RFC4222: Prioritized Treatment of Specific OSPF Version 2 Packets and Congestion Avoidance

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Network Working Group                                  G. Choudhury, Ed.
Request for Comments: 4222                                          AT&T
BCP: 112                                                    October 2005
Category: Best Current Practice


            Prioritized Treatment of Specific OSPF Version 2
                    Packets and Congestion Avoidance

Status of This Memo

   This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
   Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).

Abstract

   This document recommends methods that are intended to improve the
   scalability and stability of large networks using Open Shortest Path
   First (OSPF) Version 2 protocol.  The methods include processing OSPF
   Hellos and Link State Advertisement (LSA) Acknowledgments at a higher
   priority compared to other OSPF packets, and other congestion
   avoidance procedures.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction...................................................2
   2. Recommendations................................................3
   3. Security Considerations........................................6
   4. Acknowledgments................................................6
   5. Normative References...........................................6
   6. Informative References.........................................7
   Appendix A. LSA Storm: Causes and Impact..........................8
   Appendix B. List of Variables and Values.........................10
   Appendix C. Other Recommendations and Suggestions................11












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1.  Introduction

   In this document, OSPF refers to OSPFv2 [Ref1].  The scalability and
   stability improvement techniques described here may also apply to
   OSPFv3 [Ref2], but that will require further study and operational
   experience.

   A large network running OSPF protocol may occasionally experience the
   simultaneous or near-simultaneous update of a large number of link
   state advertisements, or LSAs.  This is particularly true if OSPF
   traffic engineering extension [Ref3] is used that may significantly
   increase the number of LSAs in the network.  We call this event an
   LSA storm and it may be initiated by an unscheduled failure or a
   scheduled maintenance event.  The failure may be hardware, software,
   or procedural in nature.

   The LSA storm causes high CPU and memory utilization at the router
   causing incoming packets to be delayed or dropped.  Delayed
   acknowledgments (beyond the retransmission timer value) result in
   retransmissions, and delayed Hello packets (beyond the router-dead
   interval) result in neighbor adjacencies being declared down.  The
   retransmissions and additional LSA originations result in further CPU
   and memory usage, essentially causing a positive feedback loop,
   which, in the extreme case, may drive the network to an unstable
   state.

   The default value of the retransmission timer is 5 seconds and that
   of the router-dead interval is 40 seconds.  However, recently there
   has been a lot of interest in significantly reducing OSPF convergence
   time.  As part of that plan, much shorter (sub-second) Hello and
   router-dead intervals have been proposed [Ref4].  In such a scenario,
   it will be more likely for Hello packets to be delayed beyond the
   router-dead interval during network congestion caused by an LSA
   storm.

   In order to improve the scalability and stability of networks, we
   recommend steps for prioritizing critical OSPF packets and avoiding
   congestion.  The details of the recommendations are given in Section
   2.  A simulation study is reported in [Ref13] that quantifies the
   congestion phenomenon and its impact.  It also studies several of the
   recommendations and shows that they indeed improve the scalability
   and stability of networks using OSPF protocol.  [Ref13] is available
   on request by contacting the editor or one of the authors.








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   Appendix A explains in more detail LSA storm scenarios, their impact,
   and points out a few real-life examples of control-message storms.
   Appendix B provides a list of variables used in the recommendations
   and their example values.  Appendix C provides some further
   recommendations and suggestions with similar goals.

2.  Recommendations

   The recommendations below are intended to improve the scalability and
   stability of large networks using OSPF protocol.  During periods of
   network congestion, they would reduce retransmissions, avoid an
   adjacency to be declared down due to Hello packets being delayed
   beyond the RouterDeadInterval, and take other congestion avoidance
   steps.  The recommendations are unordered except that Recommendation
   2 is to be implemented only if Recommendation 1 is not implemented.

   (1) Classify all OSPF packets in two classes: a "high priority" class
       comprising OSPF Hello packets and Link State Acknowledgement
       packets, and a "low priority" class comprising all other packets.
       The classification is accomplished by examining the OSPF packet
       header.  While receiving a packet from a neighbor and while
       transmitting a packet to a neighbor, try to process a "high
       priority" packet ahead of a "low priority" packet.

