Network Working Group | Z. Sarker |
Internet-Draft | Ericsson AB |
Intended status: Informational | V. Singh |
Expires: April 25, 2019 | callstats.io |
X. Zhu | |
M. Ramalho | |
Cisco Systems | |
October 22, 2018 |
Test Cases for Evaluating RMCAT Proposals
draft-ietf-rmcat-eval-test-07
The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is used to transmit media in multimedia telephony applications. These applications are typically required to implement congestion control. This document describes the test cases to be used in the performance evaluation of such congestion control algorithms.
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This memo describes a set of test cases for evaluating congestion control algorithm proposals for real-time interactive media. It is based on the guidelines enumerated in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria] and the requirements discussed in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements]. The test cases cover basic usage scenarios and are described using a common structure, which allows for additional test cases to be added to those described herein to accommodate other topologies and/or the modelling of different path characteristics. The described test cases in this memo SHOULD be used to evaluate any proposed congestion control algorithm for real-time interactive media.
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 addition, the terminology defined in RTP, RTP Profile for Audio and Video Conferences with Minimal Control, RTCP Extended Report (XR), Extended RTP Profile for RTCP-based Feedback (RTP/AVPF), and Support for Reduced-Size RTCP apply.
All the test cases in this document follow a basic structure allowing implementers to describe a new test scenario without repeatedly explaining common attributes. The structure includes a general description section that describes the test case and its motivation. Additionally the test case defines a set of attributes that characterize the testbed, for example, the network path between communicating peers and the diverse traffic sources.
+---+ +---+ |S1 |====== \ Forward --> / =======|R1 | +---+ \\ // +---+ \\ // +---+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+ |S2 |=======| A |------------------------------>| B |=======|R2 | +---+ | |<------------------------------| | +---+ +-----+ +-----+ (...) // \\ (...) // <-- Backward \\ +---+ // \\ +---+ |Sn |====== / \ ======|Rn | +---+ +---+
Figure 1: Example of A Testbed Topology
More detailed discussions on expected media source behavior, including those from synthetic video traffic sources, is at
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-video-traffic-model].Any attribute can have a set of values (enclosed within "[]"). Each member value of such a set MUST be treated as different value for the same attribute. It is desired to run separate tests for each such attribute value.
The test cases described in this document follow the above structure.
This section describes recommended test case settings and could be overwritten by the respective test cases.
To evaluate the performance of the candidate algorithms the implementers MUST log enough information to visualize the following metrics at a fine enough time granularity:
Each path between a sender and receiver as described in Figure 1 have the following characteristics unless otherwise specified in the test case.
Examples of additional network parameters are discussed in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria].
For test cases involving time-varying bottleneck capacity, all capacity values are specified as a ratio with respect to a reference capacity value, so as to allow flexible scaling of capacity values along with media source rate range. There exist two different mechanisms for inducing path capacity variation: a) by explicitly modifying the value of physical link capacity; or b) by introducing background non-adaptive UDP traffic with time-varying traffic rate. Implementers are encouraged to run the experiments with both mechanisms for test cases specified in Section 5.1, Section 5.2, and Section 5.3.
Unless otherwise specified, each test case will include one or more media sources as described below.
In this test case the bottleneck-link capacity between the two endpoints varies over time. This test is designed to measure the responsiveness of the candidate algorithm. This test tries to address the requirements in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements], which requires the algorithm to adapt the flow(s) and provide lower end-to-end latency when there exists:
It should be noted that the exact variation in available capacity due to any of the above depends on the underlying technologies. Hence, we describe a set of known factors, which may be extended to devise a more specific test case targeting certain behaviors in a certain network environment.
Expected behavior: the candidate algorithm is expected to detect the path capacity constraint, converges to the bottleneck link's capacity and adapt the flow to avoid unwanted media rate oscillation when the sending bit rate is approaching the bottleneck link's capacity. Such oscillations might occur when the media flow(s) attempts to reach its maximum bit rate but overshoots the usage of the available bottleneck capacity then to rectify, it reduces the bit rate and starts to ramp up again.
Evaluation metrics : as described in Section 4.1.
Forward --> +---+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+ |S1 |=======| A |------------------------------>| B |=======|R1 | +---+ | |<------------------------------| | +---+ +-----+ +-----+ <-- Backward
Figure 2: Testbed Topology for Limited Link Capacity
Testbed topology: One media source S1 is connected to the corresponding R1. The media traffic is transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path.
Testbed attributes:
Variation pattern index | Path direction | Start time | Path capacity ratio |
---|---|---|---|
One | Forward | 0s | 1.0 |
Two | Forward | 40s | 2.5 |
Three | Forward | 60s | 0.6 |
Four | Forward | 80s | 1.0 |
This test case is similar to Section 5.1. However in addition this test will also consider persistent network load due to competing traffic.
