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rfc:rfc8923



Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Welzl Request for Comments: 8923 S. Gjessing Category: Informational University of Oslo ISSN: 2070-1721 October 2020

        A Minimal Set of Transport Services for End Systems

Abstract

 This document recommends a minimal set of Transport Services offered
 by end systems and gives guidance on choosing among the available
 mechanisms and protocols.  It is based on the set of transport
 features in RFC 8303.

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 candidates for any level of Internet
 Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
 Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
 https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8923.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2020 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
 (https://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.

Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction
 2.  Terminology
 3.  Deriving the Minimal Set
 4.  The Reduced Set of Transport Features
   4.1.  CONNECTION-Related Transport Features
   4.2.  DATA-Transfer-Related Transport Features
     4.2.1.  Sending Data
     4.2.2.  Receiving Data
     4.2.3.  Errors
 5.  Discussion
   5.1.  Sending Messages, Receiving Bytes
   5.2.  Stream Schedulers without Streams
   5.3.  Early Data Transmission
   5.4.  Sender Running Dry
   5.5.  Capacity Profile
   5.6.  Security
   5.7.  Packet Size
 6.  The Minimal Set of Transport Features
   6.1.  ESTABLISHMENT, AVAILABILITY, and TERMINATION
   6.2.  MAINTENANCE
     6.2.1.  Connection Groups
     6.2.2.  Individual Connections
   6.3.  DATA Transfer
     6.3.1.  Sending Data
     6.3.2.  Receiving Data
 7.  IANA Considerations
 8.  Security Considerations
 9.  References
   9.1.  Normative References
   9.2.  Informative References
 Appendix A.  The Superset of Transport Features
   A.1.  CONNECTION-Related Transport Features
   A.2.  DATA-Transfer-Related Transport Features
     A.2.1.  Sending Data
     A.2.2.  Receiving Data
     A.2.3.  Errors
 Acknowledgements
 Authors' Addresses

1. Introduction

 Currently, the set of Transport Services that most applications use
 is based on TCP and UDP (and protocols that are layered on top of
 them); this limits the ability for the network stack to make use of
 features of other transport protocols.  For example, if a protocol
 supports out-of-order message delivery but applications always assume
 that the network provides an ordered byte stream, then the network
 stack can not immediately deliver a message that arrives out of
 order; doing so would break a fundamental assumption of the
 application.  The net result is unnecessary head-of-line blocking
 delay.
 By exposing the Transport Services of multiple transport protocols, a
 transport system can make it possible for applications to use these
 services without being statically bound to a specific transport
 protocol.  The first step towards the design of such a system was
 taken by [RFC8095], which surveys a large number of transports, and
 [RFC8303] as well as [RFC8304], which identify the specific transport
 features that are exposed to applications by the protocols TCP,
 Multipath TCP (MPTCP), UDP(-Lite), and Stream Control Transmission
 Protocol (SCTP), as well as the Low Extra Delay Background Transport
 (LEDBAT) congestion control mechanism.  LEDBAT was included as the
 only congestion control mechanism in this list because the "low extra
 delay background transport" service that it offers is significantly
 different from the typical service provided by other congestion
 control mechanisms.  This memo is based on these documents and
 follows the same terminology (also listed below).  Because the
 considered transport protocols conjointly cover a wide range of
 transport features, there is reason to hope that the resulting set
 (and the reasoning that led to it) will also apply to many aspects of
 other transport protocols that may be in use today or may be designed
 in the future.
 By decoupling applications from transport protocols, a transport
 system provides a different abstraction level than the Berkeley
 sockets interface [POSIX].  As with high- vs. low-level programming
 languages, a higher abstraction level allows more freedom for
 automation below the interface, yet it takes some control away from
 the application programmer.  This is the design trade-off that a
 transport system developer is facing, and this document provides
 guidance on the design of this abstraction level.  Some transport
 features are currently rarely offered by APIs, yet they must be
 offered or they can never be used.  Other transport features are
 offered by the APIs of the protocols covered here, but not exposing
 them in an API would allow for more freedom to automate protocol
 usage in a transport system.  The minimal set presented here is an
 effort to find a middle ground that can be recommended for transport
 systems to implement, on the basis of the transport features
 discussed in [RFC8303].
 Applications use a wide variety of APIs today.  While this document
 was created to ensure the API developed in the Transport Services
 (TAPS) Working Group [TAPS-INTERFACE] includes the most important
 transport features, the minimal set presented here must be reflected
 in *all* network APIs in order for the underlying functionality to
 become usable everywhere.  For example, it does not help an
 application that talks to a library that offers its own communication
 interface if the underlying Berkeley Sockets API is extended to offer
 "unordered message delivery", but the library only exposes an ordered
 byte stream.  Both the Berkeley Sockets API and the library would
 have to expose the "unordered message delivery" transport feature
 (alternatively, there may be ways for certain types of libraries to
 use this transport feature without exposing it, based on knowledge
 about the applications, but this is not the general case).
 Similarly, transport protocols such as the Stream Control
 Transmission Protocol (SCTP) offer multi-streaming, which cannot be
 utilized, e.g., to prioritize messages between streams, unless
 applications communicate the priorities and the group of connections
 upon which these priorities should be applied.  In most situations,
 in the interest of being as flexible and efficient as possible, the
 best choice will be for a library to expose at least all of the
 transport features that are recommended as a "minimal set" here.
 This "minimal set" can be implemented "one-sided" over TCP.  This
 means that a sender-side transport system can talk to a standard TCP
 receiver, and a receiver-side transport system can talk to a standard
 TCP sender.  If certain limitations are put in place, the "minimal
 set" can also be implemented "one-sided" over UDP.  While the
 possibility of such "one-sided" implementation may help deployment,
 it comes at the cost of limiting the set to services that can also be
 provided by TCP (or, with further limitations, UDP).  Thus, the
 minimal set of transport features here is applicable for many, but
 not all, applications; some application protocols have requirements
 that are not met by this "minimal set".
 Note that, throughout this document, protocols are meant to be used
 natively.  For example, when transport features of TCP, or
 "implementation over" TCP is discussed, this refers to native usage
 of TCP rather than TCP being encapsulated in some other transport
 protocol such as UDP.

2. Terminology

 Transport Feature:  A specific end-to-end feature that the transport
    layer provides to an application.  Examples include
    confidentiality, reliable delivery, ordered delivery, message-
    versus-stream orientation, etc.
 Transport Service:  A set of Transport Features, without an
    association to any given framing protocol, that provides a
    complete service to an application.
 Transport Protocol:  An implementation that provides one or more
    different Transport Services using a specific framing and header
    format on the wire.
 Application:  An entity that uses a transport-layer interface for
    end-to-end delivery of data across the network (this may also be
    an upper-layer protocol or tunnel encapsulation).
 Application-specific knowledge:  Knowledge that only applications
    have.
 End system:  An entity that communicates with one or more other end
    systems using a transport protocol.  An end system provides a
    transport-layer interface to applications.
 Connection:  Shared state of two or more end systems that persists
    across messages that are transmitted between these end systems.
 Connection Group:  A set of connections that share the same
    configuration (configuring one of them causes all other
    connections in the same group to be configured in the same way).
    We call connections that belong to a connection group "grouped",
    while "ungrouped" connections are not a part of a connection
    group.
 Socket:  The combination of a destination IP address and a
    destination port number.
 Moreover, throughout the document, the protocol name "UDP(-Lite)" is
 used when discussing transport features that are equivalent for UDP
 and UDP-Lite; similarly, the protocol name "TCP" refers to both TCP
 and MPTCP.

3. Deriving the Minimal Set

 We assume that applications have no specific requirements that need
 knowledge about the network, e.g., regarding the choice of network
 interface or the end-to-end path.  Even with these assumptions, there
 are certain requirements that are strictly kept by transport
 protocols today, and these must also be kept by a transport system.
 Some of these requirements relate to transport features that we call
 "Functional".
 Functional transport features provide functionality that cannot be
 used without the application knowing about them, or else they violate
 assumptions that might cause the application to fail.  For example,
 ordered message delivery is a functional transport feature: it cannot
 be configured without the application knowing about it because the
 application's assumption could be that messages always arrive in
 order.  Failure includes any change of the application behavior that
 is not performance oriented, e.g., security.
 "Change DSCP" and "Disable Nagle algorithm" are examples of transport
 features that we call "Optimizing"; if a transport system
 autonomously decides to enable or disable them, an application will
 not fail, but a transport system may be able to communicate more
 efficiently if the application is in control of this optimizing
 transport feature.  These transport features require application-
 specific knowledge (e.g., about delay/bandwidth requirements or the
 length of future data blocks that are to be transmitted).
 The transport features of IETF transport protocols that do not
 require application-specific knowledge and could therefore be
 utilized by a transport system on its own without involving the
 application are called "Automatable".
 We approach the construction of a minimal set of transport features
 in the following way:
 1.  Categorization (Appendix A): The superset of transport features
     from [RFC8303] is presented, and transport features are
     categorized as Functional, Optimizing, or Automatable for later
     reduction.
 2.  Reduction (Section 4): A shorter list of transport features is
     derived from the categorization in the first step.  This removes
     all transport features that do not require application-specific
     knowledge or would result in semantically incorrect behavior if
     they were implemented over TCP or UDP.
 3.  Discussion (Section 5): The resulting list shows a number of
     peculiarities that are discussed, to provide a basis for
     constructing the minimal set.
 4.  Construction (Section 6): Based on the reduced set and the
     discussion of the transport features therein, a minimal set is
     constructed.
 Following [RFC8303] and retaining its terminology, we divide the
 transport features into two main groups as follows:
 1.  CONNECTION-related transport features
  • ESTABLISHMENT
  • AVAILABILITY
  • MAINTENANCE
  • TERMINATION
 2.  DATA-Transfer-related transport features
  • Sending Data
  • Receiving Data
  • Errors

