Internet DRAFT - draft-pauly-taps-guidelines

draft-pauly-taps-guidelines







Network Working Group                                           T. Pauly
Internet-Draft                                                Apple Inc.
Intended status: Standards Track                        October 24, 2017
Expires: April 27, 2018


         Guidelines for Racing During Connection Establishment
                   draft-pauly-taps-guidelines-01

Abstract

   Often, connections created across the Internet have multiple options
   of how to communicate: address families, specific IP addresses,
   network attachments, and application and transport protocols.  This
   document describes how an implementation can race multiple options
   during connection establishment, and expose this functionality
   through an API.

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 April 27, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 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




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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Endpoint  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Derived Endpoint  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.3.  Path  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.4.  Connection  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Connection Establishment Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Structuring Options as a Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Branch Types  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       4.1.1.  Derived Endpoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       4.1.2.  Alternate Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       4.1.3.  Protocol Options  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.2.  Branching Order-of-Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Connection Establishment Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.1.  Building the Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.2.  Racing Methods  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.2.1.  Delayed Racing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.2.2.  Failover  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.3.  Completing Establishment  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
       5.3.1.  Determining Successful Establishment  . . . . . . . .  13
   6.  API Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     6.1.  Handling 0-RTT Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   9.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   10. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17

1.  Introduction

   Often, connections created across the Internet have multiple options
   of how to communicate: address families, specific IP addresses,
   network attachments, and application and transport protocols.  If an
   application chooses to only attempt one of these options, it may fail
   to connect, or end up using a suboptimal path.  If an application
   chooses to attempt one option after another, waiting for each to fail
   or time out, a user of the application may need to wait for a very
   long time before progress is made.  And, if an application
   simultaneously attempts all options, it may unnecessarily consume
   significant local or network resources.

   In order to solve this, applications can employ a method of racing
   their various connection establishment options.  This approach is



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   commonly used for racing multiple IP address families, the algorithm
   for which is referred to as "Happy Eyeballs"
   [I-D.ietf-v6ops-rfc6555bis].  However, the approach can apply more
   generally.

   This document describes how an implementation can race multiple
   options during connection establishment, and expose this
   functionality through an API.

2.  Terminology

   This document uses specific terminology when discussing connection
   establishment.

2.1.  Endpoint

   An identifier for a network service.  Generally there is a concept of
   both a local and remote endpoint.  Endpoints are the targets of
   network connections.  If an endpoint of a given type cannot be
   directly used, it should be resolved into one or more endpoints of
   another type.  Examples of endpoint types include:

   o  IP address + port

   o  Hostname + port

   o  Service name + type + domain

   o  URI

2.2.  Derived Endpoint

   A derived endpoint is an endpoint that is not the original target of
   an API client, but an endpoint created from the original endpoint
   through transformation or lookup.  Derivation may take the form of
   hostname resolution into addresses, synthesis between address types,
   or changing to a different endpoint entirely based on a configuration
   requirement.  For example, if a proxy server must be used for a
   connection, the endpoint that represents the proxy is a derived
   endpoint.

2.3.  Path

   A view of network properties that can be used to communicate to an
   endpoint from the current system.  This is sometimes referred to as a
   Provisioning Domain (PvD) [RFC7556].  The path may include properties
   of the addresses and routes being used, the network interfaces being




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   used, and other metadata about the network learned from configuration
   or negotiation.

2.4.  Connection

   A flow of data between two endpoints.  A connection is created with a
   target remote endpoint, and a set of parameters indicating client
   preferences for path selection and protocol options.

3.  Connection Establishment Overview

   The process of establishing a network connection begins when an
   application expresses intent to communicate with a remote endpoint
   (along with any constraints or requirements it may have on the
   connection).  The process can be considered complete once there is at
   least one set of network protocols that have completed any required
   setup to the point that it can transmit and receive the application's
   data.

