Re: [tcpm] I-D Action: draft-ietf-tcpm-1323bis-13.txt

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

On 5/27/2013 3:19 AM, Pasi Sarolahti wrote:
...
> MUST drop all (non-RST) segments without timestamp seems indeed
> In the worst case this might discourage enabling timestamps at all,
> if an implementation wants to be safe against middleboxes as
> described.

We've gone through this multiple times for different issues on this 
mailing list, and have addressed it in the context of this ID in detail.

RST is the *only* way TCP cleans up old connection state. TCP doesn't 
keep things tidy; it cleans up state only when it gets in the way of a 
new connection.

RSTs that happen after a reboot won't necessarily have any state from 
the previous connection. ANY requirement about those RSTs *will* 
interfere with TCP state cleanup, and hosts could end up with the net 
effect of a "memory leak" for all connections that are interrupted by a 
reboot.

That's why RSTs MUST NEVER require anything - even, IMO, a handshake (as 
per RFC 5691).

Joe