Internet-Draft title November 2021
Hardaker Expires 13 May 2022 [Page]
Workgroup:
Network Working Group
Internet-Draft:
draft-hardaker-iab-mnqeu-report-01
Published:
Intended Status:
Informational
Expires:
Author:
W. Hardaker
USC/ISI

IAB workshop report: Measuring Network Quality for End-Users

Abstract

The Measuring Network Quality for End-Users workshop was held virtually by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in September, 2021. This workshop summarizes the workshop, the topics discussed and some preliminary conclusions drawn at the end of the workshop.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on 13 May 2022.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) holds occasional workshops designed to consider long-term issues and strategies for the Internet, and to suggest future directions for the Internet architecture. This long-term planning function of the IAB is complementary to the ongoing engineering efforts performed by working groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The Measuring Network Quality for End-Users workshop was held virtually by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in September, 2021. This workshop summarizes the workshop, the topics discussed and some preliminary conclusions drawn at the end of the workshop.

1.1. Problem space

The Internet in 2021 is quite different from what it was 10 years ago. Today, it is a crucial part of everyone's daily life. People use the Internet for their social life, for their daily jobs, for routine shopping, and for keeping up with major events. An increasing number of people can access a Gigabit connection, which would be hard to imagine a decade ago. And, thanks to improvements in security, people trust the Internet for both planning their finances and for everyday payments.

At the same time, some aspects of end-user experience have not improved as much. Many users have typical connection latency that remains at decade-old levels. Despite significant reliability improvements in data center environments, end users often see interruptions in service. Despite algorithmic advances in the field of control theory, one can often find that the queuing delay in the last-mile equipment exceeds the accumulted transit delay. Transport improvements, such as QUIC, Multipath TCP, and TCP Fast Open are still not fully supported in some networks. Likewise, various advances in the security and privacy of user data are not widely supported, such as encrypted DNS to the local resolver.

Some of the major factors behind this lack of progress is the popular perception that throughput is the often sole measure of the quality of Internet connectivity. With such narrow focus, the workshop aimed to discuss various questions:

  • What is the latency under typical working conditions?
  • How reliable is the connectivity across longer time periods?
  • Does the network allow the use of a broad range of protocols?
  • What services can be run by clients of the network?
  • What kind of IPv4, NAT or IPv6 connectivity is offered, and are there firewalls?
  • What security mechanisms are available for local services, such as DNS?
  • To what degree are the privacy, confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of user communications guarded?
  • Improving these aspects of network quality will likely depend on measurement and exposing metrics to all involved parties, including to end users in a meaningful way. Such measurements and exposure of the right metrics will allow service providers and network operators to focus on the aspects that impacts the users' experience most and at the same time empowers users to choose the Internet service that will give them the best experience.
  • What are the fundamental properties of a network that contribute to good user experience?
  • What metrics quantify these properties, and how to collect such metrics in a practical way?
  • What are the best practices for interpreting those metrics, and incorporating those in a decision making process?
  • What are the best ways to communicate these properties to service providers and network operators?
  • How can these metrics be displayed to users in a meaningful way?

2. Workshop Agenda

The Measuring Network Quality for End-Users for divided into the following main topic areas:

3. Position Papers

4. Discussions

The three day workshop was broken into four separate sections, including introductory material and conclusions, that each played a role in framing the discussions.

4.1. Introduction

The Introduction section allowed participants to introduce and discuss the problem space, existing mechanisms for QoS and QoE measurements. Also discussed was the interaction between multiple users within the Network, as well as the interaction between multiple layers of the OSI stack. Some existing measurement works were presented. Vint Cerf provided a key note support describing the history and importance of the topic.

4.2. Metrics

The Metrics section of the workshop concentrated on both defining new and existing measures and how they might apply to different sections of the Internet. The need for improvements to latency and its measurements was heavily discussed, especially for certain classes of users such as live, collaborative content and gaming.

4.3. Cross-layer considerations

In the Cross-layer section participants present material and discussed how accurately measuring exactly where problems occur is difficult when many components of a network connection can affect the measurement. Discussion centered especially on the differences between physically wired and wireless connections and the difficulties of accurately determining problem spots when multiple different network types are responsible the quality.

4.4. Synthesis

Finally, in the Synthesis section presentations and discussions concentrated on the next steps likely needed to make forward progress. Of particular concern is how to bring forward measurements that can make sense to end users trying to make subscription decisions.

