| QUIC | C. Krasic |
| Internet-Draft | |
| Intended status: Standards Track | March 27, 2017 |
| Expires: September 28, 2017 |
Header Compression for HTTP over QUIC
draft-krasic-quic-qcram-00
The design of the core QUIC transport and the mapping of HTTP semantics over it subsume many HTTP/2 features, prominent among them stream multiplexing and HTTP header compression. A key advantage of the QUIC transport is that provides stream multiplexing free of HoL blocking between streams, while in HTTP/2 multiplexed streams can suffer HoL blocking primarily due to HTTP/2’s layering above TCP. However, assuming HPACK is used for header compression, HTTP over QUIC is still vulnerable to HoL blocking, because of how HPACK exploits header redundancies between multiplexed HTTP transactions. This draft defines QCRAM, a variation of HPACK and mechanisms in the QUIC HTTP mapping that allow QUIC implementations the flexibility to avoid header-compression induced HoL blocking.
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The QUIC transport protocol was designed from the outset to support HTTP semantics, and its design subsumes most of the features of HTTP/2. Two of those features, stream multiplexing and header compression come into some conflict in QUIC. A key goal of the design of QUIC is to improve stream multiplexing relative to HTTP/2, by eliminating HoL (head of line) blocking that can occur in HTTP/2. HoL blocking can happen because HTTP/2 streams are multiplexed onto a single TCP connection with its in-order semantics. QUIC can maintain independence between streams because it implements core transport functionality in a fully stream-aware manner. However, the HTTP over QUIC mapping is still subject HoL blocking if HPACK is used directly as in HTTP/2. HPACK exploits multiplexing for greater compression, shrinking the representation of headers that have appeared earlier on the same connection. In the context of QUIC, this imposes a vulnerability to HoL blocking as will be described more below.
QUIC is described in [QUIC-TRANSPORT]. The HTTP over QUIC mapping is described in [QUIC-HTTP]. For a full description of HTTP/2, see [RFC7540]. The description of HPACK is [RFC7541].
Readers may wish to refer to [RFC7540] Section 1.4 to review HPACK terminology, and [QUIC-HTTP], Sections 4 on “HTTP over QUIC stream mapping” and 4.2.1 on “Header Compression”.
This draft extends HPACK and the HTTP over QUIC mapping with the option to avoid HoL blocking. QCRAM is intended to be a relatively non-intrusive extension to HPACK, an implementation should be easily shared within stacks supporting both HTTP/2 and HTTP over QUIC. For full performance, QCRAM requires QUIC specific mechanisms that leverage tight integration between transport and HTTP layers, as will be described in Section 2.2.1.
The following is an example of how HPACK can induce HoL blocking in QUIC. Assume two message control streams A and B, and corresponding header blocks HA and HB. Stream B experiences HoL blocking due to A as follows:
Continuing the example, QCRAM’s approach is as follows.
It is worth noting that rules 1. and 2. are situations where HB is not at risk of HoL blocking, even without QCRAM. Only in rule 3 does QCRAM come into play giving the encoder the choice between HoL avoidance or better compression.
QCRAM strives to solve HoL blocking in the simplest way possible. To that end, the mechanisms QCRAM defines are largely at the granularity of header blocks, as opposed to individual header field representations.
QCRAM header compression framing differs slightly from HTTP/2. Section 4.3 of [RFC7540] declares that:
As with other aspects of QUIC, QCRAM aims to leverage opportunities for tighter integration between layers, in ways that may not have been practical in HTTP/2 due to various forms of ossification. The two specific instance of this are coordination of framing with packet generation, as described in the following paragraph, and use of transport acknowledgments to reason about encoder-decoder state synchronization, which will be described in Section 3.2.
QCRAM header compression SHOULD be progressive: compression of a Header List happens iteratively, where each iteration produces a single Header Block Fragment constrained to fit within the space available in the current transport packet. Each iteration informs the progressive HPACK encoder of available space and the encoder generates only as many HPACK representations as fit. The resulting header block fragment is encapsulated by an HTTP mapping headers frame (HEADERS or PUSH_PROMISE), and the headers frame will be encapsulated by a QUIC transport-level STREAM frame. An implementation that can not support such coordination MUST forego references allowed by rule 2 of the previous section.
HPACK indexed entries refer to an entry by its current position in the dynamic table. As Figure 1 of [RFC7541] illustrates, newest entries have smallest indices, and oldest entries are evicted first if the table is full. Under this scheme, each insertion to the table causes the index of all existing entries to change (implicitly). The approach is acceptable for HTTP/2 because TCP is totally ordered, but it is is problematic in the out-of-order context of QUIC.
