



DETNET                                                    T. Eckert, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                Futurewei Technologies USA
Intended status: Standards Track                              Y. Li, Ed.
Expires: 19 June 2026                                Huawei Technologies
                                                               S. Bryant
                                                University of Surrey ICS
                                                             A. G. Malis
                                                        Malis Consulting
                                                              J.-d. Ryoo
                                                                    ETRI
                                                                  P. Liu
                                                            China Mobile
                                                                   G. Li
                                                                  S. Ren
                                                     Huawei Technologies
                                                        16 December 2025


Deterministic Networking (DetNet) Data Plane - Tagged Cyclic Queuing and
  Forwarding (TCQF) for bounded latency with low jitter in large scale
                                DetNets
                      draft-eckert-detnet-tcqf-12

Abstract

   This memo specifies a forwarding method for bounded latency and
   bounded jitter for Deterministic Networks and is a variant of the
   IEEE TSN Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding (CQF) method.  Tagged CQF
   (TCQF) supports more than 2 cycles and indicates the cycle number via
   an existing or new packet header field called the tag to replace the
   cycle mapping in CQF which is based purely on synchronized reception
   clock.

   This memo standardizes TCQF as a mechanism independent of the tagging
   method used.  It also specifies tagging via the (1) the existing MPLS
   packet Traffic Class (TC) field for MPLS packets, (2) the IP/IPv6
   DSCP field for IP/IPv6 packets, and (3) a new TCQF Option header for
   IPv6 packets.

   Target benefits of TCQF include low end-to-end jitter, ease of high-
   speed hardware implementation, optional ability to support large
   number of flow in large networks via DiffServ style aggregation by
   applying TCQF to the DetNet aggregate instead of each DetNet flow
   individually, and support of wide-area DetNet networks with arbitrary
   link latencies and latency variations as well as low accuracy clock
   synchronization.





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Status of This Memo

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Overview (informative)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.1.  Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding (CQF) . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.2.  Benefits of CQF with higher speed links . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.3.  Challenges of CQF with higher latency links . . . . . . .   7
     2.4.  Review of CQF benefits and challenges for DetNet  . . . .   8
     2.5.  Tagged CQF  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       2.5.1.  CQF with more than two buffers  . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       2.5.2.  From CQF with multiple buffers to TCQF  . . . . . . .  11
     2.6.  Summary of TCQF benefits and goals for DetNet . . . . . .  14
   3.  Using TCQF in the DetNet Architecture and MPLS forwarding plane
           (informative) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   4.  TCQF per-flow stateless forwarding (normative)  . . . . . . .  17




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     4.1.  Configuration Data model and tag processing for MPLS TC
           tags  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
     4.2.  Packet processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
     4.3.  TCQF for MPLS with TC tagging . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
     4.4.  TCQF for IP/IPv6 with DSCP tagging  . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     4.5.  TCQF for IPv6 with IPv6 Option tagging  . . . . . . . . .  20
       4.5.1.  TCQF Option Format  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
       4.5.2.  TCQF Option Processing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
       4.5.3.  Encapsulation of TCQF Option for Deterministic IP (DIP)
               data plane  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
     4.6.  TCQF Pseudocode (normative) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
   5.  TCQF Per-flow Ingress forwarding (normative)  . . . . . . . .  26
     5.1.  Ingress Flows Configuration Data Model  . . . . . . . . .  26
     5.2.  Ingress Flows Pseudocode  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
   6.  Implementation, Deployment, Operations and Validation
           considerations (informative)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
     6.1.  Solution Scope, Taxonomy and Status for DetNet adoption
           considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
       6.1.1.  Solution scope  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
       6.1.2.  Taxonomy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
       6.1.3.  Status  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
     6.2.  High-Speed Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
     6.3.  Controller plane computation of cycle mappings  . . . . .  30
     6.4.  Link speed and bandwidth sharing  . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
     6.5.  Controller-plane considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
     6.6.  Validation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
   9.  Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
   10. Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
   11. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
     11.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
     11.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
   Appendix A.  CSQF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
   Appendix B.  TCQF with multiple priorities  . . . . . . . . . . .  41
   Appendix C.  TSN Multiple Buffer CQF  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43

1.  Introduction

1.1.  Terminology

   CQF  Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding.  A queuing mechanism defined by
      annex T of [IEEE802.1Q].

   DT  Dead Time.  A term from CQF indicating the time during each cycle
      in which no frames can be sent because the the receiving node
      could not receive it into the desired cycle buffer.



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   TCQF  Tagged Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding.  The mechanism specified
      in this memo.

2.  Overview (informative)

2.1.  Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding (CQF)

   Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding (CQF) is a bounded (guaranteed) per-hop
   latency forwarding mechanism standardized for use in ethernet
   switched networks by the IEEE TSN working group originally via
   [IEEE802.1Qch] (802.1 Qch), which later became annex T of
   [IEEE802.1Q].  See also [RFC9320], Section 6.6.

   CQF is not a separate forwarding mechanism, but it is simple a
   profile of the IEEE Time Aware Shaper (TAS) standard, [IEEE802.1Qbv],
   which introduce Time-Gated Queues.

   CQF uses a two-queue based forwarding mechanism on every switch along
   a path between a sender and receiver.  One queue is used to receive
   and store frames destined toward a particular outgoing interface on
   the switch, the other queue is used simultaneously to send frames to
   the same outgoing interface.  At every cycle time T_c interval these
   two queues are swapped, or in terms of Time-Gated Queus, one is
   closed for sending, the other is opened for sending.  This operation
   is synchronized across all switches in the network by network wide
   synchronized clocks, so that all queues open and close at the same
   time.

   For a path of h hops, the end-to-end latency bound is between (h-1) *
   T_c + DT and (h+1) * T_c.  DT is the so-called dead time at the end
   of a cycle during which no frames can be transmitted from the sending
   queue to ensure that the last byte of the last frame will be received
   earlier than the end of the same cycle on the receiving switch.

   A core contributor to DT is the (physical) link between the sending
   and receiving switch.  DT needs to be larger than the latency of this
   link, including physical propagation latency (speed of light),
   possible error correction latencies, and interface serialization
   latency.

   T_c needs to be choosen carefully: The larger it is, the higher the
   bounded latency.  The smaller it is, the fewer bytes (and hence
   frames) will fit into a cycle.

   To admit flows into a CQF network, the ingress switch uses per-flow
   Time-Gated Queues.  In the most simple case, such a gate is
   configured to admit a maximum amount of bytes from the flow into
   every cycle.  More advanced admission control can be performed for



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   bursty flows.  For example N bursty flows f_i = 0...(N-1) could share
   admitted bandwidth by each having their burst admitted in different
   cycles c_i = c % N + c_i, where c is a continuous increasing cycle
   number.

2.2.  Benefits of CQF with higher speed links

   The typical CQF deployments in manufacturing networks with 1Gbps
   links uses no less than hundreds of microseconds as a cycle interval.
   In a network with a small diameter, say less than 8 hops, it is
   sufficiently good to provide an end-to-end latency bound in the order
   of several milliseconds.

   With the increasing of link speed from 100Mbps to 1Gbps, 10Gbps,
   100Gbps or even higher in larger networks, either more bytes can be
   transmitted within the same cycle interval or the smaller cycle
   interval is required to transmit the same amount of bytes in a cycle
   as that in low speed networks.  Likewise, the serialization latency
   reduces with higher speed links and DT reduces.  This overall makes
   CQF for higher speed networks more attractive than for lower speed
   networks.

   Figure 1 shows a simple calculation on the number of bytes that can
   be transmitted in a cycle with different cycle intervals and link
   speeds.  A minimum of 1500 bytes is labeled with * as a baseline
   because a typical maximum Ethernet frame is 1500 bytes and a selected
   cycle interval should at least allow one such frame size to be
   transmitted unless otherwise specified.

   TBD: These numbers probbly need to be adjusted to reflect reducing DT
   based on serialization latency.




















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   +----------+------------------------------------------------+
   |          |           Bytes Transmitted in a Cycle         |
   |Cycle Time+------------------------------------------------+
   |          |             Link Speed                         |
   |  (us)    |   100Mbps  |   1Gbps     |   10Gbps  | 100Gbps |
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+
   |    1     |    12.5    |    125      |    1250   |   12500*|
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+
   |   1.2    |     15     |    150      |    1500*  |   15000 |
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+
   |    2     |     25     |    250      |    2500   |   25000 |
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+
   |    4     |     50     |    500      |    5000   |   50000 |
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+
   |    10    |    125     |   1250      |   12500   |  125000 |
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+
   |    12    |    150     |   1500*     |   15000   |  150000 |
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+
   |   120    |    1500*   |   15000     |   150000  | 1500000 |
   +----------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------+

           Figure 1: Bytes transmitted within one cycle interval

   When the link speed is at 10Gbps, the cycle interval could be as
   small as 1.2 us if a 1500 byte frame needs to be transmitted in one
   cycle interval, and with 100Gbps links even 1 usec cycle time allows
   for 8 frames of 1500 byte each.  These are not accurate calculations
   because there are certainly other factors to determine the cycle
   interval.  However, it shows that as the link speed increases, cycle
   interval can be greatly reduced in practice while satisfying the
   minimum amount of data transmitted in a single cycle.  The end-to-end
   latency bound when applying CQF is determined by cycle interval and
   number of hops.  That is to say, CQFs with a smaller cycle interval
   have the potential to meet more strict end-to-end latency
   requirements in higher link speed networks or meet the same end-to-
   end latency requirement in networks with much larger network diameter
   (number of hops).

   Industry automation has some typical application period requirement,
   e.g.  100 us to 2 ms for isochronous traffic, 500 us to 1 ms for
   cyclic-synchronous and 2 to 20 ms for cyclic-asynchronous traffic.
   The network cycle interval is usually a fraction of the application
   period.  When the cycle interval is in the order of tens of
   microseconds, CQF can be used to meet the most strict end-to-end
   latency requirements.  For instance, if we assume the number of hops
   is 24, when cycle interval is set to 10us, the end-to-end latency
   bound can be around (24+1)*10 = 250 us which has the potential to
   meet the latency bound requirement for isochronous traffic.



