Benchmarking Working Group                             Gabor Feher, BUTE 
INTERNET-DRAFT                                     Istvan Cselenyi, TRAB 
Expiration Date: May 2003                              Andras Korn, BUTE 
                                                                         
                                                           November 2002 
 
  Benchmarking Terminology for Routers Supporting Resource Reservation 
                 <draft-ietf-bmwg-benchres-term-02.txt> 
    
1. Status of this Memo 
    
   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with 
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. 
    
   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other 
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   Drafts. 
    
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   time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 
    
   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 
   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt 
    
   The list of Internet-Draft shadow directories can be accessed at 
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   This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo 
   does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of 
   this memo is unlimited. 
    
2. Table of contents 
    
   1. Status of this Memo.............................................1 
   2. Table of contents...............................................1 
   3. Abstract........................................................2 
   4. Introduction....................................................2 
   5. Existing definitions............................................3 
   6. Definition of Terms.............................................3 
      6.1 Resource Reservation Protocol Basics........................3 
         6.1.1 Unicast Resource Reservation Session...................3 
         6.1.2 Multicast Resource Reservation Session.................4 
         6.1.3 Resource Reservation Capable Router....................4 
         6.1.4 Signaling End-point....................................5 
         6.1.5 Reservation Orientation................................5 
         6.1.6 Reservation Session State..............................6 
         6.1.7 Signaling Path.........................................7 
      6.2 Traffic Types...............................................8 
         6.2.1 Best-Effort Data Packets...............................8 
 
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         6.2.2 Premium Data Packets...................................8 
      6.3 Router Load Types...........................................9 
         6.3.1 Traffic Load...........................................9 
         6.3.2 Session Load...........................................9 
         6.3.3 Signaling Load........................................10 
         6.3.4 Signaling Burst.......................................11 
      6.4 Performance Metrics........................................11 
         6.4.1 Signaling Message Handling Time.......................11 
         6.4.2 Premium Traffic Delay.................................12 
         6.4.3 Best-effort Traffic Delay.............................12 
         6.4.4 Signaling Message Loss................................13 
         6.4.5 Session Refreshing Capacity...........................13 
         6.4.6 Scalability Limit.....................................14 
   7. Security Considerations........................................14 
   8. Acknowledgement................................................15 
   9. References.....................................................15 
   10. Authors' Addresses............................................16 
    
3. Abstract 
    
   The purpose of this document is to define terminology specific to the 
   benchmarking of the resource reservation signaling of IP routers. 
   These terms can be used in additional documents that define 
   benchmarking methodologies for routers supporting resource 
   reservation and define reporting formats for the benchmarking 
   measurements. 
    
4. Introduction 
    
   The IntServ over DiffServ framework [1] outlines a heterogeneous 
   Quality of Service (QoS) architecture for multi domain Internet 
   services. Signaling based resource reservation (e.g. via RSVP [2]) is 
   an integral part of that model. While this approach significantly 
   lightens the load on most of the core routers, the performance of 
   border routers that handle QoS signaling is still crucial. Therefore 
   network operators, who are planning to deploy this model, shall 
   scrutinize the scalability limitations of reservation capable routers 
   and the impact of signaling on the forwarding performance of the 
   routers. 
    
   An objective way for quantifying the scalability constraints of QoS 
   signaling is to perform measurements on routers that are capable of 
   resource reservation. This document defines terminology for specific 
   set of tests that vendors or network operators can use to measure and 
   report the signaling performance characteristics of router devices 
   that support resource reservation protocols. The results of these 
   tests provide comparable data for different products supporting the 
   decision process before purchase. Moreover, these measurements 
   provide input characteristics for the dimensioning of a network in 
   which resources are provisioned dynamically by signaling. Finally, 
   the tests are applicable for characterizing the impact of the 
   resource reservation signaling on the forwarding performance of the 
   routers. 
 
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   This benchmarking terminology document is based on the knowledge 
   gained by examination of (and experimentation with) several very 
   different resource reservation protocols: RSVP [2], Boomerang [5], 
   YESSIR [6], ST2+ [7], SDP [8] and Ticket [9]. Nevertheless, this 
   document defines terms that are valid in general and not restricted 
   to these protocols. 
    
