RFC7805
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Zimmermann Request for Comments: 7805 Obsoletes: 675 721 761 813 816 879 896 W. Eddy
1078 6013 MTI Systems
Updates: 7414 L. Eggert Category: Informational NetApp ISSN: 2070-1721 April 2016
Moving Outdated TCP Extensions and TCP-Related Documents
to Historic or Informational Status
Abstract
This document reclassifies several TCP extensions and TCP-related documents that either have been superseded, have never seen widespread use, or are no longer recommended for use to "Historic" status. The affected documents are RFCs 675, 721, 761, 813, 816, 879, 896, 1078, and 6013. Additionally, this document reclassifies RFCs 700, 794, 814, 817, 872, 889, 964, and 1071 to "Informational" status.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7805.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Contents
Introduction
TCP has a long history. Over time, many RFCs have accumulated that describe aspects of the TCP protocol, implementation, and extensions. Some of these have been superseded, are no longer recommended for use, or have simply never seen widespread use.
Sections 6 and 7.1 of the TCP roadmap document RFC7414 already reclassified a number of TCP extensions as "Historic" and describes the reasons for doing so, but it did not instruct the RFC Editor to change the status of these RFCs in the RFC database. The purpose of this document is to do just that.
In addition, this document reclassifies all other documents mentioned in the TCP roadmap that currently have an "Unknown" status to either "Historic" or "Informational".
Status Changes
The following two sections give a short justification why a specific TCP extension or a TCP-related document is being reclassified as "Historic" or "Informational". In addition, the letter code after an RFC number indicates from which original status a particular RFC is changed to "Historic" or "Informational" (see BCP 9 RFC2026 for an explanation of these categories):
S - Standards Track (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, or Internet Standard)
E - Experimental
I - Informational
H - Historic
B - Best Current Practice
U - Unknown (not formally defined)
For the content of the documents itself, the reader is referred either to the corresponding RFC or, for a brief description, to the TCP roadmap document RFC7414.
Moving to "Historic" Status
This document changes the status of the following RFCs to "Historic" RFC2026:
o RFC675 U, "Specification of Internet Transmission Control
Program" was replaced by the final TCP specification RFC793
o RFC721 U, "Out-of-Band Control Signals in a Host-to-Host
Protocol" was a proposal that was not incorporated into the final TCP specification RFC793
o RFC761 U, "DoD Standard Transmission Control Protocol" was
replaced by the final TCP specification RFC793
o RFC813 U, "Window and Acknowledgement Strategy in TCP" was
incorporated into RFC1122
o RFC816 U, "Fault Isolation and Recovery" was incorporated into
RFC1122 and RFC5461
o RFC879 U, "The TCP Maximum Segment Size and Related Topics" was
incorporated into RFC1122 and RFC6691
o RFC896 U, "Congestion Control in IP/TCP Internetworks" was
incorporated into RFC1122 and RFC6633
o RFC1078 U, "TCP Port Service Multiplexer (TCPMUX)" should be
deprecated, because:
* It modifies the TCP connection establishment semantics by also
completing the three-way handshake when a service is not
available.
* It requires all new connections to be received on a single
port, which limits the number of connections between two
machines.
* It complicates firewall implementation and management because
all services share the same port number.
* There are very limited deployments, and these are not used in
an Internet context. (The only reported use is for SGI's Data
Migration Facility in private networks.)
o RFC6013 E, "TCP Cookie Transactions (TCPCT)" should be
deprecated (although only published in 2011) because:
* It uses the experimental TCP option codepoints, which prohibit
a large-scale deployment.
* RFC7413 and [TCP-EDO] are alternatives that have more "rough
consensus and running code" behind them.
* There are no known wide-scale deployments.
Moving to "Informational" Status
This document changes the status of the following RFCs to "Informational" RFC2026:
o RFC700 U, "A Protocol Experiment", which presents a field report
about the deployment of a very early version of TCP
o RFC794 U, "Pre-emption", which recommends that operating
systems need to manage their limited resources, which may include TCP connection state
o RFC814 U, "Name, Addresses, Ports, and Routes", which gives
guidance on designing tables and algorithms to keep track of various identifiers within a TCP/IP implementation
o RFC817 U, "Modularity and Efficiency in Protocol
Implementation", which contains general implementation suggestions
o RFC872 U, "TCP-on-a-LAN", which concludes that the fear of
using TCP on a local network is unfounded
o RFC889 U, "Internet Delay Experiments", which describes
experiments with the TCP retransmission timeout calculation
o RFC964 U, "Some Problems with the Specification of the Military
Standard Transmission Control Protocol", which points out several specification bugs in the US Military's MIL-STD-1778 document, which was intended as a successor to RFC793
o RFC1071 U, "Computing the Internet Checksum", which lists a
number of implementation techniques for efficiently computing the Internet checksum
Security Considerations
This document introduces no new security considerations. Each RFC listed in this document attempts to address the security considerations of the specification it contains.
