[e2e] Transport Protocol Road Map(s)

[Arnaud Legout]

Hi,
I believe it is important to stress the distinction between RFC 793 and 
2581.

I often see RFC 2581 presented as the RFC for TCP. However, this RFC 
"only" specifies the
congestion control protocol that should be implemented in TCP.
Congestion control is an important part of TCP, which raised a lot of 
interest, but there are
many more.

In particular, it is important to say that RFC 793 defines TCP as a 
transport protocol with the following
characteristics (extracted from section 1.5 of RFC 793):

   Basic Data Transfer
    Reliability
    Flow Control
    Multiplexing
    Connections
    Precedence and Security


In particular, RFC 793 defines the flow control or reliability 
mechanisms of TCP.

I would like to note that we have the chance that historical 
contributors to TCP are in this mailing list.
I always read with high interest historical anecdotes, as they often 
allow a better understanding of the
context and of the architectural choices. That would be a great idea to 
also include selected mails from
the contributors of TCP, in order to shed light on architectural 
choices. Often implementations are wrong
because developers do not understand the reason of the architecture, and 
believe they could adapt it without
any consequence.

Regards,
Arnaud.




-- 
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Arnaud Legout, Ph.D.

Castify Networks                Phone : 00.33.4.93.00.27.07
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