       The prioritized processing while transmitting may cause OSPF
       packets from a neighbor to be received out of sequence.  If
       Cryptographic Authentication (AuType = 2) is used (as specified
       in [Ref1]), then successive received valid OSPF packets from a
       neighbor need to have a non-decreasing "Cryptographic sequence
       number".  To comply with this requirement, we recommend that in
       case Cryptographic Authentication (AuType = 2) is used [Ref1],
       prioritized processing not be done at the transmitter.  This will
       avoid packets arriving at the receiver out of sequence.  However,
       after security processing at the receiver (including sequence
       number checking) is complete, the OSPF packets may be kept in a
       "high priority" queue or a "low priority" queue based on their
       class and processed accordingly.  The benefit of prioritized
       processing is clearly higher in the absence of Cryptographic
       Authentication since in that case prioritization can be
       implemented both at the transmitter and at the receiver.
       However, even with Cryptographic Authentication it will be
       beneficial to have prioritization only at the receiver (following
       security processing).

   (2) If Recommendation 1 cannot be implemented, then reset the
       inactivity timer for an adjacency whenever any OSPF unicast
       packet or any OSPF packet sent to AllSPFRouters over a point-to-
       point link is received over that adjacency instead of resetting



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       the inactivity timer only on receipt of the Hello packet.  So
       OSPF would declare the adjacency to be down only if no OSPF
       unicast packets or no OSPF packets sent to AllSPFRouters over a
       point-to-point link are received over that adjacency for a period
       equaling or exceeding the RouterDeadInterval.  The reason for not
       recommending this proposal in conjunction with Recommendation 1
       is to avoid potential undesirable side effects.  One such effect
       is the delay in discovering the down status of an adjacency in a
       case where no high priority Hello packets are being received but
       the inactivity timer is being reset by other stale packets in the
       low priority queue.

   (3) Use an exponential backoff algorithm for determining the value of
       the LSA retransmission interval (RxmtInterval).  Let R(i)
       represent the RxmtInterval value used during the i-th
       retransmission of an LSA.  Use the following algorithm to compute
       R(i).

                    R(1) = Rmin
                    R(i+1) = Min(KR(i),Rmax)  for i>=1

       where K, Rmin, and Rmax are constants and the function Min(.,.)
       represents the minimum value of its two arguments.  Example
       values for K, Rmin, and Rmax may be 2, 5, and 40 seconds,
       respectively.  Note that the example value for Rmin, the initial
       retransmission interval, is the same as the sample value of
       RxmtInterval in [Ref1].

       This recommendation is motivated by the observation that during a
       network congestion event caused by control messages, a major
       source for sustaining the congestion is the repeated
       retransmission of LSAs.  The use of an exponential backoff
       algorithm for the LSA retransmission interval reduces the rate of
       LSA retransmissions while the network experiences congestion
       (during which it is more likely that multiple retransmissions of
       the same LSA would happen).  This in turn helps the network get
       out of the congested state.

   (4) Implicit Congestion Detection and Action Based on That:  If there
       is control message congestion at a router, its neighbors do not
       know about that explicitly.  However, they can implicitly detect
       it based on the number of unacknowledged LSAs to this router.  If
       this number exceeds a certain "high-water mark", then the rate at
       which LSAs are sent to this router should be reduced
       progressively using an exponential backoff mechanism but not
       below a certain minimum rate.  At a future time, if the number of
       unacknowledged LSAs to this router falls below a certain "low-
       water mark", then the rate of sending LSAs to this router should



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       be increased progressively, again using an exponential backoff
       mechanism but not above a certain maximum rate.  The whole
       algorithm is given below.  Note that this algorithm is to be
       applied independently to each neighbor and only for unicast LSAs
       sent to a neighbor or LSAs sent to AllSPFRouters over a point-
       to-point link.

       Let,
       U(t) = Number of unacknowledged LSAs to neighbor at time t.
       H = A high-water mark (in units of number of unacknowledged
           LSAs).
       L = A low-water mark (in units of number of unacknowledged LSAs).
       G(t) = Gap between sending successive LSAs to neighbor at time t.
       F = The factor by which the above gap is to be increased during
           congestion and decreased after coming out of congestion.
       T = Minimum time that has to elapse before the existing gap
           is considered for change.
       Gmin = Minimum allowed value of gap.
       Gmax = Maximum allowed value of gap.

