BCP 89

This document provides advice to the designers of digital communication equipment, link-layer protocols, and packet-switched local networks (collectively referred to as subnetworks), who wish to support the Internet protocols but may be unfamiliar with the Internet architecture and the implications of their design choices on the performance and efficiency of the Internet. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.

The purpose of this document is to guide the design of congestion notification in any lower-layer or tunnelling protocol that encapsulates IP. The aim is for explicit congestion signals to propagate consistently from lower-layer protocols into IP. Then, the IP internetwork layer can act as a portability layer to carry congestion notification from non-IP-aware congested nodes up to the transport layer (L4). Specifications that follow these guidelines, whether produced by the IETF or other standards bodies, should assure interworking among IP-layer and lower-layer congestion notification mechanisms. This document is included in BCP 89 and updates the single paragraph of advice to subnetwork designers about Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) in Section 13 of RFC 3819 by replacing it with a reference to this document.