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Поисковые слова: sojourner




AQM K. Nichols
Internet-Draft Pollere, Inc.
Intended status: Informational V. Jacobson
Expires: September 16, 2016 A. McGregor, ed.
J. Iyengar, ed.
Google
March 15, 2016


Controlled Delay Active Queue Management
draft-ietf-aqm-codel-03

Abstract

This document describes a general framework called CoDel (Controlled
Delay) [CODEL2012] that controls bufferbloat-generated excess delay
in modern networking environments. CoDel consists of an estimator, a
setpoint, and a control loop. It requires no configuration in normal
Internet deployments. CoDel comprises some major technical
innovations and has been made available as open source so that the
framework can be applied by the community to a range of problems. It
has been implemented in Linux (and available in the Linux
distribution) and deployed in some networks at the consumer edge. In
addition, the framework has been successfully applied in other ways.

Note: Code Components extracted from this document must include the
license as included with the code in Section 5.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

This Internet-Draft will expire on September 16, 2016.







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Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions used in this document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Building Blocks of Queue Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Estimator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Setpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3. Control Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Putting it together: queue management for the network edge . 12
4.1. Overview of CoDel AQM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2. Non-starvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.3. Using the interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.4. The target setpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.5. Use with multiple queues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.6. Use of stochastic bins or sub-queues to improve
performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.7. Setting up CoDel AQM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5. Annotated Pseudo-code for CoDel AQM . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.1. Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.2. Per-queue state (codel_queue_t instance variables) . . . 19
5.3. Constants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.4. Enqueue routine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.5. Dequeue routine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.6. Helper routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.7. Implementation considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6. Adapting and applying CoDel's building blocks . . . . . . . . 23
6.1. Validations and available code . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.2. CoDel in the datacenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
9. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
10. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25



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11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

1. Introduction

The need for queue management has been evident for decades. The
"persistently full buffer" problem has been discussed in the IETF
community since the early 80's [RFC896]. The IRTF's End-to-End
Working Group called for the deployment of active queue management
(AQM) to solve the problem in 1998 [RFC2309]. Despite this
awareness, the problem has only gotten worse as Moore's Law growth in
memory density fueled an exponential increase in buffer pool size.
Efforts to deploy AQM have been frustrated by difficult configuration
and negative impact on network utilization. This problem, recently
christened "bufferbloat", [TSV2011] [BB2011] has become increasingly
important throughout the Internet but particularly at the consumer
edge. Recently, queue management has become more critical due to
increased consumer use of the Internet, mixing large video
transactions with time-critical VoIP and gaming. Gettys [TSV2011,
BB2011] has been instrumental in publicizing the problem and the
measurement work [CHARB2007, NATAL2010] and coining the term
bufferbloat. Large content distributors such as Google have observed
that bufferbloat is ubiquitous and adversely affects performance for
many users. The solution is an effective AQM that remediates
bufferbloat at a bottleneck while "doing no harm" at hops where
buffers are not bloated.

The development and deployment of effective active queue management
has been hampered by persistent misconceptions about the cause and
meaning of packet queues in network buffers. Network buffers exist
to absorb the packet bursts that occur naturally in statistically
multiplexed networks. Buffers helpfully absorb the queues created by
such reasonable packet network behavior as short-term mismatches in
traffic arrival and departure rates that arise from upstream resource
contention, transport conversation startup transients and/or changes
in the number of conversations sharing a link. Unfortunately, other
less useful network behaviors can cause queues to fill and their
effects are not nearly as benign. Discussion of these issues and the
reason why the solution is not simply smaller buffers can be found in
[RFC2309], [VANQ2006], [REDL1998], and [CODEL2012]. To understand
queue management, it is critical to understand the difference between
the necessary, useful "good" queue, and the counterproductive "bad"
queue.

Many approaches to active queue management (AQM) have been developed
over the past two decades but none has been widely deployed due to
performance problems. When designed with the wrong conceptual model



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for queues, AQMs have limited operational range, require a lot of
configuration tweaking, and frequently impair rather than improve
performance. Today, the demands on an effective AQM are even
greater: many network devices must work across a range of bandwidths,
either due to link variations or due to the mobility of the device.
The CoDel approach is designed to meet the following goals:

o parameterless for normal operation - has no knobs for operators,
users, or implementers to adjust

o treat "good queue" and "bad queue" differently, that is, keep
delay low while permitting necessary bursts of traffic

o control delay while insensitive (or nearly so) to round trip
delays, link rates and traffic loads; this goal is to "do no harm"
to network traffic while controlling delay

o adapt to dynamically changing link rates with no negative impact
on utilization

o simple and efficient implementation (can easily span the spectrum
from low-end, linux-based access points and home routers up to
high-end commercial router silicon)

CoDel has five major innovations that distinguish it from prior AQMs:
use of local queue minimum to track congestion ("bad queue"), use of
an efficient single state variable representation of that tracked
statistic, use of packet sojourn time as the observed datum, rather
than packets, bytes, or rates, use of mathematically determined
setpoint derived from maximizing the network power metric, and a
modern state space controller.

CoDel configures itself based on a round-trip time metric which can
be set to 100ms for the normal, terrestrial Internet. With no
changes to parameters, we have found CoDel to work across a wide
range of conditions, with varying links and the full range of
terrestrial round trip times.

Since CoDel was first published [CODEL2012], a number of implementers
have been using and adapting it with promising results. Much of this
work is collected at http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel .
CoDel has been implemented in Linux very efficiently and should lend
itself to silicon implementation. CoDel is well-adapted for use in
multiple queued devices and has been used by Eric Dumazet with
multiple queues in a sophisticated queue management approach,
fq_codel [FQ-CODEL-ID].





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2. Conventions used in this document

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

In this document, these words will appear with that interpretation
only when in ALL CAPS. Lower case uses of these words are not to be
interpreted as carrying [RFC2119] significance.

In this document, the characters ">>" preceding an indented line(s)
indicates a compliance requirement statement using the key words
listed above. This convention aids reviewers in quickly identifying
or finding the explicit compliance requirements of this RFC.

