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5. Protocol Integration of the Compact Time Representation

5. Protocol Integration of the Compact Time Representation​

A straightforward way to accommodate the compact time approach is to use a 1-byte length field to indicate this alternative encoding while retaining the existing TLV registry entries. This approach has backward compatibility problems, but it is still considered for the following reasons:

  • Both CCNx RFCs ([RFC8569] and [RFC8609]) are Experimental and not Standards Track; hence, expectations for forward and backward compatibility are not as stringent. "Flag day" upgrades of deployed CCNx networks, while inconvenient, are still feasible.

  • The major use case for these compressed encodings are smaller-scale IoT and/or sensor networks where the population of consumers, producers, and forwarders is reasonably small.

  • Since the current TLVs have hop-by-hop semantics, they are not covered by any signed hash and hence may be freely re-encoded by any forwarder. That means a forwarder supporting the new encoding can translate freely between the two encodings.

  • The alternative of assigning new TLV registry values does not substantially mitigate the interoperability problems anyway.

5.1. Interest Lifetime​

The Interest Lifetime definition in [RFC8609] allows for a variable-length lifetime representation, where a length of 1 encodes the linear range [0,255] in milliseconds. This document changes the definition to always encode 1-byte Interest Lifetime values in the compact time value representation (see Figure 4). For any other length, Interest Lifetimes are encoded as described in Section 3.4.1 of [RFC8609].

                     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
+---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
|           T_INTLIFE           |           Length = 1          |
+---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
| COMPACT_TIME  |
+---------------+

Figure 4: Changes to the definition of the Interest Lifetime TLV.

The Recommended Cache Time definition in [RFC8609] specifies an absolute time representation that is of a length fixed to 8 bytes. This document changes the definition to always encode 1-byte Recommended Cache Time values in the compact relative time value representation (see Figure 5). For any other length, Recommended Cache Times are encoded as described in Section 3.4.2 of [RFC8609].

                     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
+---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
|          T_CACHETIME          |           Length = 1          |
+---------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+
| COMPACT_TIME  |
+---------------+

Figure 5: Changes to the definition of the Recommended Cache Time TLV.

The packet processing is adapted to calculate an absolute time from the relative time code based on the absolute reception time. On transmission, a new relative time code is calculated based on the current system time.

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