       The equation below shows how the gap is to be changed after a
       time T has elapsed since the last change:
                 _
                |
                | Min(FG(t),Gmax) if U(t+T) > H
       G(t+T) = | G(t) if H >= U(t+T) >= L
                | Max(G(t)/F,Gmin) if U(t+T) < L
                |_

       Min(.,.) and Max(.,.) represent the minimum and maximum values of
       the two arguments, respectively.

       Example values for the various parameters of the algorithm are as
       follows: H = 20, L = 10, F = 2, T = 1 second, Gmin = 20 ms, Gmax
       = 1 second.

       Recommendations 3 and 4 both slow down LSAs to congested
       neighbors based on implicitly detecting the congestion, but they
       have important differences.  Recommendation 3 progressively slows
       down successive retransmissions of the same LSA, whereas
       Recommendation 4 progressively slows down all LSAs (new or
       retransmission) to a congested neighbor.

   (5) Throttling Adjacencies to Be Brought Up Simultaneously:  If a
       router tries to bring up a large number of adjacencies to its
       neighbors simultaneously, then that may cause severe congestion
       due to database synchronization and LSA flooding activities.  It
       is recommended that during such a situation no more than "n"



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       adjacencies should be brought up simultaneously.  Once a subset
       of adjacencies has been brought up successfully, newer
       adjacencies may be brought up as long as the number of
       simultaneous adjacencies being brought up does not exceed "n".
       The appropriate value of "n" would depend on the router
       processing power, total bandwidth available for control plane
       traffic, and propagation delay.  The value of "n" should be
       configurable.

       In the presence of throttling, an important issue is the order in
       which adjacencies are to be formed.  We recommend a First Come
       First Served (FCFS) policy based on the order in which the
       request for adjacency formation arrives.  Requests may either be
       from neighbors or self-generated.  Among the self-generated
       requests, a priority list may be used to decide the order in
       which the requests are to be made.  However, once an adjacency
       formation process starts it is not to be preempted except for
       unusual circumstances such as errors or time-outs.

   In some of the recommendations above, we refer to point-to-point
   links.  Those references should also include cases where a broadcast
   network is to be treated as a point-to-point connection from the
   standpoint of IP routing [Ref5]

3.  Security Considerations

   This memo does not create any new security issues for the OSPF
   protocol.

4.  Acknowledgments

   We would like to acknowledge the support and helpful comments from
   OSPF WG chairs Rohit Dube, Acee Lindem, and John Moy; Routing Area
   directors Alex Zinin and Bill Fenner; and IESG reviewers.  We
   acknowledge Vivek Dube,  Mitchell Erblich, Mike Fox, Tony Przygienda,
   and Krishna Rao for comments on previous versions of the document.
   We also acknowledge Margaret Chiosi, Elie Francis, Jeff Han, Beth
   Munson, Roshan Rao, Moshe Segal, Mike Wardlow, and Pat Wirth for
   collaboration and encouragement in our scalability improvement
   efforts for Link State Protocol-based networks.

5.  Normative References

   [Ref1]  Moy, J., "OSPF Version 2", STD 54, RFC 2328, April 1998.

   [Ref2]  Coltun, R., Ferguson, D., and J. Moy, "OSPF for IPv6", RFC
           2740, December 1999.




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6.  Informative References

   [Ref3]  Katz, D., Kompella, K., and D. Yeung, "Traffic Engineering
           (TE) Extensions to OSPF Version 2", RFC 3630, September 2003.

   [Ref4]  C. Alaettinoglu, V. Jacobson and H. Yu, "Towards Millisecond
           IGP Convergence", Work in Progress.

   [Ref5]  N. Shen, A. Lindem, J. Yuan, A. Zinin, R. White and S.
           Previdi, "Point-to-point operation over LAN in link-state
           routing protocols", Work in Progress.

   [Ref6]  Pappalardo, D., "AT&T, customers grapple with ATM net
           outage", Network World, February 26, 2001.

   [Ref7]  "AT&T announces cause of frame-relay network outage," AT&T
           Press Release, April 22, 1998.

   [Ref8]  Cholewka, K., "MCI Outage Has Domino Effect", Inter@ctive
           Week, August 20, 1999.