3. Building Blocks of Queue Management

Two decades of work on queue management failed to yield an approach
that could be widely deployed in the Internet. Careful tuning for
particular usages has enabled queue management techniques to "kind
of" work; that is, they have been able to decrease queueing delays,
but only at the undue cost of link utilization and/or fairness. At
the heart of queue management is the notion of "good queue" and "bad
queue" and the search for ways to get rid of the bad queue (which
only adds delay) while preserving the good queue (which provides for
good utilization). This section explains queueing, both good and
bad, and covers the innovative CoDel building blocks that can be used
to manage packet buffers to keep their queues in the "good" range.

Packet queues form in buffers facing bottleneck links, i.e., where
the line rate goes from high to low or where many links converge.
The well-known bandwidth-delay product (sometimes called "pipe size")
is the bottleneck's bandwidth multiplied by the sender-receiver-
sender round-trip delay, and is the amount of data that has to be in
transit between two hosts in order to run the bottleneck link at 100%
utilization. To explore how queues can form, consider a long-lived
TCP connection with a 25 packet window sending through a connection
with a bandwidth-delay product of 20 packets. After an initial burst
of packets the connection will settle into a five packet (+/-1)
standing queue; this standing queue size is determined by the
mismatch between the window size and the pipe size, and is unrelated
to the connection's sending rate. The connection has 25 packets in
flight at all times, but only 20 packets arrive at the destination
over a round trip time. If the TCP connection has a 30 packet
window, the queue will be ten packets with no change in sending rate.
Similarly, if the window is 20 packets, there will be no queue but
the sending rate is the same. Nothing can be inferred about the
sending rate from the queue size, and any queue other than transient



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bursts only creates delays in the network. The sender needs to
reduce the number of packets in flight rather than sending rate.

In the above example, the five packet standing queue can be seen to
contribute nothing but delay to the connection, and thus is clearly
"bad queue". If, in our example, there is a single bottleneck link
and it is much slower than the link that feeds it (say, a high-speed
ethernet link into a limited DSL uplink) a 20 packet buffer at the
bottleneck might be necessary to temporarily hold the 20 packets in
flight to keep the bottleneck link's utilization high. The burst of
packets should drain completely (to 0 or 1 packets) within a round
trip time and this transient queue is "good queue" because it allows
the connection to keep the 20 packets in flight and for the
bottleneck link to be fully utilized. In terms of the delay
experienced, the "good queue" goes away in about a round trip time,
while "bad queue" hangs around for longer, causing delays.

Effective queue management detects "bad queue" while ignoring "good
queue" and takes action to get rid of the bad queue when it is
detected. The goal is a queue controller that accomplishes this
objective. To control a queue, we need three basic components

o Estimator - figure out what we've got

o Setpoint - know what what we want

o Control loop - if what we've got isn't what we want, we need a way
to move it there

3.1. Estimator

The estimator both observes the queue and detects when good queue
turns to bad queue and vice versa. CoDel has two innovations in its
estimator: what is observed as an indicator of queue and how the
observations are used to detect good/bad queue.

Queue length has been widely used as an observed indicator of
congestion and is frequently conflated with sending rate. Use of
queue length as a metric is sensitive to how and when the length is
observed. A high speed arrival link to a buffer serviced at a much
lower rate can rapidly build up a queue that might disperse
completely or down to a single packet before a round trip time has
elapsed. If the queue length is monitored at packet arrival (as in
original RED) or departure time, every packet will see a queue with
one possible exception. If the queue length itself is time sampled
(as recommended in [REDL1998], a truer picture of the queue's
occupancy can be gained at the expense of considerable implementation
complexity.



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The use of queue length is further complicated in networks that are
subject to both short and long term changes in available link rate
(as in WiFi). Link rate drops can result in a spike in queue length
that should be ignored unless it persists. It is not the queue
length that should be controlled but the amount of excess delay
packets experience due to a persistent or standing queue, which means
that the packet sojourn time in the buffer is exactly what we want to
track. Tracking the packet sojourn times in the buffer observes the
actual delay experienced by each packet. Sojourn time allows queue
management to be independent of link rate, gives superior performance
to use of buffer size, and is directly related to user-visible
performance. It works regardless of line rate changes or link
sharing by multiple queues (which the individual queues may
experience as changing rates).

Consider a link shared by two queues with different priorities.
Packets that arrive at the high priority queue are sent as soon as
the link is available while packets in the other queue have to wait
until the high priority queue is empty (i.e., a strict priority
scheduler). The number of packets in the high priority queue might
be large but the queue is emptied quickly and the amount of time each
packet spends enqueued (the sojourn time) is not large. The other
queue might have a smaller number of packets, but packet sojourn
times will include the waiting time for the high priority packets to
be sent. This makes the sojourn time a good sample of the congestion
that each separate queue is experiencing. This example also shows
how the metric of sojourn time is independent of the number of queues
or the service discipline used, and is instead indicative of
congestion seen by the individual queues.

How can observed sojourn time be used to separate good queue from bad
queue? Although averages, especially of queue length, have
previously been widely used as an indicator of bad queue, their
efficacy is questionable. Consider the burst that disperses every
round trip time. The average queue will be one-half the burst size,
though this might vary depending on when the average is computed and
the timing of arrivals. The average queue sojourn time would be one-
half the time it takes to clear the burst. The average then would
indicate a persistent queue where there is none. Instead of averages
we recommend tracking the minimum sojourn time, then, if there is one
packet that has a zero sojourn time then there is no persistent
queue. The value of the minimum in detecting persistent queue is
apparent when looking at graphs of queue delay.

A persistent queue can be detected by tracking the (local) minimum
queue delay packets experience. To ensure that this minimum value
does not become stale, it has to have been experienced recently, i.e.
during an appropriate past time interval. This interval is the



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maximum amount of time a minimum value is considered to be in effect,
and is related to the amount of time it takes for the largest
expected burst to drain. Conservatively, this interval should be at
least a round trip time to avoid falsely detecting a persistent queue
and not a lot more than a round trip time to avoid delay in detecting
the persistent queue. This suggests that the appropriate interval
value is the maximum round-trip time of all the connections sharing
the buffer.

