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Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc793bis-28

The information below is for an old version of the document that is already published as an RFC.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9293.
Author Wesley Eddy
Last updated 2022-08-18 (Latest revision 2022-03-07)
Replaces draft-eddy-rfc793bis
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Intended RFC status Internet Standard
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GENART Last Call review (of -24) by Francis Dupont Partially completed Ready w/nits
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state Submitted to IESG for Publication
Document shepherd Michael Scharf
Shepherd write-up Show Last changed 2021-06-11
IESG IESG state Became RFC 9293 (Internet Standard)
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Consensus boilerplate Yes
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD Martin Duke
Send notices to Michael Scharf <michael.scharf@hs-esslingen.de>
IANA IANA review state Version Changed - Review Needed
IANA action state RFC-Ed-Ack
draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc793bis-28
Internet Engineering Task Force                             W. Eddy, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                               MTI Systems
Obsoletes: 793, 879, 2873, 6093, 6429, 6528,                7 March 2022
           6691 (if approved)                                           
Updates: 5961, 1011, 1122 (if approved)                                 
Intended status: Standards Track                                        
Expires: 8 September 2022

           Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Specification
                      draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc793bis-28

Abstract

   This document specifies the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).  TCP
   is an important transport layer protocol in the Internet protocol
   stack, and has continuously evolved over decades of use and growth of
   the Internet.  Over this time, a number of changes have been made to
   TCP as it was specified in RFC 793, though these have only been
   documented in a piecemeal fashion.  This document collects and brings
   those changes together with the protocol specification from RFC 793.
   This document obsoletes RFC 793, as well as RFCs 879, 2873, 6093,
   6429, 6528, and 6691 that updated parts of RFC 793.  It updates RFCs
   1011 and 1122, and should be considered as a replacement for the
   portions of those document dealing with TCP requirements.  It also
   updates RFC 5961 by adding a small clarification in reset handling
   while in the SYN-RECEIVED state.  The TCP header control bits from
   RFC 793 have also been updated based on RFC 3168.

   RFC EDITOR NOTE: If approved for publication as an RFC, this should
   be marked additionally as "STD: 7" and replace RFC 793 in that role.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 8 September 2022.

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Table of Contents

   1.  Purpose and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.2.  Key TCP Concepts  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   3.  Functional Specification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.1.  Header Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.2.  Specific Option Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
       3.2.1.  Other Common Options  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
       3.2.2.  Experimental TCP Options  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     3.3.  TCP Terminology Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
       3.3.1.  Key Connection State Variables  . . . . . . . . . . .  13
       3.3.2.  State Machine Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     3.4.  Sequence Numbers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
       3.4.1.  Initial Sequence Number Selection . . . . . . . . . .  21
       3.4.2.  Knowing When to Keep Quiet  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
       3.4.3.  The TCP Quiet Time Concept  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
     3.5.  Establishing a connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
       3.5.1.  Half-Open Connections and Other Anomalies . . . . . .  28
       3.5.2.  Reset Generation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
       3.5.3.  Reset Processing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32

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     3.6.  Closing a Connection  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
       3.6.1.  Half-Closed Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
     3.7.  Segmentation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
       3.7.1.  Maximum Segment Size Option . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
       3.7.2.  Path MTU Discovery  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38
       3.7.3.  Interfaces with Variable MTU Values . . . . . . . . .  39
       3.7.4.  Nagle Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
       3.7.5.  IPv6 Jumbograms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
     3.8.  Data Communication  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
       3.8.1.  Retransmission Timeout  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  41
       3.8.2.  TCP Congestion Control  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  41
       3.8.3.  TCP Connection Failures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
       3.8.4.  TCP Keep-Alives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43
       3.8.5.  The Communication of Urgent Information . . . . . . .  44
       3.8.6.  Managing the Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45
     3.9.  Interfaces  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  50
       3.9.1.  User/TCP Interface  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  50
       3.9.2.  TCP/Lower-Level Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  59
     3.10. Event Processing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  61
       3.10.1.  OPEN Call  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  63
       3.10.2.  SEND Call  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  64
       3.10.3.  RECEIVE Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  65
       3.10.4.  CLOSE Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  67
       3.10.5.  ABORT Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  68
       3.10.6.  STATUS Call  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  69
       3.10.7.  SEGMENT ARRIVES  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  70
       3.10.8.  Timeouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  84
   4.  Glossary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  84
   5.  Changes from RFC 793  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  89
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  96
   7.  Security and Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . .  97
   8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  99
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
   Appendix A.  Other Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
     A.1.  IP Security Compartment and Precedence  . . . . . . . . . 108
       A.1.1.  Precedence  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
       A.1.2.  MLS Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
     A.2.  Sequence Number Validation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
     A.3.  Nagle Modification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
     A.4.  Low Watermark Settings  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
   Appendix B.  TCP Requirement Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

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1.  Purpose and Scope

   In 1981, RFC 793 [16] was released, documenting the Transmission
   Control Protocol (TCP), and replacing earlier specifications for TCP
   that had been published in the past.

   Since then, TCP has been widely implemented, and has been used as a
   transport protocol for numerous applications on the Internet.

   For several decades, RFC 793 plus a number of other documents have
   combined to serve as the core specification for TCP [50].  Over time,
   a number of errata have been filed against RFC 793.  There have also
   been deficiencies found and resolved in security, performance, and
   many other aspects.  The number of enhancements has grown over time
   across many separate documents.  These were never accumulated
   together into a comprehensive update to the base specification.

   The purpose of this document is to bring together all of the IETF
   Standards Track changes and other clarifications that have been made
   to the base TCP functional specification and unify them into an
   updated version of RFC 793.

   Some companion documents are referenced for important algorithms that
   are used by TCP (e.g. for congestion control), but have not been
   completely included in this document.  This is a conscious choice, as
   this base specification can be used with multiple additional
   algorithms that are developed and incorporated separately.  This
   document focuses on the common basis all TCP implementations must
   support in order to interoperate.  Since some additional TCP features
   have become quite complicated themselves (e.g. advanced loss recovery
   and congestion control), future companion documents may attempt to
   similarly bring these together.

   In addition to the protocol specification that describes the TCP
   segment format, generation, and processing rules that are to be
   implemented in code, RFC 793 and other updates also contain
   informative and descriptive text for readers to understand aspects of
   the protocol design and operation.  This document does not attempt to
   alter or update this informative text, and is focused only on
   updating the normative protocol specification.  This document
   preserves references to the documentation containing the important
   explanations and rationale, where appropriate.

   This document is intended to be useful both in checking existing TCP
   implementations for conformance purposes, as well as in writing new
   implementations.

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2.  Introduction

   RFC 793 contains a discussion of the TCP design goals and provides
   examples of its operation, including examples of connection
   establishment, connection termination, and packet retransmission to
   repair losses.

   This document describes the basic functionality expected in modern
   TCP implementations, and replaces the protocol specification in RFC
   793.  It does not replicate or attempt to update the introduction and
   philosophy content in Sections 1 and 2 of RFC 793.  Other documents
   are referenced to provide explanation of the theory of operation,
   rationale, and detailed discussion of design decisions.  This
   document only focuses on the normative behavior of the protocol.

   The "TCP Roadmap" [50] provides a more extensive guide to the RFCs
   that define TCP and describe various important algorithms.  The TCP
   Roadmap contains sections on strongly encouraged enhancements that
   improve performance and other aspects of TCP beyond the basic
   operation specified in this document.  As one example, implementing
   congestion control (e.g. [8]) is a TCP requirement, but is a complex
   topic on its own, and not described in detail in this document, as
   there are many options and possibilities that do not impact basic
   interoperability.  Similarly, most TCP implementations today include
   the high-performance extensions in [48], but these are not strictly
   required or discussed in this document.  Multipath considerations for
   TCP are also specified separately in [59].

   A list of changes from RFC 793 is contained in Section 5.

2.1.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [3][12] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown
   here.

   Each use of RFC 2119 keywords in the document is individually labeled
   and referenced in Appendix B that summarizes implementation
   requirements.

   Sentences using "MUST" are labeled as "MUST-X" with X being a numeric
   identifier enabling the requirement to be located easily when
   referenced from Appendix B.

   Similarly, sentences using "SHOULD" are labeled with "SHLD-X", "MAY"
   with "MAY-X", and "RECOMMENDED" with "REC-X".

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   For the purposes of this labeling, "SHOULD NOT" and "MUST NOT" are
   labeled the same as "SHOULD" and "MUST" instances.

2.2.  Key TCP Concepts

   TCP provides a reliable, in-order, byte-stream service to
   applications.

   The application byte-stream is conveyed over the network via TCP
   segments, with each TCP segment sent as an Internet Protocol (IP)
   datagram.

   TCP reliability consists of detecting packet losses (via sequence
   numbers) and errors (via per-segment checksums), as well as
   correction via retransmission.

   TCP supports unicast delivery of data.  Anycast applications exist
   that successfully use TCP without modifications, though there is some
   risk of instability due to changes of lower-layer forwarding behavior
   [47].

   TCP is connection-oriented, though does not inherently include a
   liveness detection capability.

   Data flow is supported bidirectionally over TCP connections, though
   applications are free to send data only unidirectionally, if they so
   choose.

   TCP uses port numbers to identify application services and to
   multiplex distinct flows between hosts.

   A more detailed description of TCP features compared to other
   transport protocols can be found in Section 3.1 of [53].  Further
   description of the motivations for developing TCP and its role in the
   Internet protocol stack can be found in Section 2 of [16] and earlier
   versions of the TCP specification.

3.  Functional Specification

3.1.  Header Format

   TCP segments are sent as internet datagrams.  The Internet Protocol
   (IP) header carries several information fields, including the source
   and destination host addresses [1] [13].  A TCP header follows the IP
   headers, supplying information specific to the TCP protocol.  This
   division allows for the existence of host level protocols other than
   TCP.  In early development of the Internet suite of protocols, the IP
   header fields had been a part of TCP.

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   This document describes the TCP protocol.  The TCP protocol uses TCP
   Headers.

   A TCP Header, followed by any user data in the segment, is formatted
   as follows, using the style from [67]:

       0                   1                   2                   3
       0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |          Source Port          |       Destination Port        |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |                        Sequence Number                        |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |                    Acknowledgment Number                      |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |  Data |       |C|E|U|A|P|R|S|F|                               |
      | Offset| Rsrvd |W|C|R|C|S|S|Y|I|            Window             |
      |       |       |R|E|G|K|H|T|N|N|                               |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |           Checksum            |         Urgent Pointer        |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |                           [Options]                           |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |                                                               :
      :                             Data                              :
      :                                                               |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

             Note that one tick mark represents one bit position.