4. The Reduced Set of Transport Features

 By hiding automatable transport features from the application, a
 transport system can gain opportunities to automate the usage of
 network-related functionality.  This can facilitate using the
 transport system for the application programmer and it allows for
 optimizations that may not be possible for an application.  For
 instance, system-wide configurations regarding the usage of multiple
 interfaces can better be exploited if the choice of the interface is
 not entirely up to the application.  Therefore, since they are not
 strictly necessary to expose in a transport system, we do not include
 automatable transport features in the reduced set of transport
 features.  This leaves us with only the transport features that are
 either optimizing or functional.
 A transport system should be able to communicate via TCP or UDP if
 alternative transport protocols are found not to work.  For many
 transport features, this is possible, often by simply not doing
 anything when a specific request is made.  For some transport
 features, however, it was identified that direct usage of neither TCP
 nor UDP is possible; in these cases, even not doing anything would
 incur semantically incorrect behavior.  Whenever an application would
 make use of one of these transport features, this would eliminate the
 possibility to use TCP or UDP.  Thus, we only keep the functional and
 optimizing transport features for which an implementation over either
 TCP or UDP is possible in our reduced set.
 The following list contains the transport features from Appendix A,
 reduced using these rules.  The "minimal set" derived in this
 document is meant to be implementable "one-sided" over TCP and, with
 limitations, UDP.  In the list, we therefore precede a transport
 feature with "T:" if an implementation over TCP is possible, "U:" if
 an implementation over UDP is possible, and "T,U:" if an
 implementation over either TCP or UDP is possible.

4.1. CONNECTION-Related Transport Features

 ESTABLISHMENT:
  • T,U: Connect
  • T,U: Specify number of attempts and/or timeout for the first

establishment message

  • T,U: Disable MPTCP
  • T: Configure authentication
  • T: Hand over a message to reliably transfer (possibly multiple

times) before connection establishment

  • T: Hand over a message to reliably transfer during connection

establishment

 AVAILABILITY:
  • T,U: Listen
  • T,U: Disable MPTCP
  • T: Configure authentication
 MAINTENANCE:
  • T: Change timeout for aborting connection (using retransmit limit

or time value)

  • T: Suggest timeout to the peer
  • T,U: Disable Nagle algorithm
  • T,U: Notification of Excessive Retransmissions (early warning

below abortion threshold)

  • T,U: Specify DSCP field
  • T,U: Notification of ICMP error message arrival
  • T: Change authentication parameters
  • T: Obtain authentication information
  • T,U: Set Cookie life value
  • T,U: Choose a scheduler to operate between streams of an

association

  • T,U: Configure priority or weight for a scheduler
  • T,U: Disable checksum when sending
  • T,U: Disable checksum requirement when receiving
  • T,U: Specify checksum coverage used by the sender
  • T,U: Specify minimum checksum coverage required by receiver
  • T,U: Specify DF field
  • T,U: Get max. transport-message size that may be sent using a non-

fragmented IP packet from the configured interface

  • T,U: Get max. transport-message size that may be received from the

configured interface

  • T,U: Obtain ECN field
  • T,U: Enable and configure a "Low Extra Delay Background Transfer"
 TERMINATION:
  • T: Close after reliably delivering all remaining data, causing an

event informing the application on the other side

  • T: Abort without delivering remaining data, causing an event

informing the application on the other side

  • T,U: Abort without delivering remaining data, not causing an event

informing the application on the other side

  • T,U: Timeout event when data could not be delivered for too long

4.2. DATA-Transfer-Related Transport Features

4.2.1. Sending Data

  • T: Reliably transfer data, with congestion control
  • T: Reliably transfer a message, with congestion control
  • T,U: Unreliably transfer a message
  • T: Configurable Message Reliability
  • T: Ordered message delivery (potentially slower than unordered)
  • T,U: Unordered message delivery (potentially faster than ordered)
  • T,U: Request not to bundle messages
  • T: Specifying a key id to be used to authenticate a message
  • T,U: Request not to delay the acknowledgement (SACK) of a message

4.2.2. Receiving Data

  • T,U: Receive data (with no message delimiting)
  • U: Receive a message
  • T,U: Information about partial message arrival

4.2.3. Errors

 This section describes sending failures that are associated with a
 specific call to in the "Sending Data" category (Appendix A.2.1).
  • T,U: Notification of send failures
  • T,U: Notification that the stack has no more user data to send
  • T,U: Notification to a receiver that a partial message delivery

has been aborted

5. Discussion

 The reduced set in the previous section exhibits a number of
 peculiarities, which we will discuss in the following.  This section
 focuses on TCP because, with the exception of one particular
 transport feature ("Receive a message"; we will discuss this in
 Section 5.1), the list shows that UDP is strictly a subset of TCP.
 We can first try to understand how to build a transport system that
 can run over TCP, and then narrow down the result further to allow
 that the system can always run over either TCP or UDP (which
 effectively means removing everything related to reliability,
 ordering, authentication, and closing/aborting with a notification to
 the peer).
 Note that, because the functional transport features of UDP are, with
 the exception of "Receive a message", a subset of TCP, TCP can be
 used as a replacement for UDP whenever an application does not need
 message delimiting (e.g., because the application-layer protocol
 already does it).  This has been recognized by many applications that
 already do this in practice, by trying to communicate with UDP at
 first and falling back to TCP in case of a connection failure.

5.1. Sending Messages, Receiving Bytes

 For implementing a transport system over TCP, there are several
 transport features related to sending, but only a single transport
 feature related to receiving: "Receive data (with no message
 delimiting)" (and, strangely, "information about partial message
 arrival").  Notably, the transport feature "Receive a message" is
 also the only non-automatable transport feature of UDP(-Lite) for
 which no implementation over TCP is possible.
 To support these TCP receiver semantics, we define an "Application-
 Framed Byte Stream" (AFra Byte Stream).  AFra Byte Streams allow
 senders to operate on messages while minimizing changes to the TCP
 socket API.  In particular, nothing changes on the receiver side;
 data can be accepted via a normal TCP socket.
 In an AFra Byte Stream, the sending application can optionally inform
 the transport about message boundaries and required properties per
 message (configurable order and reliability, or embedding a request
 not to delay the acknowledgement of a message).  Whenever the sending
 application specifies per-message properties that relax the notion of
 reliable in-order delivery of bytes, it must assume that the
 receiving application is 1) able to determine message boundaries,
 provided that messages are always kept intact, and 2) able to accept
 these relaxed per-message properties.  Any signaling of such
 information to the peer is up to an application-layer protocol and
 considered out of scope of this document.
 For example, if an application requests to transfer fixed-size
 messages of 100 bytes with partial reliability, this needs the
 receiving application to be prepared to accept data in chunks of 100
 bytes.  Then, if some of these 100-byte messages are missing (e.g.,
 if SCTP with Configurable Reliability is used), this is the expected
 application behavior.  With TCP, no messages would be missing, but
 this is also correct for the application, and the possible
 retransmission delay is acceptable within the best-effort service
 model (see Section 3.5 of [RFC7305]).  Still, the receiving
 application would separate the byte stream into 100-byte chunks.
 Note that this usage of messages does not require all messages to be
 equal in size.  Many application protocols use some form of Type-
 Length-Value (TLV) encoding, e.g., by defining a header including
 length fields; another alternative is the use of byte stuffing
 methods such as Consistent Overhead Byte Stuffing (COBS) [COBS].  If
 an application needs message numbers, e.g., to restore the correct
 sequence of messages, these must also be encoded by the application
 itself, as SCTP's transport features that are related to the sequence
 number are not provided by the "minimum set" (in the interest of
 enabling usage of TCP).

5.2. Stream Schedulers without Streams

 We have already stated that multi-streaming does not require
 application-specific knowledge.  Potential benefits or disadvantages
 of, e.g., using two streams of an SCTP association versus using two
 separate SCTP associations or TCP connections are related to
 knowledge about the network and the particular transport protocol in
 use, not the application.  However, the transport features "Choose a
 scheduler to operate between streams of an association" and
 "Configure priority or weight for a scheduler" operate on streams.
 Here, streams identify communication channels between which a
 scheduler operates, and they can be assigned a priority.  Moreover,
 the transport features in the MAINTENANCE category all operate on
 associations in case of SCTP, i.e., they apply to all streams in that
 association.
 With only these semantics necessary to represent, the interface to a
 transport system becomes easier if we assume that connections may be
 not only a transport protocol's connection or association, but could
 also be a stream of an existing SCTP association, for example.  We
 only need to allow for a way to define a possible grouping of
 connections.  Then, all MAINTENANCE transport features can be said to
 operate on connection groups, not connections, and a scheduler
 operates on the connections within a group.
 To be compatible with multiple transport protocols and uniformly
 allow access to both transport connections and streams of a multi-
 streaming protocol, the semantics of opening and closing need to be
 the most restrictive subset of all of the underlying options.  For
 example, TCP's support of half-closed connections can be seen as a
 feature on top of the more restrictive "ABORT"; this feature cannot
 be supported because not all protocols used by a transport system
 (including streams of an association) support half-closed
 connections.