(The following key insight makes computation of the local minimum
efficient: It is sufficient to keep a single state variable of how
long the minimum has been above or below a target value rather than
retaining all the local values to compute the minimum, leading to
both storage and computational savings. We use this insight in the
pseudo-code for CoDel later in the draft.)

These two innovations, use of sojourn time as observed values and the
local minimum as the statistic to monitor queue congestion are key to
CoDel's estimator building block. The local minimum sojourn time
provides an accurate and robust measure of standing queue and has an
efficient implementation. In addition, use of the minimum sojourn
time has important advantages in implementation. The minimum packet
sojourn can only be decreased when a packet is dequeued which means
that all the work of CoDel can take place when packets are dequeued
for transmission and that no locks are needed in the implementation.
The minimum is the only statistic with this property.

A more detailed explanation with many pictures can be found in
http://pollere.net/Pdfdocs/QrantJul06.pdf and
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/84/slides/slides-84-tsvarea-4.pdf .

3.2. Setpoint

Now that we have a robust way of detecting standing queue, we need a
setpoint that tells us when to act. If the controller is set to take
action as soon as the estimator has a non-zero value, the average
drop rate will be maximized, which minimizes TCP goodput
[MACTCP1997]. Also, this policy results in no backlog over time (no
persistent queue), which negates much of the value of having a
buffer, since it maximizes the bottleneck link bandwidth lost due to
normal stochastic variation in packet interarrival time. We want a
setpoint that maximizes utilization while minimizing delay. Early in
the history of packet networking, Kleinrock developed the analytic
machinery to do this using a quantity he called 'power', which is the
ratio of a normalized throughput to a normalized delay [KLEIN81].

It is straightforward to derive an analytic expression for the
average goodput of a TCP conversation at a given round-trip time r



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and setpoint f (where f is expressed as a fraction of r). Reno TCP,
for example, yields:

goodput = r (3 + 6f - f^2) / (4 (1+f))

Since the peak queue delay is simply f r, power is solely a function
of f since the r's in the numerator and denominator cancel:

power is proportional to (1 + 2f - 1/3 f^2) / (1 + f)^2

As Kleinrock observed, the best operating point, in terms of
bandwidth / delay tradeoff, is the peak power point, since points off
the peak represent a higher cost (in delay) per unit of bandwidth.
The power vs. f curve for any AIMD TCP is monotone decreasing. But
the curve is very flat for f < 0.1 followed by a increasing curvature
with a knee around f = 0.2, then a steep, almost linear fall off
[TSV84]. Since the previous equation showed that goodput is monotone
increasing with f, the best operating point is near the right edge of
the flat top since that represents the highest goodput achievable for
a negligible increase in delay. However, since the r in the model is
a conservative upper bound, a target of 0.1r runs the risk of pushing
shorter RTT connections over the knee and giving them higher delay
for no significant goodput increase. Generally, a more conservative
target of 0.05r offers a good utilization vs. delay tradeoff while
giving enough headroom to work well with a large variation in real
RTT.

As the above analysis shows, a very small standing queue gives close
to 100% utilization of the bottleneck link. While this result was
for Reno TCP, the derivation uses only properties that must hold for
any 'TCP friendly' transport. We have verified by both analysis and
simulation that this result holds for Reno, Cubic, and
Westwood[TSV84]. This results in a particularly simple form for the
setpoint: the ideal range for the permitted standing queue is between
5% and 10% of the TCP connection's RTT. Thus target is simply 5% of
the interval of section 3.1.

3.3. Control Loop

Section 3.1 describes a simple, reliable way to measure bad
(persistent) queue. Section 3.2 shows that TCP congestion control
dynamics gives rise to a setpoint for this measure that's a provably
good balance between enhancing throughput and minimizing delay, and
that this setpoint is a constant fraction of the same 'largest
average RTT' interval used to distinguish persistent from transient
queue. The only remaining building block needed for a basic AQM is a
'control loop' algorithm to effectively drive the queueing system




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from any 'persistent queue above target' state to a state where the
persistent queue is below target.

Control theory provides a wealth of approaches to the design of
control loops. Most of classical control theory deals with the
control of linear, time-invariant, single-input-single-output (SISO)
systems. Control loops for these systems generally come from a (well
understood) class known as Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID)
controllers. Unfortunately, a queue is not a linear system and an
AQM operates at the point of maximum non-linearity (where the output
link bandwidth saturates so increased demand creates delay rather
than higher utilization). Output queues are also not time-invariant
since traffic is generally a mix of connections which start and stop
at arbitrary times and which can have radically different behaviors
ranging from "open loop" UDP audio/video to "closed-loop" congestion-
avoiding TCP. Finally, the constantly changing mix of connections
(which can't be converted to a single 'lumped parameter' model
because of their transfer function differences) makes the system
multi-input-multi-output (MIMO), not SISO.

Since queueing systems match none of the prerequisites for a
classical controller, a modern state-space controller is a better
approach with states 'no persistent queue' and 'has persistent
queue'. Since Internet traffic mixtures change rapidly and
unpredictably, a noise and error tolerant adaptation algorithm like
Stochastic Gradient is a good choice. Since there's essentially no
information in the amount of persistent queue [TSV84], the adaptation
should be driven by how long it has persisted.

Consider the two extremes of traffic behavior, a single open-loop UDP
video stream and a single, long-lived TCP bulk data transfer. If the
average bandwidth of the UDP video stream is greater that the
bottleneck link rate, the link's queue will grow and the controller
will eventually enter 'has persistent queue' state and start dropping
packets. Since the video stream is open loop, its arrival rate is
unaffected by drops so the queue will persist until the average drop
rate is greater than the output bandwidth deficit (= average arrival
rate - average departure rate) so the job of the adaptation algorithm
is to discover this rate. For this example, the adaptation could
consist of simply estimating the arrival and departure rates then
dropping at a rate slightly greater than their difference. But this
class of algorithm won't work at all for the bulk data TCP stream.
TCP runs in closed-loop flow balance [TSV84] so its arrival rate is
almost always exactly equal to the departure rate - the queue isn't
the result of a rate imbalance but rather a mismatch between the TCP
sender's window and the source-destination-source round-trip path
capacity (i.e., the connection's bandwidth-delay product). The
sender's TCP congestion avoidance algorithm will slowly increase the



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send window (one packet per round-trip-time) [RFC2581] which will
eventually cause the bottleneck to enter 'has persistent queue'
state. But, since the average input rate is the same as the average
output rate, the rate deficit estimation that gave the correct drop
rate for the video stream would compute a drop rate of zero for the
TCP stream. However, if the output link drops one packet as it
enters 'has persistent queue' state, when the sender discovers this
(via TCP's normal packet loss repair mechanisms) it will reduce its
window by a factor of two [RFC2581] so, one round-trip-time after the
drop, the persistent queue will go away.

