction in congestion window or ACK rate. The question of whether the receiver of pure ACKs is required to feed back any CE marks on them is a matter for the relevant feedback specification ( or ). It is outside the scope of the present specification. Currently AccECN feedback is required to count CE marking of any control packet including pure ACKs. Whereas RFC 3168 is silent on this point, so feedback of CE-markings might be implementation specific (see ). DISCUSSION: An AccECN deployment or an implementation of RFC 3168 that feeds back CE on pure ACKs will be at a disadvantage compared to an RFC 3168 implementation that does not. To solve this, the WG could decide to prohibit setting ECT on pure ACKs unless AccECN has been negotiated. If it does, the penultimate sentence of the Introduction will need to be modified. MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Measurements are needed to learn how the deployed base of network elements and RFC 3168 servers react to pure ACKs marked with the ECT(0)/ECT(1)/CE codepoints, i.e. whether they are dropped, codepoint cleared or processed and the congestion indication fed back on a subsequent packet.

For the experiments proposed here, the TCP sender will set ECT on window probes. It can ignore the prohibition in section 6.1.6 of RFC 3168 against setting ECT on a window probe. A window probe contains a single octet, so it is no different from a regular TCP data segment. Therefore a TCP receiver will feed back any CE marking on a window probe as normal (either using classic ECN feedback or AccECN feedback). The sender of the probe will then reduce its congestion window as normal. A receive window of zero indicates that the application is not consuming data fast enough and does not imply anything about network congestion. Once the receive window opens, the congestion window might become the limiting factor, so it is correct that CE-marked probes reduce the congestion window. This complements cwnd validation , which reduces cwnd as more time elapses without having used available capacity. However, CE-marking on window probes does not reduce the rate of the probes themselves. This is unlikely to present a problem, given the duration between window probes doubles as long as the receiver is advertising a zero window (currently minimum 1 second, maximum at least 1 minute ). MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Measurements are needed to learn how the deployed base of network elements and servers react to Window probes marked with the ECT(0)/ECT(1)/CE codepoints, i.e. whether they are dropped, codepoint cleared or processed.

A TCP implementation can set ECT on a FIN. The TCP data receiver MUST ignore the CE codepoint on incoming FINs that fail any validity check. The validity check in section 5.2 of is RECOMMENDED. A congestion response to a CE-marking on a FIN is not required. After sending a FIN, the endpoint will not send any more data in the connection. Therefore, even if the FIN-ACK indicates that the FIN was CE-marked (whether using classic or AccECN feedback), reducing the congestion window will not affect anything. After sending a FIN, a host might send one or more pure ACKs. If it is using one of the techniques in to regulate the delayed ACK ratio for pure ACKs, it could equally be applied after a FIN. But this is not required. MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Measurements are needed to learn how the deployed base of network elements and servers react to FIN packets marked with the ECT(0)/ECT(1)/CE codepoints, i.e. whether they are dropped, codepoint cleared or processed.

A TCP implementation can set ECT on a RST. The "challenge ACK" approach to checking the validity of RSTs (section 3.2 of is RECOMMENDED at the data receiver. A congestion response to a CE-marking on a RST is not required (and actually not possible). MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Measurements are needed to learn how the deployed base of network elements and servers react to RST packets marked with the ECT(0)/ECT(1)/CE codepoints, i.e. whether they are dropped, codepoint cleared or processed.

For the experiments proposed here, the TCP sender will set ECT on retransmitted segments. It can ignore the prohibition in section 6.1.5 of RFC 3168 against setting ECT on retransmissions. Nonetheless, the TCP data receiver MUST ignore the CE codepoint on incoming segments that fail any validity check. The validity check in section 5.2 of is RECOMMENDED. This will effectively mitigate an attack that uses spoofed data packets to fool the receiver into feeding back spoofed congestion indications to the sender, which in turn would be fooled into continually halving its congestion window. If the TCP sender receives feedback that a retransmitted packet was CE-marked, it will react as it would to any feedback of CE-marking on a data packet. MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Measurements are needed to learn how the deployed base of network elements and servers react to retransmissions marked with the ECT(0)/ECT(1)/CE codepoints, i.e. whether they are dropped, codepoint cleared or processed.

Extensive measurements in fixed and mobile networks {ToDo: reference (under submission)} have found no evidence of blockages due to ECT being set on any type of TCP control packet. In case traversal problems arise in future, fall-back measures have been specified above, but only for the cases where ECT on the initial packet of a half-connection (SYN or SYN-ACK) is persistently failing to get through. Fall-back measures for blockage of ECT on other TCP control packets MAY be implemented. However they are not specified here given the lack of any evidence they will be needed. justifies this advice in more detail.

