RFC - 3540

Robust Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) Signaling with Nonces

Original:	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc3540.txt
Authors:	N. Spring [University of Washington], D. Wetherall [University of Washington], D. Ely [University of Washington]
Date:	June 2003
Category:	Experimental Standard

---

Referred by:	13 RFC
Refers to:	4 RFC

---

Status

This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

This note describes the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)-nonce, an optional addition to ECN that protects against accidental or malicious concealment of marked packets from the TCP sender. It improves the robustness of congestion control by preventing receivers from exploiting ECN to gain an unfair share of network bandwidth. The ECN-nonce uses the two ECN-Capable Transport (ECT)codepoints in the ECN field of the IP header, and requires a flag in the TCP header. It is computationally efficient for both routers and hosts.

---