If there were N TCP conversations sharing the bottleneck, the
controller would have to drop O(N) packets, one from each
conversation, to make all the conversations reduce their window to
get rid of the persistent queue. If the traffic mix consists of
short (<= bandwidth-delay product) conversations, the aggregate
behavior becomes more like the open-loop video example since each
conversation is likely to have already sent all its packets by the
time it learns about a drop so each drop has negligible effect on
subsequent traffic.

The controller does not know the number, duration, or kind of
conversations creating its queue, so it has to learn the appropriate
response. Since single drops can have a large effect if the degree
of multiplexing (the number of active conversations) is small,
dropping at too high a rate is likely to have a catastrophic effect
on throughput. Dropping at a low rate (< 1 packet per round-trip-
time) then increasing the drop rate slowly until the persistent queue
goes below target is unlikely to overdrop and is guaranteed to
eventually dissipate the persistent queue. This stochastic gradient
learning procedure is the core of CoDel's control loop (the gradient
exists because a drop always reduces the (instantaneous) queue so an
increasing drop rate always moves the system "down" toward no
persistent queue, regardless of traffic mix).

The "next drop time" is decreased in inverse proportion to the square
root of the number of drops since the dropping state was entered,
using the well-known nonlinear relationship of drop rate to
throughput to get a linear change in throughput [REDL1998],
[MACTCP1997].

Since the best rate to start dropping is at slightly more than one
packet per RTT, the controller's initial drop rate can be directly
derived from the estimator's interval, defined in section 3.1. When
the minimum sojourn time first crosses the target and CoDel drops a
packet, the earliest the controller could see the effect of the drop
is the round trip time (interval) + the local queue wait time
(target). If the next drop happens any earlier than this time



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(interval + target), CoDel will overdrop. In practice, the local
queue waiting time tends to vary, so making the initial drop spacing
(i.e., the time to the second drop) be exactly the minimum possible
also leads to overdropping. Analysis of simulation and real-world
measured data shows that the 75th percentile magnitude of this
variation is less than the target, and so the initial drop spacing
SHOULD be set to the estimator's interval plus twice the target
(i.e., initial drop spacing = 1.1 * interval) to ensure that the
controller has accounted for acceptable congestion delays.

Use of the minimum statistic lets the controller be placed in the
dequeue routine with the estimator. This means that the control
signal (the drop) can be sent at the first sign of bad queue (as
indicated by the sojourn time) and that the controller can stop
acting as soon as the sojourn time falls below the setpoint.
Dropping at dequeue has both implementation and control advantages.

4. Putting it together: queue management for the network edge

CoDel was initially designed as a bufferbloat solution for the
consumer network edge. The CoDel building blocks are able to adapt
to different or time-varying link rates, to be easily used with
multiple queues, to have excellent utilization with low delay, and to
have a simple and efficient implementation. The only setting CoDel
requires is its interval value, and as 100ms satisfies that
definition for normal Internet usage, CoDel can be parameter-free for
consumer use. CoDel was released to the open source community, where
it has been widely promulgated and adapted to many problems. CoDel's
efficient implementation and lack of configuration are unique
features and make it suitable to manage modern packet buffers. For
more background and results on CoDel, see [CODEL2012] and
http://pollere.net/CoDel.html .

4.1. Overview of CoDel AQM

To ensure that link utilization is not adversely affected, CoDel's
estimator sets its target to the setpoint that optimizes power and
CoDel's controller does not drop packets when the drop would leave
the queue empty or with fewer than a maximum transmission unit (MTU)
worth of bytes in the buffer. Section 3.2 showed that the ideal
setpoint is 5-10% of the connection RTT. In the open terrestrial-
based Internet, especially at the consumer edge, we expect most
unbloated RTTs to have a ceiling of 100ms [CHARB2007]. Using this
RTT gives a minimum target of 5ms and the interval for tracking the
minimum is 100ms. In practice, uncongested links will see sojourn
times below target more often than once per RTT, so the estimator is
not overly sensitive to the value of the interval.




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When the estimator finds a persistent delay above target, the
controller enters the drop state where a packet is dropped and the
next drop time is set. As discussed in section 3.3, the initial next
drop spacing is intended to be long enough to give the endpoints time
to react to the single drop so SHOULD be set to a value of 1.1 times
the interval. If the estimator's output falls below target, the
controller cancels the next drop and exits the drop state. (The
controller is more sensitive than the estimator to an overly short
interval, since an unnecessary drop would occur and lower link
utilization.) If next drop time is reached while the controller is
still in drop state, the packet being dequeued is dropped and the
next drop time is recalculated. Additional logic prevents re-
entering the dropping state too soon after exiting it and resumes the
dropping state at a recent control level, if one exists.

Note that CoDel AQM only enters its dropping state when the local
minimum sojourn delay has exceeded target for a time interval long
enough for normal bursts to dissipate, ensuring that a burst of
packets that fits in the pipe will not be dropped.

4.2. Non-starvation

CoDel's goals are to control delay with little or no impact on link
utilization and to be deployed on a wide range of link bandwidths,
including variable-rate links, without reconfiguration. To keep from
making drops when it would starve the output link, CoDel makes
another check before dropping to see if at least an MTU worth of
bytes remains in the buffer. If not, the packet SHOULD NOT be
dropped and, currently, CoDel exits the drop state. The MTU size can
be set adaptively to the largest packet seen so far or can be read
from the driver.