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   In summary a higher speed network makes the shorter cycle interval
   feasible because sufficiently large traffic volume can be transmitted
   within one cycle interval.  A shorter cycle interval further offers
   shorter end-to-end latency and jitter bounds which provide CQF with
   the potentials to meet more strict latency requirements in wider
   deployments while preserving its simplicity of latency calculation
   and provisioning.  Therefore there is a strong motivation to leverage
   CQF and at the same time to make cycle interval as short as possible.

2.3.  Challenges of CQF with higher latency links

   Unlike the original targets for IEEE TSN work, DetNet not only
   targets to support IETF forwarding planes (IP, MPLS,...), but also
   wide-area networks with therefore longer physcial propagation
   latencies.

   As shown in Figure 2 for fundamental (two buffer) CQF, the last byte
   sent by node A in cycle (i-1) has to be ready for sending at node B
   before the start of cycle i.  To realize it, DT or dead time is
   imposed.  It is a time interval usually at the end of a cycle so that
   a node should not send the scheduled CQF packets.

   Dead time is at least the sum of the maximum propagation delay to the
   next node, the maximum processing delay at the next node and the
   maximum other time variations.  Therefore either the longer
   propagation or longer processing delay makes dead time larger.
   Packets from DetNet service is likely to be propagated over long
   links in the wider area.  It takes around 5us per kilometer to
   propagate, i.e. 0.5ms every hundred kilometers.  Hence the dead time
   can be as large as milliseconds or tens of milliseconds in case of
   hundred kilometers of longer links and larger processing delays.
   That would make the dead time eat up most of the cycle interval when
   cycle interval is short (e.g., at the same order or one order higher
   of magnitude in time as dead time).  Then the useful time in a cycle
   will be much reduced.  In some extreme cases, when the link is long
   and the cycle interval is set to extremely short, the first packet
   sent in a cycle by a node will not be possibly received in the same
   cycle interval at the next node.  That makes the useful time in a
   cycle reaches zero in two buffer CQF.  Then two buffer CQF will be no
   longer suitable.

   In result of these considerations, reasonable limits for the size of
   TSN CQF networks are in the order of at most few Km per hop, beyond
   which DT exceeds common cycle times and possible through of CQF
   traffic is hence 0.






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   --------------------------------------------------------> Time

             |             |             |             |
   Node A    |  cycle i-1  |   cycle i   |  cycle i+1  |
             |             |             |             |
   Sending  ---------------+----------------------------------
             |+------+     |+------+     |+------+     |
             ||//////|     ||//////|     ||//////|     |
             |+------+     |+------+     |+------+     |
             |  buf_1      |  buf_2      |  buf_1      |
             |       |     |       |     |       |     |
             |       | DT  |       | DT  |       | DT  |
   Node B    |       |<--->|       |<--->|       |<--->|
             |             |             |             |
   Receiving--------------------------------------------------
             |     +------+|     +------+|     +------+|
             |     |//////||     |//////||     |//////||
             |     +------+|     +------+|     +------+|
             |       buf_1 |       buf_2 |       buf_1 |
             |             |             |             |
             |             |             |             |
   Node B    |             |             |             |
             |             |             |             |
   Sending  --------------------------------------------------
             |             |+------+     |+------+     |
             |             ||//////|     ||//////|     |
             |             |+------+     |+------+     |
             |             |  buf_1      |  buf_2

   DT=Dead Time

                    Figure 2: Fundamental Two Buffer CQF

2.4.  Review of CQF benefits and challenges for DetNet

   In review, CQF has a range of benefits for DetNet.

   1.  It provides bounded latency.

   2.  It provided tightly bounded jitter.

   3.  It has a very simple and easily standardized calculus for its
       bounded latency and jitter.

   4.  It has very simple per-hop forwarding machinery (cyclic queues)
       easily supportable in high-speed network equipment.





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   5.  Like Diffserv forwarding, it does not use per-hop,per-flow state
       in the forwarding plane and therefore does not require per-
       hop,per-flow signaling with the DetNet controller-plane, allowing
       it to scale to large number of flows.

   6.  The faster the links are, the lower the per-hop latency impact of
       the cyclic queuing mechanism.

   The core limitation of CQF, which TCQF intends to solve, lies in its
   use of arrival time clock to determine the cycle into which the
   packet is to be placed, see
   [I-D.eckert-detnet-bounded-latency-problems] for more details.

   1.  Cycles times should be as short as feasible to support lower end
       to end latency (Section 2.2).

   2.  When networks have longer links, or links with higher propagation
       jitter as in Metro and WAN, this increases the dead time, and
       hence reduces the possible utilization or need to increase cycle
       times.

   3.  When shorter cycle times are feasible because of higher speed
       links, this would require an increase in clock-synchronization
       accuracy.

2.5.  Tagged CQF

   Tagging of CQF packets with cycle identifiers can be used to solve
   the dilemma aforementioned with minor changes to the fundamental two
   buffer CQF.  This section introduces this mechanism with multipl
   buffers and CQF cycle identification in the packet header.  Note that
   we are also now using the term packet (as used for IP, MPLS and other
   IETF forwarding planes) and buffers for packets, as opposed to frames
   as used by IEEE.

2.5.1.  CQF with more than two buffers

   CQF can use more than two buffers to minimize the dead time and
   increase the useful time in a cycle so as to support long link delay.
   Figure 3 shows how a three buffer CQF works in a rotating manner in
   general.  Node A sends packets in cycle (i-1).  The time interval
   over which node B receives these packet spans two cycles, cycle (i-1)
   and cycle i.  Hence a method is needed to make node B send them all
   at once in cycle (i+1) in order to ensure packets in a single cycle
   from the previous node always being sent out in one cycle at the
   current node.





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   --------------------------------------------------------> Time

             |             |             |             |
   Node A    |  cycle i-1  |   cycle i   |  cycle i+1  |
             |             |             |             |
   Sending  ---------------+----------------------------------
             |+----------+ |+----------+ |+----------+ |
             ||//////////| ||//////////| ||//////////| |
             |+----------+ |+----------+ |+----------+ |
             |  buf_1      |  buf_2         buf_3      |
             |           | |           | |           | |
             |         ->| |<-       ->| |<-       ->| |<-
             |            DT            DT            DT
             |
             -------------------------------------------------
   Node B    |     +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
             |     |///////////| |///////////| |///////////|
   Receiving |     +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
             |       buf_1 |       buf_2 |       buf_3 |
             |             |             |             |
             |             |             |             |
             |             |             |             |
             |             |             |             |
            ---------------|----------------------------------
   Node B    |             |             |+----------+ |+----------+
             |             |             ||//////////| ||//////////|
   Sending   |             |             |+----------+ |+----------+
             |             |                buf_1         buf_2

   DT=Dead Time

                         Figure 3: Three Buffer CQF

   More than three buffers will be required when the receiving interval
   at node B for packets sent in a single cycle interval from node A
   spans over more than two cycle interval boundaries.  This can happen
   when the time variance (jitter) including propagation, processing,
   regulation, clock synchronization variance (so called Maximum Time
   Interval Error - MTIE) and other factors between two neighbouring
   DetNet nodes can become larger than a single cycle tim.











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2.5.2.  From CQF with multiple buffers to TCQF

   Note that due to the variance in time, the receiving interval at the
   downstream node can be much larger than one cycle interval in which
   the upstream node transmits.  When time variance is large and cycle
   interval and dead time are set small, the possible receiving time of
   the last few packets from node A’s cycle (i-1) at node B can overlap
   with the possible receiving time of the first few packets from node
   A’s cycle i in different rounds of buffer rotations.  Hence, when the
   buffer number is larger than two, if the receiving side still uses
   the traditional CQF implicit time borderline to demarcate the
   receiving packets from the consecutive cycles of the upstream node,
   it may cause the ambiguity in identifying the right sending cycle at
   the upstream node and further affect the correctness of the decision
   of which output buffer to put the received packets at the current
   node.

   Figure 4 shows such an ambiguity when time based cycle demarcation is
   used.  The packet sent by node A in its cycle (i-1) can be received
   at any time in the receiving interval indicated as “receiving window
   for A’s buf_1” in Figure 4.  The receiving window refers to the time
   interval between the earliest time that the first packet sent in a
   given cycle from an upstream node is processed and enqueued in an
   output buffer and the latest time that the last packet of the cycle
   is processed and enqueued in an output buffer.  Network operators may
   configure the size of the receiving window, taking the time variance
   of their networks into account.  It can be seen that the spanning
   time period of receiving window is longer than the cycle interval.
   This is because there is a large time variance experienced between A
   and B, e.g. varying processing time for different packets in
   different cycles.  It does not mean the receiving interval for every
   cycle always constantly span over such a large receiving window.  The
   receiving window time interval indeed is determined by the worst case
   time variance value and that should be used for regular time cycle
   demarcation.
