                        Figure 1: TCP Header Format

   where:

   Source Port: 16 bits.
     The source port number.

   Destination Port: 16 bits.
     The destination port number.

   Sequence Number: 32 bits.
     The sequence number of the first data octet in this segment (except
     when the SYN flag is set).  If SYN is set the sequence number is
     the initial sequence number (ISN) and the first data octet is
     ISN+1.

   Acknowledgment Number: 32 bits.

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     If the ACK control bit is set, this field contains the value of the
     next sequence number the sender of the segment is expecting to
     receive.  Once a connection is established, this is always sent.

   Data Offset (DOffset): 4 bits.
     The number of 32 bit words in the TCP Header.  This indicates where
     the data begins.  The TCP header (even one including options) is an
     integer multiple of 32 bits long.

   Reserved (Rsrvd): 4 bits.
     A set of control bits reserved for future use.  Must be zero in
     generated segments and must be ignored in received segments, if
     corresponding future features are unimplemented by the sending or
     receiving host.

 
     The control bits are also known as "flags".  Assignment is managed
     by IANA from the "TCP Header Flags" registry [63].  The currently
     assigned control bits are CWR, ECE, URG, ACK, PSH, RST, SYN, and
     FIN.

   CWR: 1 bit.
     Congestion Window Reduced (see [6]).

   ECE: 1 bit.
     ECN-Echo (see [6]).

   URG: 1 bit.
     Urgent Pointer field is significant.

   ACK: 1 bit.
     Acknowledgment field is significant.

   PSH: 1 bit.
     Push Function (see the Send Call description in Section 3.9.1).

   RST: 1 bit.
     Reset the connection.

   SYN: 1 bit.
     Synchronize sequence numbers.

   FIN: 1 bit.
     No more data from sender.

   Window: 16 bits.

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     The number of data octets beginning with the one indicated in the
     acknowledgment field that the sender of this segment is willing to
     accept.  The value is shifted when the Window Scaling extension is
     used [48].

     The window size MUST be treated as an unsigned number, or else
     large window sizes will appear like negative windows and TCP will
     not work (MUST-1).  It is RECOMMENDED that implementations will
     reserve 32-bit fields for the send and receive window sizes in the
     connection record and do all window computations with 32 bits (REC-
     1).

   Checksum: 16 bits.
     The checksum field is the 16 bit ones' complement of the ones'
     complement sum of all 16 bit words in the header and text.  The
     checksum computation needs to ensure the 16-bit alignment of the
     data being summed.  If a segment contains an odd number of header
     and text octets, alignment can be achieved by padding the last
     octet with zeros on its right to form a 16 bit word for checksum
     purposes.  The pad is not transmitted as part of the segment.
     While computing the checksum, the checksum field itself is replaced
     with zeros.

 
     The checksum also covers a pseudo header (Figure 2) conceptually
     prefixed to the TCP header.  The pseudo header is 96 bits for IPv4
     and 320 bits for IPv6.  Including the pseudo header in the checksum
     gives the TCP connection protection against misrouted segments.
     This information is carried in IP headers and is transferred across
     the TCP/Network interface in the arguments or results of calls by
     the TCP implementation on the IP layer.

                     +--------+--------+--------+--------+
                     |           Source Address          |
                     +--------+--------+--------+--------+
                     |         Destination Address       |
                     +--------+--------+--------+--------+
                     |  zero  |  PTCL  |    TCP Length   |
                     +--------+--------+--------+--------+

                         Figure 2: IPv4 Pseudo Header

     Pseudo header components for IPv4:
          Source Address: the IPv4 source address in network byte order

          Destination Address: the IPv4 destination address in network
          byte order

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          zero: bits set to zero

          PTCL: the protocol number from the IP header

          TCP Length: the TCP header length plus the data length in
          octets (this is not an explicitly transmitted quantity, but is
          computed), and it does not count the 12 octets of the pseudo
          header.

 
       For IPv6, the pseudo header is defined in Section 8.1 of RFC 8200
       [13], and contains the IPv6 Source Address and Destination
       Address, an Upper Layer Packet Length (a 32-bit value otherwise
       equivalent to TCP Length in the IPv4 pseudo header), three bytes
       of zero-padding, and a Next Header value (differing from the IPv6
       header value in the case of extension headers present in between
       IPv6 and TCP).

 
       The TCP checksum is never optional.  The sender MUST generate it
       (MUST-2) and the receiver MUST check it (MUST-3).

   Urgent Pointer: 16 bits.
     This field communicates the current value of the urgent pointer as
     a positive offset from the sequence number in this segment.  The
     urgent pointer points to the sequence number of the octet following
     the urgent data.  This field is only to be interpreted in segments
     with the URG control bit set.

   Options: [TCP Option]; size(Options) == (DOffset-5)*32; present
   only when DOffset > 5.  Note that this size expression also
   includes any padding trailing the actual options present.
     Options may occupy space at the end of the TCP header and are a
     multiple of 8 bits in length.  All options are included in the
     checksum.  An option may begin on any octet boundary.  There are
     two cases for the format of an option:

        Case 1: A single octet of option-kind.

        Case 2: An octet of option-kind (Kind), an octet of option-
        length, and the actual option-data octets.

 
     The option-length counts the two octets of option-kind and option-
     length as well as the option-data octets.

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     Note that the list of options may be shorter than the data offset
     field might imply.  The content of the header beyond the End-of-
     Option option MUST be header padding of zeros (MUST-69).

 
     The list of all currently defined options is managed by IANA [62],
     and each option is defined in other RFCs, as indicated there.  That
     set includes experimental options that can be extended to support
     multiple concurrent usages [46].

 
     A given TCP implementation can support any currently defined
     options, but the following options MUST be supported (MUST-4 - note
     Maximum Segment Size option support is also part of MUST-19 in
     Section 3.7.2):

 
           Kind     Length    Meaning
           ----     ------    -------
            0         -       End of option list.
            1         -       No-Operation.
            2         4       Maximum Segment Size.

 
     These options are specified in detail in Section 3.2.

     A TCP implementation MUST be able to receive a TCP option in any
     segment (MUST-5).

     A TCP implementation MUST (MUST-6) ignore without error any TCP
     option it does not implement, assuming that the option has a length
     field.  All TCP options except End of option list and No-Operation
     MUST have length fields, including all future options (MUST-68).
     TCP implementations MUST be prepared to handle an illegal option
     length (e.g., zero); a suggested procedure is to reset the
     connection and log the error cause (MUST-7).

 
     Note: There is ongoing work to extend the space available for TCP
     options, such as [66].

   Data: variable length.
     User data carried by the TCP segment.

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3.2.  Specific Option Definitions

   A TCP Option, in the mandatory option set, is one of: an End of
   Option List Option, a No-Operation Option, or a Maximum Segment Size
   Option.

   An End of Option List Option is formatted as follows:

       0
       0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |       0       |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   where:

   Kind: 1 byte; Kind == 0.
     This option code indicates the end of the option list.  This might
     not coincide with the end of the TCP header according to the Data
     Offset field.  This is used at the end of all options, not the end
     of each option, and need only be used if the end of the options
     would not otherwise coincide with the end of the TCP header.

   A No-Operation Option is formatted as follows:

       0
       0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |       1       |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   where:

   Kind: 1 byte; Kind == 1.
     This option code can be used between options, for example, to align
     the beginning of a subsequent option on a word boundary.  There is
     no guarantee that senders will use this option, so receivers MUST
     be prepared to process options even if they do not begin on a word
     boundary (MUST-64).

   A Maximum Segment Size Option is formatted as follows:

       0                   1                   2                   3
       0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |       2       |     Length    |   Maximum Segment Size (MSS)  |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

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   where:

   Kind: 1 byte; Kind == 2.
     If this option is present, then it communicates the maximum receive
     segment size at the TCP endpoint that sends this segment.  This
     value is limited by the IP reassembly limit.  This field may be
     sent in the initial connection request (i.e., in segments with the
     SYN control bit set) and MUST NOT be sent in other segments (MUST-
     65).  If this option is not used, any segment size is allowed.  A
     more complete description of this option is provided in
     Section 3.7.1.

   Length: 1 byte; Length == 4.
     Length of the option in bytes.

   Maximum Segment Size (MSS): 2 bytes.
     The maximum receive segment size at the TCP endpoint that sends
     this segment.

3.2.1.  Other Common Options

   Additional RFCs define some other commonly used options that are
   recommended to implement for high performance, but not necessary for
   basic TCP interoperability.  These are the TCP Selective
   Acknowledgement (SACK) option [23][27], TCP Timestamp (TS) option
   [48], and TCP Window Scaling (WS) option [48].

3.2.2.  Experimental TCP Options

   Experimental TCP option values are defined in [31], and [46]
   describes the current recommended usage for these experimental
   values.

3.3.  TCP Terminology Overview

   This section includes an overview of key terms needed to understand
   the detailed protocol operation in the rest of the document.  There
   is a glossary of terms in Section 4.

3.3.1.  Key Connection State Variables

   Before we can discuss very much about the operation of the TCP
   implementation we need to introduce some detailed terminology.  The
   maintenance of a TCP connection requires maintaining state for
   several variables.  We conceive of these variables being stored in a
   connection record called a Transmission Control Block or TCB.  Among
   the variables stored in the TCB are the local and remote IP addresses
   and port numbers, the IP security level and compartment of the

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   connection (see Appendix A.1), pointers to the user's send and
   receive buffers, pointers to the retransmit queue and to the current
   segment.  In addition, several variables relating to the send and
   receive sequence numbers are stored in the TCB.

       Send Sequence Variables:

         SND.UNA - send unacknowledged
         SND.NXT - send next
         SND.WND - send window
         SND.UP  - send urgent pointer
         SND.WL1 - segment sequence number used for last window update
         SND.WL2 - segment acknowledgment number used for last window
                   update
         ISS     - initial send sequence number

       Receive Sequence Variables:

         RCV.NXT - receive next
         RCV.WND - receive window
         RCV.UP  - receive urgent pointer
         IRS     - initial receive sequence number

   The following diagrams may help to relate some of these variables to
   the sequence space.

                      1         2          3          4
                 ----------|----------|----------|----------
                        SND.UNA    SND.NXT    SND.UNA
                                             +SND.WND

           1 - old sequence numbers that have been acknowledged
           2 - sequence numbers of unacknowledged data
           3 - sequence numbers allowed for new data transmission
           4 - future sequence numbers that are not yet allowed

                       Figure 3: Send Sequence Space

   The send window is the portion of the sequence space labeled 3 in
   Figure 3.

