Document shepherd write-up:
UDP Usage Guidelines
draft-ietf-tsvwg-rfc5405bis-10
1. Summary
Document Shepherd: David Black
Responsible AD: Spencer Dawkins
The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) provides a minimal message-passing
transport that has no inherent congestion control mechanisms. This
document provides guidelines on the use of UDP for the designers of
applications, tunnels and other protocols that use UDP. Congestion
control guidelines are a primary focus, but the document also
provides guidance on other topics, including message sizes,
reliability, checksums, middlebox traversal, the use of ECN, DSCPs,
and ports.
The WG has requested Best Current Practice status because this draft
specifies general guidelines for use of UDP in any protocol (in many
cases, these guidelines are based on experience with UDP usage), and
because it is a replacement for (both obsoleting and expanding)
RFC 5405, which is a BCP (BCP 145).
2. Review and Consensus
The Transport Area WG (TSVWG) is a collection of people with varied
interests that don't individually justify their own working groups.
This draft is supported by the portion of the tsvwg working group that
is familiar with and interested in UDP and congestion control. The
draft has received significant review and critique from a number of
WG members and has undergone significant modification as a result. A
significant area of expansion over RFC 5405 is the addition of multicast
guidelines; this UDP multicast guideline work began in a separate draft
that was merged into this draft by the WG so that protocol designers
would have one place to look for UDP guidelines.
Recent discussion in the WG has focused on issues related to the
increasing use of UDP to encapsulate other protocols; an important
outcome is the addition of Section 3.6 on Limited Applicability
and Controlled Environments where aspects such as equipment robustness
and operator traffic management may substitute for protocol features
(e.g., checksums, congestion management) that are necessary in
unrestricted environments such as the Internet in general. This
draft incorporates guidelines based on lessons learned from
MPLS/UDP (RFC 7510), GRE/UDP (recent TSVWG WG Last Call) and the
routing area encapsulation design team's work (much broader draft
in the RTGWG WG).
3. Intellectual Property
Each draft author has stated his/her direct, personal knowledge that any
IPR related to this document has already been disclosed, in conformance
with BCPs 78 and 79.
4. Other Points
idnits 2.13.02 found an Internet-Draft that has been updated and a
reference to an obsolete RFC:
-- Obsolete informational reference (is this intentional?): RFC 2309
(Obsoleted by RFC 7567)
This reference is intentional, in part to indicate that congestion-
related concerns about UDP traffic have a long history.
There are no IANA Considerations.