[Tsvwg] proposed TCPM charter

[Mark Allman <[e-mail]>]

 
Hi folks!  Happy New Year!

As discussed in the tsvwg meeting in Minneapolis several folks have been
chatting about starting a new WG to focus on TCP modifications and minor
changes.  This is mostly an effort to offload work from tsvwg and to
sharpen the focus on that work.  Ted Faber and I have worked with the
TSV ADs to come up with a possible charter that is attached to this
message.  We'd love to hear any feedback folk might have on how to make
the charter better.

Thanks!

allman


---
TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions (TCPM) Working Group

Description:

    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).

    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

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).


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