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   --------------------------------------------------------> Time

              |        |        |        |        |
   Node A     | cycle  | cycle  | cycle  | cycle  |
              |  i-1   |   i    |  i+1   |  i+2   |
   Sending   ----------+--------+--------+--------+
              |+-----+ |+-----+ |+-----+ |+-----+ |
              ||/////| ||/////| ||/////| ||/////| |
              |+-----+ |+-----+ |+-----+ |+-----+ |
              | buf_1  | buf_2  | buf_3  | buf_4  |
              |      | |      | |      | |      | |
              |    ->| |<-  ->| |    ->| |    ->| |
              |      DT       DT       DT       DT
              |
             --------------------------------------
              |      +-----------+receiving window
   Node B     |      |///////////|for A's buf_1
              |      +-----------+
   Receiving  |    put to B's buf_1
              |
              |             ->|  |<- ambiguity window 1
              |
              |               +-----------+receiving window
              |               |///////////|for A's buf_2
              |        |      +-----------+
              |        |     put to B's buf_2
              |        |
              |        |             ->|  |<- ambiguity window 2
              |        |        |
              |        |        |      +-----------+receiving window
              |        |        |      |///////////|for A's buf_3
              |        |        |      +-----------+
              |        |        |     put to B's buf_3
              |        |        |
              |        |        |             ..........
              |        |        |
             -|--------|--------|--------|---------------
   Node B     |        |        |        |        |        |
              |        |        | +-----+|+-----+ |+-----+ |+-----+
   Sending    |        |        | |/////|||/////| ||/////| ||/////|
              |        |        | +-----+|+-----+ |+-----+ |+-----+
              |        |        |  buf_4 | buf_1  | buf_2  | buf_3

   DT=Dead Time

                      Figure 4: Three Buffer ambiguity





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   When a packet is received in ambiguity window 1 in Figure 4, node B
   is not able to use the receiving time to determine which buffer is
   the correct one to put the packet in because it cannot tell if the
   packet is sent from cycle (i-1) or cycle i on node A.  If node B puts
   the packet to the wrong output buffer, the packet may experience the
   unexpected delay.  At the same time, the packet occupying the non-
   designated buffer may break the contracts between the end hosts and
   DetNet networks and then cause the unpredictable consequences.

   It has been noted that the DT can be greatly increased to beat the
   time variance in order to make the receiving windows do not overlap
   so as to remove such ambiguity.  However, it is not always practical
   and usually not desired because large DT will eat useful cycle time
   and bring the low utilization issue as illustrated in Section 2.3.
   Therefore, it would be desired to keep DT as small as possible and at
   the same time identify the cycle interval correctly.

   With tagged CQF, the sending router A encodes the sending cycle
   identification in some existing or new packet header field as
   specified later in this document.  This allows the receiving router B
   to determine the correct output port cycle buffer to place the data
   packet into.  Except for the need for the operator to pre-configure
   this mapping on router B, based on the above described latency and
   jitter of the link (and processing between the sending and receiving
   router, tagging does not change the fundamental mechanism and
   benefits of CQF. makes no change from the fundamental CQF.

   Compared to CQF with multiple buffers, Tagged CQF allows to operate
   with clock synchronization at significantly reduced accuracy
   requirements than CQF.  In CQF, the MTIE is an addend determing DT
   and should hence typically be less than 1% of the cycle time.  In
   TCQF it is an addent in the permitted receive window and can hence be
   for example as large as the cycle time, and such 100 times larger.  A
   network using TCQF with 100Gbps interfaces can hence can hence use
   the same or less expensive clock synchronization setup than a CQF
   network with 1Gbps interfaces.  In addition, when conditions of the
   network connections change, the mappings can dynamically changed from
   network operations.

   CQF with multiple buffers but without tagging has been proposed to
   IEEE TSN in [multipleCQF], but has not been adopted.  Instead of
   relying on a cycle tag in a packet header, it still relies solely on
   the arrival time of packet, and can hence not equally resolve arrival
   time ambiguities as TCQF can, because it does not know the cycle from
   which the packet was sent.






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2.6.  Summary of TCQF benefits and goals for DetNet

   TCQF inherits the benefits of CQF for DetNet as outlined in
   Section 2.4, and byusing a configurable number of three or more
   cycles, and signaling the cycle as part of a packet header, it
   resolves these problems as follows.

   1.  With three cycles, TCQF can support arbitrary latency links at
       arbitrary speeds without reduction of utilization because of
       longer links or higher link speeds (same cycle time, same clock
       accuracy, only change in lengths and speeds).

   2.  With four or more cycles, TCQF can also eliminate Dead Time
       caused by variation of clock synchronization inaccuracies (MTIE)
       as well as jitter caused by link propagation and processing
       variation.  The sum of cycles times needs to be larger than the
       total jitter to achieve this.

   Prior documents describing the concept of TCQF (without using that
   name) include [I-D.qiang-detnet-large-scale-detnet] and
   [I-D.dang-queuing-with-multiple-cyclic-buffers].  TCQF does not
   depend on other elements of [RFC8655], so it can also be used stand
   alone in otherwise non-deterministic IP/IPv6 or MPLS networks to
   achieve bounded latency and low jitter.

   TCQF is likely especially beneficial when networks are architected to
   avoid per-hop, per-flow state even for traffic steering, which is the
   case for networks using SR-MPLS [RFC8402] for traffic steering of
   MPLS unicast traffic, SRv6 [RFC8986] for traffic steeering of IPv6
   unicast traffic and/or BIER-TE [I-D.ietf-bier-te-arch] for tree
   engineering of MPLS multicast traffic by using the TC and/or DSCP
   header fields of BIER packets according to [RFC8296].

   In these networks, it is specifically undesirable to require per-flow
   signaling to non-edge forwarders (such as P-LSR in MPLS networks)
   solely for DetNet QoS because such per-flow state is unnecessary for
   traffic steering and would only be required for the bounded latency
   QoS mechanism and require likely even more complex hardware and
   manageability support than what was previously required for per-hop
   steering state (such as in RSVP-TE, [RFC4875]).  Note that the DetNet
   architecture [RFC8655] does not include full support for this
   DiffServ model, which is why this memo describes how to use TCQF with
   the DetNet architecture per-hop, per-flow processing as well as
   without it.







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3.  Using TCQF in the DetNet Architecture and MPLS forwarding plane
    (informative)

   This section gives an overview of how the operations of TCQF relates
   to the DetNet architecture.  We first revisit QoS with DetNet in the
   absence of TCQF using an MPLS network as an example.

   DetNet MPLS       Relay       Transit         Relay       DetNet MPLS
   End System        Node         Node           Node        End System
      T-PE1          S-PE1        LSR-P          S-PE2       T-PE2
   +----------+                                             +----------+
   |   Appl.  |<------------ End-to-End Service ----------->|   Appl.  |
   +----------+   +---------+                 +---------+   +----------+
   | Service  |<--| Service |-- DetNet flow --| Service |-->| Service  |
   +----------+   +---------+  +----------+   +---------+   +----------+
   |Forwarding|   |Fwd| |Fwd|  |Forwarding|   |Fwd| |Fwd|   |Forwarding|
   +-------.--+   +-.-+ +-.-+  +----.---.-+   +-.-+ +-.-+   +---.------+
           :  Link  :    /  ,-----.  \   : Link :    /  ,-----.  \
           +........+    +-[ Sub-  ]-+   +......+    +-[ Sub-  ]-+
                           [Network]                   [Network]
                            `-----'                     `-----'
           |<- LSP -->| |<-------- LSP -----------| |<--- LSP -->|

           |<----------------- DetNet MPLS --------------------->|

                     Figure 5: A DetNet MPLS Network

   The above Figure 5, is copied from [RFC8964], Figure 2, and only
   enhanced by numbering the nodes to be able to better refer to them in
   the following text.

   Assume a DetNet flow is sent from T-PE1 to T-PE2 across S-PE1, LSR,
   S-PE2.  In general, bounded latency QoS processing is then required
   on the outgoing interface of T-PE1 towards S-PE1, and any further
   outgoing interface along the path.  When T-PE1 and S-PE2 know that
   their next-hop is a service LSR, their DetNet flow label stack may
   simply have the DetNet flows Service Label (S-Label) as its Top of
   Stack (ToS) LSE, explicitly indicating one DetNet flow.

   On S-PE1, the next-hop LSR is not DetNet aware, which is why S-PE1
   would need to send a label stack where the S-Label is followed by a
   Forwarding Label (F-Label), and LSR-P would need to perform bounded
   latency based QoS on that F-Label.

   For bounded latency QoS mechanisms relying on per-flow regulator
   state (aka: per-flow packet scheduling), such as in [TSN-ATS], this
   requires the use of a per-detnet flow F-Labels across the network
   from S-PE1 to S-PE2.  These could for for example be assigned/managed



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   through RSVP-TE [RFC3209] enhanced as necessary with QoS parameters
   matching the underlying bounded latency mechanism (such as
   [TSN-ATS]).

   With TCQF, a sequence of LSR and DetNet service node implements TCQF
   with MPLS TC, ideally from T-PE1 (ingress) to T-PE2 (egress).  The
   ingress node needs to perform per-DetNet-flow per-packet
   "shaping"/"regulating" to assign each packet of a flow to a
   particular TCQF cycle.  This is specified in Section 5.

   All LSR/Service nodes after the ingress node only have to map a
   received TCQF tagged DetNet packet to the configured cycle on the
   output interface, not requiring any per-DetNet-flow QoS state.  These
   LSR/Service nodes do therefore also not require per-flow interactions
   with the controller plane for the purpose of bounded latency.

   Per-flow state therefore is only required on nodes that are DetNet
   service nodes, or when explicit, per-DetNet flow steering state is
   desired, instead of ingress steering through e.g.: SR-MPLS.

   Operating TCQF per-flow stateless across a service node, such as
   S-PE1, S-PE2 in the picture is only one option.  It is of course
   equally feasible to Have one TCQF domain from T-PE1 to S-PE2, start a
   new TCQF domain there, running for example up to S-PE2 and start
   another one to T-PE2.

   A service node must act as an egress/ingress edge of a TCQF domain if
   it needs to perform operations that do change the timing of packets
   other than the type of latency that can be considered in
   configuration of TCQF (see Section 6.3).

   For example, if T-PE1 is ingress for a TCQF domain, and T-PE2 is the
   egress, S-PE1 could perform the DetNet Packet Replication Function
   (PRF) without having to be a TQCF edge node as long as it does not
   introduce latencies not included in the TCQF setup and the controller
   plane reserves resources for the multitude of flows created by the
   replication taking the allocation of resources in the TCQF cycles
   into account.

   Likewise, S-PE2 could perform the Packet Elimination Function without
   being a TCQF edge node as this most likely does not introduce any
   non-TCQF acceptable latency - and the controller plane accordingly
   reserves only for one flow the resources on the S-PE2->T-PE2 leg.