   Looking more closely, connection establishment has three required
   steps that must be performed by some entity on a system:

   1.  Identifying the endpoint to which the connection should be
       established

   2.  Choosing which path or interface to use

   3.  Conducting the necessary set of protocol handshakes to establish
       the connection

   The most simple example of this process might involve identifying the
   single IP address to which the application wishes to connect, using
   the system's current default interface or path, and starting a TCP
   handshake to establish a stream to the specified IP address.
   However, each step may also vary depending on the requirements of the
   connection: if the endpoint is defined as a hostname and port, then
   there may be multiple resolved addresses that are available; there
   may also be multiple interfaces or paths available, other than the
   default system interface; and some protocols may not need any
   transport handshake to be considered "established" (such as UDP),
   while other connections may utilize layered protocol handshakes, such
   as TLS over TCP.

   Whenever an application has multiple options for connection
   establishment, it can view the set of all individual connection
   establishment options as a single, aggregate connection
   establishment.  The aggregate set conceptually includes every valid
   combination of endpoints, paths, and protocols.  As an example,



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   consider an application that initiates a TCP connection to a hostname
   + port endpoint, and has two valid interfaces available (Wi-Fi and
   LTE).  The hostname resolves to a single IPv4 address on the Wi-Fi
   network, and resolves to the same IPv4 address on the LTE network, as
   well as a single IPv6 address.  The aggregate set of connection
   establishment options can be viewed as follows:

Aggregate [Endpoint: www.example.com:80] [Interface: Any]   [Protocol: TCP]
      |-> [Endpoint: 192.0.2.1:80]       [Interface: Wi-Fi] [Protocol: TCP]
      |-> [Endpoint: 192.0.2.1:80]       [Interface: LTE]   [Protocol: TCP]
      |-> [Endpoint: 2001:DB8::1.80]     [Interface: LTE]   [Protocol: TCP]

   Any one of these sub-entries on the aggregate connection attempt
   would satisfy the original application intent.  The concern of this
   document is the algorithm defining which of these options to try,
   when, and in what order.

4.  Structuring Options as a Tree

   When an implementation responsible for connection establishment needs
   to consider multiple options, it SHOULD logically structure these
   options as a hierarchical tree.  Each leaf node of the tree
   represents a single, coherent connection attempt, with an Endpoint, a
   Path, and a set of protocols that can directly negotiate and send
   data on the network.  Each node in the tree that is not a leaf
   represents a connection attempt that is either underspecified, or
   else includes multiple distinct options.  For example. when
   connecting on an IP network, a connection attempt to a hostname and
   port is underspecified, because the connection attempt requires a
   resolved IP address as its remote endpoint.  In this case, the node
   represented by the connection attempt to the hostname is a parent
   node, with child nodes for each IP address.  Similarly, an
   application that is allowed to connect using multiple interfaces will
   have a parent node of the tree for the decision between the paths,
   with a branch for each interface.

   The example aggregate connection attempt above can be drawn as a tree
   by grouping the addresses resolved on the same interface into
   branches:












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                             ||
                +==========================+
                |  www.example.com:80/Any  |
                +==========================+
                  //                    \\
+==========================+       +==========================+
| www.example.com:80/Wi-Fi |       |  www.example.com:80/LTE  |
+==========================+       +==========================+
             ||                      //                    \\
  +====================+  +====================+  +======================+
  | 192.0.2.1:80/Wi-Fi |  |  192.0.2.1:80/LTE  |  |  2001:DB8::1.80/LTE  |
  +====================+  +====================+  +======================+

   The rest of this document will use a notation scheme to represent
   this tree.  The parent (or trunk) node of the tree will be
   represented by a single integer, such as "1".  Each child of that
   node will have an integer that identifies it, from 1 to the number of
   children.  That child node will be uniquely identified by
   concatenating its integer to it's parents identifier with a dot in
   between, such as "1.1" and "1.2".  Each node will be summarized by a
   tuple of three elements: Endpoint, Path, and Protocol.  The above
   example can now be written more succinctly as:

   1 [www.example.com:80, Any, TCP]
     1.1 [www.example.com:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
       1.1.1 [192.0.2.1:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.2 [www.example.com:80, LTE, TCP]
       1.2.1 [192.0.2.1:80, LTE, TCP]
       1.2.2 [2001:DB8::1.80, LTE, TCP]

   When an application views this aggregate set of connection attempts
   as a single connection establishment, it only will use one of the
   leaf nodes to transfer data.  Thus, when a single leaf node becomes
   ready to use, then the entire connection attempt is ready to use by
   the application.  Another way to represent this is that every leaf
   node updates the state of its parent node when it becomes ready,
   until the trunk node of the tree is ready, which then notifies the
   application that the connection as a whole is ready to use.