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                          1          2          3
                      ----------|----------|----------
                             RCV.NXT    RCV.NXT
                                       +RCV.WND

           1 - old sequence numbers that have been acknowledged
           2 - sequence numbers allowed for new reception
           3 - future sequence numbers that are not yet allowed

                      Figure 4: Receive Sequence Space

   The receive window is the portion of the sequence space labeled 2 in
   Figure 4.

   There are also some variables used frequently in the discussion that
   take their values from the fields of the current segment.

   Current Segment Variables:

       SEG.SEQ - segment sequence number
       SEG.ACK - segment acknowledgment number
       SEG.LEN - segment length
       SEG.WND - segment window
       SEG.UP  - segment urgent pointer

3.3.2.  State Machine Overview

   A connection progresses through a series of states during its
   lifetime.  The states are: LISTEN, SYN-SENT, SYN-RECEIVED,
   ESTABLISHED, FIN-WAIT-1, FIN-WAIT-2, CLOSE-WAIT, CLOSING, LAST-ACK,
   TIME-WAIT, and the fictional state CLOSED.  CLOSED is fictional
   because it represents the state when there is no TCB, and therefore,
   no connection.  Briefly the meanings of the states are:

      LISTEN - represents waiting for a connection request from any
      remote TCP peer and port.

      SYN-SENT - represents waiting for a matching connection request
      after having sent a connection request.

      SYN-RECEIVED - represents waiting for a confirming connection
      request acknowledgment after having both received and sent a
      connection request.

      ESTABLISHED - represents an open connection, data received can be
      delivered to the user.  The normal state for the data transfer
      phase of the connection.

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      FIN-WAIT-1 - represents waiting for a connection termination
      request from the remote TCP peer, or an acknowledgment of the
      connection termination request previously sent.

      FIN-WAIT-2 - represents waiting for a connection termination
      request from the remote TCP peer.

      CLOSE-WAIT - represents waiting for a connection termination
      request from the local user.

      CLOSING - represents waiting for a connection termination request
      acknowledgment from the remote TCP peer.

      LAST-ACK - represents waiting for an acknowledgment of the
      connection termination request previously sent to the remote TCP
      peer (this termination request sent to the remote TCP peer already
      included an acknowledgment of the termination request sent from
      the remote TCP peer).

      TIME-WAIT - represents waiting for enough time to pass to be sure
      the remote TCP peer received the acknowledgment of its connection
      termination request, and to avoid new connections being impacted
      by delayed segments from previous connections.

      CLOSED - represents no connection state at all.

   A TCP connection progresses from one state to another in response to
   events.  The events are the user calls, OPEN, SEND, RECEIVE, CLOSE,
   ABORT, and STATUS; the incoming segments, particularly those
   containing the SYN, ACK, RST and FIN flags; and timeouts.

   The OPEN call specifies whether connection establishment is to be
   actively pursued, or to be passively waited for.

   A passive OPEN request means that the process wants to accept
   incoming connection requests, in contrast to an active OPEN
   attempting to initiate a connection.

   The state diagram in Figure 5 illustrates only state changes,
   together with the causing events and resulting actions, but addresses
   neither error conditions nor actions that are not connected with
   state changes.  In a later section, more detail is offered with
   respect to the reaction of the TCP implementation to events.  Some
   state names are abbreviated or hyphenated differently in the diagram
   from how they appear elsewhere in the document.

   NOTA BENE: This diagram is only a summary and must not be taken as
   the total specification.  Many details are not included.

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                               +---------+ ---------\      active OPEN
                               |  CLOSED |            \    -----------
                               +---------+<---------\   \   create TCB
                                 |     ^              \   \  snd SYN
                    passive OPEN |     |   CLOSE        \   \
                    ------------ |     | ----------       \   \
                     create TCB  |     | delete TCB         \   \
                                 V     |                      \   \
             rcv RST (note 1)  +---------+            CLOSE    |    \
          -------------------->|  LISTEN |          ---------- |     |
         /                     +---------+          delete TCB |     |
        /           rcv SYN      |     |     SEND              |     |
       /           -----------   |     |    -------            |     V
   +--------+      snd SYN,ACK  /       \   snd SYN          +--------+
   |        |<-----------------           ------------------>|        |
   |  SYN   |                    rcv SYN                     |  SYN   |
   |  RCVD  |<-----------------------------------------------|  SENT  |
   |        |                  snd SYN,ACK                   |        |
   |        |------------------           -------------------|        |
   +--------+   rcv ACK of SYN  \       /  rcv SYN,ACK       +--------+
      |         --------------   |     |   -----------
      |                x         |     |     snd ACK
      |                          V     V
      |  CLOSE                 +---------+
      | -------                |  ESTAB  |
      | snd FIN                +---------+
      |                 CLOSE    |     |    rcv FIN
      V                -------   |     |    -------
   +---------+         snd FIN  /       \   snd ACK         +---------+
   |  FIN    |<----------------          ------------------>|  CLOSE  |
   | WAIT-1  |------------------                            |   WAIT  |
   +---------+          rcv FIN  \                          +---------+
     | rcv ACK of FIN   -------   |                          CLOSE  |
     | --------------   snd ACK   |                         ------- |
     V        x                   V                         snd FIN V
   +---------+               +---------+                    +---------+
   |FINWAIT-2|               | CLOSING |                    | LAST-ACK|
   +---------+               +---------+                    +---------+
     |              rcv ACK of FIN |                 rcv ACK of FIN |
     |  rcv FIN     -------------- |    Timeout=2MSL -------------- |
     |  -------            x       V    ------------        x       V
      \ snd ACK              +---------+delete TCB          +---------+
        -------------------->|TIME-WAIT|------------------->| CLOSED  |
                             +---------+                    +---------+

                   Figure 5: TCP Connection State Diagram

   The following notes apply to Figure 5:

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      Note 1: The transition from SYN-RECEIVED to LISTEN on receiving a
      RST is conditional on having reached SYN-RECEIVED after a passive
      open.

      Note 2: The figure omits a transition from FIN-WAIT-1 to TIME-WAIT
      if a FIN is received and the local FIN is also acknowledged.

      Note 3: A RST can be sent from any state with a corresponding
      transition to TIME-WAIT (see [71] for rationale).  These
      transitions are not explicitly shown, otherwise the diagram would
      become very difficult to read.  Similarly, receipt of a RST from
      any state results in a transition to LISTEN or CLOSED, though this
      is also omitted from the diagram for legibility.

3.4.  Sequence Numbers

   A fundamental notion in the design is that every octet of data sent
   over a TCP connection has a sequence number.  Since every octet is
   sequenced, each of them can be acknowledged.  The acknowledgment
   mechanism employed is cumulative so that an acknowledgment of
   sequence number X indicates that all octets up to but not including X
   have been received.  This mechanism allows for straight-forward
   duplicate detection in the presence of retransmission.  Numbering of
   octets within a segment is that the first data octet immediately
   following the header is the lowest numbered, and the following octets
   are numbered consecutively.

   It is essential to remember that the actual sequence number space is
   finite, though large.  This space ranges from 0 to 2**32 - 1.  Since
   the space is finite, all arithmetic dealing with sequence numbers
   must be performed modulo 2**32.  This unsigned arithmetic preserves
   the relationship of sequence numbers as they cycle from 2**32 - 1 to
   0 again.  There are some subtleties to computer modulo arithmetic, so
   great care should be taken in programming the comparison of such
   values.  The symbol "=<" means "less than or equal" (modulo 2**32).

   The typical kinds of sequence number comparisons that the TCP
   implementation must perform include:

      (a) Determining that an acknowledgment refers to some sequence
      number sent but not yet acknowledged.

      (b) Determining that all sequence numbers occupied by a segment
      have been acknowledged (e.g., to remove the segment from a
      retransmission queue).

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      (c) Determining that an incoming segment contains sequence numbers
      that are expected (i.e., that the segment "overlaps" the receive
      window).

   In response to sending data the TCP endpoint will receive
   acknowledgments.  The following comparisons are needed to process the
   acknowledgments.

      SND.UNA = oldest unacknowledged sequence number

      SND.NXT = next sequence number to be sent

      SEG.ACK = acknowledgment from the receiving TCP peer (next
      sequence number expected by the receiving TCP peer)

      SEG.SEQ = first sequence number of a segment

      SEG.LEN = the number of octets occupied by the data in the segment
      (counting SYN and FIN)

      SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN-1 = last sequence number of a segment

   A new acknowledgment (called an "acceptable ack"), is one for which
   the inequality below holds:

      SND.UNA < SEG.ACK =< SND.NXT

   A segment on the retransmission queue is fully acknowledged if the
   sum of its sequence number and length is less or equal than the
   acknowledgment value in the incoming segment.

   When data is received the following comparisons are needed:

      RCV.NXT = next sequence number expected on an incoming segment,
      and is the left or lower edge of the receive window

      RCV.NXT+RCV.WND-1 = last sequence number expected on an incoming
      segment, and is the right or upper edge of the receive window

      SEG.SEQ = first sequence number occupied by the incoming segment

      SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN-1 = last sequence number occupied by the incoming
      segment

   A segment is judged to occupy a portion of valid receive sequence
   space if

      RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND

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   or

      RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN-1 < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND

   The first part of this test checks to see if the beginning of the
   segment falls in the window, the second part of the test checks to
   see if the end of the segment falls in the window; if the segment
   passes either part of the test it contains data in the window.

   Actually, it is a little more complicated than this.  Due to zero
   windows and zero length segments, we have four cases for the
   acceptability of an incoming segment:

       Segment Receive  Test
       Length  Window
       ------- -------  -------------------------------------------

          0       0     SEG.SEQ = RCV.NXT

          0      >0     RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND

         >0       0     not acceptable

         >0      >0     RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND
                     or RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN-1 < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND

   Note that when the receive window is zero no segments should be
   acceptable except ACK segments.  Thus, it is possible for a TCP
   implementation to maintain a zero receive window while transmitting
   data and receiving ACKs.  A TCP receiver MUST process the RST and URG
   fields of all incoming segments, even when the receive window is zero
   (MUST-66).

