WG Action: Rechartered TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions (tcpm)

The TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions (tcpm) working group in the
Transport Area of the IETF has been rechartered. For additional
information please contact the Area Directors or the WG Chairs.

TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions (tcpm)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Active WG

Chairs:
  Michael Scharf <michael.scharf@alcatel-lucent.com>
  Yoshifumi Nishida <nishida@sfc.wide.ad.jp>
  Pasi Sarolahti <pasi.sarolahti@iki.fi>

Assigned Area Director:
  Martin Stiemerling <mls.ietf@gmail.com>

Mailing list
  Address: tcpm@ietf.org
  To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tcpm
  Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tcpm/

Charter:

TCP is currently the Internet's predominant transport protocol. TCPM
is the working group within the IETF that handles small TCP changes,
i.e., minor extensions to TCP algorithms and protocol mechanisms.
The TCPM WG serves several purposes: 

* The WG mostly focuses on maintenance issues (e.g., bug fixes) and
modest changes to the protocol, algorithms, and interfaces that
maintain TCP's utility.

* The WG is a venue for moving current TCP specifications along the
standards track (as community energy is available for such efforts). 

* The focus of the working group is TCP. In cases where small
changes are directly applicable to other transports (e.g., SCTP or
DCCP), the mappings to other transports may be specified alongside
that for TCP, but other significant additions and changes to other
transports are not in scope.

TCPM also provides a venue for standardization of incremental
enhancements of TCP's standard congestion control. In addition,
TCPM may document alternative TCP congestion control algorithms
that are known to be widely deployed, and that are considered
safe for large-scale deployment in the Internet. Changes of algorithms
may require additional review by the IRTF Congestion Control
Research Group (ICCRG). Fundamental changes to TCP or its congestion
control algorithms (e.g., departure from loss-based congestion
control) will be handled by other working groups or will require
rechartering.

TCP's congestion control algorithms are the model followed by
alternate transports (e.g., SCTP or DCCP), which are standardized in
other working groups, such as the Transport Area WG (tsvwg). In the
past, the IETF has 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 will be 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.

New TCPM milestones that fall within the scope specified within the
charter can be added after consensus on acceptance in the working
group and approval by the responsible Area Director.

Milestones:
  Aug 2013 - Submit document on restarting the RTO timer to the IESG for
publication as an Experimental RFC
  Nov 2013 - Submit document on TCP support for rate-limited traffic for
publication (status decided as earlier milestone)
  Nov 2013 - Submit document on an analysis of more detailed ECN feedback
in TCP to the IESG for publication as an Informational RFC
  Mar 2014 - Submit revision of TCP roadmap (RFC 4614) to the IESG for
publication as an Informational RFC
  Mar 2015 - Submit document obsoleting undeployed TCP extensions to the
IESG for publication as an Informational RFC
  Aug 2015 - Submit document on a TCP Extended Data Offset Option to the
IESG as a Proposed Standard RFC