docs(server): qualify interop validation claims
Two claims in the validation record were stronger than the evidence behind them. The maximum-duration Close conclusion was stated for every conforming client. That does not follow: the deadline is evaluated on arrival, not on transmission, so an echo sent legitimately before the negotiated Duration elapsed can still be queued long enough to arrive after the server's two-second grace and carry Close. Scope the result to the loopback run that was actually performed, and describe the Close as a termination path for traffic continuing or arriving beyond the grace, including delayed in-flight traffic. The document also claimed the validation was reproducible from the commands above, while carrying only summarized client arguments and no harness — the harness was disposable on purpose and is not being promoted into repository infrastructure. Say plainly that this is a record of the validation performed rather than a reproduction harness. No implementation, test or protocol evidence changes.
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@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ loopback addresses and no DNS.
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| Packet-length restriction | `with_max_packet_length(96)` | `-l 128` (strict) | **PASS** | `[ServerRestriction] server reduced length from 128 to 96`, exit 1 — upstream's documented strict-mode policy |
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| Packet-length restriction | `with_max_packet_length(96)` | `-l 128 --loose` | **PASS** | Runs at 96 bytes, 10/10 packets, 0.00% loss, exit 0 |
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| Interval restriction | default (10 ms floor) | `-i 1ms -d 500ms --loose` | **PASS** | `server increased interval from 1ms to 10ms`; 50/50 packets, 0.00% loss — the rate limiter never penalised a client sending at the interval it was given |
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| Maximum-duration Close | `with_max_test_duration(500ms)` | `-d 5s -i 100ms --loose` | **PASS** (restriction) | `server reduced duration from 5s to 500ms`; 5/5 packets, exit 0. The Close-flagged reply itself is **not reachable** by a conforming client — see Findings. |
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| Maximum-duration Close | `with_max_test_duration(500ms)` | `-d 5s -i 100ms --loose` | **PASS** (restriction) | `server reduced duration from 5s to 500ms`; 5/5 packets, exit 0. Close reply not reached on loopback; see Findings. |
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| Continuous request | `with_max_test_duration(500ms)` | `-d 0` | **SKIPPED** | Upstream rejects it client-side (`[DurationNonPositive] duration (0s) must be > 0`); a continuous request never reaches the wire from this CLI |
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| No-test (optional) | default | `-n -l 128` | **PASS** | `[NoTest] skipping test at user request`, exit 0, no measurement session |
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| Midpoint, single clock (optional) | default | `--tstamp=midpoint --clock=monotonic` | **PASS** | 5/5 packets, exit 0; RTT and IPDV computed from the single midpoint field |
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@@ -86,23 +86,31 @@ and send/receive IPDV from it, in the monotonic-only, wall-only and both-clocks
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cases. This was the tested path most likely to expose a reply-shape
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incompatibility, and it did not.
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**The server-initiated maximum-duration Close is not reachable by a conforming
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client.** The deadline is `first served echo + configured maximum + 2 s`, while
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negotiation reduces a session's Duration to at most that same configured maximum.
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A client that honours the Duration it was given therefore always stops sending at
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least two seconds before the deadline, so no echo ever arrives to carry the
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Close flag. That was confirmed empirically: with a 500 ms maximum against a
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requested 5 s test, the upstream client accepted the restriction, sent for
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~400 ms and exited 0 without a Close ever being due.
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**The maximum-duration Close was not reached in the tested loopback run.** The
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deadline is `first served echo + configured maximum + 2 s`, and negotiation
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reduced this session's Duration to the configured 500 ms maximum. On loopback the
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upstream client honoured that restriction, stopped transmitting after ~400 ms and
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exited 0; no echo arrived anywhere near the server's +2 s deadline, so the
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Close-flagged reply was never due and this black-box scenario did not exercise
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it.
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That result is scoped to the tested path. Under ordinary low-delay conditions a
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client honouring its negotiated Duration will normally finish sending well before
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the +2 s boundary. It does not follow that the Close is unreachable in general:
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the deadline is evaluated on *arrival*, not on transmission, so an echo sent
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legitimately before the negotiated Duration elapsed could still be queued or
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delayed for more than two seconds on a real network path and arrive after
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`first served echo + configured maximum + 2 s`, carrying Close while the client
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is still draining replies. The loopback run establishes only that this did not
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occur under negligible delay. The Close therefore primarily provides a
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termination path for traffic continuing or arriving beyond the server's
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maximum-duration grace — an overrunning client, or sufficiently delayed in-flight
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echo traffic.
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This is not a defect and no fix is authorised for it. The two-second grace is
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recorded in the airlocked evidence as the measured upstream margin and is a fixed
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internal constant; the implementation matches that evidence rather than violating
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it. The consequence is simply that the Close is a defence against a client that
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overruns its negotiated Duration, not part of an ordinary session. Upstream's
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CLI offers no way to build such a client — `--loose` accepts and uses the
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restricted parameters, and a continuous request is rejected before it reaches the
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wire. The Close path itself remains covered deterministically in-repo by
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it. The Close path itself remains covered deterministically in-repo by
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`crates/irtt-server/src/tests/lifecycle.rs`, notably
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`the_first_echo_past_the_maximum_duration_carries_close_and_ends_the_session`.
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@@ -117,6 +125,11 @@ This validation does **not** establish:
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- behavior on operating systems other than the macOS/arm64 host recorded above;
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- behavior across a real network path, MTU limits or fragmentation.
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No claim of universal compatibility is made. No permanent test in this repository
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depends on the upstream executable, the Go toolchain or network access; this
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validation is intentionally manual and reproducible from the commands above.
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No claim of universal compatibility is made.
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This document is a record of the manual validation that was performed, not a
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reproduction harness. The server policy and client arguments used in each
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scenario are summarized in the matrix above, but the throwaway harness was
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deliberately discarded afterwards and is not committed, so the run is not
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reproducible from this artifact alone. No permanent test in this repository
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depends on the upstream executable, the Go toolchain or network access.
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