   We have taken advantage of the numbering scheme to protect certain
   control information as well.  This is achieved by implicitly
   including some control flags in the sequence space so they can be
   retransmitted and acknowledged without confusion (i.e., one and only
   one copy of the control will be acted upon).  Control information is
   not physically carried in the segment data space.  Consequently, we
   must adopt rules for implicitly assigning sequence numbers to
   control.  The SYN and FIN are the only controls requiring this
   protection, and these controls are used only at connection opening
   and closing.  For sequence number purposes, the SYN is considered to
   occur before the first actual data octet of the segment in which it
   occurs, while the FIN is considered to occur after the last actual
   data octet in a segment in which it occurs.  The segment length
   (SEG.LEN) includes both data and sequence space-occupying controls.
   When a SYN is present then SEG.SEQ is the sequence number of the SYN.

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3.4.1.  Initial Sequence Number Selection

   A connection is defined by a pair of sockets.  Connections can be
   reused.  New instances of a connection will be referred to as
   incarnations of the connection.  The problem that arises from this is
   -- "how does the TCP implementation identify duplicate segments from
   previous incarnations of the connection?"  This problem becomes
   apparent if the connection is being opened and closed in quick
   succession, or if the connection breaks with loss of memory and is
   then reestablished.  To support this, the TIME-WAIT state limits the
   rate of connection reuse, while the initial sequence number selection
   described below further protects against ambiguity about what
   incarnation of a connection an incoming packet corresponds to.

   To avoid confusion we must prevent segments from one incarnation of a
   connection from being used while the same sequence numbers may still
   be present in the network from an earlier incarnation.  We want to
   assure this, even if a TCP endpoint loses all knowledge of the
   sequence numbers it has been using.  When new connections are
   created, an initial sequence number (ISN) generator is employed that
   selects a new 32 bit ISN.  There are security issues that result if
   an off-path attacker is able to predict or guess ISN values [43].

   TCP Initial Sequence Numbers are generated from a number sequence
   that monotonically increases until it wraps, known loosely as a
   "clock".  This clock is a 32-bit counter that typically increments at
   least once every roughly 4 microseconds, although it is neither
   assumed to be realtime nor precise, and need not persist across
   reboots.  The clock component is intended to ensure that with a
   Maximum Segment Lifetime (MSL), generated ISNs will be unique, since
   it cycles approximately every 4.55 hours, which is much longer than
   the MSL.

   A TCP implementation MUST use the above type of "clock" for clock-
   driven selection of initial sequence numbers (MUST-8), and SHOULD
   generate its Initial Sequence Numbers with the expression:

   ISN = M + F(localip, localport, remoteip, remoteport, secretkey)

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   where M is the 4 microsecond timer, and F() is a pseudorandom
   function (PRF) of the connection's identifying parameters ("localip,
   localport, remoteip, remoteport") and a secret key ("secretkey")
   (SHLD-1).  F() MUST NOT be computable from the outside (MUST-9), or
   an attacker could still guess at sequence numbers from the ISN used
   for some other connection.  The PRF could be implemented as a
   cryptographic hash of the concatenation of the TCP connection
   parameters and some secret data.  For discussion of the selection of
   a specific hash algorithm and management of the secret key data,
   please see Section 3 of [43].

   For each connection there is a send sequence number and a receive
   sequence number.  The initial send sequence number (ISS) is chosen by
   the data sending TCP peer, and the initial receive sequence number
   (IRS) is learned during the connection establishing procedure.

   For a connection to be established or initialized, the two TCP peers
   must synchronize on each other's initial sequence numbers.  This is
   done in an exchange of connection establishing segments carrying a
   control bit called "SYN" (for synchronize) and the initial sequence
   numbers.  As a shorthand, segments carrying the SYN bit are also
   called "SYNs".  Hence, the solution requires a suitable mechanism for
   picking an initial sequence number and a slightly involved handshake
   to exchange the ISNs.

   The synchronization requires each side to send its own initial
   sequence number and to receive a confirmation of it in acknowledgment
   from the remote TCP peer.  Each side must also receive the remote
   peer's initial sequence number and send a confirming acknowledgment.

       1) A --> B  SYN my sequence number is X
       2) A <-- B  ACK your sequence number is X
       3) A <-- B  SYN my sequence number is Y
       4) A --> B  ACK your sequence number is Y

   Because steps 2 and 3 can be combined in a single message this is
   called the three-way (or three message) handshake (3WHS).

   A 3WHS is necessary because sequence numbers are not tied to a global
   clock in the network, and TCP implementations may have different
   mechanisms for picking the ISNs.  The receiver of the first SYN has
   no way of knowing whether the segment was an old one or not, unless
   it remembers the last sequence number used on the connection (which
   is not always possible), and so it must ask the sender to verify this
   SYN.  The three-way handshake and the advantages of a clock-driven
   scheme for ISN selection are discussed in [70].

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3.4.2.  Knowing When to Keep Quiet

   A theoretical problem exists where data could be corrupted due to
   confusion between old segments in the network and new ones after a
   host reboots, if the same port numbers and sequence space are reused.
   The "Quiet Time" concept discussed below addresses this and the
   discussion of it is included for situations where it might be
   relevant, although it is not felt to be necessary in most current
   implementations.  The problem was more relevant earlier in the
   history of TCP.  In practical use on the Internet today, the error-
   prone conditions are sufficiently unlikely that it is felt safe to
   ignore.  Reasons why it is now negligible include: (a) ISS and
   ephemeral port randomization have reduced likelihood of reuse of port
   numbers and sequence numbers after reboots, (b) the effective MSL of
   the Internet has declined as links have become faster, and (c)
   reboots often taking longer than an MSL anyways.

   To be sure that a TCP implementation does not create a segment
   carrying a sequence number that may be duplicated by an old segment
   remaining in the network, the TCP endpoint must keep quiet for an MSL
   before assigning any sequence numbers upon starting up or recovering
   from a situation where memory of sequence numbers in use was lost.
   For this specification the MSL is taken to be 2 minutes.  This is an
   engineering choice, and may be changed if experience indicates it is
   desirable to do so.  Note that if a TCP endpoint is reinitialized in
   some sense, yet retains its memory of sequence numbers in use, then
   it need not wait at all; it must only be sure to use sequence numbers
   larger than those recently used.

3.4.3.  The TCP Quiet Time Concept

   Hosts that for any reason lose knowledge of the last sequence numbers
   transmitted on each active (i.e., not closed) connection shall delay
   emitting any TCP segments for at least the agreed MSL in the internet
   system that the host is a part of.  In the paragraphs below, an
   explanation for this specification is given.  TCP implementors may
   violate the "quiet time" restriction, but only at the risk of causing
   some old data to be accepted as new or new data rejected as old
   duplicated data by some receivers in the internet system.

   TCP endpoints consume sequence number space each time a segment is
   formed and entered into the network output queue at a source host.
   The duplicate detection and sequencing algorithm in the TCP protocol
   relies on the unique binding of segment data to sequence space to the
   extent that sequence numbers will not cycle through all 2**32 values
   before the segment data bound to those sequence numbers has been
   delivered and acknowledged by the receiver and all duplicate copies
   of the segments have "drained" from the internet.  Without such an

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   assumption, two distinct TCP segments could conceivably be assigned
   the same or overlapping sequence numbers, causing confusion at the
   receiver as to which data is new and which is old.  Remember that
   each segment is bound to as many consecutive sequence numbers as
   there are octets of data and SYN or FIN flags in the segment.

   Under normal conditions, TCP implementations keep track of the next
   sequence number to emit and the oldest awaiting acknowledgment so as
   to avoid mistakenly using a sequence number over before its first use
   has been acknowledged.  This alone does not guarantee that old
   duplicate data is drained from the net, so the sequence space has
   been made large to reduce the probability that a wandering duplicate
   will cause trouble upon arrival.  At 2 megabits/sec. it takes 4.5
   hours to use up 2**32 octets of sequence space.  Since the maximum
   segment lifetime in the net is not likely to exceed a few tens of
   seconds, this is deemed ample protection for foreseeable nets, even
   if data rates escalate to 10s of megabits/sec.  At 100 megabits/sec,
   the cycle time is 5.4 minutes, which may be a little short, but still
   within reason.  Much higher data rates are possible today, with
   implications described in the final paragraph of this subsection.

   The basic duplicate detection and sequencing algorithm in TCP can be
   defeated, however, if a source TCP endpoint does not have any memory
   of the sequence numbers it last used on a given connection.  For
   example, if the TCP implementation were to start all connections with
   sequence number 0, then upon the host rebooting, a TCP peer might re-
   form an earlier connection (possibly after half-open connection
   resolution) and emit packets with sequence numbers identical to or
   overlapping with packets still in the network, which were emitted on
   an earlier incarnation of the same connection.  In the absence of
   knowledge about the sequence numbers used on a particular connection,
   the TCP specification recommends that the source delay for MSL
   seconds before emitting segments on the connection, to allow time for
   segments from the earlier connection incarnation to drain from the
   system.

   Even hosts that can remember the time of day and used it to select
   initial sequence number values are not immune from this problem
   (i.e., even if time of day is used to select an initial sequence
   number for each new connection incarnation).

   Suppose, for example, that a connection is opened starting with
   sequence number S.  Suppose that this connection is not used much and
   that eventually the initial sequence number function (ISN(t)) takes
   on a value equal to the sequence number, say S1, of the last segment
   sent by this TCP endpoint on a particular connection.  Now suppose,
   at this instant, the host reboots and establishes a new incarnation
   of the connection.  The initial sequence number chosen is S1 = ISN(t)

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   -- last used sequence number on old incarnation of connection!  If
   the recovery occurs quickly enough, any old duplicates in the net
   bearing sequence numbers in the neighborhood of S1 may arrive and be
   treated as new packets by the receiver of the new incarnation of the
   connection.

   The problem is that the recovering host may not know for how long it
   was down between rebooting nor does it know whether there are still
   old duplicates in the system from earlier connection incarnations.

   One way to deal with this problem is to deliberately delay emitting
   segments for one MSL after recovery from a reboot - this is the
   "quiet time" specification.  Hosts that prefer to avoid waiting and
   are willing to risk possible confusion of old and new packets at a
   given destination may choose not to wait for the "quiet time".
   Implementors may provide TCP users with the ability to select on a
   connection by connection basis whether to wait after a reboot, or may
   informally implement the "quiet time" for all connections.
   Obviously, even where a user selects to "wait," this is not necessary
   after the host has been "up" for at least MSL seconds.

   To summarize: every segment emitted occupies one or more sequence
   numbers in the sequence space, the numbers occupied by a segment are
   "busy" or "in use" until MSL seconds have passed, upon rebooting a
   block of space-time is occupied by the octets and SYN or FIN flags of
   any potentially still in-flight segments, and if a new connection is
   started too soon and uses any of the sequence numbers in the space-
   time footprint of those potentially still in-flight segments of the
   previous connection incarnation, there is a potential sequence number
   overlap area that could cause confusion at the receiver.