References
Normative References
RFC675 Cerf, V., Dalal, Y., and C. Sunshine, "Specification of
Internet Transmission Control Program", RFC 675, DOI 10.17487/RFC0675, December 1974, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc675>.
RFC700 Mader, E., Plummer, W., and R. Tomlinson, "Protocol
experiment", RFC 700, DOI 10.17487/RFC0700, August 1974, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc700>.
RFC721 Garlick, L., "Out-of-Band Control Signals in a Host-to-
Host Protocol", RFC 721, DOI 10.17487/RFC0721, September 1976, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc721>.
RFC761 Postel, J., "DoD standard Transmission Control Protocol",
RFC 761, DOI 10.17487/RFC0761, January 1980, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc761>.
RFC794 Cerf, V., "Pre-emption", RFC 794, DOI 10.17487/RFC0794,
September 1981, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc794>.
RFC813 Clark, D., "Window and Acknowledgement Strategy in TCP",
RFC 813, DOI 10.17487/RFC0813, July 1982, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc813>.
RFC814 Clark, D., "Name, addresses, ports, and routes", RFC 814,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0814, July 1982,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc814>.
RFC816 Clark, D., "Fault isolation and recovery", RFC 816,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0816, July 1982,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc816>.
RFC817 Clark, D., "Modularity and efficiency in protocol
implementation", RFC 817, DOI 10.17487/RFC0817, July 1982, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc817>.
RFC872 Padlipsky, M., "TCP-on-a-LAN", RFC 872,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0872, September 1982,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc872>.
RFC879 Postel, J., "The TCP Maximum Segment Size and Related
Topics", RFC 879, DOI 10.17487/RFC0879, November 1983, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc879>.
RFC889 Mills, D., "Internet Delay Experiments", RFC 889,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0889, December 1983,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc889>.
RFC896 Nagle, J., "Congestion Control in IP/TCP Internetworks",
RFC 896, DOI 10.17487/RFC0896, January 1984, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc896>.
RFC964 Sidhu, D. and T. Blumer, "Some problems with the
specification of the Military Standard Transmission
Control Protocol", RFC 964, DOI 10.17487/RFC0964, November
1985, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc964>.
RFC1071 Braden, R., Borman, D., and C. Partridge, "Computing the
Internet checksum", RFC 1071, DOI 10.17487/RFC1071, September 1988, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1071>.
RFC1078 Lottor, M., "TCP port service Multiplexer (TCPMUX)",
RFC 1078, DOI 10.17487/RFC1078, November 1988, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1078>.
RFC6013 Simpson, W., "TCP Cookie Transactions (TCPCT)", RFC 6013,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6013, January 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6013>.
Informative References
RFC793 Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc793>.
RFC1122 Braden, R., Ed., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122, DOI 10.17487/RFC1122, October 1989, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1122>.
RFC2026 Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2026>.
RFC5461 Gont, F., "TCP's Reaction to Soft Errors", RFC 5461,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5461, February 2009,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5461>.
RFC6633 Gont, F., "Deprecation of ICMP Source Quench Messages",
RFC 6633, DOI 10.17487/RFC6633, May 2012, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6633>.
RFC6691 Borman, D., "TCP Options and Maximum Segment Size (MSS)",
RFC 6691, DOI 10.17487/RFC6691, July 2012, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6691>.
RFC7413 Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Radhakrishnan, S., and A. Jain, "TCP
Fast Open", RFC 7413, DOI 10.17487/RFC7413, December 2014, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7413>.
RFC7414 Duke, M., Braden, R., Eddy, W., Blanton, E., and A.
Zimmermann, "A Roadmap for Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) Specification Documents", RFC 7414,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7414, February 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7414>.
[TCP-EDO] Touch, J. and W. Eddy, "TCP Extended Data Offset Option",
Work in Progress, draft-ietf-tcpm-tcp-edo-04, November
2015.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank John Leslie, Pasi Sarolahti, Richard Scheffenegger, Martin Stiemerling, Joe Touch, Valdis Kletnieks, and Greg Skinner for their contributions.
Lars Eggert has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program 2014-2018 under grant agreement No. 644866 (SSICLOPS). This document reflects only the authors' views, and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
Authors' Addresses
Alexander Zimmermann
Email: [email protected]
Wesley M. Eddy MTI Systems Suite 170, 18013 Cleveland Parkway Cleveland, OH 44135 United States
Phone: +1-216-433-6682 Email: [email protected]
Lars Eggert NetApp Sonnenallee 1 Kirchheim 85551 Germany
Phone: +49 151 12055791 Email: [email protected]