   If on the other hand, S-PE2 was to perform the Packet Reordering
   Function (PRF), this could create large peaks of packets when out-of-
   order packets are released together.  A PRF would either have to take
   care of shaping out those bursts for the traffic of a flow to again



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   conform to the admitted CIR/PIR, or else the service node would have
   to be a TCQF egress/ingress, performing that shaping itself as an
   ingress function.

4.  TCQF per-flow stateless forwarding (normative)

4.1.  Configuration Data model and tag processing for MPLS TC tags

   The following data model summarizes the configuration parameters as
   required for TCQF and discussed in further sections. 'tcqf' includes
   the parameters independent of the tagging on an interface. 'tcqf_*'
   describes the parameters for interfaces using MPLS TC and IP DSCP
   tagging.

   # Encapsulation agnostic data
   tcqf
   +-- uint16 cycles
   +-- uint16 cycle_time
   +-- uint32 cycle_clock_offset
   +-- if_config[oif] # Outgoing InterFace
       +-- uint32 cycle_clock_offset
       +-- cycle_map[iif] # Incoming InterFace
           +--uint8 oif_cycle[iif_cycle]

     Figure 6: Encapsulation independent TCQF Configuration Data Model

4.2.  Packet processing

   This section explains the TCQF packet processing and through it,
   introduces the semantic of the objects in Figure 6

   tcqf contains the router wide configuration of TCQF parameters,
   independent of the specific tagging mechanism on any interface.  Any
   interface can have a different tagging method.  This document uses
   the term router when it is irrelevant whether forwarding is for IP or
   MPLS packet, and the term Label Switched Router (LSR) to indicate
   MPLS is used, or IP router to indicate IP or IPv6 are used -
   independent of the specific encapsulation used for IP or MPLS to
   carry the cycle identification.

   The model represents a single TQCF domain, which is a set of
   interfaces acting both as ingress (iif) and egress (oif) interfaces,
   capable to forward TCQF packets amongst each other.  A router may
   have multiple TCQF domains each with a set of interfaces disjoint
   from those of any other TCQF domain.






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   tcqf.cycles is the number of cycles used across all interfaces in the
   TCQF domain. routers MUST support 3 and 4 cycles.  The maximum number
   of supportable cycles depends on the encapsulation.  For example, to
   support interfaces with MPLS TC tagging, 7 or fewer cycles MUST be
   used across all interfaces in the CQF domain.  See Section 4.3.

   The unit of tcqf.cycle_time is micro-seconds. routers MUST support
   configuration of cycle-times of 20,50,100,200,500,1000,2000 usec.

   Cycles start at an offset of tcqf.cycle_clock_offset in units of nsec
   as follows.  Let clock1 be a timestamp of the local reference clock
   for TCQF, at which cycle 1 starts, then:

   tcqf.cycle_clock_offset = (clock1 mod (tcqf.cycle_time * tcqf.cycles)
   )

   The local reference clock of the router is expected to be
   synchronized with the neighboring LSR/router in TCQF domain.
   tcqf.cycle_clock_offset can be configurable by the operator, or it
   can be read-only.  In either case will the operator be able to
   configure working TCQF forwarding through appropriately calculated
   cycle mapping.

   tcqf.if_config[oif] is optional per-interface configuration of TCQF
   parameters. tcqf.if_config[oif].cycle_clock_offset may be different
   from tcqf.cycle_clock_offset, for example, when interfaces are on
   line cards with independently synchronized clocks, or when non-
   uniform ingress-to-egress propagation latency over a complex router/
   LSR fabric makes it beneficial to allow per-egress interface or line
   card configuration of cycle_clock_offset.  It may be configurable or
   read-only.

   The value of -1 for tcqf.if_config[oif].cycle_clock_offset is used to
   indicate that the domain wide tcqf.cycle_clock_offset is to be used
   for oif.  This is the only permitted negative number for this
   parameter.

   When a packet is received from iif with a cycle value of iif_cycle
   and the packet is routed towards oif, then the cycle value (and
   buffer) to use on oif is
   tcqf.if_config[oif].cycle_map[iif].oif_cycle[iif_cycle].  This is
   called the cycle mapping and is must be configurable.  This cycle
   mapping always happens when the packet is received with a cycle tag
   on an interface in a TCQF domain and forwarded to another interface
   in the same TCQF domain.






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   This encapsulation independent data model only defines how to map
   from a received packets cycle to a sending interface cycle buffer and
   hence sent packet cycle.  It does not specify how the cycle
   identifier is encoded in the received or sent packet.  This is
   amended by the specification in the following sections.

   This data model does therefore also not determine whether interfaces
   use IP/IPv6, MPLS or any other encapsulation.  This is determined by
   the configuration of the DetNet domain.  A mixed use of MPLS and IP/
   IPv6 interfaces is possible with this data model, but at the time of
   writing this document not supported by DetNet.

4.3.  TCQF for MPLS with TC tagging

   This section describes operation of TCQF for MPLS packets using the
   Traffic Class (TC) field of MPLS label to carry the cycle-id.  To
   support this encapsulation, the TCQF Data Model as defined in
   Figure 6 is expanded as follows.

   # MPLS TC tagging specific data
   tcqf_tc[oif]
   +--uint8 tc[oif_cycle]

               Figure 7: TCQF Configuration Data for MPLS TC

   tcqf_tc[oif].tc[oif_cycle] defines how to map from the internal cycle
   number oif_cycle to an MPLS TC value on interface oif. tcqf_tc[oif]
   MUST be configured, when oif uses MPLS.  This oif_cycle <=> tc
   mapping is not only used to map from internal cycle number to MPLS TC
   tag when sending packets, but also to map from MPLS TC tag to the
   internal cycle number when receiving packets.

   In the terminology of [RFC3270], TCQF QoS as defined here, is TC-
   Inferred-PSC LSP (E-LSP) behavior: Packets are determined to belong
   to the TCQF PSC solely based on the TC of the received packet.

   The internal cycle number SHOULD be assigned from the Top of Stack
   (ToS) MPLS label TC bits before any other label stack operations
   happens.  On the egress side, the TC value of the ToS MPLS label
   SHOULD be assigned from the internal cycle number after any label
   stack processing.

   With this order of processing, TCQF can support forwarding of packets
   with any label stack operations such as label swap in the case of LDP
   or RSVP-TE created LSP, Penultimate Hop Popping (PHP), or no label
   changes from SID hop-by-hop forwarding and/or SID/label pop as in the
   case of SR-MPLS traffic steering.




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4.4.  TCQF for IP/IPv6 with DSCP tagging

   This section describes operation of TCQF for IP/IPv6 packets using
   the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) field of IP/IPv6
   packets to carry the cycle-id.  To support this encapsulation, the
   TCQF Data Model as defined in Figure 6 is expanded as follows.

   # IP/IPv6 DSCP tagging specific data
   tcqf_dscp[oif]
   +--uint8 dscp[oif_cycle]

             Figure 8: TCQF Configuration Data for IP/IPv6 DSCP

   tcqf_dscp[oif].dscp[oif_cycle] defines how to map from the internal
   cycle number oif_cycle to an IP/IPv6 DSCP value on interface oif.
   tcqf_dscp[oif] MUST be configured, when oif uses DSCP tagging of IP/
   IPv6 packets for TCQF.  This oif_cycle <=> idscp mapping is not only
   used to map from internal cycle number to the DSCP tag when sending
   packets, but also to map from IP/IPv6 DSCP to the internal cycle
   number when receiving packets.

   As how DetNet domains are currently assumed to be single
   administrative network operator domains, this document does not ask
   for standardization of the DSCP to use with TCQF.  Instead,
   deployments wanting to use TCQF with IP/IPv6 encapsulation and DSCP
   tagging need to assign within their domain DSCP from the xxxx11 "EXP/
   LU" Codepoint space according to [RFC2474], Section 6.  This allows
   up to 16 DSCP for intradomain use and hence up to 16 cycle
   identifiers.

4.5.  TCQF for IPv6 with IPv6 Option tagging

   This section describes operation of TCQF for IPv6 packets without
   having to rely on DSCP by defining a new IPv6 option for DetNet.
   This option is to be placed in the IPv6 HbH (Hop-by-Hop) Options or
   DOH (Destination Option Header) header.  To support this
   encapsulation, the TCQF Data Model as defined in Figure 6 is expanded
   as follows.

   # IPv6 TCQF Option tagging specific data
   tcqf_ipv6oh[oif]
   +--uint8 ipv6oh[oif_cycle]

       Figure 9: TCQF Configuration Data for IPv6 TCQF Option Header







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4.5.1.  TCQF Option Format

   The TCQF Option helps the receiving port to identify in which time
   cycle interval the packet is sent from the upstream router.  It can
   be used to determine the output port cycle buffer to enqueue the
   packet.

    0                   1                   2                   3
    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   |  Option Type  |  Opt Data Len |E|    Flags    |   Cycle Id    |
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   .                                                               .
   ~         (64-bit extension if flag E-bit is 1)                 ~
   .                                                               .
   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

                       Figure 10: TCQF Option Format

   TCQF-Option fields:

   *  Option Type: 8-bit identifier of the type of option.  Value TBD by
      IANA.  If the processing IPv6 node does not recognize the Option
      Type it must discard the packet and return an ICMPv6 message (the
      highest-order 2 bits = 10).  The Option Data of this option may
      change en route to the packet's final destination (the third-
      highest-order bit=1).

   *  Opt Data Len: 8-bit length of the option data.

   *  Flags: 8-bit field to indicate what TCQF Option information
      follows.  The leftmost bit is called E-bit.  When E-bit set to 1,
      there is a 64-bit extension in length after Cycle Id.

   *  Cycle Id: 8-bit field to indicate the time cycle ID at output port
      of the upstream node when the packet is sent out.  This is the
      packet header field name for the data model ipv6oh[oif_cycle]
      element.