5.3. Early Data Transmission

 There are two transport features related to transferring a message
 early: "Hand over a message to reliably transfer (possibly multiple
 times) before connection establishment", which relates to TCP Fast
 Open [RFC7413], and "Hand over a message to reliably transfer during
 connection establishment", which relates to SCTP's ability to
 transfer data together with the COOKIE-Echo chunk.  Also without TCP
 Fast Open, TCP can transfer data during the handshake, together with
 the SYN packet; however, the receiver of this data may not hand it
 over to the application until the handshake has completed.  Also,
 different from TCP Fast Open, this data is not delimited as a message
 by TCP (thus, not visible as a "message").  This functionality is
 commonly available in TCP and supported in several implementations,
 even though the TCP specification does not explain how to provide it
 to applications.
 A transport system could differentiate between the cases of
 transmitting data "before" (possibly multiple times) or "during" the
 handshake.  Alternatively, it could also assume that data that are
 handed over early will be transmitted as early as possible, and
 "before" the handshake would only be used for messages that are
 explicitly marked as "idempotent" (i.e., it would be acceptable to
 transfer them multiple times).
 The amount of data that can successfully be transmitted before or
 during the handshake depends on various factors: the transport
 protocol, the use of header options, the choice of IPv4 and IPv6, and
 the Path MTU.  A transport system should therefore allow a sending
 application to query the maximum amount of data it can possibly
 transmit before (or, if exposed, during) connection establishment.

5.4. Sender Running Dry

 The transport feature "Notification that the stack has no more user
 data to send" relates to SCTP's "SENDER DRY" notification.  Such
 notifications can, in principle, be used to avoid having an
 unnecessarily large send buffer, yet ensure that the transport sender
 always has data available when it has an opportunity to transmit it.
 This has been found to be very beneficial for some applications
 [WWDC2015].  However, "SENDER DRY" truly means that the entire send
 buffer (including both unsent and unacknowledged data) has emptied,
 i.e., when it notifies the sender, it is already too late; the
 transport protocol already missed an opportunity to send data.  Some
 modern TCP implementations now include the unspecified
 "TCP_NOTSENT_LOWAT" socket option that was proposed in [WWDC2015],
 which limits the amount of unsent data that TCP can keep in the
 socket buffer; this allows specifying at which buffer filling level
 the socket becomes writable, rather than waiting for the buffer to
 run empty.
 SCTP allows configuring the sender-side buffer too; the automatable
 Transport Feature "Configure send buffer size" provides this
 functionality, but only for the complete buffer, which includes both
 unsent and unacknowledged data.  SCTP does not allow to control these
 two sizes separately.  It therefore makes sense for a transport
 system to allow for uniform access to "TCP_NOTSENT_LOWAT" as well as
 the "SENDER DRY" notification.

5.5. Capacity Profile

 The transport features:
  • Disable Nagle algorithm
  • Enable and configure a "Low Extra Delay Background Transfer"
  • Specify DSCP field
 All relate to a QoS-like application need such as "low latency" or
 "scavenger".  In the interest of flexibility of a transport system,
 they could therefore be offered in a uniform, more abstract way,
 where a transport system could, e.g., decide by itself how to use
 combinations of LEDBAT-like congestion control and certain DSCP
 values, and an application would only specify a general "capacity
 profile" (a description of how it wants to use the available
 capacity).  A need for "lowest possible latency at the expense of
 overhead" could then translate into automatically disabling the Nagle
 algorithm.
 In some cases, the Nagle algorithm is best controlled directly by the
 application because it is not only related to a general profile but
 also to knowledge about the size of future messages.  For fine-grain
 control over Nagle-like functionality, the "Request not to bundle
 messages" is available.

5.6. Security

 Both TCP and SCTP offer authentication.  TCP authenticates complete
 segments.  SCTP allows configuring which of SCTP's chunk types must
 always be authenticated; if this is exposed as such, it creates an
 undesirable dependency on the transport protocol.  For compatibility
 with TCP, a transport system should only allow to configure complete
 transport layer packets, including headers, IP pseudo-header (if any)
 and payload.
 Security is discussed in a separate document [RFC8922].  The minimal
 set presented in the present document excludes all security-related
 transport features from Appendix A: "Configure authentication",
 "Change authentication parameters", "Obtain authentication
 information", and "Set Cookie life value", as well as "Specifying a
 key id to be used to authenticate a message".  It also excludes
 security transport features not listed in Appendix A, including
 content privacy to in-path devices.

5.7. Packet Size

 UDP(-Lite) has a transport feature called "Specify DF field".  This
 yields an error message in the case of sending a message that exceeds
 the Path MTU, which is necessary for a UDP-based application to be
 able to implement Path MTU Discovery (a function that UDP-based
 applications must do by themselves).  The "Get max. transport-message
 size that may be sent using a non-fragmented IP packet from the
 configured interface" transport feature yields an upper limit for the
 Path MTU (minus headers) and can therefore help to implement Path MTU
 Discovery more efficiently.

6. The Minimal Set of Transport Features

 Based on the categorization, reduction, and discussion in Section 3,
 this section describes a minimal set of transport features that end
 systems should offer.  Any configuration based on the described
 minimum set of transport feature can always be realized over TCP but
 also gives the transport system flexibility to choose another
 transport if implemented.  In the text of this section, "not UDP" is
 used to indicate elements of the system that cannot be implemented
 over UDP.  Conversely, all elements of the system that are not marked
 with "not UDP" can also be implemented over UDP.
 The arguments laid out in Section 5 ("discussion") were used to make
 the final representation of the minimal set as short, simple, and
 general as possible.  There may be situations where these arguments
 do not apply, e.g., implementers may have specific reasons to expose
 multi-streaming as a visible functionality to applications, or the
 restrictive open/close semantics may be problematic under some
 circumstances.  In such cases, the representation in Section 4
 ("reduction") should be considered.
 As in Section 3, Section 4, and [RFC8303], we categorize the minimal
 set of transport features as 1) CONNECTION related (ESTABLISHMENT,
 AVAILABILITY, MAINTENANCE, TERMINATION) and 2) DATA Transfer related
 (Sending Data, Receiving Data, Errors).  Here, the focus is on
 connections that the transport system offers as an abstraction to the
 application, as opposed to connections of transport protocols that
 the transport system uses.

6.1. ESTABLISHMENT, AVAILABILITY, and TERMINATION

 A connection must first be "created" to allow for some initial
 configuration to be carried out before the transport system can
 actively or passively establish communication with a remote end
 system.  As a configuration of the newly created connection, an
 application can choose to disallow usage of MPTCP.  Furthermore, all
 configuration parameters in Section 6.2 can be used initially,
 although some of them may only take effect when a connection has been
 established with a chosen transport protocol.  Configuring a
 connection early helps a transport system make the right decisions.
 For example, grouping information can influence whether or not the
 transport system implements a connection as a stream of a multi-
 streaming protocol's existing association.
 For ungrouped connections, early configuration is necessary because
 it allows the transport system to know which protocols it should try
 to use.  In particular, a transport system that only makes a one-time
 choice for a particular protocol must know early about strict
 requirements that must be kept, or it can end up in a deadlock
 situation (e.g., having chosen UDP and later be asked to support
 reliable transfer).  As an example description of how to correctly
 handle these cases, we provide the following decision tree (this is
 derived from Section 4.1 excluding authentication, as explained in
 Section 8):
    +----------------------------------------------------------+
    | Will it ever be necessary to offer any of the following? |
    | * Reliably transfer data                                 |
    | * Notify the peer of closing/aborting                    |
    | * Preserve data ordering                                 |
    +----------------------------------------------------------+
              |                                    |
              |Yes                                 |No
              | (SCTP or TCP)                      | (All protocols
              |  can be used.)                     |  can be used.)
              V                                    V

+————————————–+ +—————————–+

Is any of the following useful to Is any of the following
the application? useful to the application?
* Choosing a scheduler to operate * Specify checksum coverage
between connections in a group, used by the sender
with the possibility to configure * Specify minimum checksum
a priority or weight per connection coverage required by the
* Configurable message reliability receiver
* Unordered message delivery
* Request not to delay the
acknowledgement (SACK) of a message Yes

+————————————–+ | |

        |                |                     |             |
        |Yes             |No                   |             |
        V                |                     V             V
      SCTP is            |                UDP-Lite is    UDP is
      preferred.         |                preferred.     preferred.
                         V

+——————————————————+

Is any of the following useful to the application?
* Hand over a message to reliably transfer (possibly
multiple times) before connection establishment
* Suggest timeout to the peer
* Notification of Excessive Retransmissions (early
warning below abortion threshold)
* Notification of ICMP error message arrival