This section is informative, not normative. It presents counter-arguments against the justifications in the RFC series for disabling ECN on TCP control segments and retransmissions. It also gives rationale for why ECT is safe on control segments that have not, so far, been mentioned in the RFC series. First it addresses over-arching arguments used for most packet types, then it addresses the specific arguments for each packet type in turn.

Section 5.2 of RFC 3168 states: "To ensure the reliable delivery of the congestion indication of the CE codepoint, an ECT codepoint MUST NOT be set in a packet unless the loss of that packet [at a subsequent node] in the network would be detected by the end nodes and interpreted as an indication of congestion." We believe this argument is misplaced. TCP does not deliver most control packets reliably. So it is more important to allow control packets to be ECN-capable, which greatly improves reliable delivery of the control packets themselves (see motivation in ). ECN also improves the reliability and latency of delivery of any congestion notification on control packets, particularly because TCP does not detect the loss of most types of control packet anyway. Both these points outweigh by far the concern that a CE marking applied to a control packet by one node might subsequently be dropped by another node. The principle to determine whether a packet can be ECN-capable ought to be "do no extra harm", meaning that the reliability of a congestion signal's delivery ought to be no worse with ECN than without. In particular, setting the CE codepoint on the very same packet that would otherwise have been dropped fulfills this criterion, since either the packet is delivered and the CE signal is delivered to the endpoint, or the packet is dropped and the original congestion signal (packet loss) is delivered to the endpoint. The concern about a CE marking being dropped at a subsequent node might be motivated by the idea that ECN-marking a packet at the first node does not remove the packet, so it could go on to worsen congestion at a subsequent node. However, it is not useful to reason about congestion by considering single packets. The departure rate from the first node will generally be the same (fully utilized) with or without ECN, so this argument does not apply.

RFC 5562 presents two arguments against ECT marking of SYN packets (quoted verbatim): "First, when the TCP SYN packet is sent, there are no guarantees that the other TCP endpoint (node B in Figure 2) is ECN-Capable, or that it would be able to understand and react if the ECN CE codepoint was set by a congested router. Second, the ECN-Capable codepoint in TCP SYN packets could be misused by malicious clients to "improve" the well-known TCP SYN attack. By setting an ECN-Capable codepoint in TCP SYN packets, a malicious host might be able to inject a large number of TCP SYN packets through a potentially congested ECN-enabled router, congesting it even further." The first point actually describes two subtly different issues. So below three arguments are countered in turn.

This argument certainly applied at the time RFC 5562 was written, when no ECN responder mechanism had any logic to recognize or feed back a CE marking on a SYN. The problem was that, during the 3WHS, the flag in the TCP header for ECN feedback (called Echo Congestion Experienced) had been overloaded to negotiate the use of ECN itself. So there was no space for feedback in a SYN-ACK. The accurate ECN (AccECN) protocol has since been designed to solve this problem, using a two-pronged approach. First AccECN uses the 3 ECN bits in the TCP header as 8 codepoints, so there is space for the responder to feed back whether there was CE on the SYN. Second a TCP initiator can always request AccECN support on every SYN, and any responder reveals its level of ECN support: AccECN, classic ECN, or no ECN. Therefore, if a responder does indicate that it supports AccECN, the initiator can be sure that, if there is no CE feedback on the SYN-ACK, then there really was no CE on the SYN. An initiator can combine AccECN with three possible strategies for setting ECT on a SYN: Pessimistic ECT and cache successes: The initiator always requests AccECN in the SYN, but without setting ECT. Then it records those servers that confirm that they support AccECN in a cache. On a subsequent connection to any server that supports AccECN, the initiator can then set ECT on the SYN. Optimistic ECT: The initiator always sets ECT optimistically on the initial SYN and it always requests AccECN support. Then, if the server response shows it has no AccECN logic (so it cannot feed back a CE mark), the initiator conservatively behaves as if the SYN was CE-marked, by reducing its initial window. No cache: The optimistic ECT strategy ought to work fairly well without caching any responses. Cache failures: The optimistic ECT strategy can be improved by recording solely those servers that do not support AccECN. On subsequent connections to these non-AccECN servers, the initiator will still request AccECN but not set ECT on the SYN. Then, the initiator can use its full initial window (if it has enough request data to need it). Longer term, as servers upgrade to AccECN, the initiator will remove them from the cache and use ECT on subsequent SYNs to that server.Where an access network operator mediates Internet access via a proxy that does not support AccECN, the optimistic ECT strategy will always fail. This scenario is more likely in mobile networks. Therefore, a mobile host could cache lack of AccECN support per attached access network operator. Whenever it attached to a new operator, it could check a well-known AccECN test server and, if it found no AccECN support, it would add a cache entry for the attached operator. It would only use ECT when neither network nor server were cached. It would only populate its per server cache when not attached to a non-AccECN proxy. ECT by configuration: In a controlled environment, the administrator can make sure that servers support ECN-capable SYN packets. Examples of controlled environments are single-tenant DCs, and possibly multi-tenant DCs if it is assumed that each tenant mostly communicates with its own VMs. For unmanaged environments like the public Internet, pragmatically the choice is between strategies (S1) and (S2B): The "pessimistic ECT and cache successes" strategy (S1) suffers from exposing the initial SYN to the prevailing loss level, even if the server supports ECT on SYNs, but only on the first connection to each AccECN server. The "optimistic ECT and cache failures" strategy (S2B) exploits a server's support for ECT on SYNs from the very first attempt. But if the server turns out not to support AccECN, the initiator has to conservatively limit its initial window - usually unnecessarily. Nonetheless, initiator request data (as opposed to server response data) is rarely larger than 1 SMSS anyway {ToDo: reference? (this information was given informally by Yuchung Cheng)}. The normative specification for ECT on a SYN in uses the "optimistic ECT and cache failures" strategy (S2B) on the assumption that an initial window of 1 SMSS is usually sufficient for client requests anyway. Clients that often initially send more than 1 SMSS of data could use strategy (S1) during initial deployment, and strategy (S2B) later (when the probability of servers supporting AccECN and the likelihood of seeing some CE marking is higher). Also, as deployment proceeds, caching successes (S1) starts off small then grows, while caching failures (S2B) becomes large at first, then shrinks. MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Measurements are needed to determine whether one or the other strategy would be sufficient for any particular client, or whether a particular client would need both strategies in different circumstances.