   *  64-bit extension: This field contains values required for a
      possible additional options, such as timestamp.  This field exists
      only when E-bit in Flags field is set to one.  [Editor's Note:
      Text will be modified or added as specific uses for this field are
      identified]







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4.5.2.  TCQF Option Processing

   A packet carrying the TCQF Option with Cycle Id does not change the
   fundamental cyclic queuing and forwarding behaviors of TCQF over the
   encapsulation independent forwarding behavior described above
   (Section 4.2).

   Compared to DSCP it does not introduce a limited number of cycle-ids,
   and eliminates the possible operation consideration to use multiple
   DSCP for effectively a single per-hop forwarding behavior, which
   otherwise would be a novel aspect that could cause issues for example
   with diagnostics or other operational standards.  It also allows
   easier extensions with other potentially beneficial DetNet features
   in the same Option header.

   As part of the packet processing of Section 4.2, the Cycle ID field
   of the option heade is rewritting from tcqf.ipv6oh[oif_cycle], in the
   same way as DSCP wold be rewritten from tcqf.dscp[oif_cycle].

4.5.3.  Encapsulation of TCQF Option for Deterministic IP (DIP) data
        plane

   When used in IPv6 ([RFC8200]) networks, the TCQF Option can be placed
   in an HbH extension header or Destination Option Header (DOH).

   +-----------------------------------+
   |         DetNet IP Packet          |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |            other EHs              |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |        IPv6 Hop-by-Hop Ex Hdr     |
   |         (DIP-TCQF Option)         |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |            IPv6 Header            |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |             Data-Link             |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |             Physical              |
   +-----------------------------------+

      Figure 11: TCQF Option Encapsulated in HbH for Deterministic IP
                                 data plane









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   Figure 11 shows the encapsulation of TCQF option in HbH extension
   header for deterministic IP (DIP）data plane.  When every DetNet
   forwarding node along the path is provisioned to use TCQF as the
   queuing mechanism, this option should be placed here.  If a router
   does not support this option, it discards the packet and returns an
   ICMP message.

   In some deployments the path selection is indicated using IPv6
   routing header (RH) by specifying a set of nodes that must be
   traversed by the packet along its path to the destination.  When such
   a source routing mechanism is used, TCQF Option is placed in DOH
   (Destination Option Header) as shown in Figure 12 for Deterministic
   IP data plane.  Then the TCQF Option will be processed by the
   specified in-path routers.

   +-----------------------------------+
   |         DetNet IP Packet          |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |         other EHs including RH    |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |       IPv6 Destination Ex Hdr     |
   |         (DIP-TCQF Option)         |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |            IPv6 Header            |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |             Data-Link             |
   +-----------------------------------+
   |             Physical              |
   +-----------------------------------+

      Figure 12: TCQF Option Encapsulated in DOH for Deterministic IP
                                 data plane

   (TBD: Should and how TCQF Option be used in SRv6 ?)

4.6.  TCQF Pseudocode (normative)

   The following pseudocode restates the forwarding behavior of
   Section 4 in an algorithmic fashion as pseudocode.  It uses the
   objects of the TCQF configuration data model defined in Section 4.1.

 void receive(pak) {
   // Receive side TCQF - retrieve cycle of received packet
   // from packet internal header
   iif = pak.context.iif
   if (tcqf.if_config[iif]) { // TCQF enabled on iif
     if (tcqf_tc[iif]) {      // MPLS TCQF enabled on iif
       tc = pak.mpls_header.lse[tos].tc



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       pak.context.tcqf_cycle = map_tc2cycle( tc, tcqf_tc[iif])
     } else
     if (tcqf_ipv6oh[iif]) {    // IPv6 Option Header used on iif
       cycle_id = pak.ipv6_header.tcqf_oh[cycle_id]
       pak.context.tcqf_cycle =
         map_ipv6oh2cycle( cycle_id, tcqf_ipv6oh[iif])
     } else
     if (tcqf_dscp[iif]) {      // IP DSCP TCQF used on iif
       dscp = pak.ip_header.dscp
       pak.context.tcqf_cycle = map_dscp2cycle( dscp, tcqf_dscp[iif])
     } else // ... other encaps
   }
   forward(pak);
 }

 // ... Forwarding including any label stack operations

 void forward(pak) {
   oif = pak.context.oif = forward_process(pak)

   if(ingres_flow_enqueue(pak))
     return // ingress packets are only enqueued here.

   if(pak.context.tcqf_cycle) // non TCQF packets cycle is 0
     if(tcqf.if_config[oif]) {    // TCQF enabled on OIF
       // Map tcqf_cycle iif to oif - encap agnostic
       cycle = pak.context.tcqf_cycle
             = map_cycle(cycle,
               tcqf.if_config[oif].cycle_map[[iif])

       // MPLS TC-TCQF
       if(tcqf.tc[oif]) {
         pak.mpls_header.lse[tos].tc = map_cycle2tc(cycle, tcqf_tc[oif])
       } else
       if (tcqf_ipv6oh[oif]) { // IPv6 Option Header used on iif
         pak.ipv6_header.tcqf_oh[cycle_id] =
           map_cycle2ipv6oh(cycle, tcqf_ipv6oh[oif])
       } else
       // IP DSCP TCQF enabled on iif
       if (tcqf_dscp[oif]) {
         pak.ip_header.dscp = map_cycle2dscp(cycle, tcqf_dscp[oif])
       } // else...  other future encap/tagging options for TCQF

       tcqf_enqueue(pak, oif.cycleq[cycle,iif])  // [3]
       return
     } else {
       // Forwarding of egress TCQF packets [1]
     }



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   }
   // ... non TCQF OIF forwarding [2]
 }

 // Started when TCQF is enabled on an interface
 // dequeues packets from oif.cycleq
 // independent of encapsulation
 void send_tcqf(oif) {
   cycle = 1
   cc =  tcqf.cycle_time *
         tcqf.cycle_time
   o =   tcqf.cycle_clock_offset
   nextcyclestart = floor(tnow / cc) * cc + cc + o

   while(1) {
     ingress_flow_2_tcqf(oif,cycle) // [5]
     wait_until(tnow >= nextcyclestart); // wait until next cycle
     nextcyclestart += tcqf.cycle_time
     forall(iif) {
       forall(pak = tcqf_dequeue(oif.cycleq[cycle,iif]) {
         schedule to send pak on oif before nextcyclestart; // [4]
       }
     }
     cycle = (cycle + 1) mod tcqf.cycles + 1
   }
 }

                       Figure 13: TCQF Pseudocode

   Processing of ingress TCQF packets is performed via
   ingres_flow_enqueue(pak) and ingress_flow_2_tcqf(oif,cycle) as
   explained in Section 5.2.

   Packets in a cycle buffer can be sent almost arbitrarily within the
   time period of the cycle.  They also do not need to be sent as soon
   as possible, as long as all will be sent within that period.  There
   is no need to send them in the order of their arrival except that
   packets from the same ingres flow that end up in the same cycle must
   not be reordered across any number of tcqf hops.  The pseudocode
   describes this by using a queue oif.cycleq[cycle,iif] ([3]) for all
   packets from the same iif.  The pseudocode describes the oterwise
   arbitrary scheduling of all packets within the cycle time via the
   statement shown in [4].

   Ingress packets are passed from their ingress queues to the next
   cycle queue via [5].





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   Processing of egres TCQF packets is out-of-scope.  It can performed
   by any non-TCQF packet forwarding mechanism such as some strict
   priority queuing in step [2], and packets could accordingly be marked
   with an according packet header traffic class indicator for such a
   traffic class in step [1].

5.  TCQF Per-flow Ingress forwarding (normative)

   Ingress flows in the context of this text are packets of flows that
   enter the router from a non-TCQF interface and need to be forwarded
   to an interface with TCQF.

   In the most simple case, these packets are sent by the source and the
   router is the first-hop router.  In another case, the routers ingress
   interface connects to a hop where the previous router(s) did perform
   a different bounded latency forwarding mechanism than TCQF.

5.1.  Ingress Flows Configuration Data Model

   # Extends above defined tcqf
   tcqf
   ...
   | Ingress Flows, see below (TBD:
   +-- iflow[flowid]
       +-- uint32 csize # in bits

              Figure 14: TCQF Ingress Configuration Data Model

   The data model shown in Figure 14 expands the tcqf data model from
   Figure 6.  For every DetNet flow for which this router is the TCQF
   ingress, the controller plane has to specify a maximum number of bits
   called csize (cycle size) that are permitted to go into each
   individual cycle.

   Note, that iflow[flowid].csize is not specific to the sending
   interface because it is a property of the DetNet flow.

5.2.  Ingress Flows Pseudocode

   When a TCQF ingress is received, it first has to be enqueued into a
   per-flow queue.  This is necessary because the permitted burst size
   for the flow may be larger than what can fit into a single cycle, or
   even into the number of cycles used in the network.








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   bool ingres_flow_enqueue(pak) {
     if(!pak.context.tcqf_cycle &&
         flowid = match_detnetflow(pak)) {
       police(pak) // according to RFC9016 5.5
       enqueue(pak, flowq[oif][flowid])
       return true
     }
     return false
   }

                 Figure 15: TCQF Ingress Enqueue Pseudocode

   ingres_flow_enqueue(pak) as shown in Figure 15 performs this
   enqueuing of the packet.  Its position in the DetNet/TCQF forwarding
   code is shown in Figure 13.

   police(pak): If the router is not only the TCQF ingress router, but
   also the first-hop router from the source, ingres_flow_enqueue(pak)
   will also be the place where policing of the flows packet according
   to the Traffic Specification of the flow would happen - to ensure
   that packets violating the Traffic Specification will not be
   forwarded, or be forwarded with lower priority (e.g.: as best
   effort).  This policing and resulting forwarding action is not
   specific to TCQF and therefore out of scope for this text.  See
   [RFC9016], section 5.5.

   void ingress_flow_2_tcqf(oif, cycle) {
     foreach flowid in flowq[oif][*] {
       free = tcqf.iflow[flowid].csize
       q = flowq[oif][flowid]
       while(notempty(q) &&
             (l = head(q).size) <= free) {
         pak = dequeue(q)
         free -= l
         tcqf_enqueue(pak, oif.cycleq[cycle,internal])
       }
     }
   }

                     Figure 16: TCQF Ingress Pseudocode

   ingress_flow_2_tcqf(oif, cycle) as shown in Figure 16 transfers
   ingress DetNet flow packets from their per-flow queue into the queue
   of the cycle that will be sent next.  The position of
   ingress_flow_2_tcqf() in the DetNet/TCQF forwarding code is shown in
   Figure 13.