Expected behavior: the candidate algorithm is expected to detect the variation in available capacity and adapt the media stream(s) accordingly. The flows stabilize around their maximum bit rate as the maximum link capacity is large enough to accommodate the flows. When the available capacity drops, the flows adapt by decreasing their sending bit rate, and when congestion disappears, the flows are again expected to ramp up.
Evaluation metrics : as described in Section 4.1.
+---+ +---+ |S1 |===== \ / =======|R1 | +---+ \\ Forward --> // +---+ \\ // +-----+ +-----+ | A |------------------------------>| B | | |<------------------------------| | +-----+ +-----+ // \\ // <-- Backward \\ +---+ // \\ +---+ |S2 |====== / \ ======|R2 | +---+ +---+
Figure 3: Testbed Topology for Variable Available Capacity
Testbed Topology: Two (2) media sources S1 and S2 are connected to their corresponding destinations R1 and R2. The media traffic is transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path.
Testbed attributes:
Testbed attributes are similar as described in Section 5.1 except the test specific capacity variation setup.
Test Specific Information: This test uses path capacity variation as listed in Table 2 with a corresponding end time of 125 seconds. The reference bottleneck capacity is 2Mbps. When using background non-adaptive UDP traffic to induce time-varying bottleneck for congestion controlled media flows, the physical path capacity is 4Mbps and the UDP traffic source rate changes over time as (4 - (Y x r)), where r is the Reference bottleneck capacity in Mbps and Y is the path capacity ratio specified in Table 2.
Variation pattern index | Path direction | Start time | Path capacity ratio |
---|---|---|---|
One | Forward | 0s | 2.0 |
Two | Forward | 25s | 1.0 |
Three | Forward | 50s | 1.75 |
Four | Forward | 75s | 0.5 |
Five | Forward | 100s | 1.0 |
Real-time interactive media uses RTP hence it is assumed that RTCP, RTP header extension or such would be used by the congestion control algorithm in the backchannel. Due to asymmetric nature of the link between communicating peers it is possible for a participating peer to not receive such feedback information due to an impaired or congested backchannel (even when the forward channel might not be impaired). This test case is designed to observe the candidate congestion control behavior in such an event.
Expected behavior: It is expected that the candidate algorithms are able to cope with the lack of feedback information and adapt to minimize the performance degradation of media flows in the forward channel.
It should be noted that for this test case: logs are compared with the reference case, i.e, when the backward channel has no impairments.
Evaluation metrics : as described in Section 4.1.
Testbed topology: One (1) media source S1 is connected to corresponding R1, but both endpoints are additionally receiving and sending data, respectively. The media traffic (S1->R1) is transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path. Likewise media traffic (S2->R2) is transported over the backward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the forward path.
+---+ +---+ |S1 |===== \ Forward --> / =======|R1 | +---+ \\ // +---+ \\ // +-----+ +-----+ | A |------------------------------>| B | | |<------------------------------| | +-----+ +-----+ // \\ // <-- Backward \\ +---+ // \\ +---+ |R2 |===== / \ ======|S2 | +---+ +---+
Figure 4: Testbed Topology for Congested Feedback Link
Testbed attributes:
Variation pattern index | Path direction | Start time | Path capacity ratio |
---|---|---|---|
One | Forward | 0s | 2.0 |
Two | Forward | 20s | 1.0 |
Three | Forward | 40s | 0.5 |
Four | Forward | 60s | 2.0 |
Variation pattern index | Path direction | Start time | Path capacity ratio |
---|---|---|---|
One | Backward | 0s | 2.0 |
Two | Backward | 35s | 0.8 |
Three | Backward | 70s | 2.0 |
In this test case, more than one media flow share the bottleneck link and each of them uses the same congestion control algorithm. This is a typical scenario where a real-time interactive application sends more than one media flow to the same destination and these flows are multiplexed over the same port. In such a scenario it is likely that the flows will be routed via the same path and need to share the available bandwidth amongst themselves. For the sake of simplicity it is assumed that there are no other competing traffic sources in the bottleneck link and that there is sufficient capacity to accommodate all the flows individually. While this appears to be a variant of the test case defined in Section 5.2, it focuses on the capacity sharing aspect of the candidate algorithm. The previous test case, on the other hand, measures adaptability, stability, and responsiveness of the candidate algorithm.
Expected behavior: It is expected that the competing flows will converge to an optimum bit rate to accommodate all the flows with minimum possible latency and loss. Specifically, the test introduces three media flows at different time instances, when the second flow appears there should still be room to accommodate another flow on the bottleneck link. Lastly, when the third flow appears the bottleneck link should be saturated.
Evaluation metrics : as described in Section 4.1.