   A connection establishment tree may be degenerate, and only have a
   single leaf node, such as a connection attempt to an IP address over
   a single interface with a single protocol.

   1 [192.0.2.1:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]

   A parent node may also only have one child (or leaf) node, such as a
   when a hostname resolves to only a single IP address.




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   1 [www.example.com:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.1 [192.0.2.1:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]

4.1.  Branch Types

   There are three types of branching from a parent node into one or
   more child nodes.  Any parent node of the tree MUST only use one type
   of branching.

4.1.1.  Derived Endpoints

   If a connection originally targets a single endpoint, there may be
   multiple endpoints of different types that can be derived from the
   original.  The connection library should order the derived endpoints
   according to application preference and expected performance.

   DNS hostname-to-address resolution is the most common method of
   endpoint derivation.  When trying to connect to a hostname endpoint
   on a traditional IP network, the implementation SHOULD send DNS
   queries for both A (IPv4) and AAAA (IPv6) records if both are
   supported on the local link.  The algorithm for ordering and racing
   these addresses SHOULD follow the recommendations in Happy Eyeballs
   [I-D.ietf-v6ops-rfc6555bis].

   1 [www.example.com:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.1 [2001:DB8::1.80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.2 [192.0.2.1:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.3 [2001:DB8::2.80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.4 [2001:DB8::3.80, Wi-Fi, TCP]

   DNS-Based Service Discovery can also provide an endpoint derivation
   step.  When trying to connect to a named service, the client may
   discover one or more hostname and port pairs on the local network
   using multicast DNS.  These hostnames should each be treated as a
   branch which can be attempted independently from other hostnames.
   Each of these hostnames may also resolve to one or more addresses,
   thus creating multiple layers of branching.

   1 [term-printer._ipp._tcp.meeting.ietf.org, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.1 [term-printer.meeting.ietf.org:631, Wi-Fi, TCP]
       1.1.1 [31.133.160.18.631, Wi-Fi, TCP]

4.1.2.  Alternate Paths

   If a client has multiple network interfaces available to it, such as
   mobile client with both Wi-Fi and Cellular connectivity, it can
   attempt a connection over either interface.  This represents a branch
   point in the connection establishment.  Like with derived endpoints,



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   the interfaces should be ranked based on preference, system policy,
   and performance.  Attempts should be started on one interface, and
   then on other interfaces successively after delays based on expected
   round-trip-time or other available metrics.

   1 [192.0.2.1:80, Any, TCP]
     1.1 [192.0.2.1:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.2 [192.0.2.1:80, LTE, TCP]

   This same approach applies to any situation in which the client is
   aware of multiple links or views of the network.  Multiple Paths,
   each with a coherent set of addresses, routes, DNS server, and more,
   may share a single interface.  A path may also represent a virtual
   interface service such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

   The list of available paths should be constrained by any requirements
   or prohibitions the application sets, as well as system policy.

4.1.3.  Protocol Options

   Differences in possible protocol compositions and options can also
   provide a branching point in connection establishment.  This allows
   clients to be resilient to situations in which a certain protocol is
   not functioning on a server or network.

   This approach is commonly used for connections with optional proxy
   server configurations.  A single connection may be allowed to use an
   HTTP-based proxy, a SOCKS-based proxy, or connect directly.  These
   options should be ranked and attempted in succession.