5. Existing definitions 
    
   RFC 1242 [3] "Benchmarking Terminology for Network Interconnect 
   Devices" and RFC 2285 [4] "Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching 
   Devices" contains discussions and definitions for a number of terms 
   relevant to the benchmarking of signaling performance of reservation 
   capable routers and should be consulted before attempting to make use 
   of this document. 
    
   For the sake of clarity and continuity this document adopts the 
   template for definitions set out in Section 2 of RFC 1242. 
   Definitions are indexed and grouped together into different sections 
   for ease of reference. 
    
6. Definition of Terms 
    
6.1 Resource Reservation Protocol Basics 
    
   This group of definitions applies to various signaling based resource 
   reservation protocols implemented on IP router devices. 
    
6.1.1 Unicast Resource Reservation Session 
    
   Definition: 
      The term unicast resource reservation session (or shortly 
      reservation session) expresses that two end-nodes explicitly 
      request the network nodes, which forward their data flow, to 
      assign special QoS treatment for data packets belonging to the 
      flow. 
    
   Discussion: 
      The QoS treatment is defined by specifying the amount of 
      networking resources that should be dedicated to the data flow 
      during the length of the reservation session. There are different 
      approaches, how to specify the network resource requirement of a 
      data flow. It can be described by high-level parameters, like the 
      required bandwidth or the maximum data delay; or it can be low-
      level information, such as the parameters of a leaky-bucket model 
      describing the data flow [10]. 
       
      Reservation sessions must be uniquely registered in network nodes 
      assuring the QoS treatments. Practically, the transport address of 
      the destination end-node and the transport protocol of the 
      communication are sufficient to distinguish the reservations, 

 
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      however in extreme cases the transport address of the source 
      should be included as well. 
       
   See Also: 
      Reservation Session State 
    
6.1.2 Multicast Resource Reservation Session 
    
   Definition: 
      A multicast resource reservation session (or, in short, multicast 
      reservation session) denotes that end-nodes forming a multicast 
      group ask the network nodes, which forward the data packets of the 
      multicast group, to assign a certain QoS treatment to their data 
      traffic.  
    
   Discussion: 
      In a multicast group there can be several data traffic sources and 
      destinations. The required QoS treatment is specified the same way 
      as in the case of the unicast resource reservation sessions. In 
      the case of multicast reservations, however, unlike in the case of 
      unicast reservations, the amount of reserved network resources 
      does not have to be the same on each network node forwarding the 
      multicast data traffic. Multicast reservations must be registered 
      in network nodes forwarding the associated data traffic similarly 
      as it happens in the unicast case. 
       
      Generally, there are two types of multicast resource reservations: 
      many-to-many and one-to-many. Those of the first type allow 
      multicast data traffic to be originated from several sources, 
      while those of the second type permit only one fix data traffic 
      source in the whole multicast group that must not change during 
      the lifetime of the session. 
       
6.1.3 Resource Reservation Capable Router 
    
   Definition: 
      A router is resource reservation capable -- supports resource 
      reservation -- if it understands a resource reservation protocol 
      that signals the set-up, tear-down and modification of resource 
      reservation sessions. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Resource reservation protocols define signaling messages that are 
      interpreted by resource reservation capable routers. The router 
      captures the signaling message and manipulates the resource 
      reservation sessions and/or the reserved network resources 
      according to the content of the message. 
       
   Issues: 
      Despite that resource reservation sessions are considered to be 
      unique, resource reservation capable routers might aggregate them 
      and allocate network resources to these aggregated sessions at 
      once. The aggregation can be based on similar flow attributes 
 
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      (e.g. aggregation using DiffServ code-points [11]) or it can 
      combine arbitrary sessions as well. While reservation aggregation 
      significantly lightens the signaling processing task of a resource 
      reservation capable router, it also requires the administration of 
      the aggregated flows and might also lead to the violation of the 
      quality guaranties of individual reservations within an 
      aggregation. 
       
6.1.4 Signaling End-point 
    
   Definition: 
      A signaling end-point is a network node capable of initiating and 
      terminating resource reservation sessions. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Besides traditional end-systems, there is also another type of 
      signaling end-point: the reservation gateways. Reservation 
      gateways translate the signaling messages of one resource 
      reservation protocol into messages of another resource reservation 
      protocol. Thus the reservation gateway represents two signaling 
      end-points in one, as it is both a signaling terminator and a 
      signaling initiator. 
    