   High performance cases will have shorter cycle times than those in
   the megabits per second that the base TCP design described above
   considers.  At 1 Gbps, the cycle time is 34 seconds, only 3 seconds
   at 10 Gbps, and around a third of a second at 100 Gbps.  In these
   higher performance cases, TCP Timestamp options and Protection
   Against Wrapped Sequences (PAWS) [48] provide the needed capability
   to detect and discard old duplicates.

3.5.  Establishing a connection

   The "three-way handshake" is the procedure used to establish a
   connection.  This procedure normally is initiated by one TCP peer and
   responded to by another TCP peer.  The procedure also works if two
   TCP peers simultaneously initiate the procedure.  When simultaneous
   open occurs, each TCP peer receives a "SYN" segment that carries no
   acknowledgment after it has sent a "SYN".  Of course, the arrival of
   an old duplicate "SYN" segment can potentially make it appear, to the

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   recipient, that a simultaneous connection initiation is in progress.
   Proper use of "reset" segments can disambiguate these cases.

   Several examples of connection initiation follow.  Although these
   examples do not show connection synchronization using data-carrying
   segments, this is perfectly legitimate, so long as the receiving TCP
   endpoint doesn't deliver the data to the user until it is clear the
   data is valid (e.g., the data is buffered at the receiver until the
   connection reaches the ESTABLISHED state, given that the three-way
   handshake reduces the possibility of false connections).  It is a
   trade-off between memory and messages to provide information for this
   checking.

   The simplest 3WHS is shown in Figure 6.  The figures should be
   interpreted in the following way.  Each line is numbered for
   reference purposes.  Right arrows (-->) indicate departure of a TCP
   segment from TCP peer A to TCP peer B, or arrival of a segment at B
   from A.  Left arrows (<--), indicate the reverse.  Ellipsis (...)
   indicates a segment that is still in the network (delayed).  Comments
   appear in parentheses.  TCP connection states represent the state
   AFTER the departure or arrival of the segment (whose contents are
   shown in the center of each line).  Segment contents are shown in
   abbreviated form, with sequence number, control flags, and ACK field.
   Other fields such as window, addresses, lengths, and text have been
   left out in the interest of clarity.

       TCP Peer A                                           TCP Peer B

   1.  CLOSED                                               LISTEN

   2.  SYN-SENT    --> <SEQ=100><CTL=SYN>               --> SYN-RECEIVED

   3.  ESTABLISHED <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=101><CTL=SYN,ACK>  <-- SYN-RECEIVED

   4.  ESTABLISHED --> <SEQ=101><ACK=301><CTL=ACK>       --> ESTABLISHED

   5.  ESTABLISHED --> <SEQ=101><ACK=301><CTL=ACK><DATA> --> ESTABLISHED

       Figure 6: Basic 3-Way Handshake for Connection Synchronization

   In line 2 of Figure 6, TCP Peer A begins by sending a SYN segment
   indicating that it will use sequence numbers starting with sequence
   number 100.  In line 3, TCP Peer B sends a SYN and acknowledges the
   SYN it received from TCP Peer A.  Note that the acknowledgment field
   indicates TCP Peer B is now expecting to hear sequence 101,
   acknowledging the SYN that occupied sequence 100.

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   At line 4, TCP Peer A responds with an empty segment containing an
   ACK for TCP Peer B's SYN; and in line 5, TCP Peer A sends some data.
   Note that the sequence number of the segment in line 5 is the same as
   in line 4 because the ACK does not occupy sequence number space (if
   it did, we would wind up ACKing ACKs!).

   Simultaneous initiation is only slightly more complex, as is shown in
   Figure 7.  Each TCP peer's connection state cycles from CLOSED to
   SYN-SENT to SYN-RECEIVED to ESTABLISHED.

       TCP Peer A                                       TCP Peer B

   1.  CLOSED                                           CLOSED

   2.  SYN-SENT     --> <SEQ=100><CTL=SYN>              ...

   3.  SYN-RECEIVED <-- <SEQ=300><CTL=SYN>              <-- SYN-SENT

   4.               ... <SEQ=100><CTL=SYN>              --> SYN-RECEIVED

   5.  SYN-RECEIVED --> <SEQ=100><ACK=301><CTL=SYN,ACK> ...

   6.  ESTABLISHED  <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=101><CTL=SYN,ACK> <-- SYN-RECEIVED

   7.               ... <SEQ=100><ACK=301><CTL=SYN,ACK> --> ESTABLISHED

             Figure 7: Simultaneous Connection Synchronization

   A TCP implementation MUST support simultaneous open attempts (MUST-
   10).

   Note that a TCP implementation MUST keep track of whether a
   connection has reached SYN-RECEIVED state as the result of a passive
   OPEN or an active OPEN (MUST-11).

   The principal reason for the three-way handshake is to prevent old
   duplicate connection initiations from causing confusion.  To deal
   with this, a special control message, reset, is specified.  If the
   receiving TCP peer is in a non-synchronized state (i.e., SYN-SENT,
   SYN-RECEIVED), it returns to LISTEN on receiving an acceptable reset.
   If the TCP peer is in one of the synchronized states (ESTABLISHED,
   FIN-WAIT-1, FIN-WAIT-2, CLOSE-WAIT, CLOSING, LAST-ACK, TIME-WAIT), it
   aborts the connection and informs its user.  We discuss this latter
   case under "half-open" connections below.

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       TCP Peer A                                           TCP Peer B

   1.  CLOSED                                               LISTEN

   2.  SYN-SENT    --> <SEQ=100><CTL=SYN>               ...

   3.  (duplicate) ... <SEQ=90><CTL=SYN>               --> SYN-RECEIVED

   4.  SYN-SENT    <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=91><CTL=SYN,ACK>  <-- SYN-RECEIVED

   5.  SYN-SENT    --> <SEQ=91><CTL=RST>               --> LISTEN

   6.              ... <SEQ=100><CTL=SYN>               --> SYN-RECEIVED

   7.  ESTABLISHED <-- <SEQ=400><ACK=101><CTL=SYN,ACK>  <-- SYN-RECEIVED

   8.  ESTABLISHED --> <SEQ=101><ACK=401><CTL=ACK>      --> ESTABLISHED

                 Figure 8: Recovery from Old Duplicate SYN

   As a simple example of recovery from old duplicates, consider
   Figure 8.  At line 3, an old duplicate SYN arrives at TCP Peer B.
   TCP Peer B cannot tell that this is an old duplicate, so it responds
   normally (line 4).  TCP Peer A detects that the ACK field is
   incorrect and returns a RST (reset) with its SEQ field selected to
   make the segment believable.  TCP Peer B, on receiving the RST,
   returns to the LISTEN state.  When the original SYN finally arrives
   at line 6, the synchronization proceeds normally.  If the SYN at line
   6 had arrived before the RST, a more complex exchange might have
   occurred with RST's sent in both directions.

3.5.1.  Half-Open Connections and Other Anomalies

   An established connection is said to be "half-open" if one of the TCP
   peers has closed or aborted the connection at its end without the
   knowledge of the other, or if the two ends of the connection have
   become desynchronized owing to a failure or reboot that resulted in
   loss of memory.  Such connections will automatically become reset if
   an attempt is made to send data in either direction.  However, half-
   open connections are expected to be unusual.

   If at site A the connection no longer exists, then an attempt by the
   user at site B to send any data on it will result in the site B TCP
   endpoint receiving a reset control message.  Such a message indicates
   to the site B TCP endpoint that something is wrong, and it is
   expected to abort the connection.

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   Assume that two user processes A and B are communicating with one
   another when a failure or reboot occurs causing loss of memory to A's
   TCP implementation.  Depending on the operating system supporting A's
   TCP implementation, it is likely that some error recovery mechanism
   exists.  When the TCP endpoint is up again, A is likely to start
   again from the beginning or from a recovery point.  As a result, A
   will probably try to OPEN the connection again or try to SEND on the
   connection it believes open.  In the latter case, it receives the
   error message "connection not open" from the local (A's) TCP
   implementation.  In an attempt to establish the connection, A's TCP
   implementation will send a segment containing SYN.  This scenario
   leads to the example shown in Figure 9.  After TCP Peer A reboots,
   the user attempts to re-open the connection.  TCP Peer B, in the
   meantime, thinks the connection is open.

         TCP Peer A                                      TCP Peer B

     1.  (REBOOT)                              (send 300,receive 100)

     2.  CLOSED                                           ESTABLISHED

     3.  SYN-SENT --> <SEQ=400><CTL=SYN>              --> (??)

     4.  (!!)     <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=100><CTL=ACK>     <-- ESTABLISHED

     5.  SYN-SENT --> <SEQ=100><CTL=RST>              --> (Abort!!)

     6.  SYN-SENT                                         CLOSED

     7.  SYN-SENT --> <SEQ=400><CTL=SYN>              -->

                  Figure 9: Half-Open Connection Discovery

   When the SYN arrives at line 3, TCP Peer B, being in a synchronized
   state, and the incoming segment outside the window, responds with an
   acknowledgment indicating what sequence it next expects to hear (ACK
   100).  TCP Peer A sees that this segment does not acknowledge
   anything it sent and, being unsynchronized, sends a reset (RST)
   because it has detected a half-open connection.  TCP Peer B aborts at
   line 5.  TCP Peer A will continue to try to establish the connection;
   the problem is now reduced to the basic 3-way handshake of Figure 6.

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   An interesting alternative case occurs when TCP Peer A reboots and
   TCP Peer B tries to send data on what it thinks is a synchronized
   connection.  This is illustrated in Figure 10.  In this case, the
   data arriving at TCP Peer A from TCP Peer B (line 2) is unacceptable
   because no such connection exists, so TCP Peer A sends a RST.  The
   RST is acceptable so TCP Peer B processes it and aborts the
   connection.

         TCP Peer A                                         TCP Peer B

   1.  (REBOOT)                                  (send 300,receive 100)

   2.  (??)    <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=100><DATA=10><CTL=ACK> <-- ESTABLISHED

   3.          --> <SEQ=100><CTL=RST>                   --> (ABORT!!)

        Figure 10: Active Side Causes Half-Open Connection Discovery

   In Figure 11, two TCP Peers A and B with passive connections waiting
   for SYN are depicted.  An old duplicate arriving at TCP Peer B (line
   2) stirs B into action.  A SYN-ACK is returned (line 3) and causes
   TCP A to generate a RST (the ACK in line 3 is not acceptable).  TCP
   Peer B accepts the reset and returns to its passive LISTEN state.