   [Ref9]  Jander, M., "In Qwest Outage, ATM Takes Some Heat", Light
           Reading, April 6, 2001.

   [Ref10] A. Zinin and M. Shand, "Flooding Optimizations in Link-State
           Routing Protocols", Work in Progress.

   [Ref11] Pillay-Esnault, P., "OSPF Refresh and Flooding Reduction in
           Stable Topologies", RFC 4136, July 2005.

   [Ref12] G. Ash, G. Choudhury, V. Sapozhnikova, M. Sherif, A. Maunder,
           V. Manral, "Congestion Avoidance & Control for OSPF
           Networks", Work in Progress.

   [Ref13] G. Choudhury, G. Ash, V. Manral, A. Maunder and V.
           Sapozhnikova, "Prioritized Treatment of Specific OSPF Packets
           and Congestion Avoidance: Algorithms and Simulations", AT&T
           Technical Report, August 2003.

   [Ref14] Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black, "Definition
           of the Differentiated Services Field (DS Field) in the IPv4
           and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474, December 1998.









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Appendix A.  LSA Storm: Causes and Impact

   An LSA storm may be initiated due to many reasons.  Here are some
   examples:

   (a) one or more link failures due to fiber cuts,

   (b) one or more router failures for some reason, e.g., software crash
       or some type of disaster (including power outage) in an office
       complex hosting many routers,

   (c) link/router flapping,

   (d) requirement of taking down and later bringing back many routers
       during a software/hardware upgrade,

   (e) near synchronization of the periodic 1800-second LSA refreshes of
       a subset of LSAs,

   (f) refresh of all LSAs in the system during a change in software
       version,

   (g) injecting a large number of external routes to OSPF due to a
       procedural error,

   (h) Router ID changes causing a large number of LSA re-originations
       (possibly LSA purges as well depending on the implementation).

   In addition to the LSAs originated as a direct result of link/router
   failures, there may be other indirect LSAs as well.  One example in
   MPLS networks is traffic engineering LSAs [Ref3] originated at other
   links as a result of significant changes in reserved bandwidth.
   These result from rerouting of Label Switched Paths (LSPs) that went
   down during the link/router failure.  The LSA storm causes high CPU
   and memory utilization at the router processor causing incoming
   packets to be delayed or dropped.  Delayed acknowledgments (beyond
   the retransmission timer value) results in retransmissions, and
   delayed Hello packets (beyond the Router-Dead interval) results in
   links being declared down.  A trunk-down event causes router LSA
   origination by its end-point routers.  If traffic engineering LSAs
   are used for each link, then that type of LSA would also be
   originated by the end-point routers and potentially elsewhere as well
   due to significant changes in reserved bandwidths at other links
   caused by the failure and reroute of LSPs originally using the failed
   trunk.  Eventually, when the link recovers that would also trigger
   additional router LSAs and traffic engineering LSAs.





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   The retransmissions and additional LSA originations result in further
   CPU and memory usage, essentially causing a positive feedback loop.
   We define the LSA storm size as the number of LSAs in the original
   storm, not counting any additional LSAs resulting from the feedback
   loop described above.  If the LSA storm is too large, then the
   positive feedback loop mentioned above may be large enough to
   indefinitely sustain a large CPU and memory utilization at many
   routers in the network, thereby driving the network to an unstable
   state.  In the past, network outage events have been reported in IP
   and ATM networks using link-state protocols such as OSPF,
   Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS), Private Network-
   Network Interface (PNNI), or some proprietary variants.  See for
   example [Ref6-Ref9].  In many of these examples, large-scale flooding
   of LSAs or other similar control messages (either naturally or
   triggered by some bug or inappropriate procedure) have been partly or
   fully responsible for network instability and outage.