Given, until now, ECT-marked SYN packets have been prohibited, it cannot be assumed they will be accepted. According to a study using 2014 data from a limited range of vantage points, out of the top 1M Alexa web sites, 4791 (0.82%) IPv4 sites and 104 (0.61%) IPv6 sites failed to establish a connection when they received a TCP SYN with any ECN codepoint set in the IP header and the appropriate ECN flags in the TCP header. Of these, about 41% failed to establish a connection due to the ECN flags in the TCP header even with a Not-ECT ECN field in the IP header (i.e. despite full compliance with RFC 3168). Therefore adding the ECN capability to SYNs was increasing connection establishment failures by about 0.4%. In a study using 2017 data from a wider range of fixed and mobile vantage points to the top 500k Alexa servers, no case was found where adding the ECN capability to a SYN increased the likelihood of connection establishment failure {ToDo: reference (under submission)}. MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: More investigation is needed to understand the different outcomes of the 2014 and 2017 studies. RFC 3168 says "a host MUST NOT set ECT on SYN [...] packets", but it does not say what the responder should do if an ECN-capable SYN arrives. So, in the 2014 study, perhaps some responder implementations were checking that the SYN complied with RFC 3168, then silently ignoring non-compliant SYNs (or perhaps returning a RST). Also some middleboxes (e.g. firewalls) might have been discarding non-compliant SYNs. For the future, updates RFC 3168 to clarify that middleboxes "SHOULD NOT" do this, but that does not alter the past. Whereas RSTs can be dealt with immediately, silent failures introduce a retransmission timeout delay (default 1 second) at the initiator before it attempts any fall back strategy. Ironically, making SYNs ECN-capable is intended to avoid the timeout when a SYN is lost due to congestion. Fortunately, if there is any discard of ECN-capable SYNs due to policy, it will occur predictably, not randomly like congestion. So the initiator can avoid it by caching those sites that do not support ECN-capable SYNs. This further justifies the use of the "optimistic ECT and cache failures" strategy in . MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Experiments are needed to determine whether blocking of ECT on SYNs is widespread, and how many occurrences of problems would be masked by how few cache entries. If blocking is too widespread for the "optimistic ECT and cache failures" strategy (S2B), the "pessimistic ECT and cache successes" strategy () would be better. MEASUREMENTS NEEDED: Then measurements would be needed on whether failures were still widespread on the third connection attempt after the more careful ("pessimistic") first and second attempts. If so, it might be necessary to send a not-ECT SYN a short delay after an ECT SYN and only accept the non-ECT connection if it returned first. This would reduce the performance penalty for those deploying ECT SYN support. FOR DISCUSSION: If this becomes necessary, how much delay ought to be required before the second SYN? Certainly less than the standard RTO (1 second). But more or less than the maximum RTT expected over the surface of the earth (roughly 250ms)? Or even back-to-back? However, based on the data above from , even a cache of a dozen or so sites ought to avoid all ECN-related performance problems with roughly the Alexa top thousand. So it is questionable whether sending two SYNs will be necessary, particularly given failures at well-maintained sites could reduce further once ECT SYNs are standardized.

