Hi again,
The DTLS 1.3 ACKing scheme seems to be quite inefficient as it is written,
and I wonder if the current spec matches the authors' intentions.
Example:
Consider a flight broken down as sequence of records 1, 2, .., N.
Assume record 2 gets dropped, while all other records go through
without reordering, corruption or loss; hence, the record sequence
observed on the receiver is 1, 3, 4, ..., N.
Then, according to the spec, the following SHOULD happen:
On the receiver-side, we have the following from Section 7.1:
```
When an implementation receives a partial flight, it SHOULD generate
an ACK that covers the messages from that flight which it has
received so far. Implementations have some discretion about when to
generate ACKs, but it is RECOMMENDED that they do so under two
circumstances:
* When they receive a message or fragment which is out of order,
either because it is not the next expected message or because it
is not the next piece of the current message.
```
So, when the receiver receives records 1 and 3, it notices that 2 is missing
and immediately sends an ACK for { 1, 3 }.
On the sender-side, we have the following from Section 7.2:
```
7.2. Receiving ACKs
When an implementation receives an ACK, it SHOULD record that the
messages or message fragments sent in the records being ACKed were
received and omit them from any future retransmissions. Upon receipt
of an ACK for only some messages from a flight, an implementation
SHOULD retransmit the remaining messages or fragments.
```
So, when the receiver receives the ACK for { 1, 3 }, it resends records
2, 4, 5, .., N.
That's obviously not optimal, and probably not what was intended, but what
unambiguously appears to be the recommended behavior according to the spec.
How should this be resolved?
I see two similar and comparably unintrusive options:
1) Send ACKs only after period of inactivity
Instead of sending ACKs straight away when something hints at
something going wrong (such as an out-of-order receipt), as
currently stated in Section 7.1, only send ACKs after a period
of time where no further messages has been received.
That is, replace the current version
```
When an implementation receives a partial flight, it SHOULD generate
an ACK that covers the messages from that flight which it has
received so far. Implementations have some discretion about when to
generate ACKs, but it is RECOMMENDED that they do so under two
circumstances:
* When they receive a message or fragment which is out of order,
either because it is not the next expected message or because it
is not the next piece of the current message. Implementations
MUST NOT send ACKs for handshake messages which they discard as
out-of-order, because otherwise those messages will not be
retransmitted.
* When they have received part of a flight and do not immediately
receive the rest of the flight (which may be in the same UDP
datagram). A reasonable approach here is to set a timer for 1/4
the current retransmit timer value when the first record in the
flight is received and then send an ACK when that timer expires.
In addition, implementations MUST send ACKs upon receiving all of any
flight which they do not respond to with their own messages.
```
by something along the following lines:
```
As long as implementation has received some but not all of the next incoming
flight, it SHOULD send an ACK message after an implementation-defined period
a time during which no further messages are received. A reasonable approach
here is to reset a timer to 1/4 the current retransmission timer with every
record received in the current flight, and send an ACK when that timer
expires.
```
In the above example, this would mean that as long as records 3,4,..,N arrive
in close succession, it will only once send an ACK for {1,3,4,...,N} in the
end,
triggering retransmission of record 2 only, which is optimal.
The drawback of this is that the receiver of a flight does not inform a peer
about a gap in a flight as soon as it notices it. For this to work, the
content
of an ACK would need to be what's missing instead of what's present, which
appears to be a too intrusive change to be considered at this stage. The
benefit of this approach is that it leads to very good retransmission
bandwidth.
2. Essentially same as option 1., but 'mirrored': Allow the receiver of a flight
to send ACKs recurringly (though preferably still bunched, i.e. using some
timer
for the bunching), and replace the part of Section 7.2:
```
7.2. Receiving ACKs
When an implementation receives an ACK, it SHOULD record that the
messages or message fragments sent in the records being ACKed were
received and omit them from any future retransmissions. Upon receipt
of an ACK for only some messages from a flight, an implementation
SHOULD retransmit the remaining messages or fragments.
```
by something along the lines of
```
7.2. Receiving ACKs
If an implementation receives an ACK for parts of a flight, but doesn't
immediately receive ACKs for the rest of the flight, it SHOULD retransmit
the messages that have not been ACKed. A reasonable approach here is to
reset a timer to 1/4 the current retransmission timer with every ACK record
received, and retransmit the last outgoing flight when that timer expires.
```
Let me know what you think and which option (if not a completely different one)
you'd prefer.
Cheers,
Hanno
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