   1 [www.example.com:80, Any, HTTP/TCP]
     1.1 [192.0.2.8:80, Any, HTTP/HTTP Proxy/TCP]
     1.2 [192.0.2.7:10234, Any, HTTP/SOCKS/TCP]
     1.3 [www.example.com:80, Any, HTTP/TCP]
       1.3.1 [192.0.2.1:80, Any, HTTP/TCP]

   This approach also allows a client to attempt different sets of
   application and transport protocols that may provide preferable
   characteristics when available.  For example, the protocol options
   could involve QUIC [I-D.ietf-quic-transport] over UDP on one branch,
   and HTTP/2 [RFC7540] over TLS over TCP on the other:

   1 [www.example.com:443, Any, Any HTTP]
     1.1 [www.example.com:443, Any, QUIC/UDP]
       1.1.1 [192.0.2.1:443, Any, QUIC/UDP]
     1.2 [www.example.com:443, Any, HTTP2/TLS/TCP]
       1.2.1 [192.0.2.1:443, Any, HTTP2/TLS/TCP]




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   Another example is racing SCTP with TCP:

   1 [www.example.com:80, Any, Any Stream]
     1.1 [www.example.com:80, Any, SCTP]
            1.1.1 [192.0.2.1:80, Any, SCTP]
     1.2 [www.example.com:80, Any, TCP]
       1.2.1 [192.0.2.1:80, Any, TCP]

   Implementations that support racing protocols and protocol options
   SHOULD maintain a history of which protocols and protocol options
   successfully established, on a per-network basis.  This information
   can influence future racing decisions to prioritize or prune
   branches.

4.2.  Branching Order-of-Operations

   Branch types must occur in a specific order relative to one another
   to avoid creating leaf nodes with invalid or incompatible settings.
   In the example above, it would be invalid to branch for derived
   endpoints (the DNS results for www.example.com) before branching
   between interface paths, since usable DNS results on one network may
   not necessarily be the same as DNS results on another network due to
   local network entities, supported address families, or enterprise
   network configurations.  Implementations must be careful to branch in
   an order that results in usable leaf nodes whenever there are
   multiple branch types that could be used from a single node.

   The order of operations for branching, where lower numbers are acted
   upon first, SHOULD be:

   1.  Alternate Paths

   2.  Protocol Options

   3.  Derived Endpoints

   Branching between paths is the first in the list because results
   across multiple interfaces are likely not related to one another:
   endpoint resolution may return different results, especially when
   using locally resolved host and service names, and which protocols
   are supported and preferred may differ across interfaces.  Thus, if
   multiple paths are attempted, the overall connection can be seen as a
   race between the available paths or interfaces.

   Protocol options are checked next in order.  Whether or not a set of
   protocol, or protocol-specific options, can successfully connect is
   generally not dependent on which specific IP address is used.
   Furthermore, the protocol stacks being attempted may influence or



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   altogether change the endpoints being used.  Adding a proxy to a
   connection's branch will change the endpoint to the proxy's IP
   address or hostname.  Choosing an alternate protocol may also modify
   the ports that should be selected.

   Branching for derived endpoints is the final step, and may have
   multiple layers of derivation or resolution, such as DNS service
   resolution and DNS hostname resolution.

5.  Connection Establishment Dynamics

   The primary goal of the connection establishment process is to
   successfully negotiate a protocol stack to an endpoint over an
   interface--to connect a single leaf node of the tree--with as little
   delay and as few unnecessary connections attempts as possible.
   Optimizing these two factors improves the user experience, while
   minimizing network load.

   This section covers the dynamic aspect of connection establishment.
   While the tree described above is a useful conceptual and
   architectural model, an implementation does not know what the full
   tree may become up front, nor will many of the possible branches be
   used in the common case.

5.1.  Building the Tree

   The tree of options is built dynamically, out from the original trunk
   node.  Any time that a connection attempt may be made directly to an
   endpoint without further derivation, and without needing to try
   alternate paths or protocol options that have not yet been covered by
   previous branches, the implementation SHOULD treat this as a leaf
   node and connect directly.  Any time that an implementation chooses
   to branch between multiple options, it SHOULD determine a preferred
   order between the child nodes based on system policy, expected or
   historical performance, and application preference.

