TCPM Working Group J. Touch
Internet Draft USC/ISI
Intended status: Proposed Standard June 4, 2013
Expires: December 2013
Shared Use of Experimental TCP Options
draft-ietf-tcpm-experimental-options-06.txt
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Internet-Draft Shared Use of Experimental TCP Options June 2013
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Abstract
This document describes how the experimental TCP option codepoints
can concurrently support multiple TCP extensions, even within the
same connection. It uses a new IANA TCP experiment identifier, and
is also robust to experiments that are not registered and those that
do not use this sharing mechanism. It is recommended for all new TCP
options that use these codepoints.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction...................................................2
2. Conventions used in this document..............................4
3. TCP Experimental Option Structure..............................4
3.1. Selecting an ExID.........................................6
3.2. Impact on TCP Option Processing...........................7
4. Reducing the Impact of False Positives.........................7
5. Migration to Assigned Options..................................8
6. Rationale......................................................8
7. Security Considerations........................................9
8. IANA Considerations............................................9
9. References....................................................10
9.1. Normative References.....................................10
9.2. Informative References...................................10
10. Acknowledgments..............................................12
1. Introduction
TCP includes options to enable new protocol capabilities that can be
activated only where needed and supported [RFC793]. The space for
identifying such options is small - 256 values, of which 30 are
assigned at the time this document was published [IANA]. Two of
these codepoints are allocated to support experiments (253, 254)
[RFC4727]. These values are intended for testing purposes or anytime
an assigned codepoint is either not warranted or available, e.g.,
based on the maturity status of the defined capability (i.e.,
Experimental or Informational, rather than Standards Track).
The term "experimental TCP options" refers here to options that use
the TCP experimental option codepoints [RFC4727]. Such experiments
can be described in any type of RFC - Experimental, Informational,
etc., and are intended to be used both in controlled environments
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and in are allowed in public deployments (when not enabled as
default) [RFC3692]. Nothing prohibits deploying multiple experiments
in the same environment - controlled or public. Further, some
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