   Issues: 
      Typically, signaling end-points have a dedicated protocol stack, 
      which interprets and generates the signaling messages. However, in 
      some special cases, the resource reservation initiation is carried 
      out without the notice of the signaling terminating node. For 
      example, the Boomerang resource reservation protocol encapsulates 
      the reservation requests in an ICMP Echo message. This message is 
      bounced back from the signaling terminating network node ("Far-End 
      Node") and as a result the node becomes a signaling end-point 
      without understanding the reservation protocol. 
       
6.1.5 Reservation Orientation 
    
   Definition: 
      The reservation orientation tells which signaling end-point(s) 
      initiates the network resources allocation to obtain special QoS 
      treatment for the data traffic of the reservation session. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Resource reservation protocols can be classified into two groups 
      depending on the relationship between the reservation initiators 
      and their role in the data traffic flow. First, there are sender-
      oriented protocols, where the source(s) of the reservation 
      sessionÆs data traffic initiates the network resource allocation 
      message. Second, in the case of the receiver-oriented protocols, 
      the receiver(s) of the reservation sessionÆs data traffic 
      initiates the resource allocation messages. Due to the asymmetric 
      routing nature of the Internet, in the latter case, the 
      receiver(s) should know the route(s) of the desired data traffic 
      before it would be able to send the resource allocation 
 
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      message(s). For this reason, even in the second case, the first 
      signaling message(s) establishing the reservation session comes 
      from the source(s) of the data traffic marking the route(s) on 
      which the resource allocation message(s) might travel backward. 
       
   Issues: 
      The orientation of the reservation initiator affects the basics of 
      the resource reservation protocols and therefore it is an 
      important design decision. In the case of multicast reservation 
      sessions, the sender-oriented protocols require the traffic 
      sources to maintain a list of receivers and send their allocation 
      messages considering the requirements of the receivers. A less 
      polite, but less demanding solution is when the sources ignore the 
      QoS requirements of the receivers and send the allocation requests 
      at will. Using multicast reservation sessions, the receiver-
      oriented protocols give the chance to the receivers to place their 
      own resource allocation requests and thus ease the task of the 
      sources. However, in this case the resource allocations must be 
      preceded by the marking of the data routes of the reservation 
      session (c.f. RSVP PATH message [2]). In case of large multicast 
      groups, enabling the receivers to specify their QoS requirements, 
      the receiver-oriented approach seems to be a better choice, 
      however in other cases the sender-oriented protocols promise less 
      complexity. 
       
6.1.6 Reservation Session State 
    
   Definition: 
      A reservation session state is a holder for all the relevant 
      information about the corresponding reservation session registered 
      in the resource reservation capable router. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Resource reservation capable routers maintain reservation session 
      states to store information about the reservation session. This 
      information might include the QoS treatment that the reservation 
      session requires; the description of how and where to forward the 
      incoming signaling messages; policies regarding the QoS treatment 
      or the reservation session; timing information about the 
      reservation session; etc. 
       
      Based on how reservation session states are stored in a 
      reservation capable router, the routers can be categorized into 
      three classes: 
       
      Hard-state resource reservation capable routers (e.g. ST2 capable 
      routers [7]) store the reservation session states permanently, 
      established by a set-up signaling primitive, until a corresponding 
      tear-down signaling primitive arrives or until the router is 
      informed that the reservation session canceled. 
       
      There are also soft-state resource reservation capable routers, 
      where there are no permanent reservation session states, but each 
 
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      state have to be regularly refreshed by appropriate refresh 
      signaling messages. If no refresh signaling message arrives during 
      a certain period then the router cancels the reservation session 
      assuming that the signaling end-points do not intend to keep up 
      the reservation session any longer or the communication lines are 
      broken somewhere along the data path. This feature makes soft-
      state resource reservation capable routers more robust than hard-
      state routers, since no failures can cause permanent resource 
      stuck in the routers. 
       
      Finally, there are stateless resource reservation capable routers 
      storing no information about the individual reservation sessions. 
      Without reservation session states the resource reservation 
      capabilities of such routers are limited, e.g. there is no support 
      for many-to-many multicast resource reservation sessions; and the 
      reservation session must be sender oriented. 
       
   Issues: 
      Although soft-state reservation capable routers are more robust 
      than hard-state ones, the frequent processing of refresh signaling 
      messages or the detection of the missing reservation session state 
      refreshes might cause serious increase in the router load, which 
      can be a base of the scalability problems. In order to decrease 
      the number of refresh signaling messages, the resource reservation 
      capable router might support various mechanisms to pack several 
      refresh signaling messages into one larger message. 
       