says that ECT SYN packets could be misused by malicious clients to augment "the well-known TCP SYN attack". It goes on to say "a malicious host might be able to inject a large number of TCP SYN packets through a potentially congested ECN-enabled router, congesting it even further." We assume this is a reference to the TCP SYN flood attack (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYN_flood), which is an attack against a responder end point. We assume the idea of this attack is to use ECT to get more packets through an ECN-enabled router in preference to other non-ECN traffic so that they can go on to use the SYN flooding attack to inflict more damage on the responder end point. This argument could apply to flooding with any type of packet, but we assume SYNs are singled out because their source address is easier to spoof, whereas floods of other types of packets are easier to block. Mandating Not-ECT in an RFC does not stop attackers using ECT for flooding. Nonetheless, if a standard says SYNs are not meant to be ECT it would make it legitimate for firewalls to discard them. However this would negate the considerable benefit of ECT SYNs for compliant transports and seems unnecessary because RFC 3168 already provides the means to address this concern. In section 7, RFC 3168 says "During periods where ... the potential packet marking rate would be high, our recommendation is that routers drop packets rather then set the CE codepoint..." and this advice is repeated in (section 4.2.1). This makes it harder for flooding packets to gain from ECT. Further experiments are needed to test how much malicious hosts can use ECT to augment flooding attacks without triggering AQMs to turn off ECN support (flying "just under the radar"). If it is found that ECT can only slightly augment flooding attacks, the risk of such attacks will need to be weighed against the performance benefits of ECT SYNs.

The proposed approach in for experimenting with ECN-capable SYN-ACKs is effectively identical to the scheme called ECN+ . In 2005, the ECN+ paper demonstrated that it could reduce the average Web response time by an order of magnitude. It also argued that adding ECT to SYN-ACKs did not raise any new security vulnerabilities.

The IETF has already specified an experiment with ECN-capable SYN-ACK packets . It was inspired by the ECN+ paper, but it specified a much more conservative congestion response to a CE-marked SYN-ACK, called ECN+/TryOnce. This required the server to reduce its initial window to 1 segment (like ECN+), but then the server had to send a second SYN-ACK and wait for its ACK before it could continue with its initial window of 1 SMSS. The second SYN-ACK of this 5-way handshake had to carry no data, and had to disable ECN, but no justification was given for these last two aspects. The present ECN experiment obsoletes RFC 5562 because it uses the ECN+ congestion response, not ECN+/TryOnce. First we argue against the rationale for ECN+/TryOnce given in sections 4.4 and 6.2 of . It starts with a rather too literal interpretation of the requirement in RFC 3168 that says TCP's response to a single CE mark has to be "essentially the same as the congestion control response to a *single* dropped packet." TCP's response to a dropped initial (SYN or SYN-ACK) packet is to wait for the retransmission timer to expire (currently 1s). However, this long delay assumes the worst case between two possible causes of the loss: a) heavy overload; or b) the normal capacity-seeking behaviour of other TCP flows. When the network is still delivering CE-marked packets, it implies that there is an AQM at the bottleneck and that it is not overloaded. This is because an AQM under overload will disable ECN (as recommended in section 7 of RFC 3168 and repeated in section 4.2.1 of RFC 7567). So scenario (a) can be ruled out. Therefore, TCP's response to a CE-marked SYN-ACK can be similar to its response to the loss of any packet, rather than backing off as if the special initial packet of a flow has been lost. How TCP responds to the loss of any single packet depends what it has just been doing. But there is not really a precedent for TCP's response when it experiences a CE mark having sent only one (small) packet. If TCP had been adding one segment per RTT, it would have halved its congestion window, but it hasn't established a congestion window yet. If it had been exponentially increasing it would have exited slow start, but it hasn't started exponentially increasing yet so it hasn't established a slow-start threshold. Therefore, we have to work out a reasoned argument for what to do. If an AQM is CE-marking packets, it implies there is already a queue and it is probably already somewhere around the AQM's operating point - it is unlikely to be well below and it might be well above. So, it does not seem sensible to add a number of packets at once. On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that the SYN-ACK itself pushed the AQM into congestion, so it will be safe to introduce another single segment immediately (1 RTT after the SYN-ACK). Therefore, starting to probe for capacity with a slow start from an initial window of 1 segment seems appropriate to the circumstances. This is the approach adopted in .