+——————————————————+

        |                            |
        |Yes                         |No
        V                            V
  TCP is preferred.             SCTP and TCP
                                are equally preferable.
 Note that this decision tree is not optimal for all cases.  For
 example, if an application wants to use "Specify checksum coverage
 used by the sender", which is only offered by UDP-Lite, and
 "Configure priority or weight for a scheduler", which is only offered
 by SCTP, the above decision tree will always choose UDP-Lite, making
 it impossible to use SCTP's schedulers with priorities between
 grouped connections.  Also, several other factors may influence the
 decisions for or against a protocol, e.g., penetration rates, the
 ability to work through NATs, etc.  We caution implementers to be
 aware of the full set of trade-offs, for which we recommend
 consulting the list in Section 4.1 when deciding how to initialize a
 connection.
 To summarize, the following parameters serve as input for the
 transport system to help it choose and configure a suitable protocol:
 Reliability:  a boolean that should be set to true when any of the
    following will be useful to the application: reliably transfer
    data; notify the peer of closing/aborting; or preserve data
    ordering.
 Checksum coverage:  a boolean to specify whether it will be useful to
    the application to specify checksum coverage when sending or
    receiving.
 Configure message priority:  a boolean that should be set to true
    when any of the following per-message configuration or
    prioritization mechanisms will be useful to the application:
    choosing a scheduler to operate between grouped connections, with
    the possibility to configure a priority or weight per connection;
    configurable message reliability; unordered message delivery; or
    requesting not to delay the acknowledgement (SACK) of a message.
 Early message timeout notifications:  a boolean that should be set to
    true when any of the following will be useful to the application:
    hand over a message to reliably transfer (possibly multiple times)
    before connection establishment; suggest timeout to the peer;
    notification of excessive retransmissions (early warning below
    abortion threshold); or notification of ICMP error message
    arrival.
 Once a connection is created, it can be queried for the maximum
 amount of data that an application can possibly expect to have
 reliably transmitted before or during transport connection
 establishment (with zero being a possible answer) (see
 Section 6.2.1).  An application can also give the connection a
 message for reliable transmission before or during connection
 establishment (not UDP); the transport system will then try to
 transmit it as early as possible.  An application can facilitate
 sending a message particularly early by marking it as "idempotent"
 (see Section 6.3.1); in this case, the receiving application must be
 prepared to potentially receive multiple copies of the message
 (because idempotent messages are reliably transferred, asking for
 idempotence is not necessary for systems that support UDP).
 After creation, a transport system can actively establish
 communication with a peer, or it can passively listen for incoming
 connection requests.  Note that active establishment may or may not
 trigger a notification on the listening side.  It is possible that
 the first notification on the listening side is the arrival of the
 first data that the active side sends (a receiver-side transport
 system could handle this by continuing to block a "Listen" call,
 immediately followed, for example, by issuing "Receive"; callback-
 based implementations could simply skip the equivalent of "Listen").
 This also means that the active opening side is assumed to be the
 first side sending data.
 A transport system can actively close a connection, i.e., terminate
 it after reliably delivering all remaining data to the peer (if
 reliable data delivery was requested earlier (not UDP)), in which
 case the peer is notified that the connection is closed.
 Alternatively, a connection can be aborted without delivering
 outstanding data to the peer.  In case reliable or partially reliable
 data delivery was requested earlier (not UDP), the peer is notified
 that the connection is aborted.  A timeout can be configured to abort
 a connection when data could not be delivered for too long (not UDP);
 however, timeout-based abortion does not notify the peer application
 that the connection has been aborted.  Because half-closed
 connections are not supported, when a host implementing a transport
 system receives a notification that the peer is closing or aborting
 the connection (not UDP), its peer may not be able to read
 outstanding data.  This means that unacknowledged data residing in a
 transport system's send buffer may have to be dropped from that
 buffer upon arrival of a "close" or "abort" notification from the
 peer.

6.2. MAINTENANCE

 A transport system must offer means to group connections, but it
 cannot guarantee truly grouping them using the transport protocols
 that it uses (e.g., it cannot be guaranteed that connections become
 multiplexed as streams on a single SCTP association when SCTP may not
 be available).  The transport system must therefore ensure that
 group- versus non-group-configurations are handled correctly in some
 way (e.g., by applying the configuration to all grouped connections
 even when they are not multiplexed, or informing the application
 about grouping success or failure).
 As a general rule, any configuration described below should be
 carried out as early as possible to aid the transport system's
 decision making.

6.2.1. Connection Groups

 The following transport features and notifications (some directly
 from Section 4; some new or changed, based on the discussion in
 Section 5) automatically apply to all grouped connections:
 Configure a timeout (not UDP)
 This can be done with the following parameters:
  • A timeout value for aborting connections, in seconds.
  • A timeout value to be suggested to the peer (if possible), in

seconds.

  • The number of retransmissions after which the application should

be notified of "Excessive Retransmissions".

 Configure urgency
 This can be done with the following parameters:
  • A number to identify the type of scheduler that should be used to

operate between connections in the group (no guarantees given).

    Schedulers are defined in [RFC8260].
  • A "capacity profile" number to identify how an application wants

to use its available capacity. Choices can be "lowest possible

    latency at the expense of overhead" (which would disable any
    Nagle-like algorithm), "scavenger", or values that help determine
    the DSCP value for a connection.
  • A buffer limit (in bytes); when the sender has less than the

provided limit of bytes in the buffer, the application may be

    notified.  Notifications are not guaranteed, and it is optional
    for a transport system to support buffer limit values greater than
    0.  Note that this limit and its notification should operate
    across the buffers of the whole transport system, i.e., also any
    potential buffers that the transport system itself may use on top
    of the transport's send buffer.
 Following Section 5.7, these properties can be queried:
  • The maximum message size that may be sent without fragmentation

via the configured interface. This is optional for a transport

    system to offer and may return an error ("not available").  It can
    aid applications implementing Path MTU Discovery.
  • The maximum transport message size that can be sent, in bytes.

Irrespective of fragmentation, there is a size limit for the

    messages that can be handed over to SCTP or UDP(-Lite); because
    the service provided by a transport system is independent of the
    transport protocol, it must allow an application to query this
    value: the maximum size of a message in an Application-Framed Byte
    Stream (see Section 5.1).  This may also return an error when data
    is not delimited ("not available").
  • The maximum transport message size that can be received from the

configured interface, in bytes (or "not available").

  • The maximum amount of data that can possibly be sent before or

during connection establishment, in bytes.

 In addition to the already mentioned closing/aborting notifications
 and possible send errors, the following notifications can occur:
 Excessive Retransmissions:  The configured (or a default) number of
    retransmissions has been reached, yielding this early warning
    below an abortion threshold.
 ICMP Arrival (parameter: ICMP message):  An ICMP packet carrying the
    conveyed ICMP message has arrived.
 ECN Arrival (parameter: ECN value):  A packet carrying the conveyed
    Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) value has arrived.  This
    can be useful for applications implementing congestion control.
 Timeout (parameter: s seconds):  Data could not be delivered for s
    seconds.
 Drain:  The send buffer has either drained below the configured
    buffer limit or it has become completely empty.  This is a generic
    notification that tries to enable uniform access to
    "TCP_NOTSENT_LOWAT" as well as the "SENDER DRY" notification (as
    discussed in Section 5.4; SCTP's "SENDER DRY" is a special case
    where the threshold (for unsent data) is 0 and there is also no
    more unacknowledged data in the send buffer).

6.2.2. Individual Connections

 Configure priority or weight for a scheduler, as described in
 [RFC8260].
 Configure checksum usage: This can be done with the following
 parameters, but there is no guarantee that any checksum limitations
 will indeed be enforced (the default behavior is "full coverage,
 checksum enabled"):
  • a boolean to enable/disable usage of a checksum when sending
  • the desired coverage (in bytes) of the checksum used when sending
  • a boolean to enable/disable requiring a checksum when receiving
  • the required minimum coverage (in bytes) of the checksum when

receiving

6.3. DATA Transfer

6.3.1. Sending Data

 When sending a message, no guarantees are given about the
 preservation of message boundaries to the peer; if message boundaries
 are needed, the receiving application at the peer must know about
 them beforehand (or the transport system cannot use TCP).  Note that
 an application should already be able to hand over data before the
 transport system establishes a connection with a chosen transport
 protocol.  Regarding the message that is being handed over, the
 following parameters can be used:
 Reliability:  This parameter is used to convey a choice of: fully
    reliable with congestion control (not UDP), unreliable without
    congestion control, unreliable with congestion control (not UDP),
    and partially reliable with congestion control (see [RFC3758] and
    [RFC7496] for details on how to specify partial reliability) (not
    UDP).  The latter two choices are optional for a transport system
    to offer and may result in full reliability.  Note that
    applications sending unreliable data without congestion control
    should themselves perform congestion control in accordance with
    [RFC8085].
 Ordered (not UDP):  This boolean lets an application choose between
    ordered message delivery (true) and possibly unordered,
    potentially faster message delivery (false).
 Bundle:  This boolean expresses a preference for allowing to bundle
    messages (true) or not (false).  No guarantees are given.
 DelAck:  This boolean, if false, lets an application request that the
    peer not delay the acknowledgement for this message.
 Fragment:  This boolean expresses a preference for allowing to
    fragment messages (true) or not (false), at the IP level.  No
    guarantees are given.
 Idempotent (not UDP):  This boolean expresses whether a message is
    idempotent (true) or not (false).  Idempotent messages may arrive
    multiple times at the receiver (but they will arrive at least
    once).  When data is idempotent, it can be used by the receiver
    immediately on a connection establishment attempt.  Thus, if data
    is handed over before the transport system establishes a
    connection with a chosen transport protocol, stating that a
    message is idempotent facilitates transmitting it to the peer
    application particularly early.
 An application can be notified of a failure to send a specific
 message.  There is no guarantee of such notifications, i.e., send
 failures can also silently occur.