6.1.7 Signaling Path 
    
   Definition: 
      A signaling path is a sequence of network nodes and links along 
      which signaling messages travel from one signaling end-point to 
      the other. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Resource reservation capable routers must assure that all other 
      router, which is responsible for handling the actual signaling 
      message, really receives that message. Therefore, routers forward 
      the signaling messages along the signaling path and each router, 
      affected by the message, processes it. 
       
      Usually signaling messages are immediately forwarded by resource 
      reservation capable routers towards the destination(s), spreading 
      the information as fast as possible. However, there might be 
      protocol messages that do not affect all the routers along the 
      signaling path, but only a subset of it (e.g. refresh messages in 
      RSVP). These kinds of signaling messages are terminated by routers 
      when they are not necessary anymore. 
       
   Issues: 
      Resource reservation capable routers must be prepared that there 
      are other routers along the signaling path unable to interpret the 
      actual resource reservation protocol. Even in this case the 
 
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      signaling messages must be delivered to all corresponding resource 
      reservation capable routers (usually using some kind of 
      tunneling). 
       
6.2 Traffic Types 
    
   This group of definitions defines traffic types forwarded by resource 
   reservation capable routers. 
    
6.2.1 Best-Effort Data Packets 
    
   Definition: 
      Best-effort data packet is a packet that has no associated 
      resource reservation session in the routers and thus it is served 
      in the "default" way. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Data packets that do not require QoS guarantees along their path 
      are considered to be best-effort packets. "Best-effort" means that 
      the router makes its best effort to forward the data packet 
      quickly and safely, but does not guarantee anything (e.g. delay or 
      loss probability). This type of traffic is the most common type in 
      today's Internet. (There may be scenarios where resource 
      reservation is done even for best-effort traffic too, but those 
      are outside of the focus of this memo.) We will refer to the 
      traffic of the best-effort data packets shortly as best-effort 
      traffic. 
    
6.2.2 Premium Data Packets 
    
   Definition: 
      Premium data packets are the packets that the resource reservation 
      capable router distinguishes from best-effort packets and forwards 
      them according to a QoS agreement. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Data packets that correspond to a resource reservation session in 
      the router are premium data packets. The QoS treatment is defined 
      in the associated resource reservation state (e.g. flow 
      descriptor) that is established by signaling messages during the 
      reservation session setup. 
       
      The router may distinguish several types of premium. Data packets 
      belonging to different types of premium traffic may receive 
      different QoS treatment. We will refer to the traffic of the 
      premium data packets shortly as premium traffic. 
       
   Issues: 
      The router has to identify every packet whether it belongs to any 
      resource reservation session or not. This can be done by either 
      multi-field classification [11] using the IP 5-tuple or the ToS 
      field in the header of the IP packet. However, if a packet has an 
      associated resource reservation session in the router, then the 
 
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      corresponding resource reservation states describing the QoS 
      treatment has to be looked up. This look up procedure might be 
      quite time consuming in routers with vast amounts of resource 
      reservation sessions. 
    
6.3 Router Load Types 
    
   This group of definitions describes different load component types 
   that impact only a specific part of the resource reservation capable 
   router. Categorizing the router load is crucial, since the 
   conventional router load metric expressing the processing power 
   utilization of the router does not characterize precisely enough a 
   the resource reservation capable router. In the case of routers 
   supporting resource reservations it is also important to know the 
   source of the processing power utilization. 
    
6.3.1 Traffic Load 
    
   Definition: 
      Usually traffic load means the load that is raised by the data 
      traffic forwarding task of the router. However, we define the 
      traffic load as the volume of the input data traffic that causes 
      the router to be loaded. 
    
   Discussion: 
      It is obvious that forwarding the data packets, which requires 
      obtaining the routing information and transferring the data packet 
      between network interfaces, requires processing power. In general 
      router benchmarking measurements only this type of load is 
      considered as the source of the processing power utilization. 
      Although the traffic load is the dominant load component, 
      benchmarking routers supporting resource reservations must 
      consider other load components also in line with the resource 
      reservation handling. 
    
   Measurement unit: 
      The amount of the traffic load is represented by the volume of the 
      data traffic. The volume is measured by the transferred bits 
      during a second, i.e. the measurement unit is bit per seconds 
      (bps). 
    