An alternative to the server caching failed connection attempts would be for the server to rely on the client caching failed attempts (on the basis that the client would cache a failure whether ECT was blocked on the SYN or the SYN-ACK). This strategy cannot be used if the SYN does not request AccECN support. It works as follows: if the server receives a SYN that requests AccECN support but is set to not-ECT, it replies with a SYN-ACK also set to not-ECT. If a middlebox only blocks ECT on SYNs, not SYN-ACKs, this strategy might disable ECN on a SYN-ACK when it did not need to, but at least it saves the server from maintaining a cache.

Section 5.2 of RFC 3168 gives the following arguments for not allowing the ECT marking of pure ACKs (ACKs not piggy-backed on data): "To ensure the reliable delivery of the congestion indication of the CE codepoint, an ECT codepoint MUST NOT be set in a packet unless the loss of that packet in the network would be detected by the end nodes and interpreted as an indication of congestion. Transport protocols such as TCP do not necessarily detect all packet drops, such as the drop of a "pure" ACK packet; for example, TCP does not reduce the arrival rate of subsequent ACK packets in response to an earlier dropped ACK packet. Any proposal for extending ECN-Capability to such packets would have to address issues such as the case of an ACK packet that was marked with the CE codepoint but was later dropped in the network. We believe that this aspect is still the subject of research, so this document specifies that at this time, "pure" ACK packets MUST NOT indicate ECN-Capability." Later on, in section 6.1.4 it reads: "For the current generation of TCP congestion control algorithms, pure acknowledgement packets (e.g., packets that do not contain any accompanying data) MUST be sent with the not-ECT codepoint. Current TCP receivers have no mechanisms for reducing traffic on the ACK-path in response to congestion notification. Mechanisms for responding to congestion on the ACK-path are areas for current and future research. (One simple possibility would be for the sender to reduce its congestion window when it receives a pure ACK packet with the CE codepoint set). For current TCP implementations, a single dropped ACK generally has only a very small effect on the TCP's sending rate." We next address each of the arguments presented above. The first argument is a specific instance of the reliability argument for the case of pure ACKs. This has already been addressed by countering the general reliability argument in . The second argument says that ECN ought not to be enabled unless there is a mechanism to respond to it. However, actually there is a mechanism to respond to congestion on a pure ACK that RFC 3168 has overlooked - the congestion window mechanism. When data segments and pure ACKs are interspersed, congestion notifications ought to regulate the congestion window, whether they are on data segments or on pure ACKs. Otherwise, if ECN is disabled on Pure ACKs, and if (say) 70% of the segments in one direction are Pure ACKs, about 70% of the congestion notifications will be missed and the data segments will not be correctly regulated. So RFC 3168 ought to have considered two congestion response mechanisms - reducing the congestion window (cwnd) and reducing the ACK rate - and only the latter was missing. Further, RFC 3168 was incorrect to assume that, if one ACK was a pure ACK, all segments in the same direction would be pure ACKs. Admittedly a continual stream of pure ACKs in one direction is quite a common case (e.g. a file download). However, it is also common for the pure ACKs to be interspersed with data segments (e.g. HTTP/2 browser requests controlling a web application). Indeed, it is more likely that any congestion experienced by pure ACKs will be due to mixing with data segments, either within the same flow, or within competing flows. This insight swings the argument towards enabling ECN on pure ACKs so that CE marks can drive the cwnd response to congestion (whenever data segments are interspersed with the pure ACKs). Then to separately decide whether an ACK rate response is also required (when they are ECN-enabled). The two types of response are addressed separately in the following two subsections, then a final subsection draws conclusions.

If the sender of pure ACKs sets them to ECT, the bullets below assess whether the three stages of the congestion response mechanism will all work for each type of congestion feedback (classic ECN and AccECN ): The receiver of a pure ACK can detect a CE marking on it: Classic feedback: the receiver will not expect CE marks on pure ACKs, so it will be implementation-dependent whether it happens to check for CE marks on all packets. AccECN feedback: the AccECN specification requires the receiver of any TCP packets to count any CE marks on them (whether or not control packets are ECN-capable). TCP never ACKs a pure ACK, but the receiver of a CE-mark on a pure ACK can feed it back when it sends a subsequent data segment (if it ever does): Classic feedback: the receiver (of the pure ACKs) would set the echo congestion experienced (ECE) flag in the TCP header as normal. AccECN feedback: the receiver continually feeds back a count of the number of CE-marked packets that it has received (and, if possible, a count of CE-marked bytes). In either case (classic or AccECN feedback), if the TCP sender does receive feedback about CE-markings on pure ACKs, it will react in the usual way by reducing its congestion window accordingly. This will regulate the rate of any data packets it is sending amongst the pure ACKs. Note that, while a host has no application data to send, any congestion window it has attained might also be reduced by the congestion window validation mechanism .