4.3. Using the interval

The interval is chosen to give endpoints time to react to a drop
without being so long that response times suffer. CoDel's estimator,
setpoint, and control loop all use the interval. Understanding their
derivation shows that CoDel is the most sensitive to the value of
interval for single long-lived TCPs with a decreased sensitivity for
traffic mixes. This is fortunate as RTTs vary across connections and
are not known apriori. The best policy is to use an interval
slightly larger than the RTT seen by most of the connections using a
link, a value that can be determined as the largest RTT seen if the
value is not an outlier (use of a 95-99th percentile value should
work). In practice, this value is not known or measured (though see
Section 6.2 for an application where interval is measured. An
interval setting of 100ms works well across a range of RTTs from 10ms
to 1 second (excellent performance is achieved in the range from 10



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ms to 300ms). For devices intended for the normal terrestrial
Internet, interval SHOULD have a value of 100ms. This will only
cause overdropping where a long-lived TCP has an RTT longer than
100ms and there is little or no mixing with other connections through
the link.

Some confusion concerns the roles of the target setpoint and the
minimum-tracking interval. In particular, some experimenters believe
the value of target needs to be increased when the lower layers have
a bursty nature where packets are transmitted for short periods
interspersed with idle periods where the link is waiting for
permission to send. CoDel's estimator will "see" the effective
transmission rate over an interval and increasing target will just
lead to longer queue delays. On the other hand, where a significant
additional delay is added to the intrinsic round trip time of most or
all packets due to the waiting time for a transmission, it is
necessary to increase interval by that extra delay. That is, target
SHOULD NOT be adjusted but interval MAY need to be adjusted. For
more on this (and pictures) see http://pollere.net/Pdfdocs/
noteburstymacs.pdf

4.4. The target setpoint

The target is the maximum acceptable persistent queue delay above
which CoDel is dropping or preparing to drop and below which CoDel
will not drop. The calculations of section 3.2 showed that the best
setpoint is 5-10% of the RTT, with the low end of 5% preferred. We
used simulation to explore the impact when TCPs are mixed with other
traffic and with connections of different RTTs. Accordingly, we
experimented extensively with values in the 5-10% of RTT range and,
overall, used target values between 1 and 20 milliseconds for RTTs
from 30 to 500ms and link bandwidths of 64Kbps to 100Mbps to
experimentally explore the setpoint that gives consistently high
utilization while controlling delay across a range of bandwidths,
RTTs, and traffic loads. Our results were notably consistent with
the mathematics of section 3.2. Below a target of 5ms, utilization
suffers for some conditions and traffic loads, and above 5ms we saw
very little or no improvement in utilization. Thus target SHOULD be
set to 5ms for normal Internet traffic.

A congested (but not overloaded) CoDel link with traffic composed
solely or primarily of long-lived TCP flows will have a median delay
through the link will tend to the target. For bursty traffic loads
and for overloaded conditions (where it is difficult or impossible
for all the arriving flows to be accommodated) the median queues will
be longer than target.





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The non-starvation drop inhibit feature dominates where the link rate
becomes very small. By inhibiting drops when there is less than an
(outbound link) MTU worth of bytes in the buffer, CoDel adapts to
very low bandwidth links. This is shown in [CODEL2012] and
interested parties should see the discussion of results there.
Unpublished studies were carried out down to 64Kbps. The drop
inhibit condition can be expanded to include a test to retain
sufficient bytes or packets to fill an allocation in a request-and-
grant MAC.

Sojourn times must remain above the target for an entire interval in
order to enter the drop state. Any packet with a sojourn time less
than the target will reset the time that the queue was last below the
target. Since Internet traffic has very dynamic characteristics, the
actual sojourn delay experienced by packets varies greatly and is
often less than the target unless the overload is excessive. When a
link is not overloaded, it is not a bottleneck and packet sojourn
times will be small or nonexistent. In the usual case, there are
only one or two places along a path where packets will encounter a
bottleneck (usually at the edge), so the total amount of queueing
delay experienced by a packet should be less than 10ms even under
extremely congested conditions. This net delay is substantially
lower than common current queueing delays on the Internet that grow
to orders of seconds [NETAL2010, CHARB2007].

4.5. Use with multiple queues

Unlike other AQMs, CoDel is easily adapted to multiple queue systems.
With other approaches there is always a question of how to account
for the fact that each queue receives less than the full link rate
over time and usually sees a varying rate over time. This is exactly
what CoDel excels at: using a packet's sojourn time in the buffer
completely circumvents this problem. In a multiple-queue setting, a
separate CoDel algorithm runs on each queue, but each CoDel instance
uses the packet sojourn time the same way a single-queue CoDel does.
Just as a single-queue CoDel adapts to changing link bandwidths
[CODEL2012], so does a multiple-queue CoDel system. As an
optimization to avoid queueing more than necessary, when testing for
queue occupancy before dropping, the total occupancy of all queues
sharing the same output link should be used. This property of CoDel
has been exploited in fq_codel, briefly discussed in the next section
and in more detail in [FQ-CODEL-ID].

4.6. Use of stochastic bins or sub-queues to improve performance

Shortly after the release of the CoDel pseudocode, Eric Dumazet
created fq_codel, applying CoDel to each bin, or queue, used with
stochastic fair queueing. (To understand further, see [SFQ1990] or



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the linux sfq documentation at http://linux.die.net/man/8/tc-sfq .)
fq_codel hashes on the packet header fields to determine a specific
bin, or sub-queue, for each five-tuple flow, and runs CoDel on each
bin or sub-queue thus creating a well-mixed output flow and obviating
issues of reverse path flows (including "ack compression").
Dumazet's code is part of the CeroWrt project code at the
bufferbloat.net's web site and described in [FQ-CODEL-ID]. Andrew
McGregor has implemented a version of fq_codel for ns-3, which is
being prepared for inclusion at http://code.nsnam.org/tomh/ns-3-dev-
aqm/ .

We have also experimented with a similar multi-queue approach by
creating an ns-2 simulator code module, sfqcodel, which uses
Stochastic Fair Queueing (SFQ) to isolate flows into bins, each
running CoDel. This setup has provided excellent results: median
queues remain small across a range of traffic patterns that includes
bidirectional file transfers (that is, the same traffic sent in both
directions on a link), constant bit-rate VoIP-like flows, and
emulated web traffic and utilizations are consistently better than
single queue CoDel, generally very close to 100%. Our code, intended
for simulation experiments, is available at http://pollere.net/
CoDel.html and being integrated into the ns-2 distribution.