6.3.2. Receiving Data

 A receiving application obtains an "Application-Framed Byte Stream"
 (AFra Byte Stream); this concept is further described in Section 5.1.
 In line with TCP's receiver semantics, an AFra Byte Stream is just a
 stream of bytes to the receiver.  If message boundaries were
 specified by the sender, a receiver-side transport system
 implementing only the minimum set of Transport Services defined here
 will still not inform the receiving application about them (this
 limitation is only needed for transport systems that are implemented
 to directly use TCP).
 Different from TCP's semantics, if the sending application has
 allowed that messages are not fully reliably transferred, or
 delivered out of order, then such reordering or unreliability may be
 reflected per message in the arriving data.  Messages will always
 stay intact, i.e., if an incomplete message is contained at the end
 of the arriving data block, this message is guaranteed to continue in
 the next arriving data block.

7. IANA Considerations

 This document has no IANA actions.

8. Security Considerations

 Authentication, confidentiality protection, and integrity protection
 are identified as transport features by [RFC8095].  Often, these
 features are provided by a protocol or layer on top of the transport
 protocol; none of the full-featured standards-track transport
 protocols in [RFC8303], which this document is based upon, provide
 all of these transport features on its own.  Therefore, they are not
 considered in this document, with the exception of native
 authentication capabilities of TCP and SCTP for which the security
 considerations in [RFC5925] and [RFC4895] apply.  The minimum
 requirements for a secure transport system are discussed in a
 separate document [RFC8922].

9. References

9.1. Normative References

 [RFC8095]  Fairhurst, G., Ed., Trammell, B., Ed., and M. Kuehlewind,
            Ed., "Services Provided by IETF Transport Protocols and
            Congestion Control Mechanisms", RFC 8095,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC8095, March 2017,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8095>.
 [RFC8303]  Welzl, M., Tuexen, M., and N. Khademi, "On the Usage of
            Transport Features Provided by IETF Transport Protocols",
            RFC 8303, DOI 10.17487/RFC8303, February 2018,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8303>.
 [RFC8922]  Enghardt, T., Pauly, T., Perkins, C., Rose, K., and C.
            Wood, "A Survey of the Interaction between Security
            Protocols and Transport Services", RFC 8922,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC8922, October 2020,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8922>.

9.2. Informative References

 [COBS]     Cheshire, S. and M. Baker, "Consistent overhead byte
            stuffing", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Volume 7,
            Issue 2, DOI 10.1109/90.769765, April 1999,
            <https://doi.org/10.1109/90.769765>.
 [POSIX]    The Open Group, "IEEE Standard for Information
            Technology--Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX(R))
            Base Specifications, Issue 7", (Revision of IEEE Std
            1003.1-2008), IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, January 2018,
            <https://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
            functions/contents.html>.
 [RFC3758]  Stewart, R., Ramalho, M., Xie, Q., Tuexen, M., and P.
            Conrad, "Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
            Partial Reliability Extension", RFC 3758,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC3758, May 2004,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3758>.
 [RFC4895]  Tuexen, M., Stewart, R., Lei, P., and E. Rescorla,
            "Authenticated Chunks for the Stream Control Transmission
            Protocol (SCTP)", RFC 4895, DOI 10.17487/RFC4895, August
            2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4895>.
 [RFC4987]  Eddy, W., "TCP SYN Flooding Attacks and Common
            Mitigations", RFC 4987, DOI 10.17487/RFC4987, August 2007,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4987>.
 [RFC5925]  Touch, J., Mankin, A., and R. Bonica, "The TCP
            Authentication Option", RFC 5925, DOI 10.17487/RFC5925,
            June 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5925>.
 [RFC6897]  Scharf, M. and A. Ford, "Multipath TCP (MPTCP) Application
            Interface Considerations", RFC 6897, DOI 10.17487/RFC6897,
            March 2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6897>.
 [RFC7305]  Lear, E., Ed., "Report from the IAB Workshop on Internet
            Technology Adoption and Transition (ITAT)", RFC 7305,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC7305, July 2014,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7305>.
 [RFC7413]  Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Radhakrishnan, S., and A. Jain, "TCP
            Fast Open", RFC 7413, DOI 10.17487/RFC7413, December 2014,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7413>.
 [RFC7496]  Tuexen, M., Seggelmann, R., Stewart, R., and S. Loreto,
            "Additional Policies for the Partially Reliable Stream
            Control Transmission Protocol Extension", RFC 7496,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC7496, April 2015,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7496>.
 [RFC8085]  Eggert, L., Fairhurst, G., and G. Shepherd, "UDP Usage
            Guidelines", BCP 145, RFC 8085, DOI 10.17487/RFC8085,
            March 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8085>.
 [RFC8260]  Stewart, R., Tuexen, M., Loreto, S., and R. Seggelmann,
            "Stream Schedulers and User Message Interleaving for the
            Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC 8260,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC8260, November 2017,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8260>.
 [RFC8304]  Fairhurst, G. and T. Jones, "Transport Features of the
            User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Lightweight UDP (UDP-
            Lite)", RFC 8304, DOI 10.17487/RFC8304, February 2018,
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8304>.
 [RFC8622]  Bless, R., "A Lower-Effort Per-Hop Behavior (LE PHB) for
            Differentiated Services", RFC 8622, DOI 10.17487/RFC8622,
            June 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8622>.
 [SCTP-STREAM-1]
            Weinrank, F. and M. Tuexen, "Transparent Flow Mapping for
            NEAT", IFIP Networking 2017, Workshop on Future of
            Internet Transport (FIT 2017), June 2017.
 [SCTP-STREAM-2]
            Welzl, M., Niederbacher, F., and S. Gjessing, "Beneficial
            Transparent Deployment of SCTP: The Missing Pieces", IEEE
            GlobeCom 2011, DOI 10.1109/GLOCOM.2011.6133554, December
            2011, <https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOCOM.2011.6133554>.
 [TAPS-INTERFACE]
            Trammell, B., Welzl, M., Enghardt, T., Fairhurst, G.,
            Kuehlewind, M., Perkins, C., Tiesel, P. S., Wood, C. A.,
            and T. Pauly, "An Abstract Application Layer Interface to
            Transport Services", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
            draft-ietf-taps-interface-09, 27 July 2020,
            <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-taps-interface-
            09>.
 [WWDC2015] Lakhera, P. and S. Cheshire, "Your App and Next Generation
            Networks", Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2015, San
            Francisco, USA, June 2015,
            <https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=719>.

Appendix A. The Superset of Transport Features

 In this description, transport features are presented following the
 nomenclature "CATEGORY.[SUBCATEGORY].FEATURENAME.PROTOCOL",
 equivalent to "pass 2" in [RFC8303].  We also sketch how functional
 or optimizing transport features can be implemented by a transport
 system.  The "minimal set" derived in this document is meant to be
 implementable "one-sided" over TCP and, with limitations, UDP.
 Hence, for all transport features that are categorized as
 "functional" or "optimizing", and for which no matching TCP and/or
 UDP primitive exists in "pass 2" of [RFC8303], a brief discussion on
 how to implement them over TCP and/or UDP is included.
 We designate some transport features as "automatable" on the basis of
 a broader decision that affects multiple transport features:
  • Most transport features that are related to multi-streaming were

designated as "automatable". This was done because the decision

    on whether or not to use multi-streaming does not depend on
    application-specific knowledge.  This means that a connection that
    is exhibited to an application could be implemented by using a
    single stream of an SCTP association instead of mapping it to a
    complete SCTP association or TCP connection.  This could be
    achieved by using more than one stream when an SCTP association is
    first established (CONNECT.SCTP parameter "outbound stream
    count"), maintaining an internal stream number, and using this
    stream number when sending data (SEND.SCTP parameter "stream
    number").  Closing or aborting a connection could then simply free
    the stream number for future use.  This is discussed further in
    Section 5.2.
  • With the exception of "Disable MPTCP", all transport features that

are related to using multiple paths or the choice of the network

    interface were designated as "automatable".  For example, "Listen"
    could always listen on all available interfaces and "Connect"
    could use the default interface for the destination IP address.
 Finally, in three cases, transport features are aggregated and/or
 slightly changed from [RFC8303] in the description below.  These
 transport features are marked as "CHANGED FROM RFC 8303".  These do
 not add any new functionality but just represent a simple refactoring
 step that helps to streamline the derivation process (e.g., by
 removing a choice of a parameter for the sake of applications that
 may not care about this choice).  The corresponding transport
 features are automatable, and they are listed immediately below the
 "CHANGED FROM RFC 8303" transport feature.