   When multiple paths are available, and permitted by the system's
   policy, the implementation SHOULD branch between the various paths.
   The list SHOULD be sorted based on the system policies and routes
   (which often determine a "default" interface), preferences expressed
   by the application, and expected performance based on measured or
   advertised properties of each path.

   When multiple protocol options are allowed by an application, and the
   system and implementation identify valid sets of protocols and
   protocol options, the implementation SHOULD branch between these
   sets.  This list SHOULD be sorted based on application preference and




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   expected performance, generally measured in terms of latency and
   bandwidth.

   An implementation will only branch to derive endpoints when
   necessary.  This step involves the most external information, as
   endpoint derivation is often a process that requires fetching
   information from the network.  Before branching, an implementation
   must first generate the list of derived endpoints.  Once this list is
   sufficiently populated to continue, the implementation SHOULD sort
   the list based on preference and expected performance.  When these
   derived endpoints are IP addresses, implementations SHOULD use the
   algorithm in [RFC6724] to sort the addresses.  In cases where
   additional information can become available after the initial tree
   has been constructed, the implementation SHOULD update the tree to
   reflect new information and orderings if none of the leaf nodes are
   fully established.

5.2.  Racing Methods

   There are three different approaches to racing the attempts for
   different nodes of the connection establishment tree:

   1.  Immediate

   2.  Delayed

   3.  Failover

   Each approach is appropriate in different use-cases and branch types.
   However, to avoid consuming unnecessary network resources,
   implementations SHOULD NOT use immediate racing as a default
   approach.

   The timing algorithms for racing SHOULD remain independent across
   branches of the tree.  Any timers or racing logic is isolated to a
   given parent node, and is not ordered precisely with regards to other
   children of other nodes.

5.2.1.  Delayed Racing

   Delayed racing can be used whenever a single node of the tree has
   multiple child nodes.  Based on the order determined when building
   the tree, the first child node will be initiated immediately,
   followed by the next child node after some delay.  Once that second
   child node is initiated, the third child node (if present) will begin
   after another delay, and so on until all child nodes have been
   initiated, or one of the child nodes successfully completes its
   negotiation.



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   Delayed racing attempts occur in parallel.  Implementations SHOULD
   NOT terminate an earlier child connection attempt upon starting a
   secondary child.

   The delay between starting child nodes SHOULD be based on the
   properties of the previously started child node.  For example, if the
   first child represents an IP address with a known route, and the
   second child represents another IP address, the delay between
   starting the first and second IP addresses can be based on the
   expected retransmission cadence for the first child's connection
   (derived from historical round-trip-time).  Alternatively, if the
   first child represents a branch on a Wi-Fi interface, and the second
   child represents a branch on an LTE interface, the delay should be
   based on the expected time in which the branch for the first
   interface would be able to establish a connection, based on link
   quality and historical round-trip-time.

   Any delay SHOULD have a defined minimum and maximum value based on
   the branch type.  Generally, branches between paths and protocols
   should have longer delays than branches between derived endpoints.
   The maximum delay should be considered with regards to how long a
   user is expected to wait for the connection to complete.

   If a child node fails to connect before the delay timer has fired for
   the next child, the next child SHOULD be started immediately.

5.2.2.  Failover

   If an implementation or application has a strong preference for one
   branch over another, the branching node may choose to wait until one
   child has failed before starting the next.  Failure of a leaf node is
   determined by its protocol negotiation failing or timing out; failure
   of a parent branching node is determined by all of its children
   failing.

   An example in which failover is recommended is a race between a
   protocol stack that uses a proxy and a protocol stack that bypasses
   the proxy.  Failover is useful in case the proxy is down or
   misconfigured, but any more aggressive type of racing may end up
   unnecessarily avoiding a proxy that was preferred by policy.

5.3.  Completing Establishment

   The process of connection establishment completes when one leaf node
   of the tree has completed negotiation with the remote endpoint
   successfully, or else all nodes of the tree have failed to connect.
   The first leaf node to complete its connection is then used by the
   application to send and receive data.