QCRAM uses a hybrid absolute-relative indexing approach. Every QCRAM header block fragment starts with an integer that conveys an absolute base index. The format of individual indexed representations does not change, but their semantics become absolute in combination with the base index. Similarly, the base index is used to perform table insertions at unambiguous positions.
QCRAM is optional on a per header frame basis. QCRAM enabled header frames can be decoded on receipt, otherwise the header frame should be processed in strict order as per Section 4.2.1 of the HTTP mapping.
QCRAM adds three integer epochs to HPACK state, all derived from the sequence numbers of HTTP Mapping (refer to [QUIC-HTTP] Sections 5.2.2 and 5.2.4.), and provided to the HPACK layer by the HTTP mapping:
The following must hold: encode_epoch >= packet_epoch > commit_epoch. Section 3.2 describes ho the epoch values are computed.
As each header block fragment is processed, HPACK is informed whether QCRAM is enabled. If so, the encoder will emit an indexed representation only if it is not vulnerable to HoL blocking, that is if there is a matching entry in the dynamic table such that: entry.encode_epoch <= commit_epoch or entry.encode_epoch >= packet_epoch. Otherwise a literal must be used.
Every QCRAM header block fragment must start with a single HPACK integer that encodes the value of the base index, defined as the total number of entries that had been inserted to the dynamic table before encoding the current header block. As described above, the decoder will use this as the starting point for insertions, and for interpreting indexed representations.
Since QCRAM allows headers to be processed out of order, it might be possible that a header block fragment may contain references to entries that have been evicted by the time it arrives. For example, suppose HB was encoded after HA, and HB evicts an entry referenced by HA. If due to network drops HB is decoded first, the reference in HA will become invalid.
To handle this with minimal complexity, QCRAM takes the following approach: if packet_epoch > commit_epoch + 1, and if while encoding the current header block fragment an eviction becomes necessary, then QCRAM must be disabled for the current header frame. The first condition might be paraphrased as: are there any header block packets still in flight before the current one?
In the above example, HB would not be QCRAM enabled, hence the decoder must ensure to process HB strictly after HA.
*Compared to other QUIC state such as receive buffers, the default table size of 4,096 octets (see [RFC7540] Section 6.5.2.) is very modest. Deployment data suggests it is rarely increased in practice, and experiments to increase it did not yield significant gains. Consequently, I think it’s best to avoid any heroic measures to deal with performance under full tables. *
An additional flag is added to HEADERS and PUSH_PROMISE (refer to Sections 5.2.1. and 5.2.4. of [QUIC-HTTP]):
QCRAM (0x8): This header block fragment can be decoded upon receipt.
When encoding headers, the HTTP mapping layer notifies the HPACK layer whether QCRAM is set, and provides the commit, packet, and encoding epochs:
Beyond sequence numbers already defined in Section 5.2.1 and 5.2.4, the only additional overhead of QCRAM is the base index added to header blocks. For a typical connection with fewer than 256 requests, the index would consume approximately 1 byte per header block.
It might be advantageous to allow implementations to send header frames on the HTTP control stream (QUIC stream 3). Such headers would not be associated with any HTTP transaction, but could be used strategically to improve performance. For instance, as a means to avoid disabling QCRAM due to table eviction, or to ensure most frequently used entries have the smallest indices.
For QCRAM header frames, the base index is sufficient to decode correctly. If QCRAM were made mandatory rather than optional, then it would be feasible to remove sequence number from wire format of HEADERS and PUSH_PROMISE frames, as well as the QCRAM flag. However, this would imply that once the table became full, insertions could only occur during during periods with a single header block in flight.
Alternatively, if it were desirable to support a middle ground between totally ordered HPACK and the present draft, one way might be to extend the concept of packet epoch to denote a sequence of one or more packets. A pair of new flags would be added to header frames to signal the start and end of such packet sequences. The decoder would have to have buffering based logic to ensure header blocks within a packet sequence are processed in order, similar to the logic used in totally ordered HPACK.
TBD.
This document currently makes no request of IANA, and might not need to.
This draft draws heavily on the text of [RFC7541]. The indirect input of those authors is gratefully acknowledged, as well as ideas from:
| [QUIC-HTTP] | Bishop, M., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) over QUIC" |
| [QUIC-TRANSPORT] | Iyengar, J. and M. Thomson, "QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed and Secure Transport" |
| [RFC7540] | Belshe, M., Peon, R. and M. Thomson, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540, DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015. |
| [RFC7541] | Peon, R. and H. Ruellan, "HPACK: Header Compression for HTTP/2", RFC 7541, DOI 10.17487/RFC7541, May 2015. |