6.3.2 Session Load 
    
   Definition: 
      Similar to the traffic load, we define the session load as the 
      number of reservation sessions in the router. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Each resource reservation capable router that employs a packet 
      classifier algorithm distinguishing the flows referring to 
      reservation sessions maintains resource reservation session states 
      keeping track of the resource reservation dedication. Obviously, 
      the more reservation session states are set up on the router, the 
 
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      more complex the traffic classification becomes, and the longer 
      time it takes to look up the corresponding resource reservation 
      session sate. 
       
      Moreover, in most protocols, not only the traffic flows, but also 
      the signaling messages that manipulate resource reservation 
      sessions on the router have to identify themselves first, before 
      taking any other actions. This kind of classification also gives 
      extra work to the router. 
       
   Issues: 
      In the case of soft-state resource reservation capable routers, 
      the session load also affects reservation session maintenance. The 
      maintenance of timers that watchdog the reservation session 
      refreshes and the refresh signaling messages may cause severe load 
      on the router. Based on the initiating point of the refresh 
      messages, resource reservation protocols can be divided into two 
      groups. First, there are protocols where it is the responsibility 
      of the signaling end-points to initiate refresh messages and these 
      messages are forwarded along the whole signaling path refreshing 
      the corresponding resource reservation session. Second, there are 
      other protocols, where the reservation session refresh happens 
      only between the two peering network nodes of the signaling path. 
      In this latter case, the routers and signaling end-points have 
      their own schedule for the refresh message initiation. The first 
      approach lightens the load of the session maintenance task; 
      however, the second approach bears the ability to adjust the 
      signaling intensity along the signaling path. 
       
   Measurement unit: 
      The session load is measured by the number of reservation sessions 
      in the router. 
       
6.3.3 Signaling Load 
    
   Definition: 
      Similarly to the previous load types, the signaling load is 
      determined by the incoming signaling message intensity. 
       
   Discussion: 
      The processing of signaling messages requires processor power that 
      raises the load on the control plane of the router. In routers 
      where the control plane and the data plane are not totally 
      independent (e.g. certain parts of the tasks are served by the 
      same processor; or the architecture has common memory buffers or 
      transfer buses) the signaling load can have an impact on the 
      router's packet forwarding performance as well. 
       
      Most of the resource reservation protocols have several protocol 
      primitives realized by different signaling message types. Each of 
      these message types may require a different amount of processing 
      power from the router. 
       
 
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   Measurement unit: 
      The signaling load is characterized by the signaling intensity, 
      which expresses how many signaling messages arrive to the router 
      within a second. Thus the unit of the signaling intensity is 
      [1/s]. 
       
6.3.4 Signaling Burst 
       
   Definition: 
      The signaling burst denotes a certain number of signaling messages 
      that arrive to the input port(s) of the router back-to-back, 
      causing persistent load on the signaling message handler. 
       
   Discussion: 
      Back-to-back signaling messages on one port of the router form a 
      typical signaling burst. However, other cases are imaginable, for 
      example when signaling messages arrive on different ports 
      simultaneously or with an overlap in time (i.e. when the tail of 
      one signaling message is behind the head of another one arriving 
      on another port). 
    
   Measurement unit: 
      The signaling burst is characterized by its length, which is the 
      number of messages that have arrived within the burst. 
    
6.4 Performance Metrics 
    
   This group of definitions is the collection of the measurable impacts 
   that a resource reservation protocol has over the tested router 
   device it is running on. 
    
6.4.1 Signaling Message Handling Time 
    
   Definition: 
      The signaling message handling time (or, in short, signal handling 
      time) is the time that a signaling message spends inside the 
      router before it is forwarded to the next node on the signaling 
      path. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Depending on the type of the signaling message, the router also 
      interprets the signaling messages, acts on them and usually 
      forwards a modified signaling message. Thus the message handling 
      time is usually longer than forwarding time of data packets of the 
      same size. In addition, there might be also signaling message 
      primitives that are drained or generated by the router. Thus, the 
      signal handling time is defined as the time difference between the 
      time when a signaling message is received and the time the 
      corresponding processed signaling message is transmitted. If a 
      signaling message is not forwarded on the router (see Signaling 
      Path), the signal handling time is immeasurable; therefore it is 
      not defined for such messages. 
       
