RE: proposed WINDOW_UPDATE text for session flow control windows

From my understanding, when the recipient has consumed some data from a stream, it needs to send two WINDOW_UPDATE frames to notify the sender:
- One for updating the stream window size.
- One for updating the session window size.

These two frames could be merged into one by stating that a WINDOW_UPDATE for a stream window also applies to the session window.
This impacts the WINDOW_UPDATE frames received for a closed stream: they should still be applied to the session window.

I find that sending only one WINDOW_UPDATE frame is slightly better from the design point of view. I'm not sure of the impact at the implementation level. I would think it is better to process one "complex" frame than two "simple" ones.

Opinions?

Hervé.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: willchan@google.com [mailto:willchan@google.com] On Behalf Of
> William Chan (???)
> Sent: dimanche 10 février 2013 09:03
> To: HTTP Working Group
> Subject: proposed WINDOW_UPDATE text for session flow control windows
> 
> Here's my commit in my github fork of the HTTP/2.0 spec:
> https://github.com/willchan/http2-

> spec/commit/8ba562d34e33e784aad3549a8bab8a6bba87d508
> 
> Here's the HTML generated for that (it looks very broken, sorry, I am n00b at
> this tooling):
> http://htmlpreview.github.com/?https://github.com/willchan/http2-

> spec/blob/master/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2.html#WINDOW_UPDATE
> 
> Roberto and I have had some minimal discussion about this at my pull
> request to his SPDY spec repo: https://github.com/grmocg/SPDY-

> Specification/pull/4.
> 
> Note, I did not update the flow control principles section. I also did not
> update the SETTINGS section, although arguably the SETTINGS id
> SETTINGS_INITIAL_WINDOW_SIZE should be renamed to
> SETTINGS_INITIAL_STREAM_WINDOW_SIZE to be explicit.
> 
> My diff is rather simple. It changes the text to indicate stream 0 is used for
> the session window. It also does some minor wordsmithing because the
> original text was pretty ambiguous. I'm included the full updated
> WINDOW_UPDATE text here:
> 
> ========================================
> 3.6.8.  WINDOW_UPDATE
> 
>    The WINDOW_UPDATE control frame is used to implement per stream and
>    per session flow control in HTTP/2.0.  Flow control in HTTP/2.0 is
>    per hop, that is, only between the two endpoints of a HTTP/2.0
>    connection.  If there are one or more intermediaries between the
>    client and the origin server, flow control signals are not explicitly
>    forwarded by the intermediaries.  (However, throttling of data
>    transfer by any recipient may have the effect of indirectly
>    propagating flow control information upstream back to the original
>    sender.)  Flow control only applies to the data portion of data
>    frames.
> 
>    Flow control in SPDY is implemented by a data transfer window for
> 
> 
> 
> Belshe, et al.           Expires August 14, 2013               [Page 26]
> 

> Internet-Draft                  HTTP/2.0                   February 2013
> 
> 
>    each stream and one for the entire session.  The data transfer window
>    is a simple uint32 that indicates how many bytes of data the sender
>    can transmit.  When the session starts, the sender initializes the
>    session window to the initial session window size.  After a stream is
>    created, but before any data frames have been transmitted, the sender
>    initializes the stream window to the initial stream window size.  The
>    window size is a measure of the buffering capability of the
>    recipient.  The sender MUST NOT send a data frame with a data length
>    greater than the session window size or the stream window size.
>    After sending each data frame, the sender decrements both the per
>    stream window size and the session window size by the amount of data
>    transmitted.  When a stream window size becomes less than or equal to
>    0, the sender MUST NOT send data frames for that stream, except for a
>    zero length data frame with the FIN flag set.  Likewise, when the
>    session window size becomes less than or equal to 0, the sender the
>    sender MUST NOT send data frames for that stream, except for a zero
>    length data frame with the FIN flag set.  The recipient can send a
>    WINDOW_UPDATE frame back to notify the sender that it has consumed
>    some data and freed up buffer space to receive more data for the
>    stream or session.
> 
>    +----------------------------------+
>    |1|   unused     |         9       |
>    +----------------------------------+
>    | 0 (flags) |     8 (length)       |
>    +----------------------------------+
>    |X|     Stream-ID (31-bits)        |
>    +----------------------------------+
>    |X|  Delta-Window-Size (31-bits)   |
>    +----------------------------------+
> 
>    Control bit: The control bit is always 1 for this message.
> 
>    Unused
> 
>    Type: The message type for a WINDOW_UPDATE message is 9.
> 
>    Length: The length field is always 8 for this frame (there are 8
>    bytes after the length field).
> 
>    Stream-ID: The stream ID that this WINDOW_UPDATE control frame is
>    for.  If the stream ID value is 0, the WINDOW_UPDATE frame applies to
>    the session window.
> 
>    Delta-Window-Size: The additional number of bytes that the sender can
>    transmit in addition to existing remaining window size.  The legal
>    range for this field is 1 to 2^31 - 1 (0x7fffffff) bytes.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Belshe, et al.           Expires August 14, 2013               [Page 27]
> 