       TCP Peer A                                    TCP Peer B

   1.  LISTEN                                        LISTEN

   2.       ... <SEQ=Z><CTL=SYN>                -->  SYN-RECEIVED

   3.  (??) <-- <SEQ=X><ACK=Z+1><CTL=SYN,ACK>   <--  SYN-RECEIVED

   4.       --> <SEQ=Z+1><CTL=RST>              -->  (return to LISTEN!)

   5.  LISTEN                                        LISTEN

   Figure 11: Old Duplicate SYN Initiates a Reset on two Passive Sockets

   A variety of other cases are possible, all of which are accounted for
   by the following rules for RST generation and processing.

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3.5.2.  Reset Generation

   A TCP user or application can issue a reset on a connection at any
   time, though reset events are also generated by the protocol itself
   when various error conditions occur, as described below.  The side of
   a connection issuing a reset should enter the TIME-WAIT state, as
   this generally helps to reduce the load on busy servers for reasons
   described in [71].

   As a general rule, reset (RST) is sent whenever a segment arrives
   that apparently is not intended for the current connection.  A reset
   must not be sent if it is not clear that this is the case.

   There are three groups of states:

      1.  If the connection does not exist (CLOSED) then a reset is sent
      in response to any incoming segment except another reset.  A SYN
      segment that does not match an existing connection is rejected by
      this means.

      If the incoming segment has the ACK bit set, the reset takes its
      sequence number from the ACK field of the segment, otherwise the
      reset has sequence number zero and the ACK field is set to the sum
      of the sequence number and segment length of the incoming segment.
      The connection remains in the CLOSED state.

      2.  If the connection is in any non-synchronized state (LISTEN,
      SYN-SENT, SYN-RECEIVED), and the incoming segment acknowledges
      something not yet sent (the segment carries an unacceptable ACK),
      or if an incoming segment has a security level or compartment
      Appendix A.1 that does not exactly match the level and compartment
      requested for the connection, a reset is sent.

      If the incoming segment has an ACK field, the reset takes its
      sequence number from the ACK field of the segment, otherwise the
      reset has sequence number zero and the ACK field is set to the sum
      of the sequence number and segment length of the incoming segment.
      The connection remains in the same state.

      3.  If the connection is in a synchronized state (ESTABLISHED,
      FIN-WAIT-1, FIN-WAIT-2, CLOSE-WAIT, CLOSING, LAST-ACK, TIME-WAIT),
      any unacceptable segment (out of window sequence number or
      unacceptable acknowledgment number) must be responded to with an
      empty acknowledgment segment (without any user data) containing
      the current send-sequence number and an acknowledgment indicating
      the next sequence number expected to be received, and the
      connection remains in the same state.

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      If an incoming segment has a security level or compartment that
      does not exactly match the level and compartment requested for the
      connection, a reset is sent and the connection goes to the CLOSED
      state.  The reset takes its sequence number from the ACK field of
      the incoming segment.

3.5.3.  Reset Processing

   In all states except SYN-SENT, all reset (RST) segments are validated
   by checking their SEQ-fields.  A reset is valid if its sequence
   number is in the window.  In the SYN-SENT state (a RST received in
   response to an initial SYN), the RST is acceptable if the ACK field
   acknowledges the SYN.

   The receiver of a RST first validates it, then changes state.  If the
   receiver was in the LISTEN state, it ignores it.  If the receiver was
   in SYN-RECEIVED state and had previously been in the LISTEN state,
   then the receiver returns to the LISTEN state, otherwise the receiver
   aborts the connection and goes to the CLOSED state.  If the receiver
   was in any other state, it aborts the connection and advises the user
   and goes to the CLOSED state.

   TCP implementations SHOULD allow a received RST segment to include
   data (SHLD-2).  It has been suggested that a RST segment could
   contain diagnostic data that explains the cause of the RST.  No
   standard has yet been established for such data.

3.6.  Closing a Connection

   CLOSE is an operation meaning "I have no more data to send."  The
   notion of closing a full-duplex connection is subject to ambiguous
   interpretation, of course, since it may not be obvious how to treat
   the receiving side of the connection.  We have chosen to treat CLOSE
   in a simplex fashion.  The user who CLOSEs may continue to RECEIVE
   until the TCP receiver is told that the remote peer has CLOSED also.
   Thus, a program could initiate several SENDs followed by a CLOSE, and
   then continue to RECEIVE until signaled that a RECEIVE failed because
   the remote peer has CLOSED.  The TCP implementation will signal a
   user, even if no RECEIVEs are outstanding, that the remote peer has
   closed, so the user can terminate their side gracefully.  A TCP
   implementation will reliably deliver all buffers SENT before the
   connection was CLOSED so a user who expects no data in return need
   only wait to hear the connection was CLOSED successfully to know that
   all their data was received at the destination TCP endpoint.  Users
   must keep reading connections they close for sending until the TCP
   implementation indicates there is no more data.

   There are essentially three cases:

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      1) The user initiates by telling the TCP implementation to CLOSE
      the connection (TCP Peer A in Figure 12).

      2) The remote TCP endpoint initiates by sending a FIN control
      signal (TCP Peer B in Figure 12).

      3) Both users CLOSE simultaneously (Figure 13).

   Case 1: Local user initiates the close
      In this case, a FIN segment can be constructed and placed on the
      outgoing segment queue.  No further SENDs from the user will be
      accepted by the TCP implementation, and it enters the FIN-WAIT-1
      state.  RECEIVEs are allowed in this state.  All segments
      preceding and including FIN will be retransmitted until
      acknowledged.  When the other TCP peer has both acknowledged the
      FIN and sent a FIN of its own, the first TCP peer can ACK this
      FIN.  Note that a TCP endpoint receiving a FIN will ACK but not
      send its own FIN until its user has CLOSED the connection also.

   Case 2: TCP endpoint receives a FIN from the network
      If an unsolicited FIN arrives from the network, the receiving TCP
      endpoint can ACK it and tell the user that the connection is
      closing.  The user will respond with a CLOSE, upon which the TCP
      endpoint can send a FIN to the other TCP peer after sending any
      remaining data.  The TCP endpoint then waits until its own FIN is
      acknowledged whereupon it deletes the connection.  If an ACK is
      not forthcoming, after the user timeout the connection is aborted
      and the user is told.

   Case 3: Both users close simultaneously
      A simultaneous CLOSE by users at both ends of a connection causes
      FIN segments to be exchanged (Figure 13).  When all segments
      preceding the FINs have been processed and acknowledged, each TCP
      peer can ACK the FIN it has received.  Both will, upon receiving
      these ACKs, delete the connection.

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       TCP Peer A                                           TCP Peer B

   1.  ESTABLISHED                                          ESTABLISHED

   2.  (Close)
       FIN-WAIT-1  --> <SEQ=100><ACK=300><CTL=FIN,ACK>  --> CLOSE-WAIT

   3.  FIN-WAIT-2  <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=101><CTL=ACK>      <-- CLOSE-WAIT

   4.                                                       (Close)
       TIME-WAIT   <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=101><CTL=FIN,ACK>  <-- LAST-ACK

   5.  TIME-WAIT   --> <SEQ=101><ACK=301><CTL=ACK>      --> CLOSED

   6.  (2 MSL)
       CLOSED

                      Figure 12: Normal Close Sequence

       TCP Peer A                                           TCP Peer B

   1.  ESTABLISHED                                          ESTABLISHED

   2.  (Close)                                              (Close)
       FIN-WAIT-1  --> <SEQ=100><ACK=300><CTL=FIN,ACK>  ... FIN-WAIT-1
                   <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=100><CTL=FIN,ACK>  <--
                   ... <SEQ=100><ACK=300><CTL=FIN,ACK>  -->

   3.  CLOSING     --> <SEQ=101><ACK=301><CTL=ACK>      ... CLOSING
                   <-- <SEQ=301><ACK=101><CTL=ACK>      <--
                   ... <SEQ=101><ACK=301><CTL=ACK>      -->

   4.  TIME-WAIT                                            TIME-WAIT
       (2 MSL)                                              (2 MSL)
       CLOSED                                               CLOSED

                   Figure 13: Simultaneous Close Sequence

   A TCP connection may terminate in two ways: (1) the normal TCP close
   sequence using a FIN handshake (Figure 12), and (2) an "abort" in
   which one or more RST segments are sent and the connection state is
   immediately discarded.  If the local TCP connection is closed by the
   remote side due to a FIN or RST received from the remote side, then
   the local application MUST be informed whether it closed normally or
   was aborted (MUST-12).

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3.6.1.  Half-Closed Connections

   The normal TCP close sequence delivers buffered data reliably in both
   directions.  Since the two directions of a TCP connection are closed
   independently, it is possible for a connection to be "half closed,"
   i.e., closed in only one direction, and a host is permitted to
   continue sending data in the open direction on a half-closed
   connection.

   A host MAY implement a "half-duplex" TCP close sequence, so that an
   application that has called CLOSE cannot continue to read data from
   the connection (MAY-1).  If such a host issues a CLOSE call while
   received data is still pending in the TCP connection, or if new data
   is received after CLOSE is called, its TCP implementation SHOULD send
   a RST to show that data was lost (SHLD-3).  See [24] section 2.17 for
   discussion.

   When a connection is closed actively, it MUST linger in the TIME-WAIT
   state for a time 2xMSL (Maximum Segment Lifetime) (MUST-13).
   However, it MAY accept a new SYN from the remote TCP endpoint to
   reopen the connection directly from TIME-WAIT state (MAY-2), if it:

      (1) assigns its initial sequence number for the new connection to
      be larger than the largest sequence number it used on the previous
      connection incarnation, and

      (2) returns to TIME-WAIT state if the SYN turns out to be an old
      duplicate.

   When the TCP Timestamp options are available, an improved algorithm
   is described in [41] in order to support higher connection
   establishment rates.  This algorithm for reducing TIME-WAIT is a Best
   Current Practice that SHOULD be implemented, since timestamp options
   are commonly used, and using them to reduce TIME-WAIT provides
   benefits for busy Internet servers (SHLD-4).

