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Partial MLS
draft-kiefer-mls-partial-00

Document Type Replaced Internet-Draft (mls WG)
Expired & archived
Authors Franziskus Kiefer , Karthikeyan Bhargavan , Richard Barnes , Joël , Marta Mularczyk
Last updated 2025-08-11 (Latest revision 2025-06-28)
Replaced by draft-ietf-mls-partial
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Intended RFC status (None)
Formats
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state Adopted by a WG
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state Replaced by draft-ietf-mls-partial
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to (None)

This Internet-Draft is no longer active. A copy of the expired Internet-Draft is available in these formats:

Abstract

The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol provides efficient asynchronous group key establishment for large groups with up to thousands of clients. In MLS, any member can commit a change to the group, and consequently, all members must download, validate, and maintain the full group state, which can incur a significant communication and computational costs, especially when joining a group. This document defines an MLS extension to support "partial MLS clients" that don't undertake these costs. A partial client cannot commit changes to the group, and only has partial authentication information for the other members of the group, but is otherwise able to participate in the group. In exchange for these limitations, a partial MLS client can participate in an MLS group with significantly lower requirements in terms of download, memory, and processing.

Authors

Franziskus Kiefer
Karthikeyan Bhargavan
Richard Barnes
Joël
Marta Mularczyk

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)