> Internet-Draft                  HTTP/2.0                   February 2013
> 
> 
>    The window size as kept by the sender must never exceed 2^31
>    (although it can become negative in one special case).  If a sender
>    receives a WINDOW_UPDATE that causes the window size to exceed this
>    limit, then if the Stream-ID was 0, it MUST send a GOAWAY frame with
>    status code FLOW_CONTROL_ERROR to terminate the session.  And if the
>    Stream-ID references an active stream, it must send a RST_STREAM
>    frame with status code FLOW_CONTROL_ERROR to terminate the stream.
> 
>    When a HTTP/2.0 connection is first established, the default initial
>    window size for all streams is 64KB and the initial window size for
>    the session is 64KB.  An endpoint can use the SETTINGS control frame
>    to adjust the initial window size for the streams in the session.
>    That is, its peer can start out using the 64KB default initial stream
>    window size when sending data frames before receiving a SETTINGS
>    frame.  Because SETTINGS is asynchronous, there may be a race
>    condition if the recipient wants to decrease the initial window size,
>    but its peer immediately sends 64KB on the creation of a new
>    connection, before waiting for the SETTINGS to arrive.  This is one
>    case where the window size kept by the sender will become negative.
>    Once the sender detects this condition, it must stop sending data
>    frames and wait for the recipient to catch up.  The recipient has two
>    choices:
> 
>       immediately send RST_STREAM with FLOW_CONTROL_ERROR status
> code.
> 
>       allow the head of line blocking (as there is only one stream for
>       the session and the amount of data in flight is bounded by the
>       default initial window size), and send WINDOW_UPDATE as it
>       consumes data.
> 
>    In the case of option 2, both sides must compute the stream window
>    size based on the initial stream window size in the SETTINGS.  For
>    example, if the recipient sets the initial stream window size to be
>    16KB, and the sender sends 64KB for a stream immediately on session
>    establishment, the sender will discover its window size is -48KB on
>    receipt of the SETTINGS.  As the recipient consumes the first 16KB,
>    it can send a WINDOW_UPDATE of 16KB back to the sender.  This
>    interaction continues until the sender's window size becomes positive
>    again, and it can resume transmitting data frames.
> 
>    After the recipient reads in a data frame with FLAG_FIN that marks
>    the end of the data stream, it should not send WINDOW_UPDATE frames
>    for the stream as it consumes the last data frame.  A sender should
>    ignore all the WINDOW_UPDATE frames associated with the stream after
>    it send the last frame for the stream.
> 
>    The data frames from the sender and the WINDOW_UPDATE frames from
> the
>    recipient are completely asynchronous with respect to each other.
> 
> 
> 
> Belshe, et al.           Expires August 14, 2013               [Page 28]
> 

> Internet-Draft                  HTTP/2.0                   February 2013
> 
> 
>    This property allows a recipient to aggressively update the window
>    size kept by the sender to prevent the stream from stalling.

Received on Monday, 11 February 2013 15:03:24 UTC