Packet Sampling (psamp) ----------------------- Charter Last Modified: 2008-02-25 Current Status: Active Working Group Chair(s): Juergen Quittek Operations and Management Area Director(s): Dan Romascanu Ronald Bonica Operations and Management Area Advisor: Dan Romascanu Mailing Lists: General Discussion:psamp@ietf.org To Subscribe: psamp-request@ietf.org In Body: (un)subscribe Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/psamp/index.html Description of Working Group: The Packet Sampling working group is chartered to define a standard set of capabilities for network elements to sample subsets of packets by statistical and other methods. The capabilities should be simple enough that they can be implemented ubiquitously at maximal line rate. They should be rich enough to support a range of existing and emerging measurement-based applications, and other IETF working groups where appropriate. The focus of the WG will be to (i) specify a set of selection operations by which packets are sampled (ii) specify the information that is to be made available for reporting on sampled packets; (iii) describe protocols by which information on sampled packets is reported to applications; (iv) describe protocols by which packet selection and reporting configured. Packet reports must be communicable in a timely manner, to applications either on-board of off-board the sampling network element. The streams of packet reports produced by a packet sampling must (i) allow consistent interpretation, independent of the particular network element that produced them; (ii) be self-defining, in that their interpretation does not require additional information to be supplied by the network element; (iii) allow robustness of interpretation with respect to missing reports or part of reports; Network elements shall support multiple parallel packet samplers, each with independently configurable packet selectors, reports, report streams, and export. Network elements must allow easy and secure reconfiguration of these packet samplers by on-board or external applications. Export of a report stream across a network must be congestion avoiding in compliance with RFC 2914. Unreliable transport is permitted because the requirements at the exporter for reliable transport (state maintenance, addressibilty, acknowledgment processing, buffering unacknowledged data) would prevent ubiquitous deployment. Congestion avoidance with unreliable export is to be accomplished by the following measures, which shall be mandatory to implement and use. The maximum export rate of a report stream must be configurable at the exporter. A report stream must contain sufficient information for transmission loss to be detected a collector. Then the collector must run a congestion control algorithm to compute a new sending rate, and reconfigure the exporter with this rate. In order to maintain report collection during periods of congestion, PSAMP report streams may claim more than a fair share of link bandwidth, provided the number of report streams in competition with fair sharing traffic is limited. Selection of the content of packet reports will be cognizant of privacy and anonymity issues while being responsive to the needs of measurement applications, and in accordance with RFC 2804. Re-use of existing protocols will be encouraged provided the protocol capabilities are compatible with PSAMP requirements. Specifically, the PSAMP WG will perform the following tasks, in accordance with the principles stated above: 1. Selectors for packet sampling. Define the set of primitive packet selection operations for network elements, the parameters by which they may be configured, and the ways in which they can be combined. 2. Packet Information. Specify extent of packet that is to be made available for reporting. Target for inclusion the packet's IP header, some subsequent bytes of the packet, and encapsulating headers if present. Full packet capture of arbitrary packet streams is explicitly out of scope. Specify variants for IPv4 and IPv6, extent of IP packet available under encapsulation methods, and under packet encryption. 3. Sampled packet reports. Define the format of the report that is constructed by the network element for each sampled packet for communication to applications. The format shall be sufficiently rich as to allow inclusion in the packet report of (i) IP packet information as specified in paragraph 2 above; (ii) encapsulating packet headers as specified in paragraph 2 above; (iii) interface or channel identifiers associated with transit of the packet across the network element; (iv) quantities computable from packet content and router state, (v) quantities computed during the selection operation. All reported quantities must reflect the router state and configuration encountered by the packet in the network element. 4. Report Streams. Define a format for a stream of packet reports, to include: (i) the format of packet reports in the stream; (ii) the packet reports themselves; (iii) configuration parameters of the selectors of the packets reported on; (iv) configuration parameters and state information of the network element; (v) quantities that enable collectors and applications to infer of attained packet sampling rates, detect loss during samping, report loss in transmission, and correct for information missing from the packet report stream; (vi) indication of the inherent accuracy of the reported quantities, e.g., of timestamps. 5. Multiple Report Streams. Define requirements for multiple parallel packet samplers in one network element, including the allowed degradation of packet reporting when packets are selected by multiple packet samplers. 6. Configuration and Management. Define a packet sampler MIB to reside at the network element, including parameters for packet selection, packet report and stream format, and export. Select or define a communication protocol to configure/read this MIB. 7. Presentation, Export, and Transport of Packet Reports. Define interface for presentation of reports to on-board applications. Select unreliable transport protocol for remote export. Determine rate control algorithms for export. Initial Internet-Draft: A Framework for Passive Packet Measurement [draft-duffield-framework-papame] Goals and Milestones: Done Submit initial Framework document Done Submit initial Packet selector and packet information document Done Submit initial Report format and report stream format document Done Submit initial Export and requirements for collectors document Done Submit initial MIB document Done Submit final Framework document Done Submit final Packet selector and packet information document Done Submit final PSAMP protocol specification Mar 2008 Submit final PSAMP information model May 2008 Submit final MIB document Internet-Drafts: Posted Revised I-D Title ------ ------- -------------------------------------------- Sep 2002 Jun 2008 A Framework for Packet Selection and Reporting Oct 2002 Jul 2008 Sampling and Filtering Techniques for IP Packet Selection Oct 2003 Dec 2007 Packet Sampling (PSAMP) Protocol Specifications Oct 2003 Feb 2008 Information Model for Packet Sampling Exports Request For Comments: None to date.