Hi all,

Also relevant to this discussion, 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/125/materials/minutes-125-tsvwg-00 
includes the following:

"- Discussion: Gorry Fairhurst questioned why only the 2 ECN bits were being 
exported instead of the full 8-bit Traffic Class/DSCP field. Shueyan noted that 
while DSCP IEs exist, specific ECN statistical IEs are needed for L4S 
visibility.
- Operator Feedback: Jason Livingood expressed strong support, noting that the 
lack of standardized IPFIX ECN reporting is currently an operational gap for 
ISPs deploying L4S."

Cheers,
Med

De : Joe Clarke (jclarke) <[email protected]>
Envoyé : vendredi 27 mars 2026 16:31
À : [email protected]; [email protected]
Cc : [email protected]
Objet : [OPSAWG]Re: Feedback on Export of L4S ECN in IP Flow Information Export 
(IPFIX), draft-song-opsawg-ipfix-ecn-01


Adding to this as a contributor, Jason Livingood has requested the IETF NOC 
provide some stats on L4S/ECN.  He hinted that he's using IPFIX today in 
Comcast to do this.  It might be worth reaching out to him to see what he's 
doing and how that is working and if a new IE would be useful vs. leveraging 
the full 8 bits you get today.

Joe

From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Friday, March 27, 2026 at 07:57
To: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: [OPSAWG]Feedback on Export of L4S ECN in IP Flow Information Export 
(IPFIX), draft-song-opsawg-ipfix-ecn-01
Dear draft-song-opsawg-ipfix-ecn authors,

I would like to complement what I mentioned during our OPSAWG meeting last week.

There is an existing information element ipClassOfService (ID: 5) which exports 
the 8 bits of of IPv4 TOS or IPv6 Traffic Class field. You could be exporting 
the 8 bits directly and extract the bit 6 and bit 7 in collector for ECN 
evaluation.

This ipClassOfService is a very basic IPFIX IE, implemented by most IPFIX 
Metering Processes. On top of that, it's typically a key field, along with 
src/dst IP address, src/dst port, IP protocol, and input interface.

So asking a router to meter the full ipClassOfService, to substract the last 2 
bits, insert it into the new ipv4HeaderEcn IFPIX IE before exporting  is a big 
job. Especially if it's a key field, as this implies "touching" the 
ipClassOfService for every single packet.

            0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7

         +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

         |          DS Field, DSCP           | ECN Field |

         +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+



                        Figure 1: ECN Fields in IPv4

IMO, this is not optimal, and you are not even saving on the export bandwidth 
as we speak about unsigned8 anyway. I believe your router implementation should 
stick to exporting the ipClassOfService.

I don't want to say that you should not define this IFPIX IE in IANA (notice 
the double negation).
There is actually one case where these ipv4HeaderEcn and ipv6HeaderEcn IFPIX 
IEs might be useful.
Your IPFIX collector receives the ipClassOfService. From there, you extract the 
last 2 bits because you only care about ECN. If and only if you want to 
re-export the IPFIX IEs, stressing that only the last bits are relevant (maybe 
b/c you set the DSCP bits to 0), expressing the clear semantic, then it might 
make sense to export these new IPFIX IEs ... implying the request to IANA.

I hope this clarifies.

I did not look at the other IPFIX IEs in your draft but I advice you think 
along the same logic.
For example, I read "The Information Element encodes only these 3 bits." for 
mplsHeaderEcn.
We might be facing the same issue.

And finally, like in RFC 9487, a section about sample use cases 
(https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9487#name-sample-use-cases) with some 
appendix examples (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9487#appendix-A) 
would be a plus.

Thanks and regards, Benoit

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