   In [Ref13], a simulation model is used to show that there is a
   certain LSA storm size threshold above which the network may show
   unstable behavior caused by a large number of retransmissions, link
   failures due to missed Hello packets, and subsequent link recoveries.
   It is also shown that the LSA storm size causing instability may be
   substantially increased by providing prioritized treatment to Hello
   and LSA Acknowledgment packets and by using an exponential backoff
   algorithm for determining the LSA retransmission interval.  If it is
   not possible to prioritize Hello packets, then resetting the
   inactivity timer on receiving any valid OSPF packets can also provide
   the same benefit.  Furthermore, if we prioritize Hello packets, then
   even when the network operates somewhat above the stability
   threshold, links are not declared down due to missed Hellos.  This
   implies that even though there is control plane congestion due to
   many retransmissions, the data plane stays up and no new LSAs are
   originated (besides the ones in the original storm and the
   refreshes).  These observations support the first three
   recommendations in Section 2.  The authors of this document have also
   done simulations to verify that the other recommendations in Section
   2 help avoid congestion and allow a graceful exit from a congested
   state.

   One might argue that the scalability issue of large networks should
   be solved solely by dividing the network hierarchically into multiple
   areas so that flooding of LSAs remains localized within areas.
   However, this approach increases the network management and design
   complexity and may result in less optimal routing between areas.
   Also, Autonomous System External (ASE) LSAs are flooded throughout
   the AS, and it may be a problem if there are large numbers of them.
   Furthermore, a large number of summary LSAs may need to be flooded
   across areas, and their numbers would increase significantly if



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   multiple Area Border Routers are employed for the purpose of
   reliability.  Thus, it is important to allow the network to grow
   towards as large a size as possible under a single area.

   The recommendations in the document are synergistic with a broader
   set of scalability and stability improvement proposals.  [Ref10]
   proposes flooding overhead reduction in case more than one interface
   goes to the same neighbor.  [Ref11] proposes a mechanism for greatly
   reducing LSA refreshes in stable topologies.

   [Ref12] proposes a wide range of congestion control and failure
   recovery mechanisms (some of those ideas are covered in this
   document, but [Ref12] has other ideas not covered here).

Appendix B.  List of Variables and Values

   F    = The factor by which the gap between sending successive LSAs to
          a neighbor is to be increased during congestion and decreased
          after coming out of congestion (used in Recommendation 4).
          Example value is 2.

   G(t) = Gap between sending successive LSAs to a neighbor at time t
          (used in Recommendation 4).

   Gmax = Maximum allowed value of gap between sending successive LSAs
          to a neighbor (used in Recommendation 4).  Example value is 1
          second.

   Gmin = Minimum allowed value of gap between sending successive LSAs
          to a neighbor (used in Recommendation 4).  Example value is 20
          ms.

   H    = A high-water mark (in units of number of unacknowledged LSAs).
          Exceeding this mark would trigger a potential increase in the
          gap between sending successive LSAs to a neighbor.  (used in
          Recommendation 4).  Example value is 20.

   K    = A multiplicative constant used in increasing the RxmtInterval
          value used during successive retransmissions of the same LSA
          (used in Recommendation 3).  Example value is 2.

   L    = A low-water mark (in units of number of unacknowledged LSAs)
          Dropping below this mark would trigger a potential decrease in
          the gap between sending successive LSAs to a neighbor.  (used
          in Recommendation 4).  Example value is 10.

   n    = Upper limit on the number of adjacencies to be brought up
          simultaneously (used in Recommendation 5).



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   R(i) = RxmtInterval value used during the i-th retransmission of an
          LSA (used in Recommendation 3).

   Rmax = The maximum allowed value of RxmtInterval (used in
          Recommendation 3).  Example value is 40 seconds.

   Rmin = The minimum allowed value of RxmtInterval (used in
          Recommendation 3).  Example value is 5 seconds.

   T    = Minimum time that has to elapse before the existing gap
          between sending successive LSAs to a neighbor is considered
          for change (used in Recommendation 4).  Example value is 1
          second.

   U(t) = Number of unacknowledged LSAs to a neighbor at time t (used in
          Recommendation 4).

Appendix C.  Other Recommendations and Suggestions

   (1) Explicit Marking:  In Section 2, we recommended that OSPF packets
       be classified to "high" and "low" priority classes based on
       examining the OSPF packet header.  In some cases (particularly in
       the receiver), this examination may be computationally costly.
       An alternative would be the use of different TOS/Precedence field
       settings for the two priority classes.  [Ref1] recommends setting
       the TOS field to 0 and the Precedence field to 6 for all OSPF
       packets.  We recommend this same setting for the "low" priority
       OSPF packets and a different setting for the "high" priority OSPF
       packets in order to be able to classify them separately without
       having to examine the OSPF packet header.  Two examples are given
       below:

       Example 1: For "low" priority packets, set TOS field to 0 and
                  Precedence field to 6, and for "high" priority packets
                  set TOS field to 4 and Precedence field to 6.

