Re: TCPMUX (RFC 1078) status

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

On 8/15/2013 10:19 PM, Martin Sustrik wrote:
> On 15/08/13 22:18, Joe Touch wrote:
>
>>>> Does anyone have any idea how widely is TCPMUX (RFC 1078) protocol
>>>> used?
>>>> Is it the case that there are inetd daemons in TCPMUX mode running
>>>> everywhere, or can it be rather considered a dead protocol?
>>>>
>>>> Specifically, if I implement a new TCPMUX daemon how likely I am to
>>>> clash with an existing TCPMUX daemon listening on port 1?
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It's in the FreeBSD inetd, among others, but to to my
>>> knowledge, nobody actually turns it on. There are
>>> probably security issues.
>>
>> There are semantics issues to; see draft-touch-tcp-portnames-00 for
>> information (this is being revised for resubmission shortly, FWIW).
>
> Nice, however, it requires changes to TCP stack, so even if it succeeds
> it won't be a practical option for at least few years to come.

There have been other stack changes that have been deployed fairly quickly.

However, that's not relevant to the reason I cited the doc; the doc has 
a discussion of TCPMUX and its problems.

Joe