5. Conclusions

During the final hour of the workshop we gathered statements that group thought were summary statements from the 3 day event. We later discarded any that were in contention (listed further below for completeness). For this document, the editor took the original list and divided it into rough categories, applied some suggested edits discussed on the mailing list and further edited for clarity and to provide context.

5.1. General statements

  1. Bandwidth is necessary but not alone sufficient
  2. In many cases, Internet users don't need more bandwidth, but rather need "better bandwidth" - i.e., they need other improvements to their connectivity.
  3. We need both active and passive measurements - passive measurements can provide historical debugging.
  4. We need passive measurements to be continuous and archivable and queriable - include reliability/connectivity measurements.
  5. A really meaningful metric for users is whether their application will work properly or fail because of a lack of a network with sufficient characteristics.
  6. An useful metric for goodness must actually incentive goodness - good metrics should actionable to help drive industries toward improvement.
  7. A lower latency internet, however achieved would benefit all end users.

5.2. Specific statements about detailed protocols/techniques

  1. Round trips Per Minute (RPM) is a useful, consumable metric
  2. We need a usable tool that fills the current gap between network reachability, latency and speed tests.
  3. End-users that want to be involved in QoS decisions should be able to voice their needs and desires.
  4. Applications are needed that can perform and report good quality measurements in order to identify insufficient points in network access.
  5. Research done by regulators indicate that users/consumers prefer a simple metric per application, which frequently resolves to whether the application will work properly not.
  6. New measurements and QoS or QoE techniques should not rely only or depend on reading TCP headers
  7. It is clear from developers of interactive applications and from network operators that lower latency is a strong factor in user QoE. However, metrics are lacking to support this statement directly.

5.3. Problem statements and concerns

  1. Latency mean and medians are distractions from better measurements
  2. It is frustrating to only measure network services without simultaneously improving those services
  3. Stakeholder incentives aren't aligned for easy wins in this space. Incentives are needed to motivate improvements in public network access. Measurements may be one step toward driving competitive market incentive.
  4. For future-proof networking, measuring ecological impact of measuring material and energy usage is important.
  5. We do not have incontrovertible evidence that any one metric (e.g. latency or speed) is more important than others to persuade device vendors to concentrate on any one optimization.

5.4. No-consensus reached statements

Additional statements were recorded that did not have consensus of the group at the time, but we list here for completeness about the fact they were discussed:

  1. We do not have incontrovertible evidence that buffer bloat is a prevalent problem
  2. The measurement needs to support reporting localization in order to find problems. Specifically:

    • Detecting a problem is not sufficient if you can't find the location
    • Need more than just english - different localization concerns
  3. Stakeholder incentives aren't aligned for easy wins in this space

6. Follow on work

There was discussion during the workshop about where future work should be performed. The group agreed that some work could be done more immediately within existing IETF working groups, while other longer-term research may be needed in IRTF groups.

7. Security considerations

A few security relevant topics were discussed at the workshop, including but not limited to:

8. References

8.1. Normative References

[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC4035]
Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security Extensions", RFC 4035, DOI 10.17487/RFC4035, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4035>.
[RFC5155]
Laurie, B., Sisson, G., Arends, R., and D. Blacka, "DNS Security (DNSSEC) Hashed Authenticated Denial of Existence", RFC 5155, DOI 10.17487/RFC5155, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5155>.

8.2. Informative References

[RFC1111]
Postel, J., "Request for comments on Request for Comments: Instructions to RFC authors", RFC 1111, DOI 10.17487/RFC1111, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1111>.

Appendix A. Participants List

The following is a list of participants attended the workshop over a remote connection:

IAB Members at the Time of Approval

Internet Architecture Board members at the time this document was approved for publication were:

Jari Arkko

Deborah Brungard
Ben Campbell
Lars Eggert
Wes Hardaker
Cullen Jennings
Mirja Kühlewind
Zhenbin Li
Jared Mauch
Tommy Pauly
Colin Perkins
David Schinazi
Russ White
Jiankang Yao

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the workshop participants, the members of the IAB, and the program committee for creating and participating in many interesting discussions.

Appendix B. Github Version of this document

While this document is under development, it can be viewed, tracked, fill here:

https://github.com/intarchboard/network-quality-workshop-report

Author's Address

Wes Hardaker
USC/ISI