+---+ +---+ |S1 |===== \ Forward --> / =======|R1 | +---+ \\ // +---+ \\ // +---+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+ |S2 |=======| A |------------------------------>| B |=======|R2 | +---+ | |<------------------------------| | +---+ +-----+ +-----+ // \\ // <-- Backward \\ +---+ // \\ +---+ |S3 |====== / \ ======|R3 | +---+ +---+
Figure 5: Testbed Topology for Multiple congestion controlled media Flows
Testbed topology: Three media sources S1, S2, S3 are connected to R1, R2, R3 respectively. The media traffic is transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path.
Testbed attributes:
Flow ID | Media type | Start time | End time |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Video | 0s | 119s |
2 | Video | 20s | 119s |
3 | Video | 40s | 119s |
4 | Audio | 0s | 119s |
5 | Audio | 20s | 119s |
6 | Audio | 40s | 119s |
In this test case, multiple media flows share the bottleneck link, but the one-way propagation delay for each flow is different. For the sake of simplicity it is assumed that there are no other competing traffic sources in the bottleneck link and that there is sufficient capacity to accommodate all the flows. While this appears to be a variant of test case 5.2, it focuses on the capacity sharing aspect of the candidate algorithm under different RTTs.
Expected behavior: It is expected that the competing flows will converge to bit rates to accommodate all the flows with minimum possible latency and loss. Specifically, the test introduces five media flows at the same time instance.
Evaluation metrics : as described in Section 4.1.
Testbed Topology: Five (5) media sources S1,S2,..,S5 are connected to their corresponding media sinks R1,R2,..,R5. The media traffic is transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path. The topology is the same as in Section 5.4.
Testbed attributes:
Flow IF | Media type | Start time | End time |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Video | 0s | 299s |
2 | Video | 10s | 299s |
3 | Video | 20s | 299s |
4 | Video | 30s | 299s |
5 | Video | 40s | 299s |
6 | Audio | 0 | 299s |
7 | Audio | 10s | 299s |
8 | Audio | 20s | 299s |
9 | Audio | 30s | 299s |
10 | Audio | 40s | 299s |
In this test case, one or more media flows share the bottleneck link with at least one long lived TCP flow. Long lived TCP flows download data throughout the session and are expected to have infinite amount of data to send and receive. This is a scenario where a multimedia application co-exists with a large file download. The test case measures the adaptivity of the candidate algorithm to competing traffic. It addresses the requirement 3 in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements].
Expected behavior: depending on the convergence observed in test case 5.1 and 5.2, the candidate algorithm may be able to avoid congestion collapse. In the worst case, the media stream will fall to the minimum media bit rate.
Evaluation metrics : following metrics in addition to as described in Section 4.1.
Testbed topology: One (1) media source S1 is connected to the corresponding media sink, R1. In addition, there is a long-live TCP flow sharing the same bottleneck link. The media traffic is transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path. The TCP traffic goes over the forward path from, S_tcp with acknowledgment packets go over the backward path from, R_tcp.
+--+ +--+ |S1|===== \ Forward --> / =======|R1| +--+ \\ // +--+ \\ // +-----+ +-----+ | A |---------------------------->| B | | |<----------------------------| | +-----+ +-----+ // \\ // <-- Backward \\ +-----+ // \\ +-----+ |S_tcp|=== / \ ===|R_tcp| +-----+ +-----+
Figure 6: Testbed Topology for TCP vs congestion controlled media Flows
Testbed attributes:
In this test case, one or more congestion controlled media flow shares the bottleneck link with multiple short-lived TCP flows. Short-lived TCP flows resemble the on/off pattern observed in the web traffic, wherein clients ( for example -browsers) connect to a server and download a resource (typically a web page, few images, text files, etc.) using several TCP connections. This scenario shows the performance of a multimedia application when several browser windows are active. The test case measures the adaptivity of the candidate algorithm to competing web traffic, it addresses the requirements 1.E in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements].
Depending on the number of short TCP flows, the cross-traffic either appears as a short burst flow or resembles a long TCP flow. The intention of this test is to observe the impact of short-term burst on the behavior of the candidate algorithm.
Expected behavior: The candidate algorithm is expected to avoid flow starvation during the presence of short and bursty competing TCP flows, streaming at least at the minimum media bit rate. After competing TCP flows terminate, the media streams are expected to be robust enough to eventually recover to previous steady state behavior, and at the very least, avoid persistent starvation.
Evaluation metrics : following metrics in addition to as described in Section 4.1.
Testbed topology: The topology described here is same as the one described in Figure 6.