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6.  Implementation, Deployment, Operations and Validation considerations
    (informative)

6.1.  Solution Scope, Taxonomy and Status for DetNet adoption
      considerations

6.1.1.  Solution scope

   TCQF is proposed as a solution not standalone, but in conjunction
   with [I-D.eckert-detnet-flow-interleaving] as a per-flow mechanism to
   be used on the ingress TCQF router to allow more flexible per-flow
   management of admission of flow bursts into cycles than presented in
   this document.  The reason for splitting up the proposal into two
   documents is because [I-D.eckert-detnet-flow-interleaving] can be
   combined with all "mostly-synchronous" per-hop mechanisms, for
   example beyong TCQF also (of course) CQF and GLBF
   ([I-D.eckert-detnet-glbf].

6.1.2.  Taxonomy

   Using the section number/titles of the taxonomy document
   [I-D.ietf-detnet-dataplane-taxonomy] the TCQF technology can be
   classified as follows.

   *  4.1 Per Hop Dominant Factor for Latency Bound

      The per-hop dominan latency bound is Category 3.  The per-hop
      latency for each class is determined by the cycle size, which has
      to be determined by the sum of burst sizes required by the flows.
      This burst can be split up across multiple cycles by the
      mechanisms described in [I-D.eckert-detnet-flow-interleaving] for
      flows whose rate is low enough that they do not need resources in
      every cycle.

   *  5.1 Periodicity

      TCQF is Periodic, however, by using tagging it reduces the
      required synchronization across the network (using CQF as a
      reference) by potentially a factor of 100 or more, allowing to use
      the same or even less stringent clock synchronization at 100 times
      or more speedup versus current CQF networks.

   *  5.2.  Traffic Granularity

      TCQF has Class level granularity.  In its current form, this draft
      only describes operation for a single cycle class, but it can
      easily be extended to use multiple classes.  In addition,
      additional differentiation into more classes can happen at the



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      ingress edge through [I-D.eckert-detnet-flow-interleaving].
      However, those additional options do not increase the amount of
      per-hop state in the TCQF network, that will stay limited to the
      cycle states required for the per-hop classes (e.g.: just one
      class now).  Hence TCQF maintains minimal state per-hop.

   *  5.3.  Time Bounds

      TCQF is Bounded (Left and Right bounded) as determind by the time
      in which the cycle the packet is in is sent.  In result, The total
      end-to-end jitter of a packet is limited to the cycle time
      deployed, as is the per-hop jitter.

   *  5.4 Service Order

      TCQF service order is solely arrival based.

   *  1.  Suitable Categories for DetNet

      TCQF is "6.3.  Class level periodic bounded category" according to
      the categorization.

6.1.3.  Status

   TCQF has a high-speed (100Gbps interface) ASIC/FPGA implementation
   which was deployed and tested by an academic network test
   organization, a test report is in [CENI].  There is also a large-
   scale simulation of the algorithm/mechanisms and results presented at
   a peer reviewed academic conference, see [LDN].

6.2.  High-Speed Implementation

   High-speed implementations with programmable forwarding planes of
   TCQF packet forwarding require Time-Gated Queues for the cycle
   queues, such as introduced by [IEEE802.1Qbv] and also employed in CQF
   [IEEE802.1Qch].

   Compared to CQF, the accuracy of clock synchronization across the
   nodes is reduced as explained in Section 6.3 below.












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   High-speed forwarding for ingress packets as specified in Section 5
   above would require to pass packets first into a per-flow queue and
   then re-queue them into a cycle queue.  This is not ideal for high
   speed implementations.  The pseudocode for ingres_flow_enqueue() and
   ingress_flow_2_tcqf(), like the rest of the pseudocode in this
   document is only meant to serve as the most compact and hopefully
   most easy to read specification of the desired externally observable
   behavior of TCQF - but not as a guidance for implementation,
   especially not for high-speed forwarding planes.

   High-speed forward could be implemented with single-enqueueing into
   cycle queues as follows:

   Let B[f] be the maximum amount of data that the router would need to
   buffer for ingress flow f at any point in time.  This can be
   calculated from the flows Traffic Specification.  For example, when
   using the parameters of [RFC9016], section 5.5.

   B[f] <= MaxPacketsPerInterval*MaxPayloadSize*8

   maxcycles = max( ceil( B[f] / tcqf.iflow[f].csize) | f)

   Maxcycles is the maximum number of cycles required so that packets
   from all ingress flows can be directly enqueued into maxcycles
   queues.  The router would then not cycle across tcqf.cycles number of
   queues, but across maxcycles number of queues, but still cycling
   across tcqf.cycles number of cycle tags.

   Calculation of B[f] and in result maxcycles may further be refined
   (lowered) by additionally known constraints such as the bitrates of
   the ingress interface(s) and TCQF output interface(s).

6.3.  Controller plane computation of cycle mappings

   The cycle mapping is computed by the controller plane by taking at
   minimum the link, interface serialization and node internal
   forwarding latencies as well as the cycle_clock_offsets into account.














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   Router  . O1
    R1     . | cycle 1 | cycle 2 | cycle 3 | cycle 1 |
           .    .
           .     ............... Delay D
           .                    .
           .                    O1'
           .                     | cycle 1 |
   Router  .   | cycle 1 | cycle 2 | cycle 3 | cycle 1 |
     R2    .   O2

   CT  = cycle_time
   C   = cycles
   CC  = CT * C
   O1  = cycle_clock_offset router R1, interface towards R2
   O2  = cycle_clock_offset router R2, output interface of interest
   O1' = O1 + D

                      Figure 17: Calculation reference

   Consider in Figure 17 that Router R1 sends packets via C = 3 cycles
   with a cycle_clock offset of O1 towards Router R2.  These packets
   arrive at R2 with a cycle_clock offset of O1' which includes through
   D all latencies incurred between releasing a packet on R1 from the
   cycle buffer until it can be put into a cycle buffer on R2:
   serialization delay on R1, link delay, non_CQF delays in R1 and R2,
   especially forwarding in R2, potentially across an internal fabric to
   the output interface with the sending cycle buffers.

   A = ( ceil( ( O1' - O2 ) / CT) + C + 1) mod CC
   map(i) = (i - 1 + A) mod C + 1

                    Figure 18: Calculating cycle mapping

   Figure 18 shows a formula to calculate the cycle mapping between R1
   and R2, using the first available cycle on R2.  In the example of
   Figure 17 with CT = 1, (O1' - O2) =~ 1.8, A will be 0, resulting in
   map(1) to be 1, map(2) to be 2 and map(3) to be 3.

   The offset "C" for the calculation of A is included so that a
   negative (O1 - O2) will still lead to a positive A.

   In general, D will be variable [Dmin...Dmax], for example because of
   differences in serialization latency between min and max size
   packets, variable link latency because of temperature based length
   variations, link-layer variability (radio links) or in-router
   processing variability.  In addition, D also needs to account for the
   drift between the synchronized clocks for R1 and R2.  This is called
   the Maximum Time Interval Error (MTIE).



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   Let A(d) be A where O1' is calculated with D = d.  To account for the
   variability of latency and clock synchronization, map(i) has to be
   calculated with A(Dmax), and the controller plane needs to ensure
   that that A(Dmin)...A(Dmax) does cover at most (C - 1) cycles.

   If it does cover C cycles, then C and/or CT are chosen too small, and
   the controller plane needs to use larger numbers for either.

   This (C - 1) limitation is based on the understanding that there is
   only one buffer for each cycle, so a cycle cannot receive packets
   when it is sending packets.  While this could be changed by using
   double buffers, this would create additional implementation
   complexity and not solve the limitation for all cases, because the
   number of cycles to cover [Dmin...Dmax] could also be (C + 1) or
   larger, in which case a tag of 1...C would not suffice.

6.4.  Link speed and bandwidth sharing

   TCQF hops along a path do not need to have the same bitrate, they
   just need to use the same cycle time.  The controller plane has to
   then be able to take the TCQF capacity of each hop into account when
   admitting flows based on their Traffic Specification and TCQF csize.

   TCQF does not require to be allocated 100% of the link bitrate.  When
   TCQF has to share a link with other traffic classes, queuing just has
   to be set up to ensure that all data of a TCQF cycle buffer can be
   sent within the TCQF cycle time.  For example by making the TCQF
   cycle queues the highest priority queues and then limiting their
   capacity through admission control to leave time for other queues to
   be served as well.

6.5.  Controller-plane considerations

   TCQF is applicable to both centralized as well as decentralized/
   distributed controller-plane models.  From the perspective of the
   controller plane.  If the controller-plane is centralized, then it is
   logically very simple to perform admission control for any additional
   flow by checking that there is sufficient bandwidth for the amount of
   bits required for the flow on every cycle along the intended path.
   Likewise, path computation can be done to determine on which non-
   shortest path those resources are available.

   More efficient use of resources can be achieved by considering that
   flows with low bit rates would not need bits reserved in every cycle,
   but only in every N'th cyce.  This requires different gates on ingres
   to admit packets from such flows than shown in this document and more
   complex admission control that attempts for example to interleave
   multiple flows across different set of cycles to as best as possible



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   utilize all cycles.  This is the same complexity as possible in TSN
   technologies.  Beside the admission control and different ingres
   policing, such enhancements have no impact on the per-hop TCQF
   forwarding and can thus potentially be added incrementally.