A number of open issues should be studied. In particular, if the
number of different queues or bins is too large, the scheduling will
be the dominant factor, not the AQM; it is NOT the case that more
bins are always better. In our simulations, we have found good
behavior across mixed traffic types with smaller numbers of queues,
8-16 for a 5Mbps link. This configuration appears to give the best
behavior for voice, web browsing and file transfers where increased
numbers of bins seems to favor file transfers at the expense of the
other traffic. Our work has been very preliminary and we encourage
others to take this up and to explore analytic modeling. It would be
instructive to see the effects of different numbers of bins on a
range of traffic models, something like an updated version of
[BMPFQ].

Implementers SHOULD use the fq_codel multiple queue approach if
possible as it deals with many problems beyond the reach of an AQM on
a single queue.

4.7. Setting up CoDel AQM

CoDel is set for use in devices in the open Internet. An interval of
100ms is used, target is set to 5% of interval, and the initial drop
spacing is also set to interval. These settings have been chosen so
that a device, such as a small WiFi router, can be sold without the
need for any values to be made adjustable, yielding a parameterless



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implementation. In addition, CoDel is useful in environments with
significantly different characteristics from the normal Internet, for
example, in switches used as a cluster interconnect within a data
center. Since cluster traffic is entirely internal to the data
center, round trip latencies are low (typically <100us) but
bandwidths are high (1-40Gbps) so it's relatively easy for the
aggregation phase of a distributed computation (e.g., the Reduce part
of a Map/Reduce) to persistently fill then overflow the modest per-
port buffering available in most high speed switches. A CoDel
configured for this environment (target and interval in the
microsecond rather than millisecond range) can minimize drops (or ECN
marks) while keeping throughput high and latency low.

Devices destined for these environments MAY use a different interval,
where suitable. If appropriate analysis indicates, the target MAY be
set to some other value in the 5-10% of interval and the initial drop
spacing MAY be set to a value of 1.0 to 1.2 times the interval. But
these settings will cause problems such as overdropping and low
throughput if used on the open Internet, so devices that allow CoDel
to be configured SHOULD default to Internet-appropriate values given
in this document.

5. Annotated Pseudo-code for CoDel AQM

What follows is the CoDel algorithm in C++-like pseudo-code. Since
CoDel adds relatively little new code to a basic tail-drop fifo-
queue, we have attempted to highlight just these additions by
presenting CoDel as a sub-class of a basic fifo-queue base class.
The reference code is included to aid implementers who wish to apply
CoDel to queue management as described here or to adapt its
principles to other applications.

Implementors are strongly encouraged to also look at Eric Dumazet's
Linux kernel version of CoDel - a well-written, well tested, real-
world, C-based implementation. As of this writing, it is at
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/net/sched/sch_codel.c.

The following pseudo-code is open-source with a dual BSD/GPL license:

Codel - The Controlled-Delay Active Queue Management algorithm.
Copyright (C) 2011-2014 Kathleen Nichols .
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

o Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer,
without modification.



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o Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
distribution.

o The names of the authors may not be used to endorse or promote
products derived from this software without specific prior written
permission.

Alternatively, provided that this notice is retained in full, this
software may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License ("GPL") version 2, in which case the provisions of the GPL
apply INSTEAD OF those given above.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

5.1. Data Types

time_t is an integer time value in units convenient for the system.
Resolution to at least a millisecond is required and better
resolution is useful up to the minimum possible packet time on the
output link; 64- or 32-bit widths are acceptable but with 32 bits the
resolution should be no finer than 2^{-16} to leave enough dynamic
range to represent a wide range of queue waiting times. Narrower
widths also have implementation issues due to overflow (wrapping) and
underflow (limit cycles because of truncation to zero) that are not
addressed in this pseudocode. The code presented here uses 0 as a
flag value to indicate "no time set."

packet_t* is a pointer to a packet descriptor. We assume it has a
tstamp field capable of holding a time_t and that field is available
for use by CoDel (it will be set by the enqueue routine and used by
the dequeue routine).

queue_t is a base class for queue objects (the parent class for
codel_queue_t objects). We assume it has enqueue() and dequeue()
methods that can be implemented in child classes. We assume it has a
bytes() method that returns the current queue size in bytes. This



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can be an approximate value. The method is invoked in the dequeue()
method but shouldn't require a lock with the enqueue() method.

flag_t is a Boolean.

5.2. Per-queue state (codel_queue_t instance variables)

time_t first_above_time; // Time to declare sojourn time above target
time_t drop_next; // Time to drop next packet
uint32_t count; // Packets dropped since entering drop state
flag_t dropping; // Set to true if in drop state

5.3. Constants

time_t target = MS2TIME(5); // 5ms target queue delay
time_t interval = MS2TIME(100); // 100ms sliding-minimum window
u_int maxpacket = 512; // Maximum packet size in bytes
// (should use interface MTU)

5.4. Enqueue routine

All the work of CoDel is done in the dequeue routine. The only CoDel
addition to enqueue is putting the current time in the packet's
tstamp field so that the dequeue routine can compute the packet's
sojourn time.

void codel_queue_t::enqueue(packet_t* pkt)
{
pkt->timestamp() = clock();
queue_t::enqueue(pkt);
}

5.5. Dequeue routine

This is the heart of CoDel. There are two branches based on whether
the controller is in dropping state: (i) if the controller is in
dropping state (that is, the minimum packet sojourn time is greater
than target) then the controller checks if it is time to leave
dropping state or schedules the next drop(s); or (ii) if the
controller is not in dropping state, it determines if it should enter
dropping state and do the initial drop.