Reducing the congestion window will have no effect on the rate of pure ACKs. The worst case here is if the bottleneck is congested solely with pure ACKs, but it could also be problematic if a large fraction of the load was from unresponsive ACKs, leaving little or no capacity for the load from responsive data. Since RFC 3168 was published, Acknowledgement Congestion Control (AckCC) techniques have been documented in (informational). So any pair of TCP end-points can choose to agree to regulate the delayed ACK ratio in response to lost or CE-marked pure ACKs. However, the protocol has a number of open deployment issues (e.g. it relies on two new TCP options, one of which is required on the SYN where option space is at a premium and, if either option is blocked by a middlebox, no fall-back behaviour is specified). The new TCP options addressed two problems, namely that TCP had: i) no mechanism to allow ECT to be set on pure ACKs; and ii) no mechanism to feed back loss or CE-marking of pure ACKs. A combination of the present specification and AccECN addresses both these problems, at least for ECN marking. So it might now be possible to design an ECN-specific ACK congestion control scheme without the extra TCP options proposed in RFC 5690. However, such a mechanism is out of scope of the present document. Setting aside the practicality of RFC 5690, the need for AckCC has not been conclusively demonstrated. It has been argued that the Internet has survived so far with no mechanism to even detect loss of pure ACKs. However, it has also been argued that ECN is not the same as loss. Packet discard can naturally thin the ACK load to whatever the bottleneck can support, whereas ECN marking does not (it queues the ACKs instead). Nonetheless, RFC 3168 (section 7) recommends that an AQM switches over from ECN marking to discard when the marking probability becomes high. Therefore discard can still be relied on to thin out ECN-enabled pure ACKs as a last resort.

In the case when AccECN has been negotiated, the arguments for ECT (and CE) on pure ACKs heavily outweigh those against. ECN is always more and never less reliable for delivery of congestion notification. The cwnd response has been overlooked as a mechanism for responding to congestion on pure ACKs, so it is incorrect not to set ECT on pure ACKs when they are interspersed with data segments. And when they are not, packet discard still acts as the "congestion response of last resort". In contrast, not setting ECT on pure ACKs is certainly detrimental to performance, because when a pure ACK is lost it can prevent the release of new data. Separately, AckCC (or perhaps an improved variant exploiting AccECN) could optionally be used to regulate the spacing between pure ACKs. However, it is not clear whether AckCC is justified. In the case when Classic ECN has been negotiated, there is still an argument for ECT (and CE) on pure ACKs, but it is less clear-cut. Some existing RFC 3168 implementations might happen to (unintentionally) provide the correct feedback to support a cwnd response. Even for those that did not, setting ECT on pure ACKs would still be better for performance than not setting it and do no extra harm. If AckCC was required, it is designed to work with RFC 3168 ECN.

Section 6.1.6 of RFC 3168 presents only the reliability argument for prohibiting ECT on Window probes: "If a window probe packet is dropped in the network, this loss is not detected by the receiver. Therefore, the TCP data sender MUST NOT set either an ECT codepoint or the CWR bit on window probe packets. However, because window probes use exact sequence numbers, they cannot be easily spoofed in denial-of-service attacks. Therefore, if a window probe arrives with the CE codepoint set, then the receiver SHOULD respond to the ECN indications." The reliability argument has already been addressed in . Allowing ECT on window probes could considerably improve performance because, once the receive window has reopened, if a window probe is lost the sender will stall until the next window probe reaches the receiver, which might be after the maximum retransmission timeout (at least 1 minute ). On the bright side, RFC 3168 at least specifies the receiver behaviour if a CE-marked window probe arrives, so changing the behaviour ought to be less painful than for other packet types.

RFC 3168 is silent on whether a TCP sender can set ECT on a FIN. A FIN is considered as part of the sequence of data, and the rate of pure ACKs sent after a FIN could be controlled by a CE marking on the FIN. Therefore there is no reason not to set ECT on a FIN.