A.1. CONNECTION-Related Transport Features

 ESTABLISHMENT:
  • Connect
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Functional because the notion of a connection is often reflected
    in applications as an expectation to be able to communicate after
    a "Connect" succeeded, with a communication sequence relating to
    this transport feature that is defined by the application
    protocol.
    Implementation: via CONNECT.TCP, CONNECT.SCTP or CONNECT.UDP(-
    Lite).
  • Specify which IP Options must always be used
    Protocols: TCP, UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because IP Options relate to knowledge about the
    network, not the application.
  • Request multiple streams
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge (example implementations of using
    multi-streaming without involving the application are described in
    [SCTP-STREAM-1] and [SCTP-STREAM-2]).
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Limit the number of inbound streams
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Specify number of attempts and/or timeout for the first

establishment message

    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because this is closely related to potentially assumed
    reliable data delivery for data that is sent before or during
    connection establishment.
    Implementation: using a parameter of CONNECT.TCP and CONNECT.SCTP.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (this is irrelevant in the
    case of UDP because there, reliable data delivery is not assumed).
  • Obtain multiple sockets
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because the non-parallel usage of multiple paths to
    communicate between the same end hosts relates to knowledge about
    the network, not the application.
  • Disable MPTCP
    Protocols: MPTCP
    Optimizing because the parallel usage of multiple paths to
    communicate between the same end hosts can improve performance.
    Whether or not to use this feature depends on knowledge about the
    network as well as application-specific knowledge (see Section 3.1
    of [RFC6897]).
    Implementation: via a boolean parameter in CONNECT.MPTCP.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing.
  • Configure authentication
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because this has a direct influence on security.
    Implementation: via parameters in CONNECT.TCP and CONNECT.SCTP.
    With TCP, this allows configuring Master Key Tuples (MKTs) to
    authenticate complete segments (including the TCP IPv4
    pseudoheader, TCP header, and TCP data).  With SCTP, this allows
    specifying which chunk types must always be authenticated.
    Authenticating only certain chunk types creates a reduced level of
    security that is not supported by TCP; to be compatible, this
    should therefore only allow to authenticate all chunk types.  Key
    material must be provided in a way that is compatible with both
    [RFC4895] and [RFC5925].
    Implementation over UDP: not possible (UDP does not offer this
    functionality).
  • Indicate (and/or obtain upon completion) an Adaptation Layer via

an adaptation code point

    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because it allows sending extra data for the sake of
    identifying an adaptation layer, which by itself is application
    specific.
    Implementation: via a parameter in CONNECT.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: not possible.  (TCP does not offer this
    functionality.)
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer this
    functionality.)
  • Request to negotiate interleaving of user messages
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because it requires using multiple streams, but
    requesting multiple streams in the CONNECTION.ESTABLISHMENT
    category is automatable.
    Implementation: controlled via a parameter in CONNECT.SCTP.  One
    possible implementation is to always try to enable interleaving.
  • Hand over a message to reliably transfer (possibly multiple times)

before connection establishment

    Protocols: TCP
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via a parameter in CONNECT.TCP.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not provide
    reliability.)
  • Hand over a message to reliably transfer during connection

establishment

    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because this can only work if the message is limited in
    size, making it closely tied to properties of the data that an
    application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via a parameter in CONNECT.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: transmit the message with the SYN packet,
    sacrificing the ability to identify message boundaries.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP is unreliable.)
  • Enable UDP encapsulation with a specified remote UDP port number
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because UDP encapsulation relates to knowledge about
    the network, not the application.
 AVAILABILITY:
  • Listen
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Functional because the notion of accepting connection requests is
    often reflected in applications as an expectation to be able to
    communicate after a "Listen" succeeded, with a communication
    sequence relating to this transport feature that is defined by the
    application protocol.
    CHANGED FROM RFC 8303.  This differs from the 3 automatable
    transport features below in that it leaves the choice of
    interfaces for listening open.
    Implementation: by listening on all interfaces via LISTEN.TCP (not
    providing a local IP address) or LISTEN.SCTP (providing SCTP port
    number / address pairs for all local IP addresses).  LISTEN.UDP(-
    Lite) supports both methods.
  • Listen, 1 specified local interface
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because decisions about local interfaces relate to
    knowledge about the network and the Operating System, not the
    application.
  • Listen, N specified local interfaces
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because decisions about local interfaces relate to
    knowledge about the network and the Operating System, not the
    application.
  • Listen, all local interfaces
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because decisions about local interfaces relate to
    knowledge about the network and the Operating System, not the
    application.
  • Specify which IP Options must always be used
    Protocols: TCP, UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because IP Options relate to knowledge about the
    network, not the application.
  • Disable MPTCP
    Protocols: MPTCP
    Optimizing because the parallel usage of multiple paths to
    communicate between the same end hosts can improve performance.
    Whether or not to use this feature depends on knowledge about the
    network as well as application-specific knowledge (see Section 3.1
    of [RFC6897]).
    Implementation: via a boolean parameter in LISTEN.MPTCP.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing.
  • Configure authentication
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because this has a direct influence on security.
    Implementation: via parameters in LISTEN.TCP and LISTEN.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: with TCP, this allows configuring Master
    Key Tuples (MKTs) to authenticate complete segments (including the
    TCP IPv4 pseudoheader, TCP header, and TCP data).  With SCTP, this
    allows specifying which chunk types must always be authenticated.
    Authenticating only certain chunk types creates a reduced level of
    security that is not supported by TCP; to be compatible, this
    should therefore only allow to authenticate all chunk types.  Key
    material must be provided in a way that is compatible with both
    [RFC4895] and [RFC5925].
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer
    authentication.)
  • Obtain requested number of streams
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Limit the number of inbound streams
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Indicate (and/or obtain upon completion) an Adaptation Layer via

an adaptation code point

    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because it allows sending extra data for the sake of
    identifying an adaptation layer, which by itself is application
    specific.
    Implementation: via a parameter in LISTEN.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: not possible.  (TCP does not offer this
    functionality.)
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer this
    functionality.)
  • Request to negotiate interleaving of user messages
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because it requires using multiple streams, but
    requesting multiple streams in the CONNECTION.ESTABLISHMENT
    category is automatable.
    Implementation: via a parameter in LISTEN.SCTP.
 MAINTENANCE:
  • Change timeout for aborting connection (using retransmit limit or

time value)

    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because this is closely related to potentially assumed
    reliable data delivery.
    Implementation: via CHANGE_TIMEOUT.TCP or CHANGE_TIMEOUT.SCTP.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP is unreliable and
    there is no connection timeout.)
  • Suggest timeout to the peer
    Protocols: TCP
    Functional because this is closely related to potentially assumed
    reliable data delivery.
    Implementation: via CHANGE_TIMEOUT.TCP.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP is unreliable and
    there is no connection timeout.)
  • Disable Nagle algorithm
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Optimizing because this decision depends on knowledge about the
    size of future data blocks and the delay between them.
    Implementation: via DISABLE_NAGLE.TCP and DISABLE_NAGLE.SCTP.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (UDP does not implement the
    Nagle algorithm).
  • Request an immediate heartbeat, returning success/failure
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because this informs about network-specific knowledge.
  • Notification of Excessive Retransmissions (early warning below

abortion threshold)