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Packet* CoDelQueue::dequeue()
{
double now = clock();;
dodequeueResult r = dodequeue(now);

if (dropping_) {
if (! r.ok_to_drop) {
// sojourn time below target - leave dropping state
dropping_ = false;
}
// Time for the next drop. Drop current packet and dequeue
// next. If the dequeue doesn't take us out of dropping
// state, schedule the next drop. A large backlog might
// result in drop rates so high that the next drop should
// happen now, hence the 'while' loop.
while (now >= drop_next_ && dropping_) {
drop(r.p);
r = dodequeue(now);
if (! r.ok_to_drop) {
// leave dropping state
dropping_ = false;
} else {
++count_;
// schedule the next drop.
drop_next_ = control_law(drop_next_);
}
}
// If we get here we're not in dropping state. The 'ok_to_drop'
// return from dodequeue means that the sojourn time has been
// above 'target' for 'interval' so enter dropping state.
} else if (r.ok_to_drop) {
drop(r.p);
r = dodequeue(now);
dropping_ = true;

// If min went above target close to when it last went
// below, assume that the drop rate that controlled the
// queue on the last cycle is a good starting point to
// control it now. ('drop_next' will be at most 'interval'
// later than the time of the last drop so 'now - drop_next'
// is a good approximation of the time from the last drop
// until now.)
count_ = (count_ > 2 && now - drop_next_ < 8*interval_)?
count_ - 2 : 1;
drop_next_ = control_law(now);
}
return (r.p);
}



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5.6. Helper routines

Since the degree of multiplexing and nature of the traffic sources is
unknown, CoDel acts as a closed-loop servo system that gradually
increases the frequency of dropping until the queue is controlled
(sojourn time goes below target). This is the control law that
governs the servo. It has this form because of the sqrt(p)
dependence of TCP throughput on drop probability. Note that for
embedded systems or kernel implementation, the inverse sqrt can be
computed efficiently using only integer multiplication.

time_t codel_queue_t::control_law(time_t t)
{
return t + interval / sqrt(count);
}

Next is a helper routine the does the actual packet dequeue and
tracks whether the sojourn time is above or below target and, if
above, if it has remained above continuously for at least interval.
It returns two values: a Boolean indicating if it is OK to drop
(sojourn time above target for at least interval), and the packet
dequeued.





























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typedef struct {
packet_t* p;
flag_t ok_to_drop;
} dodequeue_result;

dodequeue_result codel_queue_t::dodequeue(time_t now)
{
dodequeueResult r = { NULL, queue_t::dequeue() };
if (r.p == NULL) {
// queue is empty - we can't be above target
first_above_time_ = 0;
return r;
}

// To span a large range of bandwidths, CoDel runs two
// different AQMs in parallel. One is sojourn-time-based
// and takes effect when the time to send an MTU-sized
// packet is less than target. The 1st term of the "if"
// below does this. The other is backlog-based and takes
// effect when the time to send an MTU-sized packet is >=
// target. The goal here is to keep the output link
// utilization high by never allowing the queue to get
// smaller than the amount that arrives in a typical
// interarrival time (MTU-sized packets arriving spaced
// by the amount of time it takes to send such a packet on
// the bottleneck). The 2nd term of the "if" does this.
time_t sojourn_time = now - r.p->tstamp;
if (sojourn_time_ < target_ || bytes() <= maxpacket_) {
// went below - stay below for at least interval
first_above_time_ = 0;
} else {
if (first_above_time_ == 0) {
// just went above from below. if still above at
// first_above_time, will say it's ok to drop.
first_above_time_ = now + interval_;
} else if (now >= first_above_time_) {
r.ok_to_drop = 1;
}
}
return r;
}

5.7. Implementation considerations

Since CoDel requires relatively little per-queue state and no direct
communication or state sharing between the enqueue and dequeue
routines, it is relatively simple to add CoDel to almost any packet
processing pipeline, including ASIC- or NPU-based forwarding engines.



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One issue to consider is dodequeue()'s use of a 'bytes()' function to
determine the current queue size in bytes. This value does not need
to be exact. If the enqueue part of the pipeline keeps a running
count of the total number of bytes it has put into the queue and the
dequeue routine keeps a running count of the total bytes it has
removed from the queue, 'bytes()' is simply the difference between
these two counters (32-bit counters should be adequate.) Enqueue has
to update its counter once per packet queued but it does not matter
when (before, during or after the packet has been added to the
queue). The worst that can happen is a slight, transient,
underestimate of the queue size which might cause a drop to be
briefly deferred.

6. Adapting and applying CoDel's building blocks

CoDel has been implemented and tested in a range of environments.

6.1. Validations and available code

An experiment by Stanford graduate students successfully used Linux
CoDel to duplicate our published simulation work on CoDel's ability
to adapt to drastic link rate changes. This experiment can be found
at http://reproducingnetworkresearch.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/
solving-bufferbloat-the-codel-way/ .

Our ns-2 simulations are available at http://pollere.net/CoDel.html .
CableLabs has funded some additions to the simulator sfqcodel code,
which have been made public. The basic algorithm of CoDel remains
unchanged, but we continue to experiment with drop interval setting
when resuming the drop state, inhibiting or canceling drop state when
few bytes are in the queue, and other details. Our approach to
changes is to only make them if we are convinced they do more good
than harm, both operationally and in the implementation. With this
in mind, some of these issues may continue to evolve as we get more
deployment and as the building blocks are applied to a wider range of
problems.

CoDel is available in ns-2 version 2.35 and later.

Andrew McGregor has an ns-3 implementation of both CoDel and
fq_codel. CoDel is available in ns-3 version 3.21 and later at
https://www.nsnam.org/ . At the time of this writing, the ns-3
implementation of fq_codel is available at
https://www.nsnam.org/wiki/GSOC2014Bufferbloat .

CoDel is available in Linux. Eric Dumazet implemented CoDel in the
Linux kernel.




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Dave Taht has been instrumental in the integration and distribution
of CoDel as a bufferbloat solution
(http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel ).

6.2. CoDel in the datacenter

Nandita Dukkipati's team at Google was quick to realize that the
CoDel building blocks could be applied to bufferbloat problems in
datacenter servers, not just to Internet routers. The Linux CoDel
queueing discipline (qdisc) was adapted in three ways to tackle this
bufferbloat problem.

1. The default CoDel action was modified to be a direct feedback
from qdisc to the TCP layer at dequeue. The direct feedback
simply reduces TCP's congestion window just as congestion control
would do in the event of drop. The scheme falls back to ECN
marking or packet drop if the TCP socket lock could not be
acquired at dequeue.