   Decentralized or distributed controller planes including on-path,
   per-flow signaling, such as one using the mechanisms of RSVP-TE,
   [RFC3209] is equally feasible with TCQF.  In this case one of the
   potential benefits of TCQ is not leveraged, which is the complete
   removal of per-hop,per-flow awarenes on each router.  Nevertheless,
   the controller-plane only introduces the need for this state
   maintenance into the control-plane of each router, but does not
   change the TCQF forwarding plane, but maintains its per-hop, per-flow
   non-stateful nature and resulting performance/cost benefits.

6.6.  Validation

   [LDN] describes an accurate simualtion based validation of TCQF and
   provides further details on the mathematical models.

   [CENI] is a report summary of a 100Gbps link speed commercial router
   validation implementation of TCQF deployed and measured in a research
   testbed with a range of up to 2000km across China, operated by the
   China Environment for Network Innovations (CENI).  The report also
   provides a reference to a more detailled version of the report.  Note
   that both reports are in chinese.  TCQF is called DIP in these
   reports.

7.  Security Considerations

   TBD.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document defines a new TCQF-Variant Option for the “Destination
   Options and Hop-by-Hop Options” under the “Internet Protocol Version
   6 (IPv6) Parameters” registry [IPV6-PARMS] with the suggested values
   in Figure 19.

   +------+-----+-----+-------+--------------------+-------------+
   | Hexa | act | chg | rest  | Description        | Reference   |
   +------+-----+-----+-------+--------------------+-------------+
   | 0xB1 | 10  | 1   | 10001 | TCQF Option        |this document|
   +------+-----+-----+-------+--------------------+-------------+

     Figure 19: TCQF Option Code in Destination Options and Hop-by-Hop
                                  Options




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9.  Acknowledgement

   Many thanks for review by David Black (DetNet techadvisor).  Thanks
   to Xiaoliang Zheng and Fan Yang for their input to the TCQF option
   format.  They where initially listed as co-authors for draft-yizhou-
   detnet-ipv6-options-for-cqf-variant, which was merged into.

10.  Changelog

   [RFC-editor: please remove]

   Initial draft name: draft-eckert-detnet-mpls-tc-tcqf

   00

   Initial version

   01

   Added new co-author.

   Changed Data Model to "Configuration Data Model",

   and changed syntax from YANG tree to a non-YANG tree, removed empty
   section targeted for YANG model.  Reason: the configuration
   parameters that we need to specify the forwarding behavior is only a
   subset of what likely would be a good YANG model, and any work to
   define such a YANG model not necessary to specify the algorithm would
   be scope creep for this specification.  Better done in a separate
   YANG document.  Example additional YANG aspects for such a document
   are how to map parameters to configuration/operational space, what
   additional operational/monitoring parameter to support and how to map
   the YANG objects required into various pre-existing YANG trees.

   Improved text in forwarding section, simplified sentences, used
   simplified configuration data model.

   02

   Refresh

   03

   Added ingress processing, and further implementation considerations.

   New draft name: draft-eckert-detnet-tcqf

   00



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   Added text for DSCP based tagging of IP/IPv6 packets, therefore
   changing the original, MPLS-only centric scope of the document,
   necessitating a change in name and title.

   This was triggered by the observation of David Black at the IETF114
   DetNet meeting that with DetNet domains being single administrative
   domains, it is not necessary to have standardized (cross
   administrative domain) DSCP for the tagging of IP/IP6 packets for
   TCQF.  Instead it is sufficient to use EXP/LU DSCP code space and
   assignment of these is a local matter of a domain as is that of TC
   values when MPLS is used.  Standardized DSCP in the other hand would
   have required likely work/oversight by TSVWG.

   In any case, the authors feel that with this insight, there is no
   need to constrain single-domain definition of TCQF to only MPLS, but
   instead both MPLS and IP/IPv6 tagging can be easily specified in this
   one draft.

   01

   Added new co-author.

   02

   Attempt to resolve issues from https://github.com/toerless/detnet/
   issues/1.

   *  Review from David Black, refine queueing/scheduling of pseudocode/
      explanation to highlight the non-sequential requirements.

   *  Comment from Lou Berger re. applicability of controller-plane
      resulting in new section about controller-plane.

   *  Reference to CENI chinese validation deployment.

   03

   Merged draft with draft-yizhou-detnet-ipv6-options-for-cqf-variant-
   02.

   Changed specification to be independent of encapsulation/forwarding
   plane and moved MPLS and IP/DSCP (from old TCQF draft) and IPv6 with
   extension header into separate seconds.

   Human translation of CENI report, uploaded CENI report with
   permission from CENI onto web page accessible from outside chinese
   firewall.




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   04

   Added appendix sections on comparison with CSQF and multi class TCQF

   05

   Refresh.

   06

   Refresh.

   07

   Refresh - still waiting for more discuss of direction in detnet WG.

   08

   Refresh - still waiting for more discuss of direction in detnet WG.

   09

   Added section "Solution Scope, Taxonomy and Status for DetNet
   adoption considerations", made [I-D.eckert-detnet-flow-interleaving]
   normative and claim it to be part of the overall solution.

   10, 11

   Moved Xiaoliang Zheng and Fan Yang into acknowledgement section.
   Explanation: They where initially listed as co-authors for draft-
   yizhou-detnet-ipv6-options-for-cqf-variant which was merged into
   draft-eckert-detnet-tcqf and at that point in time the list of
   authors was simply merged.  As part of preparing for possible
   adoption of draft-eckert-detnet-tcqf we revisited the amount of
   participation of the listed authors and concluded, that the input
   from Xiaoliang Zheng and Fan Yang was best met by giving them
   acknowledgment also noting that they have not been active in the IETF
   DetNet work itself.

11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.eckert-detnet-flow-interleaving]
              Eckert, T. T., "Deterministic Networking (DetNet) Data
              Plane - Flow interleaving for scaling detnet data planes
              with minimal end-to-end latency and large number of
              flows.", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-eckert-



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              detnet-flow-interleaving-03, 7 July 2025,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-eckert-
              detnet-flow-interleaving-03>.

   [RFC2474]  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,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2474, December 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2474>.

   [RFC3270]  Le Faucheur, F., Ed., Wu, L., Davie, B., Davari, S.,
              Vaananen, P., Krishnan, R., Cheval, P., and J. Heinanen,
              "Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Support of
              Differentiated Services", RFC 3270, DOI 10.17487/RFC3270,
              May 2002, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3270>.

   [RFC8200]  Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
              (IPv6) Specification", STD 86, RFC 8200,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8200, July 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8200>.

   [RFC8655]  Finn, N., Thubert, P., Varga, B., and J. Farkas,
              "Deterministic Networking Architecture", RFC 8655,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8655, October 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8655>.

   [RFC8964]  Varga, B., Ed., Farkas, J., Berger, L., Malis, A., Bryant,
              S., and J. Korhonen, "Deterministic Networking (DetNet)
              Data Plane: MPLS", RFC 8964, DOI 10.17487/RFC8964, January
              2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8964>.

11.2.  Informative References

   [CENI]     China Environment for Network Innovations (CENI), "CENI
              DIP Networking Test Report", 2020,
              <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/network2030/
              publications/main/CENI_DIP_Networking_Test_Report.pdf>.
              Translated with permission from chinese version at:
              https://ceni.org.cn/406.html

   [I-D.chen-detnet-sr-based-bounded-latency]
              Chen, M., Geng, X., Li, Z., Joung, J., and J. Ryoo,
              "Segment Routing (SR) Based Bounded Latency", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-chen-detnet-sr-based-
              bounded-latency-03, 7 July 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-chen-detnet-
              sr-based-bounded-latency-03>.




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   [I-D.dang-queuing-with-multiple-cyclic-buffers]
              Liu, B. and J. Dang, "A Queuing Mechanism with Multiple
              Cyclic Buffers", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              dang-queuing-with-multiple-cyclic-buffers-00, 22 February
              2021, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dang-
              queuing-with-multiple-cyclic-buffers-00>.

   [I-D.eckert-detnet-bounded-latency-problems]
              Eckert, T. T. and S. Bryant, "Problems with existing
              DetNet bounded latency queuing mechanisms", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-eckert-detnet-bounded-
              latency-problems-00, 12 July 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-eckert-
              detnet-bounded-latency-problems-00>.

   [I-D.eckert-detnet-glbf]
              Eckert, T. T., Clemm, A., Bryant, S., and S. Hommes,
              "Deterministic Networking (DetNet) Data Plane - guaranteed
              Latency Based Forwarding (gLBF) for bounded latency with
              low jitter and asynchronous forwarding in Deterministic
              Networks", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-eckert-
              detnet-glbf-07, 11 December 2025,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-eckert-
              detnet-glbf-07>.

   [I-D.ietf-bier-te-arch]
              Eckert, T. T., Menth, M., and G. Cauchie, "Tree
              Engineering for Bit Index Explicit Replication (BIER-TE)",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-bier-te-arch-
              13, 25 April 2022, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
              draft-ietf-bier-te-arch-13>.

   [I-D.ietf-detnet-dataplane-taxonomy]
              Joung, J., Geng, X., Peng, S., and T. T. Eckert,
              "Dataplane Enhancement Taxonomy", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-detnet-dataplane-taxonomy-04, 7
              July 2025, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              ietf-detnet-dataplane-taxonomy-04>.

   [I-D.qiang-detnet-large-scale-detnet]
              Qiang, L., Geng, X., Liu, B., Eckert, T. T., Geng, L., and
              G. Li, "Large-Scale Deterministic IP Network", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-qiang-detnet-large-scale-
              detnet-05, 2 September 2019,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-qiang-detnet-
              large-scale-detnet-05>.





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   [IEEE802.1Q]
              IEEE 802.1 Working Group, "IEEE Standard for Local and
              Metropolitan Area Network — Bridges and Bridged Networks
              (IEEE Std 802.1Q)", doi 10.1109/ieeestd.2018.8403927,
              2018, <https://doi.org/10.1109/ieeestd.2018.8403927>.

   [IEEE802.1Qbv]
              IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Task Group., "IEEE
              Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks --
              Bridges and Bridged Networks - Amendment 25: Enhancements
              for Scheduled Traffic", 2015.

