Hi all,
Not many people worldwide read this alias and understand
That RTO could be leveraged to fight “silent drops” in the DC environment.
It is a good use case to publish/document (with more details that it was in the 
presentation).
I hope that in the future OAM would be used for this purpose – it is better 
from architecture point of view.
Eduard
From: Jeff Tantsura [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 3, 2021 1:08 AM
To: Alexander Azimov <[email protected]>
Cc: Vasilenko Eduard <[email protected]>; Alexander Azimov 
<[email protected]>; routing WG <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Self-healing Networking with Flow Label

Eduard,

The idea of the draft to come is to explain what to do - when and how.
The goal is not to regulate (we really don’t) but to provide, similarly to 
RFC7938 a set of guidelines that community can use to build better and more 
resilient networks.

Cheers,
Jeff


On Aug 2, 2021, at 04:01, Alexander Azimov 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Eduard,

пн, 2 авг. 2021 г. в 13:45, Vasilenko Eduard 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>:
It is the key in this presentation “This behavior MUST be switched off by 
default”
It has been shown on slides 7-10 that flow label change on RTO is enabled by 
default for BSD and LINUX.
It needs regulation. It needs a standard RFC. Because it kills Anycast 
otherwise.
As I'm partially responsible for the key points of the presentation, I can 
stress that it is a bit different.

  *   We have an opportunity for self-healing TCP on top of IPv6, it should be 
preserved;
  *   The Linux defaults should be changed to a safe mode to prevent session 
timeouts;
  *   The hash recalculation behavior should be documented;
I'm not sure what you mean by the term 'regulation'.

The story of how to use RTO to work-around “silent drop” vendor’s bugs could be 
a good informational RFC.
My be people developing iOAM would pay more attention to this use case.

IMHO: these are 2 separate drafts.
I'm not sure about it, we'll try to provide -00 before the next IETF meeting, 
let's see how it progresses.

Eduard
From: Alexander Azimov 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
Sent: Monday, August 2, 2021 1:20 PM
To: Vasilenko Eduard 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; Jeff 
Tantsura <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: routing WG <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: Self-healing Networking with Flow Label

Eduard,

Please see the quote from the slide 28. My suggestion was:

Client – sends SYN, Server – responds with SYN&ACK

  *   In case of SYN_RTO or RTO events Server SHOULD recalculate its TCP socket 
hash, thus change Flow Label. This behavior MAY be switched on by default;
  *   In case of SYN_RTO or RTO events Client MAY recalculate its TCP socket 
hash, thus change Flow Label. This behavior MUST be switched off by default;
This looks like a safe default behavior, that saves the part of the 
improvements, but makes the work with stateful anycast services safe.

And yes, IMO it's ok to have a knob to enable it in the controlled environment. 
If you ask how to enable it in the presence of internal anycast services - 
there was also a suggestion in the slides: eBPF. It gives a good way to make 
this kind of separation.

02.08.2021, 11:48, "Vasilenko Eduard" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>:

Hi Jeff,

The situation when Control Plane does not understand what the Forwarding pane 
doing is a bug.

Yes, RTO in TCP helps to find a work-around for this bug. And yes, Anycast is 
typically absent inside DC – it does not create the problem in the DC 
environment.



But the same LINUX is used outside DC. RTO Flow Label change here would create 
even more problems if Anycast would happen on the traffic path (not much 
predictable for client).

Do we need separate LINUX distribution for DC and separate distribution for 
other environments?

Or should we rely on the proper non-default configuration for different 
environments? (Admin should not forget to change)

What if Anycast would become needed in DC?



RTO flow label recalculation is mutually exclusive with Anycast on the traffic 
part.

What is more valuable for the public?



IMHO: It is better to fight the problem of such type of a bug with iOAM than to 
cancel Anycast.



IMHO: It is better to have Flow Label recalculation on RTO as “off” by default.

DC Admin has the higher qualification to activate it in a controlled 
environment than every client worldwide that should not forget to disable it.



Eduard

From: Jeff Tantsura [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 2, 2021 6:56 AM
To: Vasilenko Eduard 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; routing WG 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: Self-healing Networking with Flow Label



Eduard,



The issue is present not in link/device case, if well implemented - fast rehash 
takes care of updating forwarding within a number of ms. The problem is with  
“gray” failures,  when the link in question is UP from routing/forwarding 
prospective but drops traffic (mostly occasionally and when a HW bug occurs has 
a distinct flow attributes).



In many large DC fabrics, the majority of the traffic is east-west, between 
end-points that aren’t anycast. In such deployments - the solution solves  
issues rather elegantly and without any interventions from the operator.

The issues/side effects are well understood and will be documented.



The best way to receive RTGWG emails is well… to subscribe to RTGWG ;-)

Cheers,

Jeff



On Aug 1, 2021, at 09:47, Vasilenko Eduard 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:



Hi  Alexander,



Have I understood your presentation right?

The client SHOULD change IPv6 flow label after SYN RTO to have a chance to be 
moved to the working path inside DC fabric (if DC fabric supports flow label 
for hash calculation)

But at the same time

The client SHOULD NOT change the IPv6 flow label after SYN RTO to avoid being 
switched to a different TCP proxy engine.



Looks like a deadlock, especially if both things should happen for the same 
traffic:

it should reach DC fabric

and

it should be hash load-balanced between different TCP proxy engines (or 
applications) inside DC Fabric.



I see one bad solution (“Disable Flow Label”):

Routers up to TCP proxy engine SHOULD be configured not to use flow label (by 
the way these are all routers on the Internet),

TCP flow engines SHOULD be outside of the DC Fabric (CLOS) – probably in front 
of it.

Routers/Switches inside DC Fabric SHOULD use flow labels.



I see another bad solution (“Disable Anycast”):

Disable anycast on routers in principle, use only stateful LB.





It has been commented in the chat that Anycast is not possible in principle for 
stateful connection. It is too general a statement.

Anycast is just not compatible with Flow Label. It is not a problem for IPv4 
anycast even if the connection is stateful (TCP) because 5-tuple for hash would 
not change.

Hence, IPv6 anycast has become dead at the time when Flow Label change has been 
added in LINUX for active TCP session.



Among 3 thins:

-          Anycast

-          Flow Label load balancing (basic Flow Label functionality)

-          Flow Label change on the active session for application to be more 
active in new path search

You have to choose which one to kill – all 3 are not compatible with each other 
at the same.

I vote to disable Flow Label change in LINUX. Then wait till the network would 
fix itself.

We have so many fancy TE tools our days. A broken link or a broken node could 
be excluded from routing for 50ms.



PS: I am not subscribed to the RTGWG alias, please keep me on a copy of this 
thread.

<image001.png>

Best Regards

Eduard Vasilenko

Senior Architect

Europe Standardization & Industry Development Department

Tel: +7(985) 910-1105, +7(916) 800-5506



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Best regards,
Alexander Azimov

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