[tcpm] Extending TCP option space

[Pasi Sarolahti <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

TCP's option space has been under increasing demand recently, with new option-space hungry extensions such as MPTCP, and some recent ideas in the research domain. In the past there have been some discussion about mechanisms to extend the option space, and an extension option was proposed in draft-eddy-tcp-loo, but since then these efforts have died down. I'm wondering if there would be any interest in the tcpm community to resume this work.

I recall that re-segmenting middleboxes were mentioned as one potential problem for such extension, and there might be other problems. Nevertheless, I would find it useful, if there was an RFC that a) documented the known problems with option space extension; and b) defined an option format and assigned the needed type codes, to enable experimentations with larger than 40-byte option space.

Thoughts?

- Pasi