   [IEEE802.1Qch]
              IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Task Group., "IEEE
              Std 802.1Qch-2017: IEEE Standard for Local and
              Metropolitan Area Networks - Bridges and Bridged Networks
              - Amendment 29: Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding", 2017.

   [IPV6-PARMS]
              "Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Parameters", IANA ,
              n.d., <https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-parameters/
              ipv6-parameters.xhtml>.

   [LDN]      Liu, B., Ren, S., Wang, C., Angilella, V., Medagliani, P.,
              Martin, S., and J. Leguay, "Towards Large-Scale
              Deterministic IP Networks", IEEE 2021 IFIP Networking
              Conference (IFIP Networking),
              doi 10.23919/IFIPNetworking52078.2021.9472798, 2021,
              <https://dl.ifip.org/db/conf/networking/
              networking2021/1570696888.pdf>.

   [multipleCQF]
              Finn, N., "Multiple Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding",
              October 2021,
              <https://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/docs2021/new-finn-
              multiple-CQF-0921-v02.pdf>.

   [RFC3209]  Awduche, D., Berger, L., Gan, D., Li, T., Srinivasan, V.,
              and G. Swallow, "RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP
              Tunnels", RFC 3209, DOI 10.17487/RFC3209, December 2001,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3209>.

   [RFC4875]  Aggarwal, R., Ed., Papadimitriou, D., Ed., and S.
              Yasukawa, Ed., "Extensions to Resource Reservation
              Protocol - Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE) for Point-to-
              Multipoint TE Label Switched Paths (LSPs)", RFC 4875,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4875, May 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4875>.



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   [RFC8296]  Wijnands, IJ., Ed., Rosen, E., Ed., Dolganow, A.,
              Tantsura, J., Aldrin, S., and I. Meilik, "Encapsulation
              for Bit Index Explicit Replication (BIER) in MPLS and Non-
              MPLS Networks", RFC 8296, DOI 10.17487/RFC8296, January
              2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8296>.

   [RFC8402]  Filsfils, C., Ed., Previdi, S., Ed., Ginsberg, L.,
              Decraene, B., Litkowski, S., and R. Shakir, "Segment
              Routing Architecture", RFC 8402, DOI 10.17487/RFC8402,
              July 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8402>.

   [RFC8938]  Varga, B., Ed., Farkas, J., Berger, L., Malis, A., and S.
              Bryant, "Deterministic Networking (DetNet) Data Plane
              Framework", RFC 8938, DOI 10.17487/RFC8938, November 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8938>.

   [RFC8986]  Filsfils, C., Ed., Camarillo, P., Ed., Leddy, J., Voyer,
              D., Matsushima, S., and Z. Li, "Segment Routing over IPv6
              (SRv6) Network Programming", RFC 8986,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8986, February 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8986>.

   [RFC9016]  Varga, B., Farkas, J., Cummings, R., Jiang, Y., and D.
              Fedyk, "Flow and Service Information Model for
              Deterministic Networking (DetNet)", RFC 9016,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9016, March 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9016>.

   [RFC9320]  Finn, N., Le Boudec, J.-Y., Mohammadpour, E., Zhang, J.,
              and B. Varga, "Deterministic Networking (DetNet) Bounded
              Latency", RFC 9320, DOI 10.17487/RFC9320, November 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9320>.

   [TSN-ATS]  Specht, J., "P802.1Qcr - Bridges and Bridged Networks
              Amendment: Asynchronous Traffic Shaping", IEEE , 9 July
              2020, <https://1.ieee802.org/tsn/802-1qcr/>.

Appendix A.  CSQF

   [I-D.chen-detnet-sr-based-bounded-latency] (CSQF) describes a
   variation of the cyclic queuing mechanism in which the cycle
   identifier is not mapped by a mapping table in each node (as in
   TCQF), instead the packet header carries the sequence of cycles for
   every cyclic queuing hop.  In the draft, this is proposed
   specifically for networks using Segment Routing and can therefore
   allocate for N cycles N SIDs, each one for a different cycle to allow
   indicating in a SID sequence header for each hop, which cycle to use.




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   The core new functionality enabled with eliminating the cycle mapping
   table on the routers and moving the sequence of cycles into the
   header is the ability to utilize in a flexible fashion more than a
   fixed number of cycles, independently on each hop.

   Assume a minimum of N (e.g.: N = 3) cycles would be required in a
   particular deployment with TCQF.  If CSQF is then set up with e.g.: N
   + 4 = 7 cycles, then it would be possible for the controller-plane to
   delay packets of a flow on every hop by 1,2,3 or 4 more cycles than
   necessary at minimum.  This can lead to an easier ability to achieve
   higher utilization in the face of controller-plane operations that
   manages large number of flows in large scale DetNets, and does not
   allocate to every flow bandwidth in every cycle.  This naturally
   leads to uneven utilization of cycles and the problem of managing
   distribution of traffic load across cycles.

   [I-D.eckert-detnet-flow-interleaving] discusses this overall advanced
   controller-plane traffic management and how different queuing options
   can be used in such a setup.  It also describes the necessary ingress
   processing to allow forwarding traffic flows only in such well
   engineered specific cycles.

   While such advanced cycle engineering may look at first quite
   complex, it should simply be compared to the mechanisms that already
   are standard in service provider networks to manage bandwidth/
   capacity by engineering per-flow paths across topologies with non-
   equal cost paths.  In that overall complex problem space, managing
   distribution of traffic across cycles is but a minor extension.

   Note that TCQF can of course also benefit from such advanced cycle
   engineering at the controller plane, albeit less flexibly than CSQF.

   Given how CQSF and TCQF share all the forwarding behavior except for
   where the cycle Identifier is retrieved from and how it is mapped, it
   would also be a very useeful consideration to consider both
   approaches options of a single target standard.  It seems unlikely
   though, that an implementation that can support TCQF could not
   support CSQF - or vice versa.

Appendix B.  TCQF with multiple priorities

   TSN CQF [IEEE802.1Qch] does permit to establish multiple independent
   cyclic queuing instances and therefore create more flexbility.








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   Consider likewise, that in DetNet, there are separate packet headers
   for a packet priority and a cycle identifier.  For each priority, a
   separate instance of TCQF is established, and the priority decides
   which instance of CQF the packet gets processed by, whereas the cycle
   identifier determines the cycle within the TCQF instance.

   Consider for example a setup with 4 priorities 1..4.  The cycle time
   for the highest priority 1 is C.  The cycle time for priority 2 is 2
   * C, for priority 3 3 * C and for priority 4 4 * C.  In queuing,
   strict priority queuing is used, packets from a priority 1 cycle
   queue will always be sent over those from priorities 2...4, and so
   on.  In result, a flow can now be given one out of 4 priorities, each
   with an increasing per-hop latency: C (prio 1), 2C (prio 2), 3C (prio
   3), 4C (prio 4).  This does of course also require for admission
   control to not allow full utilization of the capacity of cycles in
   each class.  In a simple static splitting of capacity across classes,
   each cycle of of each priority could for example be allowed to be
   utilized up to 25%.

   This multi-priority "extension" to TCQF is in this version of the
   document only mentioned as an appendix, because it is not clear if
   this degree of flexibility is desired in a first-generation target
   standard for TCQF.  Given how both priority and cycle identifiers are
   needed, this mechanism would certainly require for both MPLS and IP/
   IPv6 a new extension header, such as the one proposed in this
   document to carry the Cycle IDentifierm and then the priority could
   be indicated by the IP header DSCP.

Appendix C.  TSN Multiple Buffer CQF

   CQF with multiple buffers but without tagging has been proposed to
   IEEE TSN in [multipleCQF], but has not been adopted.  Instead of
   relying on a cycle tag in a packet header as proposed in this memo,
   it still relies solely on the arrival time of packet, and can hence
   not equally resolve arrival time ambiguities as TCQF can, because it
   does not know the cycle from which the packet was sent, or the cycle
   for which it is intended.

   Consider that multiple buffer CQF is like TCQF, except the cycle id
   is missing from the packet that is sent.  Upon arrival at the
   receiving router, the sending cycle ID has to be determined solely by
   the time the packet is received (reception timestamp) because this
   time is an indicator of the sending timestamp and hence the sending
   cycle.  The sum of MTIE, processing variation link propagation
   latency and other variations from layer 1 and layer 2 processing
   (forward error correction, retransmissions) is the erorr of the
   sending time that the receiving router can determine.  As soon as
   this error is so large, that the receiving router can not



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   unambiguously determine a sending cycle, the mechanism does not work
   anymore.  The receiving router can also not simply assume for a
   packet to be sent by one of the possible cycles, because when this is
   not the actual sending cycle, then such an assumption will cause
   possible overruns of cycle buffers and hence failure of admission
   control and pckets drop or congestion.  In result, multiple buffer
   CQF without carrying a target cycle in a packet header seems not
   feasible to actually solve the issue or real propagation latency
   variation in transmission, or the perceived variation in propagation
   due to jitter in clocks between adjacend nodes.

   https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-parameters/
   ipv6-parameters.xhtml

Authors' Addresses

   Toerless Eckert (editor)
   Futurewei Technologies USA
   2220 Central Expressway
   Santa Clara,  CA 95050
   United States of America
   Email: tte@cs.fau.de


   Yizhou Li (editor)
   Huawei Technologies
   Nanjing
   China
   Email: liyizhou@huawei.com


   Stewart Bryant
   University of Surrey ICS
   United Kingdom
   Email: s.bryant@surrey.ac.uk


   Andrew G. Malis
   Malis Consulting
   United States of America
   Email: agmalis@gmail.com


   Jeong-dong Ryoo
   ETRI
   South Korea
   Email: ryoo@etri.re.kr




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   Peng Liu
   China Mobile
   China
   Email: liupengyjy@chinamobile.com


   Guangpeng Li
   Huawei Technologies
   Beijing
   China
   Email: liguangpeng@huawei.com


   Shoushou Ren
   Huawei Technologies
   Beijing
   China
   Email: renshoushou@huawei.com

































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