    Protocols: TCP
    Optimizing because it is an early warning to the application,
    informing it of an impending functional event.
    Implementation: via ERROR.TCP.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (there is no abortion
    threshold).
  • Add path
    Protocols: MPTCP, SCTP
    MPTCP Parameters: source-IP; source-Port; destination-IP;
    destination-Port
    SCTP Parameters: local IP address
    Automatable because the choice of paths to communicate between the
    same end hosts relates to knowledge about the network, not the
    application.
  • Remove path
    Protocols: MPTCP, SCTP
    MPTCP Parameters: source-IP; source-Port; destination-IP;
    destination-Port
    SCTP Parameters: local IP address
    Automatable because the choice of paths to communicate between the
    same end host relates to knowledge about the network, not the
    application.
  • Set primary path
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because the choice of paths to communicate between the
    same end hosts relates to knowledge about the network, not the
    application.
  • Suggest primary path to the peer
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because the choice of paths to communicate between the
    same end hosts relates to knowledge about the network, not the
    application.
  • Configure Path Switchover
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because the choice of paths to communicate between the
    same end hosts relates to knowledge about the network, not the
    application.
  • Obtain status (query or notification)
    Protocols: SCTP, MPTCP
    SCTP parameters: association connection state; destination
    transport address list; destination transport address reachability
    states; current local and peer receiver window size; current local
    congestion window sizes; number of unacknowledged DATA chunks;
    number of DATA chunks pending receipt; primary path; most recent
    SRTT on primary path; RTO on primary path; SRTT and RTO on other
    destination addresses; MTU per path; interleaving supported yes/no
    MPTCP parameters: subflow-list (identified by source-IP; source-
    Port; destination-IP; destination-Port)
    Automatable because these parameters relate to knowledge about the
    network, not the application.
  • Specify DSCP field
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Optimizing because choosing a suitable DSCP value requires
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: via SET_DSCP.TCP / SET_DSCP.SCTP / SET_DSCP.UDP(-
    Lite).
  • Notification of ICMP error message arrival
    Protocols: TCP, UDP(-Lite)
    Optimizing because these messages can inform about success or
    failure of functional transport features (e.g., host unreachable
    relates to "Connect").
    Implementation: via ERROR.TCP or ERROR.UDP(-Lite.)
  • Obtain information about interleaving support
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because it requires using multiple streams, but
    requesting multiple streams in the CONNECTION.ESTABLISHMENT
    category is automatable.
    Implementation: via STATUS.SCTP.
  • Change authentication parameters
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because this has a direct influence on security.
    Implementation: via SET_AUTH.TCP and SET_AUTH.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: with SCTP, this allows adjusting key_id,
    key, and hmac_id.  With TCP, this allows changing the preferred
    outgoing MKT (current_key) and the preferred incoming MKT
    (rnext_key), respectively, for a segment that is sent on the
    connection.  Key material must be provided in a way that is
    compatible with both [RFC4895] and [RFC5925].
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer
    authentication.)
  • Obtain authentication information
    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because authentication decisions may have been made by
    the peer, and this has an influence on the necessary application-
    level measures to provide a certain level of security.
    Implementation: via GET_AUTH.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: with SCTP, this allows obtaining key_id
    and a chunk list.  With TCP, this allows obtaining current_key and
    rnext_key from a previously received segment.  Key material must
    be provided in a way that is compatible with both [RFC4895] and
    [RFC5925].
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer
    authentication.)
  • Reset Stream
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Notification of Stream Reset
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Reset Association
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because deciding to reset an association does not
    require application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: via RESET_ASSOC.SCTP.
  • Notification of Association Reset
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because this notification does not relate to
    application-specific knowledge.
  • Add Streams
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Notification of Added Stream
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because using multi-streaming does not require
    application-specific knowledge.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Choose a scheduler to operate between streams of an association
    Protocols: SCTP
    Optimizing because the scheduling decision requires application-
    specific knowledge.  However, if a transport system would not use
    this, or wrongly configure it on its own, this would only affect
    the performance of data transfers; the outcome would still be
    correct within the "best effort" service model.
    Implementation: using SET_STREAM_SCHEDULER.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (streams are not available in
    TCP, but no guarantee is given that this transport feature has any
    effect).
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (streams are not available in
    UDP, but no guarantee is given that this transport feature has any
    effect).
  • Configure priority or weight for a scheduler
    Protocols: SCTP
    Optimizing because the priority or weight requires application-
    specific knowledge.  However, if a transport system would not use
    this, or wrongly configure it on its own, this would only affect
    the performance of data transfers; the outcome would still be
    correct within the "best effort" service model.
    Implementation: using CONFIGURE_STREAM_SCHEDULER.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (streams are not available in
    TCP, but no guarantee is given that this transport feature has any
    effect).
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (streams are not available in
    UDP, but no guarantee is given that this transport feature has any
    effect).
  • Configure send buffer size
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because this decision relates to knowledge about the
    network and the Operating System, not the application (see also
    the discussion in Section 5.4).
  • Configure receive buffer (and rwnd) size
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because this decision relates to knowledge about the
    network and the Operating System, not the application.
  • Configure message fragmentation
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because this relates to knowledge about the network
    and the Operating System, not the application.  Note that this
    SCTP feature does not control IP-level fragmentation, but decides
    on fragmentation of messages by SCTP, in the end system.
    Implementation: done by always enabling it with
    CONFIG_FRAGMENTATION.SCTP and auto-setting the fragmentation size
    based on network or Operating System conditions.
  • Configure PMTUD
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because Path MTU Discovery relates to knowledge about
    the network, not the application.
  • Configure delayed SACK timer
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because the receiver-side decision to delay sending
    SACKs relates to knowledge about the network, not the application
    (it can be relevant for a sending application to request not to
    delay the SACK of a message, but this is a different transport
    feature).
  • Set Cookie life value
    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because it relates to security (possibly weakened by
    keeping a cookie very long) versus the time between connection
    establishment attempts.  Knowledge about both issues can be
    application specific.
    Implementation over TCP: the closest specified TCP functionality
    is the cookie in TCP Fast Open; for this, [RFC7413] states that
    the server "can expire the cookie at any time to enhance
    security", and Section 4.1.2 of [RFC7413] describes an example
    implementation where updating the key on the server side causes
    the cookie to expire.  Alternatively, for implementations that do
    not support TCP Fast Open, this transport feature could also
    affect the validity of SYN cookies (see Section 3.6 of [RFC4987]).
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer this
    functionality.)
  • Set maximum burst
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because it relates to knowledge about the network, not
    the application.
  • Configure size where messages are broken up for partial delivery
    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation over TCP: not possible.  (TCP does not offer
    identification of message boundaries.)
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not fragment
    messages.)
  • Disable checksum when sending
    Protocols: UDP
    Functional because application-specific knowledge is necessary to
    decide whether it can be acceptable to lose data integrity with
    respect to random corruption.
    Implementation: via SET_CHECKSUM_ENABLED.UDP.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (TCP does not offer to disable
    the checksum, but transmitting data with an intact checksum will
    not yield a semantically wrong result).
  • Disable checksum requirement when receiving
    Protocols: UDP
    Functional because application-specific knowledge is necessary to
    decide whether it can be acceptable to lose data integrity with
    respect to random corruption.
    Implementation: via SET_CHECKSUM_REQUIRED.UDP.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (TCP does not offer to disable
    the checksum, but transmitting data with an intact checksum will
    not yield a semantically wrong result).
  • Specify checksum coverage used by the sender
    Protocols: UDP-Lite
    Functional because application-specific knowledge is necessary to
    decide for which parts of the data it can be acceptable to lose
    data integrity with respect to random corruption.
    Implementation: via SET_CHECKSUM_COVERAGE.UDP-Lite.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (TCP does not offer to limit
    the checksum length, but transmitting data with an intact checksum
    will not yield a semantically wrong result).
    Implementation over UDP: if checksum coverage is set to cover
    payload data, do nothing.  Else, either do nothing (transmitting
    data with an intact checksum will not yield a semantically wrong
    result), or use the transport feature "Disable checksum when
    sending".
  • Specify minimum checksum coverage required by receiver
    Protocols: UDP-Lite
    Functional because application-specific knowledge is necessary to
    decide for which parts of the data it can be acceptable to lose
    data integrity with respect to random corruption.
    Implementation: via SET_MIN_CHECKSUM_COVERAGE.UDP-Lite.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (TCP does not offer to limit
    the checksum length, but transmitting data with an intact checksum
    will not yield a semantically wrong result).
    Implementation over UDP: if checksum coverage is set to cover
    payload data, do nothing.  Else, either do nothing (transmitting
    data with an intact checksum will not yield a semantically wrong
    result), or use the transport feature "Disable checksum
    requirement when receiving".
  • Specify DF field
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Optimizing because the DF field can be used to carry out Path MTU
    Discovery, which can lead an application to choose message sizes
    that can be transmitted more efficiently.
    Implementation: via MAINTENANCE.SET_DF.UDP(-Lite) and
    SEND_FAILURE.UDP(-Lite).
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (with TCP, the sending
    application is not in control of transport message sizes, making
    this functionality irrelevant).
  • Get max. transport-message size that may be sent using a non-

fragmented IP packet from the configured interface

    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Optimizing because this can lead an application to choose message
    sizes that can be transmitted more efficiently.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (this information is not
    available with TCP).
  • Get max. transport-message size that may be received from the

configured interface

    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Optimizing because this can, for example, influence an
    application's memory management.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (this information is not
    available with TCP).
  • Specify TTL/Hop count field
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because a transport system can use a large enough
    system default to avoid communication failures.  Allowing an
    application to configure it differently can produce notifications
    of ICMP error message arrivals that yield information that only
    relates to knowledge about the network, not the application.
  • Obtain TTL/Hop count field
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because the TTL/Hop count field relates to knowledge
    about the network, not the application.
  • Specify ECN field
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because the ECN field relates to knowledge about the
    network, not the application.
  • Obtain ECN field
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Optimizing because this information can be used by an application
    to better carry out congestion control (this is relevant when
    choosing a data transmission Transport Service that does not
    already do congestion control).
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (this information is not
    available with TCP).
  • Specify IP Options
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because IP Options relate to knowledge about the
    network, not the application.
  • Obtain IP Options
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because IP Options relate to knowledge about the
    network, not the application.
  • Enable and configure a "Low Extra Delay Background Transfer"
    Protocols: a protocol implementing the LEDBAT congestion control
    mechanism
    Optimizing because whether this feature is appropriate or not
    depends on application-specific knowledge.  However, wrongly using
    this will only affect the speed of data transfers (albeit
    including other transfers that may compete with the transport
    system's transfer in the network), so it is still correct within
    the "best effort" service model.
    Implementation: via CONFIGURE.LEDBAT and/or SET_DSCP.TCP /
    SET_DSCP.SCTP / SET_DSCP.UDP(-Lite) [RFC8622].
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (TCP does not support LEDBAT
    congestion control, but not implementing this functionality will
    not yield a semantically wrong behavior).
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (UDP does not offer congestion
    control).
 TERMINATION:
  • Close after reliably delivering all remaining data, causing an