RFC 3168 is silent on whether a TCP sender can set ECT on a RST. The host generating the RST message does not have an open connection after sending it (either because there was no such connection when the packet that triggered the RST message was received or because the packet that triggered the RST message also triggered the closure of the connection). Moreover, the receiver of a CE-marked RST message can either: i) accept the RST message and close the connection; ii) emit a so-called challenge ACK in response (with suitable throttling) and otherwise ignore the RST (e.g. because the sequence number is in-window but not the precise number expected next); or iii) discard the RST message (e.g. because the sequence number is out-of-window). In the first two cases there is no point in echoing any CE mark received because the sender closed its connection when it sent the RST. In the third case it makes sense to discard the CE signal as well as the RST. Although a congestion response following a CE-marking on a RST does not appear to make sense, the following factors have been considered before deciding whether the sender ought to set ECT on a RST message: As explained above, a congestion response by the sender of a CE-marked RST message is not possible; So the only reason for the sender setting ECT on a RST would be to improve the reliability of the message's delivery; RST messages are used to both mount and mitigate attacks: Spoofed RST messages are used by attackers to terminate ongoing connections, although the mitigations in RFC 5961 have considerably raised the bar against off-path RST attacks; Legitimate RST messages allow endpoints to inform their peers to eliminate existing state that correspond to non existing connections, liberating resources e.g. in DoS attacks scenarios; AQMs are advised to disable ECN marking during persistent overload, so: it is harder for an attacker to exploit ECN to intensify an attack; it is harder for a legitimate user to exploit ECN to more reliably mitigate an attack Prohibiting ECT on a RST would deny the benefit of ECN to legitimate RST messages, but not to attackers who can disregard RFCs; If ECT were prohibited on RSTs it would be easy for security middleboxes to discard all ECN-capable RSTs; However, unlike a SYN flood, it is already easy for a security middlebox (or host) to distinguish a RST flood from legitimate traffic , and even if a some legitimate RSTs are accidentally removed as well, legitimate connections still function. So, on balance, it has been decided that it is worth experimenting with ECT on RSTs. During experiments, if the ECN capability on RSTs is found to open a vulnerability that is hard to close, this decision can be reversed, before it is specified for the standards track.

RFC 3168 says the sender "MUST NOT" set ECT on retransmitted packets. The rationale for this consumes nearly 2 pages of RFC 3168, so the reader is referred to section 6.1.5 of RFC 3168, rather than quoting it all here. There are essentially three arguments, namely: reliability; DoS attacks; and over-reaction to congestion. We address them in order below. The reliability argument has already been addressed in . Protection against DoS attacks is not afforded by prohibiting ECT on retransmitted packets. An attacker can set CE on spoofed retransmissions whether or not it is prohibited by an RFC. Protection against the DoS attack described in section 6.1.5 of RFC 3168 is solely afforded by the requirement that "the TCP data receiver SHOULD ignore the CE codepoint on out-of-window packets". Therefore in the sender is allowed to set ECT on retransmitted packets, in order to reduce the chance of them being dropped. We also strengthen the receiver's requirement from "SHOULD ignore" to "MUST ignore". And we generalize the receiver's requirement to include failure of any validity check, not just out-of-window checks, in order to include the more stringent validity checks in RFC 5961 that have been developed since RFC 3168. A consequence is that, for those retransmitted packets that arrive at the receiver after the original packet has been properly received (so-called spurious retransmissions), any CE marking will be ignored. There is no problem with that because the fact that the original packet has been delivered implies that the sender's original congestion response (when it deemed the packet lost and retransmitted it) was unnecessary. Finally, the third argument is about over-reacting to congestion. The argument goes that, if a retransmitted packet is dropped, the sender will not detect it, so it will not react again to congestion (it would have reduced its congestion window already when it retransmitted the packet). Whereas, if retransmitted packets can be CE tagged instead of dropped, senders could potentially react more than once to congestion. However, we argue that it is legitimate to respond again to congestion if it still persists in subsequent round trip(s). Therefore, in all three cases, it is not incorrect to set ECT on retransmissions.

Extensive experiments have found no evidence of any traversal problems with ECT on any TCP control packet {ToDo: reference (under submission)}. Nonetheless, Sections and specify fall-back measures if ECT on the first packet of each half-connection (SYN or SYN-ACK) appears to be blocking progress. Here, the question of fall-back measures for ECT on other control packets is explored. It supports the advice given in ; until there's evidence that something's broken, don't fix it. If an implementation has had to disable ECT to ensure the first packet of a flow (SYN or SYN-ACK) gets through, the question arises whether it ought to disable ECT on all subsequent control packets within the same TCP connection. Without evidence of any such problems, this seems unnecessarily cautious. Particularly given it would be hard to detect loss of most other types of TCP control packets that are not ACK'd. And particularly given that unnecessarily removing ECT from other control packets could lead to performance problems, e.g. by directing them into an inferior queue or over a different path, because some broken multipath equipment (erroneously) routes based on all 8 bits of the Diffserv field. In the case where a connection starts without ECT on the SYN (perhaps because problems with previous connections had been cached), there will have been no test for ECT traversal in the client-server direction until the pure ACK that completes the handshake. It is possible that some middlebox might block ECT on this pure ACK or on later retransmissions of lost packets. Similarly, after a route change, the new path might include some middlebox that blocks ECT on some or all TCP control packets. However, without evidence of such problems, the complexity of a fix does not seem worthwhile. MORE MEASUREMENTS NEEDED (?): If further two-ended measurements do find evidence for these traversal problems, measurements would be needed to check for correlation of ECT traversal problems between different control packets. It might then be necessary to introduce a catch-all fall-back rule that disables ECT on certain subsequent TCP control packets based on some criteria developed from these measurements.