Testbed attributes:
In this test case, more than one real-time interactive media flows share the link bandwidth and all flows reach to a steady state by utilizing the link capacity in an optimum way. At this stage one of the media flows is paused for a moment. This event will result in more available bandwidth for the rest of the flows as they are on a shared link. When the paused media flow resumes it would no longer have the same bandwidth share on the link. It has to make it's way through the other existing flows in the link to achieve a fair share of the link capacity. This test case is important specially for real-time interactive media which consists of more than one media flows and can pause/resume media flows at any point of time during the session. This test case directly addresses the requirement number 5 in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements]. One can think it as a variation of test case defined in Section 5.4. However, it is different as the candidate algorithms can use different strategies to increase its efficiency, for example in terms of fairness, convergence time, reduce oscillation etc, by capitalizing the fact that they have previous information of the link.
Expected behavior: During the period where the third stream is paused, the two remaining flows are expected to increase their rates and reach the maximum media bit rate. When the third stream resumes, all three flows are expected to converge to the same original fair share of rates prior to the media pause/resume event.
Evaluation metrics : following metrics in addition to as described in Section 4.1.
Testbed Topology: Same as test case defined in Section 5.4
Testbed attributes: The general description of the testbed parameters are same as Section 5.4 with changes in the test specific setup as below-
It has been noticed that there are other interesting test cases besides the basic test cases listed above. In many aspects, these additional test cases can help further evaluation of the candidate algorithm. They are listed as below.
In this test case media flows will have different priority levels. This will be an extension of Section 5.4 where the same test will be run with different priority levels imposed on each of the media flows. For example, the first flow (S1) is assigned a priority of 2 whereas the remaining two flows (S2 and S3) are assigned a priority of 1. The candidate algorithm MUST reflect the relative priorities assigned to each media flow. In the previous example, the first flow (S1) MUST arrive at a steady-state rate approximately twice of that of the other two flows (S2 and S3).
The candidate algorithm can use a coupled congestion control mechanism or use a weighted priority scheduler for the bandwidth distribution according to the respective media flow priority or use.
This test case requires to run all the basic test cases with the availability of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) [RFC6679] feature enabled. The goal of this test is to exhibit that the candidate algorithms do not fail when ECN signals are available. With ECN signals enabled the algorithms are expected to perform better than their delay based variants.
In this test case one congestion controlled media flow, S1->R1, traverses a path with multiple bottlenecks. As illustrated in Figure 7, the first flow (S1->R1) competes with the second congestion controlled media flow (S2->R2) over the link between A and B which is close to the sender side; again, that flow (S1->R1) competes with the third congestion controlled media flow (S3->R3) over the link between C and D which is close to the receiver side. The goal of this test is to ensure that the candidate algorithms work properly in the presence of multiple bottleneck links on the end to end path.
Expected behavior: the candidate algorithm is expected to achieve full utilization at both bottleneck links without starving any of the three congestion controlled media flows.
Forward ----> +---+ +---+ +---+ +---+ |S2 | |R2 | |S3 | |R3 | +---+ +---+ +---+ +---+ | | | | | | | | +---+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +---+ |S1 |=======| A |------>| B |----->| C |---->| D |=======|R1 | +---+ | |<------| |<-----| |<----| | +---+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ 1st 2nd Bottleneck (A->B) Bottleneck (C->D) <------ Backward
Figure 7: Testbed Topology for Multiple Bottlenecks
Testbed topology: Three media sources S1, S2, and S3 are connected to respective destinations R1, R2, and R3. For all three flows the media traffic is transported over the forward path and corresponding feedback/control traffic is transported over the backward path.
Testbed attributes:
Additional wireless network (both cellular network and WiFi network) specific test cases are defined in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-wireless-tests].
The evaluations of the test cases are intended to run in a controlled lab environment. Hence, the applications, simulators and network nodes should be well-behaved and should not impact the desired results. In case the evaluations are not done in a controlled environment, the security considerations in [I-D.ietf-rmcat-eval-criteria] and the relevant congestion control algorithms apply. It is important to take appropriate caution to avoid leaking non-responsive traffic from unproven congestion avoidance techniques onto the open Internet.
There are no IANA impacts in this memo.
Much of this document is derived from previous work on congestion control at the IETF.
The content and concepts within this document are a product of the discussion carried out in the Design Team.
[HEVC-seq] | HEVC, "Test Sequences", http://www.netlab.tkk.fi/~varun/test_sequences/ |
[I-D.ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements] | Jesup, R. and Z. Sarker, "Congestion Control Requirements for Interactive Real-Time Media", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-rmcat-cc-requirements-09, December 2014. |
[RFC5681] | Allman, M., Paxson, V. and E. Blanton, "TCP Congestion Control", RFC 5681, DOI 10.17487/RFC5681, September 2009. |
[xiph-seq] | Xiph.org, "Video Test Media", http://media.xiph.org/video/derf/ |