 
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      In the case of signaling messages that carry information 
      pertaining to multicast flows, the router might issue multiple 
      signaling messages after processing. In this case, by definition, 
      the signal handling time is the time interval elapsed between the 
      arrival of the incoming signaling message and the departure of the 
      last signaling message related to the received one. 
       
      This metric depends on the load on the router, as other tasks may 
      limit the processing power available to signaling message 
      handling. In addition to the router load, the signal handling time 
      may also be dependent on the type of the signaling message. For 
      example, it usually takes a shorter time for the router to tear 
      down a resource reservation session than to set it up. 
       
      The signal handling time is an important characteristic as it 
      directly affects the setup time of a session. 
       
   Measurement unit: 
      The unit of the signaling message handling time is the second. 
    
6.4.2 Premium Traffic Delay 
    
   Definition: 
      Premium traffic delay is the forwarding time of a premium data 
      packet passing through a resource reservation capable router. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Premium traffic packets must be classified first in order to 
      assign the network resources dedicated to the flow. The time of 
      the classification is added to the usual forwarding time 
      (including the queuing) that a router would spend on the packet 
      without any resource reservation capability. 
       
      There are routers where the processing power is shared between the 
      control plane and the data plane. This means that the processing 
      of signaling messages may have an impact on the data forwarding 
      performance of the router. In this case the premium traffic delay 
      metric reflects the influence the two planes have on each other. 
    
   Measurement unit: 
      The unit of the premium traffic delay is the second. 
    
6.4.3 Best-effort Traffic Delay 
    
   Definition: 
      Best-effort traffic delay is the forwarding time of a best-effort 
      packet passing through a resource reservation capable router. 
    
   Discussion: 
      Marking the premium traffic packets also marks the best-effort 
      traffic packets via the lack of marking. In this case the 
      detection of the best-effort packets is straightforward, so the 
      classification algorithms do not have any influence on the best-
 
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      effort traffic. However, the processing power sharing between the 
      control and data plane might still cause delays in the forwarding 
      procedure of each packet. 
    
   Measurement unit: 
      The unit of the best-effort traffic delay is the second. 
    
6.4.4 Signaling Message Loss 
    
   Definition: 
      Signaling message loss is the ratio of the actual and the expected 
      number of signaling messages leaving a resource reservation 
      capable router subtracted from one. 
       
   Discussion: 
      There are certain types of signaling messages required to be 
      forwarded by the resource reservation capable router immediately 
      when their processing is finished. However, due to the high router 
      load or for other reasons, the forwarding or even the processing 
      of these signaling messages might be canceled. To characterize 
      such situations we introduce the signaling message loss metric 
      expressing the ratio of the signaling messages that actually have 
      left the router and those ones that were expected to leave the 
      router as a result of the incoming sequence of signaling messages. 
       
      Since the most frequent reason for the signaling message loss is 
      the high router load, therefore this metric is suitable for 
      sounding out the scalability limits of resource reservation 
      capable routers. 
       
   Issues: 
      Sometimes it may be hard to determine whether a signaling message 
      is still in the queues of the router or whether it has already 
      been dropped. For this reason we define that a signaling message 
      is lost if there is no appearing forwarded signaling message 
      within a reasonable long time period. This time period should be 
      adjusted to the actual resource reservation protocol and might 
      also depend on the type of the message, too. For example, in the 
      case of soft-state resource reservation capable routers the 
      measurer may wait as much as the refresh period to detect the loss 
      of a signaling message. 
       
   Measurement unit: 
      This measure has no unit; it is expressed by a real number, which 
      is between zero and one (including the limits). 
    
6.4.5 Session Refreshing Capacity 
    
   Definition: 
      The session refreshing capacity metric is applied for soft-state 
      resource reservation capable routers only and tells the ratio of 
      the truly refreshed reservation sessions and the number of 
      sessions that should be refreshed during one refresh period. 
 
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   Discussion: 
      When a soft-state resource reservation capable router is 
      overloaded, it may happen that the router is not able to refresh 
      all the registered reservation sessions having no time to run the 
      session refresh task. In this case sooner or later the resource 
      reservation sessions over the session refresh capacity are dropped 
      even if the resource reservation end-points are still refreshing 
      them. 
       
      The session refreshing capacity sounds out the limit of the 
      resource reservation session number that the router is capable to 
      maintain. 
    
