Reliable transport vs. reliable transport

One of the most contradictory uses of terminology in communications concerns the word transport as used by the IETF and the ITU-T communities. To make matters worse, the term’s prevalent modifier reliable leads to even further divergence in meaning.

To the Internet community, transport refers to the fourth layer of the OSI layer stack (a layer stack known to the ITU-T as X.200, but largely assumed to have been superseded by the more flexible G.80x layering model). The transport layer sits above the network layer (IP), and is responsible (or not) for a range of end-to-end path functionalities. The IETF has defined four transport protocols – the two celebrated ones being UDP (unreliable) and TCP (reliable), and their less fêted brethren are SCTP (highly reliable and message-oriented), and DCCP (unreliable but TCP-friendly).

Since the IP stack does not extend below OSI layer 3, the basic tenet is that nothing can be done about defects in lower layers (congestion, lost or misordered packets) and the best strategy is to compensate for any such problems using the layer over IP (e.g., retransmission, packet reordering). Reliability in this context thus means employing such compensation.

To the communications infrastructure community a transport network is a communications network that serves no function other than transport of user information between the network’s ingress and its egress. In particular, no complex processing such as packet retransmission of reordering is in scope. Reliability in this context means monitoring the functionality and performance of the lowest accessible layer (OAM), and bypassing defective elements in as short a time as possible (protection switching).

For many years the Rubicon between L2 and L3 so effectively separated the two communities that the disparate usages could continue un-noticed. But then came MPLS.

MPLS was originally invented as a method of accelerating the processing of IP packets, by parsing the IP header only at network ingress, and attaching a short label to be looked-up from then on. With advances in header parsing hardware and algorithms this acceleration became less and less significant. However, the possibility of treating a packet consistently throughout the network, and thus performing traffic engineering under layer three instead of compensation over it, kept MPLS from becoming marginalized. While IntServ at the IP level (implemented by RSVP) never caught on, traffic engineering at the MPLS layer (RSVP-TE) starting gaining momentum.

Of course, for MPLS to truly make IP more reliable, it required more “transport” functionality (in the ITU sense), such as stronger OAM and protection switching. This lead to the introduction of “Transport-MPLS” (T-MPLS), later to be renamed “MPLS-Transport Profile” (MPLS-TP).
Thus it became impossible to suppress the conflict between the two transports. In the IETF Work on MPLS Transport Profile in the IETF is obviously not performed in the “Transport Area” (having nothing to do with transport), but in the “Routing Area” (although it has very little to do with routing).

So what does the future hold for the words “transport” and “reliable” ? In theory it would be possible to adopt synonyms (such “carriage”, and “resilient”), although I doubt that either community would be willing to abandon its traditions. At a high enough level of abstraction the meanings coalesce, so perhaps the best tactic today (whenever there is room for error) is to say sub-IP transport and super-IP transport. Reliability can be left for the super-IP case (where it is not really apt) since there are multiple alternatives for the sub-IP case.

Y(J)S

Succulents and (tele)protection mechanisms

My wife and I cultivate succulents, plants that store water. Cacti are succulents, but we don’t collect them – only the cuddly and outwardly types. What I find so interesting about succulents is that the various types are relatively unrelated – there was never a proto-succulent that evolved into many subspecies. Instead many different kinds of plants developed similar mechanisms to cope with the same problem – that of conserving water. For example, the American Agave (from which Tequila is made) family looks so similar to the African Aloe (from which Aloe Vera is derived) family, that it is hard to tell them apart.

The same thing happens in different families of technologies. For example, in-building wiring in the UK uses ring circuits, where wiring goes from the fuse box to each of the receptacles, and back to the fuse box. In this way one can get away with smaller-diameter conductors than needed with a "radial circuit", since there are two parallel paths from the fuse box to each receptacle. Furthermore, if a wire is disconnected along one direction from the fuse box, there is still electricity at all of the receptacles. This is similar to what we call in communications engineering a 1+1 protection mechanism. In 1+1 protection the information is sent around a ring in both directions, and a copy that makes it (first or best) to the destination is extracted.

On the other hand, high-voltage electric distribution systems use a mechanism called "teleprotection" in order to bypass faults. When a fault is detected large relays switch in order to bypass the fault. This is similar to what we call fast reroute (FRR), in which detection of a communications network failure triggers rerouting of information around the failed link or element.

So, two of the protection mechanisms used in communications were independently discovered and implemented in electric wiring as well. I find that as interesting as succulents.

Y(J)S