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   It is useful to process success and failure throughout the tree by
   child nodes reporting to their parent nodes (towards the trunk of the
   tree).  For example, in the following case, if 1.1.1 fails to
   connect, it reports the failure to 1.1.  Since 1.1 has no other child
   nodes, it also has failed and reports that failure to 1.  Because 1.2
   has not yet failed, 1 is not considered to have failed.  Since 1.2
   has not yet started, it is started and the process continues.
   Similarly, if 1.1.1 successfully connects, then it marks 1.1 as
   connected, which propagates to the trunk node 1.  At this point, the
   connection as a whole is considered to be successfully connected and
   ready to process application data

   1 [www.example.com:80, Any, TCP]
     1.1 [www.example.com:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
       1.1.1 [192.0.2.1:80, Wi-Fi, TCP]
     1.2 [www.example.com:80, LTE, TCP]
       ...

   If a leaf node has successfully completed its connection, all other
   attempts SHOULD be made ineligible for use by the application for the
   original request.  New connection attempts that involve transmitting
   data on the network SHOULD NOT be started after another leaf node has
   completed successfully, as the connection as a whole has been
   established.  An implementation MAY choose to let certain handshakes
   and negotiations complete in order to gather metrics to influence
   future connections.  Similarly, an implementation MAY choose to hold
   onto fully established leaf nodes that were not the first to
   establish for use in future connections, but this approach is not
   recommended since those attempts were slower to connect and may
   exhibit less desirable properties.

5.3.1.  Determining Successful Establishment

   Implementations may select the criteria by which a leaf node is
   considered to be successfully connected differently on a per-protocol
   basis.  If the only protocol being used is a transport protocol with
   a clear handshake, like TCP, then the obvious choice is to declare
   that node "connected" when the last packet of the three-way handshake
   has been received.  If the only protocol being used is an
   "unconnected" protocol, like UDP, the implementation may consider the
   node fully "connected" the moment it determines a route is present,
   before sending any packets on the network.

   For protocol stacks with multiple handshakes, the decision becomes
   more nuanced.  If the protocol stack involves both TLS and TCP, an
   implementation MAY determine that a leaf node is connected after the
   TCP handshake is complete, or it MAY wait for the TLS handshake to
   complete as well.  The benefit of declaring completion when the TCP



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   handshake finishes, and thus stopping the race for other branches of
   the tree, is that there will be less burden on the network from other
   connection attempts.  On the other hand, by waiting until the TLS
   handshake is complete, an implementation avoids the scenario in which
   a TCP handshake completes quickly, but TLS negotiation is either very
   slow or fails altogether in particular network conditions or to a
   particular endpoint.

6.  API Considerations

   In general, the internal states and nodes of racing connection
   establishment do not need to be exposed to applications.  Instead,
   this process SHOULD be treated as an abstraction of a single,
   aggregate connection establishment behind an API.  This places some
   requirements on the API, including:

   o  The API must allow the application to specify an un-resolved
      endpoint as the remote side of the connection, such as a URI or
      hostname + port.  The application also should be able to provide
      constraints on path selection and protocol features.

   o  Any read or write operations cannot take effect until one leaf
      node has been chosen as the connected node.  The API needs to
      either expose asynchronous reads and writes, or else prohibit
      reads and writes until the connection is established.

   o  The action of starting or initiating the connection may involve
      many network-bound operations, so this operation SHOULD be
      asynchronous.

   o  Properties of the connection, such as the remote and local
      addresses, the interface used, and the protocols used, may not be
      queryable until the connection is established.

6.1.  Handling 0-RTT Data

   Several protocols allow sending higher-level protocol or application
   data within the first packet of their protocol establishment, such as
   TCP Fast Open [RFC7413] and TLS 1.3 [I-D.ietf-tls-tls13].  This
   approach is referred to as sending Zero-RTT (0-RTT) data.  This is a
   desirable property, but poses challenges to an implementation that
   uses racing during connection establishment.