2. Being located in the server makes it possible to monitor the
actual RTT to use as CoDel's interval rather than making a "best
guess" of RTT. The CoDel interval is dynamically adjusted by
using the maximum TCP round-trip time (RTT) of those connections
sharing the same Qdisc/bucket. In particular, there is a history
entry of the maximum RTT experienced over the last second. As a
packet is dequeued, the RTT estimate is accessed from its TCP
socket. If the estimate is larger than the current CoDel
interval, the CoDel interval is immediately refreshed to the new
value. If the CoDel interval is not refreshed for over a second,
it is decreased it to the history entry and the process is
repeated. The use of the dynamic TCP RTT estimate lets interval
adapt to the actual maximum value currently seen and thus lets
the controller space its drop intervals appropriately.

3. Since the mathematics of computing the setpoint are invariant, a
target of 5% of the RTT or CoDel interval was used here.

Non-data packets were not dropped as these are typically small and
sometimes critical control packets. Being located on the server,
there is no concern with misbehaving users as there would be on the
public Internet.

In several data center workload benchmarks, which are typically
bursty, CoDel reduced the queueing latencies at the qdisc, and
thereby improved the mean and 99th-percentile latencies from several
tens of milliseconds to less than one millisecond. The minimum
tracking part of the CoDel framework proved useful in disambiguating
"good" queue versus "bad" queue, particularly helpful in controlling



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qdisc buffers that are inherently bursty because of TCP Segmentation
Offload (TSO).

7. Security Considerations

This document describes an active queue management algorithm for
implementation in networked devices. There are no specific security
exposures associated with CoDel.

8. IANA Considerations

This document does not require actions by IANA.

9. Conclusions

CoDel provides very general, efficient, parameterless building blocks
for queue management that can be applied to single or multiple queues
in a variety of data networking scenarios. It is a critical tool in
solving bufferbloat. CoDel's settings MAY be modified for other
special-purpose networking applications. We encourage
experimentation, improvement, and rigorous testing.

On-going projects are creating a deployable CoDel in Linux routers
and experimenting with applying CoDel to stochastic queueing with
promising results.

10. Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Jim Gettys for the constructive nagging
that made us get the work "out there" before we thought it was ready.
We also want to thank Dave Taht, Eric Dumazet, and the open source
community for showing the value of getting it "out there" and for
making it real. We also wish to thank Nandita Dukkipati for
contributions to Section 6 and for comments which helped to
substantially improve this draft.

11. References

11.1. Normative References

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key Words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", March 1997.

11.2. Informative References







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[FQ-CODEL-ID]
Hoeiland-Joergensen, T., McKenney, P.,
dave.taht@gmail.com, d., Gettys, J., and E. Dumazet,
"FlowQueue-Codel", draft-ietf-aqm-fq-codel-03 (work in
progress), November 2015.

[RFC2581] Allman, M., Paxson, V., and W. Stevens, "TCP Congestion
Control", RFC 2581, April 1999.

[RFC0896] Nagle, J., "Congestion control in IP/TCP internetworks",
RFC 896, January 1984.

[RFC2309] Braden, B., Clark, D., Crowcroft, J., Davie, B., Deering,
S., Estrin, D., Floyd, S., Jacobson, V., Minshall, G.,
Partridge, C., Peterson, L., Ramakrishnan, K., Shenker,
S., Wroclawski, J., and L. Zhang, "Recommendations on
Queue Management and Congestion Avoidance in the
Internet", RFC 2309, April 1998.

[TSV2011] Gettys, J., "Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet",
IETF 80 presentation to Transport Area Open Meeting,
March, 2011,
.

[BB2011] Gettys, J. and K. Nichols, "Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in
the Internet", Communications of the ACM 9(11) pp. 57-65.

[BMPFQ] Suter, B., "Buffer Management Schemes for Supporting TCP
in Gigabit Routers with Per-flow Queueing", IEEE Journal
on Selected Areas in Communications Vol. 17 Issue 6, June,
1999, pp. 1159-1169.

[CMNTS] Allman, M., "Comments on Bufferbloat", Computer
Communication Review Vol. 43 No. 1, January, 2013, pp.
31-37.

[CODEL2012]
Nichols, K. and V. Jacobson, "Controlling Queue Delay",
Communications of the ACM Vol. 55 No. 11, July, 2012, pp.
42-50.

[VANQ2006]
Jacobson, V., "A Rant on Queues", talk at MIT Lincoln
Labs, Lexington, MA July, 2006,
.






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[REDL1998]
Nichols, K., Jacobson, V., and K. Poduri, "RED in a
Different Light", Tech report, September, 1999,
red_light_9_30.pdf>.

[NETAL2010]
Kreibich, C., et. al., "Netalyzr: Illuminating the Edge
Network", Proceedings of the Internet Measurement
Conference Melbourne, Australia, 2010.

[TSV84] Jacobson, V., "CoDel talk at TSV meeting IETF 84",
slides-84-tsvarea-4.pdf>.

[CHARB2007]
Dischinger, M., et. al, "Characterizing Residential
Broadband Networks", Proceedings of the Internet
Measurement Conference San Diego, CA, 2007.

[MACTCP1997]
Mathis, M., Semke, J., and J. Mahdavi, "The Macroscopic
Behavior of the TCP Congestion Avoidance Algorithm", ACM
SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review Vol. 27 no. 1, Jan.
2007.

[SFQ1990] McKenney, P., "Stochastic Fairness Queuing", Proceedings
of IEEE INFOCOMM 90 San Francisco, 1990.

[KLEIN81] Kleinrock, L. and R. Gail, "An Invariant Property of
Computer Network Power", International Conference on
Communications June, 1981,
.

Authors' Addresses

Kathleen Nichols
Pollere, Inc.
PO Box 370201
Montara, CA 94037
USA

Email: nichols@pollere.com








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Van Jacobson
Google

Email: vanj@google.com


Andrew McGregor
Google

Email: andrewmcgr@google.com


Janardhan Iyengar
Google

Email: jri@google.com



































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