       Example 2: For "low" priority packets, set TOS field to 0 and
                  Precedence field to 6, and for "high" priority packets
                  set TOS field to 0 and Precedence field to 7.

       Note that the TOS/Precedence bits have been redefined by Diffserv
       (RFC 2474, [Ref14]).  Also note that the different TOS/Precedence
       field settings suggested above only need to be agreed among the
       systems on the link.  This recommendation is not needed to be
       followed if it is easy to examine the OSPF packet header and
       thereby separately classify "high" and "low" priority packets.





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   (2) Further Prioritization of OSPF Packets: Besides the packets
       designated as "high" priority in Recommendation 1 of Section 2,
       there may be a need for further priority separation among the
       "low" priority OSPF packets.  We recommend the use of three
       priority classes: "high", "medium" and "low".  While receiving a
       packet from a neighbor and while transmitting a packet to a
       neighbor, try to process a "high priority" packet ahead of
       "medium" and "low" priority packets and a "medium" priority
       packet ahead of "low priority" packets.  The "high" priority
       packets are as designated in Recommendation 1 of Section 2.  We
       provide below two candidate examples for "medium" priority
       packets.  All OSPF packets not designated as "high" or "medium"
       priority are "low" priority.  If Cryptographic Authentication
       (AuType = 2) is used (as specified in [Ref1]), then prioritized
       treatment is to be provided only at the receiver and after
       security processing, but not at the transmitter since that may
       cause packets to arrive out of sequence and violate the
       requirements of "Autype = 2".

       One example of "medium" priority packet is the Database
       Description (DBD) packet from a slave (during the database
       synchronization process) that is used as an acknowledgment.

       A second example is an LSA carrying intra-area topology change
       information (this may trigger SPF calculation and rerouting of
       Label Switched Paths, so fast processing of this packet may
       improve OSPF/Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) convergence
       times).  However, if the processing cost of identifying and
       separately queueing the LSA in this example is deemed to be high,
       then the implementer may decide not to do it.

   (3) Processing a Large Number of LSA Purges: Occasionally, some
       events in the network, such as router ID changes, may result in a
       large number of LSA re-originations and LSA purges.  In such a
       scenario, one may consider processing LSAs in different order,
       e.g., processing LSA purges ahead of LSA originations.  We,
       however, do not recommend out-of-order LSA processing for several
       reasons.  First, detecting the LSA type ahead of queueing may be
       computationally expensive.  Out-of-order processing may also
       cause subtle bugs.  We do not want to recommend a major change in
       the LSA processing paradigm for a relatively rare event such as
       router ID change.  However, a router with a changing ID may flush
       the old LSAs gradually without causing a storm.








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Contributing Authors and Their Addresses

   In addition to the editor, several people contributed to this
   document.  The names and contact information of all authors are given
   below.

   Anurag S. Maunder
   Erlang Technology
   2880 Scott Boulevard
   Santa Clara, CA 95052
   USA

   Phone: (408) 420-7617
   EMail: anuragm@erlangtech.com


   Gerald R. Ash
   AT&T
   Room D5-2A01
   200 Laurel Avenue
   Middletown, NJ, 07748
   USA

   Phone: (732) 420-4578
   EMail: gash@att.com


   Vishwas Manral
   Sinett Corp,
   2/1 Embassy Icon Annex,
   Infantry Road,
   Bangalore 560 001
   India

   Phone: +91-(805)-137-7023
   EMail: vishwas@sinett.com


   Vera D. Sapozhnikova
   AT&T
   Room C5-2C29
   200 Laurel Avenue
   Middletown, NJ, 07748
   USA

   Phone: (732) 420-2653
   EMail: sapozhnikova@att.com




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Editor's Address

   Gagan L. Choudhury
   AT&T
   Room D5-3C21
   200 Laurel Avenue
   Middletown, NJ, 07748
   USA

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Choudhury, Ed.           Best Current Practice                 [Page 14]

RFC 4222                 Prioritized Treatment              October 2005


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Choudhury, Ed.           Best Current Practice                 [Page 15]