   If the application has 0-RTT data to send in any protocol handshakes,
   it needs to provide this data before the handshakes have begun.  When
   racing, this means that the data SHOULD be provided before the
   process of connection establishment has begun.  If the API allows the
   application to send 0-RTT data, it MUST provide an interface that



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   identifies this data as idempotent data.  In general, 0-RTT data may
   be replayed (for example, if a TCP SYN contains data, and the SYN is
   retransmitted, the data will be retransmitted as well), but racing
   means that different leaf nodes have the opportunity to send the same
   data independently.  If data is truly idempotent, this should be
   permissible.

   Once the application has provided its 0-RTT data, an implementation
   SHOULD keep a copy of this data and provide it to each new leaf node
   that is started and for which a 0-RTT protocol is being used.

   It is also possible that protocol stacks within a particular leaf
   node use 0-RTT handshakes without any idempotent application data.
   For example, TCP Fast Open could use a Client Hello from a TLS as its
   0-RTT data, shortening the cumulative handshake time.

   0-RTT handshakes often rely on previous state, such as TCP Fast Open
   cookies, previously established TLS tickets, or out-of-band
   distributed pre-shared keys (PSKs).  Implementations should be aware
   of security concerns around using these tokens across multiple
   addresses or paths when racing.  In the case of TLS, any given ticket
   or PSK SHOULD only be used on one leaf node.  If implementations have
   multiple tickets available from a previous connection, each leaf node
   attempt MUST use a different ticket.  In effect, each leaf node will
   send the same early application data, yet encoded (encrypted)
   differently on the wire.

7.  Security Considerations

   See Section 6.1 for security considerations around racing with 0-RTT
   data.

   An attacker that knows a particular device is racing several options
   during connection establishment may be able to block packets for the
   first connection attempt, thus inducing the device to fall back to a
   secondary attempt.  This is a problem if the secondary attempts have
   worse security properties that enable further attacks.
   Implementations should ensure that all options have equivalent
   security properties to avoid incentivizing attacks.

   Since results from the network can determine how a connection attempt
   tree is built, such as when DNS returns a list of resolved endpoints,
   it is possible for the network to cause an implementation to consume
   significant on-device resources.  Implementations SHOULD limit the
   maximum amount of state allowed for any given node, including the
   number of child nodes, especially when the state is based on results
   from the network.




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8.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no request to IANA.

9.  Acknowledgments

   Thanks to Josh Graessley and Stuart Cheshire for their help in the
   design of the original implementation of Happy Eyeballs for Apple
   that began this work.

10.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-quic-transport]
              Iyengar, J. and M. Thomson, "QUIC: A UDP-Based Multiplexed
              and Secure Transport", draft-ietf-quic-transport-07 (work
              in progress), October 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-tls-tls13]
              Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
              Version 1.3", draft-ietf-tls-tls13-21 (work in progress),
              July 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-v6ops-rfc6555bis]
              Schinazi, D. and T. Pauly, "Happy Eyeballs Version 2:
              Better Connectivity Using Concurrency", draft-ietf-v6ops-
              rfc6555bis-06 (work in progress), October 2017.

   [RFC6724]  Thaler, D., Ed., Draves, R., Matsumoto, A., and T. Chown,
              "Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol Version 6
              (IPv6)", RFC 6724, DOI 10.17487/RFC6724, September 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6724>.

   [RFC7413]  Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Radhakrishnan, S., and A. Jain, "TCP
              Fast Open", RFC 7413, DOI 10.17487/RFC7413, December 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7413>.

   [RFC7540]  Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015, <https://www.rfc-
              editor.org/info/rfc7540>.

   [RFC7556]  Anipko, D., Ed., "Multiple Provisioning Domain
              Architecture", RFC 7556, DOI 10.17487/RFC7556, June 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7556>.







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Author's Address

   Tommy Pauly
   Apple Inc.
   1 Infinite Loop
   Cupertino, California 95014
   United States of America

   Email: tpauly@apple.com










































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