   Measurement unit: 
      This measure has no unit; it is expressed by a real number, which 
      is between zero and one (including the limits). 
    
6.4.6 Scalability Limit 
    
   Definition: 
      The scalability limit is the threshold between the steady state 
      and the overloaded state of the device under test. 
    
   Discussion: 
      All existing routers have finite buffer memory and finite 
      processing power. In the steady state of the router, the buffer 
      memories are not fully utilized and the processing power is enough 
      to cope with all tasks running on the router. As the router load 
      increases the router has to postpone more and more tasks. These 
      tasks (e.g. forwarding certain packets) are queued in the buffers, 
      and processed later. However, there is a certain point where no 
      more buffer memory is available or a task cannot be postponed any 
      longer; thus, the router is forced to drop the packet or the 
      activity. This way the overloaded state of the resource 
      reservation capable router can be recognized by the fact that some 
      kind of data (signaling or packet) or task (e.g. refreshing) loss 
      occurs. 
       
      The critical load condition when the router is still in the steady 
      state but the smallest amount of constant load increase would 
      drive it to the overloaded state is the scalability limit of the 
      router. 
    
7. Security Considerations 
    
   As this document is solely for providing terminology and describes 
   neither a protocol nor an implementation, there are no security 
   considerations associated with this document. 
    



 
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8. Acknowledgement 
    
   We would like to thank the following individuals for their help in 
   forming this document: Joakim Bergkvist and Norbert Vegh from Telia 
   Research AB, Sweden, Krisztian Nemeth, Balazs Szabo, Gabor Kovacs and 
   Peter Vary from the High Speed Networks Laboratory, Budapest 
   University of Technology and Economics, Hungary. 
    
9. References 
    
   [1]  Y. Bernet, et. al., "A Framework for Integrated Services 
        Operation over Diffserv Networks", RFC 2998, November 2000 

   [2]  B. Braden, Ed., et. al., "Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) - 
        Version 1 Functional Specification", RFC 2205, September 1997. 

   [3]  S. Bradner, "Benchmarking Terminology for Network 
        Interconnection Devices", RFC 1242, July 1991 

   [4]  R. Mandeville, "Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching 
        Devices", RFC 2285, February 1998 

   [5]  G. Feher, K. Nemeth, M. Maliosz, "Boomerang : A Simple Protocol 
        for Resource Reservation in IP Networks," Vancouver, IEEE Real-
        Time Technology and Applications Symposium, June 1999 

   [6]  P. Pan, H. Schulzrinne, "YESSIR: A Simple Reservation Mechanism 
        for the Internet", Computer Communication Review, on-line 
        version, volume 29, number 2, April 1999 

   [7]  L. Delgrossi, L. Berger, "Internet Stream Protocol Version 2 
        (ST2) Protocol Specification - Version ST2+", RFC 1819, August 
        1995 

   [8]  P. White, J. Crowcroft, "A Case for Dynamic Sender-Initiated 
        Reservation in the Internet", Journal on High Speed Networks, 
        Special Issue on QoS Routing and Signaling, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1998 

   [9]  A. Eriksson, C. Gehrmann, "Robust and Secure Light-weight 
        Resource Reservation for Unicast IP Traffic", International WS 
        on QoS'98, IWQoS'98, May 18-20, 1998 

   [10] J. Wroclawski, "The Use of RSVP with IETF Integrated Services", 
        RFC 2210, September 1997 

   [11] K. Nichols et al., "Definition of the Differentiated Services 
        Field (DS Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474 

   [12] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) 
        Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998 

   [13] Postel, J., Editor, "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, 
        September 1981 
 
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10. Authors' Addresses 
    
   Gabor Feher 
   Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE) 
   Department of Telecommunications and Telematics 
   Magyar Tudosok krt. 2, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary 
   Phone: +36 1 463-1538 
   Email: feher@ttt-atm.ttt.bme.hu 
    
   Istvan Cselenyi 
   Telia Research AB 
   Vitsandsgatan 9B 
   SE 12386, Farsta 
   SWEDEN, 
   Phone: +46 8 713-8173 
   Email: istvan.i.cselenyi@telia.se 
    
   Andras Korn 
   Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE) 
   Institute of Mathematics, Department of Analysis 
   Egry Jozsef u. 2, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary 
   Phone: +36 1 463-2475 
   Email: korn@math.bme.hu 
 





























 
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