WG Action: TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions (tcpm)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Transport Area.  For additional information, 
please contact the Area Directors or the WG Chairs.

TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions (tcpm)
------------------------------------------

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s):
Ted Faber <[e-mail]>
Mark Allman <[e-mail]>

Transport Area Director(s):
Allison Mankin <[e-mail]>
Jon Peterson <[e-mail]>

Transport Area Advisor:
Jon Peterson <[e-mail]>

Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: [e-mail]
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Archive: ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf-mail-archive/tcpm/

Description of Working Group:

TCP is currently the Internet's predominant transport protocol.
To maintain TCP's utility the IETF has regularly updated both
the protocol itself and the congestion control algorithms
implemented by the protocol that are crucial for the stability
of the Internet. These changes reflect our evolving
understanding of transport protocols, congestion control and new
needs presented by an ever-changing network. The TCPM WG will
provide a venue within the IETF to work on these issues. The WG
will serve several purposes:

    * The WG will mostly focus on maintenance issues (e.g., bug
      fixes) and modest changes to the protocol and algorithms
      that maintain TCP's utility.
    * The WG will be a venue for moving current TCP specifications
      along the standards track (as community energy is available
      for such efforts).

    * The WG will write a document that outlines "what is TCP".
      This document will be a roadmap of sorts to the various TCP
      specifications in the RFC series.

TCPM will take a subset of the work which has been conducted in
the Transport Area WG over the past several years.
Specifically, some of the WG's initial work will be moved from
the Transport Area WG (tsvwg).

TCPM is expected to be the working group within the IETF to
handle TCP changes. Proposals for additional TCP work items
should be brought up within the working group. While
fundamental changes to TCP or its congestion control algorithms
(e.g., departure from loss-based congestion control) should be      
brought through TCPM, it is expected that such large changes
will ultimately be handled by the Transport Area WG (tsvwg).
All additional work items for TCPM will, naturally, require the
approval of the Transport Services Area Area Directors and the IESG. 

TCP's congestion control algorithms are the model followed by
alternate transports (e.g., SCTP and (in some cases) DCCP). In
addition, the IETF has recently worked on several documents
about algorithms that are specified for multiple protocols
(e.g., TCP and SCTP) in the same document. Which WG shepherds
such documents in the future will determined on a case-by-case
basis. In any case, the TCPM WG will remain in close contact
with other relevant WGs working on these protocols to ensure
openness and stringent review from all angles.

Specific Goals:

    * A revision of RFC 1323 based on experience and evaluation.
      Depending on the conclusions of the WG and the nature of the
      updates this document could be a candidate for Draft Standard.
      A current Internet-Draft has been submitted to start this
      process (draft-jacobson-tsvwg-1323bis-00.txt).

    * A "roadmap" for TCP. The protocol and associated algorithms
      have become spread out throughout the RFC series. This WG will
      issue a document that catalogs all the various TCP
      specifications and informational documents in the RFC series in
      a single location. An initial discussion (and strawman start at
      a list of such RFCs) has been conducted on the end2end interest
      list.

    * While there is no consensus on exactly how to deal with spurious
      retransmits (caused by bad RTO estimates or packet reordering)
      there are several proposals that will be fleshed out in this WG
      and likely issued as experimental documents. The current set of
      proposals is:

                draft-sarolahti-tsvwg-tcp-frto-03.txt
                draft-blanton-tcp-reordering-00.txt 
                draft-bhandarkar-tcp-dcr-00.txt

Goals and Milestones:

 Mar 04 Submit FRTO draft to IESG for publication as an Experimental RFC 
 Mar 04 Submit Reordering Mitigation draft to IESG for publication as an Experimental RFC 
 May 04 Submit DCR draft to IESG for publication as an Experimental RFC 
 May 04 Submit TCP Roadmap document to IESG for publication as a Best Current Practices RFC 
 May 04 Develop (providing editors are available) milestones for advancement to Draft Standard 
	of identified important TCP specs (e.g. RFC 2018, 2581, 2988...) 
 Jun 04 Submit a revision of RFC 1323 to the IESG for publication as a Proposed or Draft 
	Standard (depending on the nature of the changes to the document)