The following subsections discuss any interactions between setting ECT on all packets and using the following popular variants of TCP: IW10 and TFO. It also briefly notes the possibility that the principles applied here should translate to protocols derived from TCP. This section is informative not normative, because no interactions have been identified that require any change to specifications. The subsection on IW10 discusses potential changes to specifications but recommends that no changes are needed. The designs of the following TCP variants have also been assessed and found not to interact adversely with ECT on TCP control packets: SYN cookies (see Appendix A of and section 3.1 of ), TCP Fast Open (TFO ) and L4S .

IW10 is an experiment to determine whether it is safe for TCP to use an initial window of 10 SMSS . This subsection does not recommend any additions to the present specification in order to interwork with IW10. The specifications as they stand are safe, and there is only a corner-case with ECT on the SYN where performance could be occasionally improved, as explained below. As specified in , a TCP initiator can only set ECT on the SYN if it requests AccECN support. If, however, the SYN-ACK tells the initiator that the responder does not support AccECN, advises the initiator to conservatively reduce its initial window to 1 SMSS because, if the SYN was CE-marked, the SYN-ACK has no way to feed that back. If the initiator implements IW10, it seems rather over-conservative to reduce IW from 10 to 1 just in case a congestion marking was missed. Nonetheless, the reduction to 1 SMSS will rarely harm performance, because: as long as the initiator is caching failures to negotiate AccECN, subsequent attempts to access the same server will not use ECT on the SYN anyway, so there will no longer be any need to conservatively reduce IW; currently it is not common for a TCP initiator (client) to have more than one data segment to send {ToDo: evidence/reference?} - IW10 is primarily exploited by TCP servers. If a responder receives feedback that the SYN-ACK was CE-marked, mandates that it reduces its initial window to 1 SMSS. When the responder also implements IW10, it is particularly important to adhere to this requirement in order to avoid overflowing a queue that is clearly already congested.

TCP Fast Open (TFO ) is an experiment to remove the round trip delay of TCP's 3-way hand-shake (3WHS). A TFO initiator caches a cookie from a previous connection with a TFO-enabled server. Then, for subsequent connections to the same server, any data included on the SYN can be passed directly to the server application, which can then return up to an initial window of response data on the SYN-ACK and on data segments straight after it, without waiting for the ACK that completes the 3WHS. The TFO experiment and the present experiment to add ECN-support for TCP control packets can be combined without altering either specification, which is justified as follows: The handling of ECN marking on a SYN is no different whether or not it carries data. In response to any CE-marking on the SYN-ACK, the responder adopts the normal response to congestion, as discussed in Section 7.2 of .

Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP ) is a standards track transport protocol derived from TCP. SCTP currently does not include ECN support, but Appendix A of RFC 4960 broadly describes how it would be supported and a (long-expired) draft on the addition of ECN to SCTP has been produced . This draft avoided setting ECT on control packets and retransmissions, closely following the arguments in RFC 3168. QUIC is another standards track transport protocol offering similar services to TCP but intended to exploit some of the benefits of running over UDP. A way to add ECN support to QUIC has been proposed . Experience from experiments on adding ECN support to all TCP packets ought to be directly transferable to derivatives of TCP, like SCTP or QUIC.

considers the question of whether ECT on RSTs will allow RST attacks to be intensified. There are several security arguments presented in RFC 3168 for preventing the ECN marking of TCP control packets and retransmitted segments. We believe all of them have been properly addressed in , particularly and on DoS attacks using spoofed ECT-marked SYNs and spoofed CE-marked retransmissions.

There are no IANA considerations in this memo.

Thanks to Mirja Kühlewind, David Black, Padma Bhooma and Gorry Fairhurst for their useful reviews. The work of Marcelo Bagnulo has been performed in the framework of the H2020-ICT-2014-2 project 5G NORMA. His contribution reflects the consortium's view, but the consortium is not liable for any use that may be made of any of the information contained therein.