3.7.  Segmentation

   The term "segmentation" refers to the activity TCP performs when
   ingesting a stream of bytes from a sending application and
   packetizing that stream of bytes into TCP segments.  Individual TCP
   segments often do not correspond one-for-one to individual send (or
   socket write) calls from the application.  Applications may perform
   writes at the granularity of messages in the upper layer protocol,
   but TCP guarantees no boundary coherence between the TCP segments
   sent and received versus user application data read or write buffer
   boundaries.  In some specific protocols, such as Remote Direct Memory
   Access (RDMA) using Direct Data Placement (DDP) and Marker PDU

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   Aligned Framing (MPA) [35], there are performance optimizations
   possible when the relation between TCP segments and application data
   units can be controlled, and MPA includes a specific mechanism for
   detecting and verifying this relationship between TCP segments and
   application message data structures, but this is specific to
   applications like RDMA.  In general, multiple goals influence the
   sizing of TCP segments created by a TCP implementation.

   Goals driving the sending of larger segments include:

   *  Reducing the number of packets in flight within the network.

   *  Increasing processing efficiency and potential performance by
      enabling a smaller number of interrupts and inter-layer
      interactions.

   *  Limiting the overhead of TCP headers.

   Note that the performance benefits of sending larger segments may
   decrease as the size increases, and there may be boundaries where
   advantages are reversed.  For instance, on some implementation
   architectures, 1025 bytes within a segment could lead to worse
   performance than 1024 bytes, due purely to data alignment on copy
   operations.

   Goals driving the sending of smaller segments include:

   *  Avoiding sending a TCP segment that would result in an IP datagram
      larger than the smallest MTU along an IP network path, because
      this results in either packet loss or packet fragmentation.
      Making matters worse, some firewalls or middleboxes may drop
      fragmented packets or ICMP messages related to fragmentation.

   *  Preventing delays to the application data stream, especially when
      TCP is waiting on the application to generate more data, or when
      the application is waiting on an event or input from its peer in
      order to generate more data.

   *  Enabling "fate sharing" between TCP segments and lower-layer data
      units (e.g. below IP, for links with cell or frame sizes smaller
      than the IP MTU).

   Towards meeting these competing sets of goals, TCP includes several
   mechanisms, including the Maximum Segment Size option, Path MTU
   Discovery, the Nagle algorithm, and support for IPv6 Jumbograms, as
   discussed in the following subsections.

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3.7.1.  Maximum Segment Size Option

   TCP endpoints MUST implement both sending and receiving the MSS
   option (MUST-14).

   TCP implementations SHOULD send an MSS option in every SYN segment
   when its receive MSS differs from the default 536 for IPv4 or 1220
   for IPv6 (SHLD-5), and MAY send it always (MAY-3).

   If an MSS option is not received at connection setup, TCP
   implementations MUST assume a default send MSS of 536 (576 - 40) for
   IPv4 or 1220 (1280 - 60) for IPv6 (MUST-15).

   The maximum size of a segment that TCP endpoint really sends, the
   "effective send MSS," MUST be the smaller (MUST-16) of the send MSS
   (that reflects the available reassembly buffer size at the remote
   host, the EMTU_R [20]) and the largest transmission size permitted by
   the IP layer (EMTU_S [20]):

       Eff.snd.MSS =

           min(SendMSS+20, MMS_S) - TCPhdrsize - IPoptionsize

   where:

   *  SendMSS is the MSS value received from the remote host, or the
      default 536 for IPv4 or 1220 for IPv6, if no MSS option is
      received.

   *  MMS_S is the maximum size for a transport-layer message that TCP
      may send.

   *  TCPhdrsize is the size of the fixed TCP header and any options.
      This is 20 in the (rare) case that no options are present, but may
      be larger if TCP options are to be sent.  Note that some options
      might not be included on all segments, but that for each segment
      sent, the sender should adjust the data length accordingly, within
      the Eff.snd.MSS.

   *  IPoptionsize is the size of any IPv4 options or IPv6 extension
      headers associated with a TCP connection.  Note that some options
      or extension headers might not be included on all packets, but
      that for each segment sent, the sender should adjust the data
      length accordingly, within the Eff.snd.MSS.

   The MSS value to be sent in an MSS option should be equal to the
   effective MTU minus the fixed IP and TCP headers.  By ignoring both
   IP and TCP options when calculating the value for the MSS option, if

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   there are any IP or TCP options to be sent in a packet, then the
   sender must decrease the size of the TCP data accordingly.  RFC 6691
   [44] discusses this in greater detail.

   The MSS value to be sent in an MSS option must be less than or equal
   to:

      MMS_R - 20

   where MMS_R is the maximum size for a transport-layer message that
   can be received (and reassembled at the IP layer) (MUST-67).  TCP
   obtains MMS_R and MMS_S from the IP layer; see the generic call
   GET_MAXSIZES in Section 3.4 of RFC 1122.  These are defined in terms
   of their IP MTU equivalents, EMTU_R and EMTU_S [20].

   When TCP is used in a situation where either the IP or TCP headers
   are not fixed, the sender must reduce the amount of TCP data in any
   given packet by the number of octets used by the IP and TCP options.
   This has been a point of confusion historically, as explained in RFC
   6691, Section 3.1.

3.7.2.  Path MTU Discovery

   A TCP implementation may be aware of the MTU on directly connected
   links, but will rarely have insight about MTUs across an entire
   network path.  For IPv4, RFC 1122 recommends an IP-layer default
   effective MTU of less than or equal to 576 for destinations not
   directly connected, and for IPv6 this would be 1280.  Using these
   fixed values limits TCP connection performance and efficiency.
   Instead, implementation of Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD) and
   Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery (PLPMTUD) is strongly
   recommended in order for TCP to improve segmentation decisions.  Both
   PMTUD and PLPMTUD help TCP choose segment sizes that avoid both on-
   path (for IPv4) and source fragmentation (IPv4 and IPv6).

   PMTUD for IPv4 [2] or IPv6 [14] is implemented in conjunction between
   TCP, IP, and ICMP protocols.  It relies both on avoiding source
   fragmentation and setting the IPv4 DF (don't fragment) flag, the
   latter to inhibit on-path fragmentation.  It relies on ICMP errors
   from routers along the path, whenever a segment is too large to
   traverse a link.  Several adjustments to a TCP implementation with
   PMTUD are described in RFC 2923 in order to deal with problems
   experienced in practice [28].  PLPMTUD [32] is a Standards Track
   improvement to PMTUD that relaxes the requirement for ICMP support
   across a path, and improves performance in cases where ICMP is not
   consistently conveyed, but still tries to avoid source fragmentation.
   The mechanisms in all four of these RFCs are recommended to be
   included in TCP implementations.

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   The TCP MSS option specifies an upper bound for the size of packets
   that can be received (see [44]).  Hence, setting the value in the MSS
   option too small can impact the ability for PMTUD or PLPMTUD to find
   a larger path MTU.  RFC 1191 discusses this implication of many older
   TCP implementations setting the TCP MSS to 536 (corresponding to the
   IPv4 576 byte default MTU) for non-local destinations, rather than
   deriving it from the MTUs of connected interfaces as recommended.

3.7.3.  Interfaces with Variable MTU Values

   The effective MTU can sometimes vary, as when used with variable
   compression, e.g., RObust Header Compression (ROHC) [38].  It is
   tempting for a TCP implementation to advertise the largest possible
   MSS, to support the most efficient use of compressed payloads.
   Unfortunately, some compression schemes occasionally need to transmit
   full headers (and thus smaller payloads) to resynchronize state at
   their endpoint compressors/decompressors.  If the largest MTU is used
   to calculate the value to advertise in the MSS option, TCP
   retransmission may interfere with compressor resynchronization.

   As a result, when the effective MTU of an interface varies packet-to-
   packet, TCP implementations SHOULD use the smallest effective MTU of
   the interface to calculate the value to advertise in the MSS option
   (SHLD-6).

3.7.4.  Nagle Algorithm

   The "Nagle algorithm" was described in RFC 896 [18] and was
   recommended in RFC 1122 [20] for mitigation of an early problem of
   too many small packets being generated.  It has been implemented in
   most current TCP code bases, sometimes with minor variations (see
   Appendix A.3).

   If there is unacknowledged data (i.e., SND.NXT > SND.UNA), then the
   sending TCP endpoint buffers all user data (regardless of the PSH
   bit), until the outstanding data has been acknowledged or until the
   TCP endpoint can send a full-sized segment (Eff.snd.MSS bytes).

   A TCP implementation SHOULD implement the Nagle Algorithm to coalesce
   short segments (SHLD-7).  However, there MUST be a way for an
   application to disable the Nagle algorithm on an individual
   connection (MUST-17).  In all cases, sending data is also subject to
   the limitation imposed by the Slow Start algorithm [8].

   Since there can be problematic interactions between the Nagle
   Algorithm and delayed acknowledgements, some implementations use
   minor variations of the Nagle algorithm, such as the one described in
   Appendix A.3.

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3.7.5.  IPv6 Jumbograms

   In order to support TCP over IPv6 Jumbograms, implementations need to
   be able to send TCP segments larger than the 64KB limit that the MSS
   option can convey.  RFC 2675 [25] defines that an MSS value of 65,535
   bytes is to be treated as infinity, and Path MTU Discovery [14] is
   used to determine the actual MSS.

   The Jumbo Payload option need not be implemented or understood by
   IPv6 nodes that do not support attachment to links with a MTU greater
   than 65,575 [25], and the present IPv6 Node Requirements does not
   include support for Jumbograms [55].

3.8.  Data Communication

   Once the connection is established data is communicated by the
   exchange of segments.  Because segments may be lost due to errors
   (checksum test failure), or network congestion, TCP uses
   retransmission to ensure delivery of every segment.  Duplicate
   segments may arrive due to network or TCP retransmission.  As
   discussed in the section on sequence numbers, the TCP implementation
   performs certain tests on the sequence and acknowledgment numbers in
   the segments to verify their acceptability.

   The sender of data keeps track of the next sequence number to use in
   the variable SND.NXT.  The receiver of data keeps track of the next
   sequence number to expect in the variable RCV.NXT.  The sender of
   data keeps track of the oldest unacknowledged sequence number in the
   variable SND.UNA.  If the data flow is momentarily idle and all data
   sent has been acknowledged then the three variables will be equal.

   When the sender creates a segment and transmits it the sender
   advances SND.NXT.  When the receiver accepts a segment it advances
   RCV.NXT and sends an acknowledgment.  When the data sender receives
   an acknowledgment it advances SND.UNA.  The extent to which the
   values of these variables differ is a measure of the delay in the
   communication.  The amount by which the variables are advanced is the
   length of the data and SYN or FIN flags in the segment.  Note that
   once in the ESTABLISHED state all segments must carry current
   acknowledgment information.

   The CLOSE user call implies a push function (see Section 3.9.1), as
   does the FIN control flag in an incoming segment.