event informing the application on the other side

    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because the notion of a connection is often reflected
    in applications as an expectation to have all outstanding data
    delivered and no longer be able to communicate after a "Close"
    succeeded, with a communication sequence relating to this
    transport feature that is defined by the application protocol.
    Implementation: via CLOSE.TCP and CLOSE.SCTP.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP is unreliable and
    hence does not know when all remaining data is delivered; it does
    also not offer to cause an event related to closing at the peer.)
  • Abort without delivering remaining data, causing an event

informing the application on the other side

    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because the notion of a connection is often reflected
    in applications as an expectation to potentially not have all
    outstanding data delivered and no longer be able to communicate
    after an "Abort" succeeded.  On both sides of a connection, an
    application protocol may define a communication sequence relating
    to this transport feature.
    Implementation: via ABORT.TCP and ABORT.SCTP.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer to
    cause an event related to aborting at the peer.)
  • Abort without delivering remaining data, not causing an event

informing the application on the other side

    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Functional because the notion of a connection is often reflected
    in applications as an expectation to potentially not have all
    outstanding data delivered and no longer be able to communicate
    after an "Abort" succeeded.  On both sides of a connection, an
    application protocol may define a communication sequence relating
    to this transport feature.
    Implementation: via ABORT.UDP(-Lite).
    Implementation over TCP: stop using the connection, wait for a
    timeout.
  • Timeout event when data could not be delivered for too long
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because this notifies that potentially assumed reliable
    data delivery is no longer provided.
    Implementation: via TIMEOUT.TCP and TIMEOUT.SCTP.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (this event will not occur
    with UDP).

A.2. DATA-Transfer-Related Transport Features

A.2.1. Sending Data

  • Reliably transfer data, with congestion control
    Protocols: TCP, SCTP
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via SEND.TCP and SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP is unreliable.)
  • Reliably transfer a message, with congestion control
    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: via SEND.TCP.  With SEND.TCP, message
    boundaries will not be identifiable by the receiver, because TCP
    provides a byte-stream service.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP is unreliable.)
  • Unreliably transfer a message
    Protocols: SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Optimizing because only applications know about the time
    criticality of their communication, and reliably transferring a
    message is never incorrect for the receiver of a potentially
    unreliable data transfer, it is just slower.
    CHANGED FROM RFC 8303.  This differs from the 2 automatable
    transport features below in that it leaves the choice of
    congestion control open.
    Implementation: via SEND.SCTP or SEND.UDP(-Lite).
    Implementation over TCP: use SEND.TCP.  With SEND.TCP, messages
    will be sent reliably, and message boundaries will not be
    identifiable by the receiver.
  • Unreliably transfer a message, with congestion control
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because congestion control relates to knowledge about
    the network, not the application.
  • Unreliably transfer a message, without congestion control
    Protocols: UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because congestion control relates to knowledge about
    the network, not the application.
  • Configurable Message Reliability
    Protocols: SCTP
    Optimizing because only applications know about the time
    criticality of their communication, and reliably transferring a
    message is never incorrect for the receiver of a potentially
    unreliable data transfer, it is just slower.
    Implementation: via SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: done by using SEND.TCP and ignoring this
    configuration.  Based on the assumption of the best-effort service
    model, unnecessarily delivering data does not violate application
    expectations.  Moreover, it is not possible to associate the
    requested reliability to a "message" in TCP anyway.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP is unreliable.)
  • Choice of stream
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because it requires using multiple streams, but
    requesting multiple streams in the CONNECTION.ESTABLISHMENT
    category is automatable.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Choice of path (destination address)
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because it requires using multiple sockets, but
    obtaining multiple sockets in the CONNECTION.ESTABLISHMENT
    category is automatable.
  • Ordered message delivery (potentially slower than unordered)
    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: done by using SEND.TCP.  With SEND.TCP,
    messages will not be identifiable by the receiver.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer any
    guarantees regarding ordering.)
  • Unordered message delivery (potentially faster than ordered)
    Protocols: SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: done by using SEND.TCP and always sending
    data ordered.  Based on the assumption of the best-effort service
    model, ordered delivery may just be slower and does not violate
    application expectations.  Moreover, it is not possible to
    associate the requested delivery order to a "message" in TCP
    anyway.
  • Request not to bundle messages
    Protocols: SCTP
    Optimizing because this decision depends on knowledge about the
    size of future data blocks and the delay between them.
    Implementation: via SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: done by using SEND.TCP and
    DISABLE_NAGLE.TCP to disable the Nagle algorithm when the request
    is made and enable it again when the request is no longer made.
    Note that this is not fully equivalent because it relates to the
    time of issuing the request rather than a specific message.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (UDP never bundles messages).
  • Specifying a "payload protocol-id" (handed over as such by the

receiver)

    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because it allows sending extra application data with
    every message, for the sake of identification of data, which by
    itself is application specific.
    Implementation: SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: not possible.  (This functionality is not
    available in TCP.)
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (This functionality is not
    available in UDP.)
  • Specifying a key id to be used to authenticate a message
    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because this has a direct influence on security.
    Implementation: via a parameter in SEND.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: this could be emulated by using
    SET_AUTH.TCP before and after the message is sent.  Note that this
    is not fully equivalent because it relates to the time of issuing
    the request rather than a specific message.
    Implementation over UDP: not possible.  (UDP does not offer
    authentication.)
  • Request not to delay the acknowledgement (SACK) of a message
    Protocols: SCTP
    Optimizing because only an application knows for which message it
    wants to quickly be informed about success/failure of its
    delivery.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (TCP does not offer this
    functionality, but ignoring this request from the application will
    not yield a semantically wrong behavior).
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (UDP does not offer this
    functionality, but ignoring this request from the application will
    not yield a semantically wrong behavior).

A.2.2. Receiving Data

  • Receive data (with no message delimiting)
    Protocols: TCP
    Functional because a transport system must be able to send and
    receive data.
    Implementation: via RECEIVE.TCP.
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (UDP only works on messages;
    these can be handed over, the application can still ignore the
    message boundaries).
  • Receive a message
    Protocols: SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via RECEIVE.SCTP and RECEIVE.UDP(-Lite).
    Implementation over TCP: not possible.  (TCP does not support
    identification of message boundaries.)
  • Choice of stream to receive from
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because it requires using multiple streams, but
    requesting multiple streams in the CONNECTION.ESTABLISHMENT
    category is automatable.
    Implementation: see Section 5.2.
  • Information about partial message arrival
    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation: via RECEIVE.SCTP.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (this information is not
    available with TCP).
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (this information is not
    available with UDP).

A.2.3. Errors

 This section describes sending failures that are associated with a
 specific call to in the "Sending Data" category (Appendix A.2.1).
  • Notification of send failures
    Protocols: SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Functional because this notifies that potentially assumed reliable
    data delivery is no longer provided.
    CHANGED FROM RFC 8303.  This differs from the 2 automatable
    transport features below in that it does not distinguish between
    unsent and unacknowledged messages.
    Implementation: via SENDFAILURE-EVENT.SCTP and SEND_FAILURE.UDP(-
    Lite).
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (this notification is not
    available and will therefore not occur with TCP).
  • Notification of an unsent (part of a) message
    Protocols: SCTP, UDP(-Lite)
    Automatable because the distinction between unsent and
    unacknowledged does not relate to application-specific knowledge.
  • Notification of an unacknowledged (part of a) message
    Protocols: SCTP
    Automatable because the distinction between unsent and
    unacknowledged does not relate to application-specific knowledge.
  • Notification that the stack has no more user data to send
    Protocols: SCTP
    Optimizing because reacting to this notification requires the
    application to be involved, and ensuring that the stack does not
    run dry of data (for too long) can improve performance.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (see the discussion in
    Section 5.4).
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (this notification is not
    available and will therefore not occur with UDP).
  • Notification to a receiver that a partial message delivery has

been aborted

    Protocols: SCTP
    Functional because this is closely tied to properties of the data
    that an application sends or expects to receive.
    Implementation over TCP: do nothing (this notification is not
    available and will therefore not occur with TCP).
    Implementation over UDP: do nothing (this notification is not
    available and will therefore not occur with UDP).

Acknowledgements

 The authors would like to thank all the participants of the TAPS
 Working Group and the NEAT and MAMI research projects for valuable
 input to this document.  We especially thank Michael Tüxen for help
 with connection establishment/teardown, Gorry Fairhurst for his
 suggestions regarding fragmentation and packet sizes, and Spencer
 Dawkins for his extremely detailed and constructive review.  This
 work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020
 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 644334
 (NEAT).

Authors' Addresses

 Michael Welzl
 University of Oslo
 PO Box 1080 Blindern
 N-0316 Oslo
 Norway
 Phone: +47 22 85 24 20
 Email: michawe@ifi.uio.no
 Stein Gjessing
 University of Oslo
 PO Box 1080 Blindern
 N-0316 Oslo
 Norway
 Phone: +47 22 85 24 44
 Email: steing@ifi.uio.no
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