Code change:
certainly as examining decrypted traffic. Because HTTPS has historically layered HTTP on top of TLS, which is <del> in turn layered on top of TCP, intermediaries do have access to unencrypted TCP-level transport information, such as retransmissions, and some carriers exploited this information in attempts to improve transport-layer performance RFC3135.  The most recent standardized version of HTTPS, HTTP/3 I-D.ietf-quic-http, uses the QUIC protocol RFC9000 as its transport layer.  QUIC relies on the TLS 1.3 initial handshake RFC8446 only for key exchange RFC9001, and encrypts almost all transport parameters itself except for a few invariant header fields.  In the QUIC short header, the only transport-level parameter which is sent "in the clear" is the Destination Connection ID RFC8999, and even in the QUIC long header, the only transport-level parameters sent "in the clear" are the Version, Destination </del> <ins> in turn layered on top of TCP, intermediaries have historically had access to unencrypted TCP-level transport information, such as retransmissions, and some carriers exploited this information in attempts to improve transport-layer performance RFC3135.  The most recent standardized version of HTTPS, HTTP/3 RFC9114, uses the QUIC protocol RFC9000 as its transport layer.  QUIC relies on the TLS 1.3 initial handshake RFC8446 only for key exchange RFC9001, and encrypts almost all transport parameters itself except for a few invariant header fields.  In the QUIC short header, the only transport-level parameter which is sent "in the clear" is the Destination Connection ID RFC8999, and even in the QUIC long header, the only transport- level parameters sent "in the clear" are the Version, Destination </ins> Connection ID, and Source Connection ID.  For these reasons, HTTP/3 is significantly more "opaque" than HTTPS with HTTP/1 or HTTP/2.

Related discussion:
text: Some of this follows later in sections 3.2.1 and Yet, the split between these three sections is unclear. Having a discussion about today's Internet path characteristics and the dynamics at one place could be more useful. The text could also better distinguish between what matters to endpoints and considerations relevant only for middleboxes (such as passive monitors). Section 3.3 Path Requirements The statement "to find the bandwidth requirements for a router on the delivery path" may assume that the bottleneck on the path will be routers. Yet, on a path the bottlenecks could also be a link layer device (e.g., an Ethernet Switch, a Wifi access point, etc.). RFC 6077 (specifically Section 3.1.3) also explains that issue. A better wording may be "to find the bandwidth requirements for a delivery path". Section 3.6. Unpredictable Usage Profiles / Section 3.7. Extremely Unpredictable Usage Profiles I am not fully convinced by the distinction between "unpredictable" and "extremely unpredictable". To me, these two sections could be merged and maybe also be shortened. More specifically, Section 3.7 lists a lot of statistics from the past. What is IMHO a bit missing in Section 3.7 are actual operational considerations. For instance, are there any lessons learnt for the future? Note that Section 3.6 has a reasonable conclusion at the end. Section 4. Latency Considerations and Section 4.1. Ultra Low-Latency I am surprised by the definition "ultra low-latency (less than 1 second)", as well as some of the other numbers. For other real-time communication use cases, "ultra low-latency" would probably imply a latency requirement of the order of one millisecond. For instance, isochronous traffic for motion control in industrial networks may require a latency of 1 ms, and such "ultra-low latency" requirements are discussed elsewhere, e.g., in the DetNet WG. The terminology in this section should be better explained to readers dealing with networked systems with much harder latency requirements. And a reference should be added for these definitions in the context of video streaming.