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3.8.1.  Retransmission Timeout

   Because of the variability of the networks that compose an
   internetwork system and the wide range of uses of TCP connections the
   retransmission timeout (RTO) must be dynamically determined.

   The RTO MUST be computed according to the algorithm in [10],
   including Karn's algorithm for taking RTT samples (MUST-18).

   RFC 793 contains an early example procedure for computing the RTO,
   based on work mentioned in IEN 177 [72].  This was then replaced by
   the algorithm described in RFC 1122, and subsequently updated in RFC
   2988, and then again in RFC 6298.

   RFC 1122 allows that if a retransmitted packet is identical to the
   original packet (which implies not only that the data boundaries have
   not changed, but also that none of the headers have changed), then
   the same IPv4 Identification field MAY be used (see Section 3.2.1.5
   of RFC 1122) (MAY-4).  The same IP identification field may be reused
   anyways, since it is only meaningful when a datagram is fragmented
   [45].  TCP implementations should not rely on or typically interact
   with this IPv4 header field in any way.  It is not a reasonable way
   to either indicate duplicate sent segments, nor to identify duplicate
   received segments.

3.8.2.  TCP Congestion Control

   RFC 2914 [5] explains the importance of congestion control for the
   Internet.

   RFC 1122 required implementation of Van Jacobson's congestion control
   algorithms slow start and congestion avoidance together with
   exponential back-off for successive RTO values for the same segment.
   RFC 2581 provided IETF Standards Track description of slow start and
   congestion avoidance, along with fast retransmit and fast recovery.
   RFC 5681 is the current description of these algorithms and is the
   current Standards Track specification providing guidelines for TCP
   congestion control.  RFC 6298 describes exponential back-off of RTO
   values, including keeping the backed-off value until a subsequent
   segment with new data has been sent and acknowledged without
   retransmission.

   A TCP endpoint MUST implement the basic congestion control algorithms
   slow start, congestion avoidance, and exponential back-off of RTO to
   avoid creating congestion collapse conditions (MUST-19).  RFC 5681
   and RFC 6298 describe the basic algorithms on the IETF Standards
   Track that are broadly applicable.  Multiple other suitable
   algorithms exist and have been widely used.  Many TCP implementations

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   support a set of alternative algorithms that can be configured for
   use on the endpoint.  An endpoint MAY implement such alternative
   algorithms provided that the algorithms are conformant with the TCP
   specifications from the IETF Standards Track as described in RFC
   2914, RFC 5033 [7], and RFC 8961 [15] (MAY-18).

   Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) was defined in RFC 3168 and is
   an IETF Standards Track enhancement that has many benefits [52].

   A TCP endpoint SHOULD implement ECN as described in RFC 3168 (SHLD-
   8).

3.8.3.  TCP Connection Failures

   Excessive retransmission of the same segment by a TCP endpoint
   indicates some failure of the remote host or the Internet path.  This
   failure may be of short or long duration.  The following procedure
   MUST be used to handle excessive retransmissions of data segments
   (MUST-20):

      (a) There are two thresholds R1 and R2 measuring the amount of
      retransmission that has occurred for the same segment.  R1 and R2
      might be measured in time units or as a count of retransmissions
      (with the current RTO and corresponding backoffs as a conversion
      factor, if needed).

      (b) When the number of transmissions of the same segment reaches
      or exceeds threshold R1, pass negative advice (see Section 3.3.1.4
      of [20]) to the IP layer, to trigger dead-gateway diagnosis.

      (c) When the number of transmissions of the same segment reaches a
      threshold R2 greater than R1, close the connection.

      (d) An application MUST (MUST-21) be able to set the value for R2
      for a particular connection.  For example, an interactive
      application might set R2 to "infinity," giving the user control
      over when to disconnect.

      (e) TCP implementations SHOULD inform the application of the
      delivery problem (unless such information has been disabled by the
      application; see Asynchronous Reports section), when R1 is reached
      and before R2 (SHLD-9).  This will allow a remote login
      application program to inform the user, for example.

   The value of R1 SHOULD correspond to at least 3 retransmissions, at
   the current RTO (SHLD-10).  The value of R2 SHOULD correspond to at
   least 100 seconds (SHLD-11).

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   An attempt to open a TCP connection could fail with excessive
   retransmissions of the SYN segment or by receipt of a RST segment or
   an ICMP Port Unreachable.  SYN retransmissions MUST be handled in the
   general way just described for data retransmissions, including
   notification of the application layer.

   However, the values of R1 and R2 may be different for SYN and data
   segments.  In particular, R2 for a SYN segment MUST be set large
   enough to provide retransmission of the segment for at least 3
   minutes (MUST-23).  The application can close the connection (i.e.,
   give up on the open attempt) sooner, of course.

3.8.4.  TCP Keep-Alives

   A TCP connection is said to be "idle" if for some long amount of time
   there have been no incoming segments received and there is no new or
   unacknowledged data to be sent.

   Implementors MAY include "keep-alives" in their TCP implementations
   (MAY-5), although this practice is not universally accepted.  Some
   TCP implementations, however, have included a keep-alive mechanism.
   To confirm that an idle connection is still active, these
   implementations send a probe segment designed to elicit a response
   from the TCP peer.  Such a segment generally contains SEG.SEQ =
   SND.NXT-1 and may or may not contain one garbage octet of data.  If
   keep-alives are included, the application MUST be able to turn them
   on or off for each TCP connection (MUST-24), and they MUST default to
   off (MUST-25).

   Keep-alive packets MUST only be sent when no sent data is
   outstanding, and no data or acknowledgement packets have been
   received for the connection within an interval (MUST-26).  This
   interval MUST be configurable (MUST-27) and MUST default to no less
   than two hours (MUST-28).

   It is extremely important to remember that ACK segments that contain
   no data are not reliably transmitted by TCP.  Consequently, if a
   keep-alive mechanism is implemented it MUST NOT interpret failure to
   respond to any specific probe as a dead connection (MUST-29).

   An implementation SHOULD send a keep-alive segment with no data
   (SHLD-12); however, it MAY be configurable to send a keep-alive
   segment containing one garbage octet (MAY-6), for compatibility with
   erroneous TCP implementations.

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3.8.5.  The Communication of Urgent Information

   As a result of implementation differences and middlebox interactions,
   new applications SHOULD NOT employ the TCP urgent mechanism (SHLD-
   13).  However, TCP implementations MUST still include support for the
   urgent mechanism (MUST-30).  Information on how some TCP
   implementations interpret the urgent pointer can be found in RFC 6093
   [40].

   The objective of the TCP urgent mechanism is to allow the sending
   user to stimulate the receiving user to accept some urgent data and
   to permit the receiving TCP endpoint to indicate to the receiving
   user when all the currently known urgent data has been received by
   the user.

   This mechanism permits a point in the data stream to be designated as
   the end of urgent information.  Whenever this point is in advance of
   the receive sequence number (RCV.NXT) at the receiving TCP endpoint,
   that TCP must tell the user to go into "urgent mode"; when the
   receive sequence number catches up to the urgent pointer, the TCP
   implementation must tell user to go into "normal mode".  If the
   urgent pointer is updated while the user is in "urgent mode", the
   update will be invisible to the user.

   The method employs an urgent field that is carried in all segments
   transmitted.  The URG control flag indicates that the urgent field is
   meaningful and must be added to the segment sequence number to yield
   the urgent pointer.  The absence of this flag indicates that there is
   no urgent data outstanding.

   To send an urgent indication the user must also send at least one
   data octet.  If the sending user also indicates a push, timely
   delivery of the urgent information to the destination process is
   enhanced.  Note that because changes in the urgent pointer correspond
   to data being written by a sending application, the urgent pointer
   can not "recede" in the sequence space, but a TCP receiver should be
   robust to invalid urgent pointer values.

   A TCP implementation MUST support a sequence of urgent data of any
   length (MUST-31). [20]

   The urgent pointer MUST point to the sequence number of the octet
   following the urgent data (MUST-62).

   A TCP implementation MUST (MUST-32) inform the application layer
   asynchronously whenever it receives an Urgent pointer and there was
   previously no pending urgent data, or whenever the Urgent pointer
   advances in the data stream.  The TCP implementation MUST (MUST-33)

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   provide a way for the application to learn how much urgent data
   remains to be read from the connection, or at least to determine
   whether more urgent data remains to be read [20].

3.8.6.  Managing the Window

   The window sent in each segment indicates the range of sequence
   numbers the sender of the window (the data receiver) is currently
   prepared to accept.  There is an assumption that this is related to
   the currently available data buffer space available for this
   connection.

   The sending TCP endpoint packages the data to be transmitted into
   segments that fit the current window, and may repackage segments on
   the retransmission queue.  Such repackaging is not required, but may
   be helpful.

   In a connection with a one-way data flow, the window information will
   be carried in acknowledgment segments that all have the same sequence
   number, so there will be no way to reorder them if they arrive out of
   order.  This is not a serious problem, but it will allow the window
   information to be on occasion temporarily based on old reports from
   the data receiver.  A refinement to avoid this problem is to act on
   the window information from segments that carry the highest
   acknowledgment number (that is segments with acknowledgment number
   equal or greater than the highest previously received).

   Indicating a large window encourages transmissions.  If more data
   arrives than can be accepted, it will be discarded.  This will result
   in excessive retransmissions, adding unnecessarily to the load on the
   network and the TCP endpoints.  Indicating a small window may
   restrict the transmission of data to the point of introducing a round
   trip delay between each new segment transmitted.

   The mechanisms provided allow a TCP endpoint to advertise a large
   window and to subsequently advertise a much smaller window without
   having accepted that much data.  This, so-called "shrinking the
   window," is strongly discouraged.  The robustness principle [20]
   dictates that TCP peers will not shrink the window themselves, but
   will be prepared for such behavior on the part of other TCP peers.

   A TCP receiver SHOULD NOT shrink the window, i.e., move the right
   window edge to the left (SHLD-14).  However, a sending TCP peer MUST
   be robust against window shrinking, which may cause the "usable
   window" (see Section 3.8.6.2.1) to become negative (MUST-34).

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   If this happens, the sender SHOULD NOT send new data (SHLD-15), but
   SHOULD retransmit normally the old unacknowledged data between
   SND.UNA and SND.UNA+SND.WND (SHLD-16).  The sender MAY also
   retransmit old data beyond SND.UNA+SND.WND (MAY-7), but SHOULD NOT
   time out the connection if data beyond the right window edge is not
   acknowledged (SHLD-17).  If the window shrinks to zero, the TCP
   implementation MUST probe it in the standard way (described below)
   (MUST-35).

3.8.6.1.  Zero Window Probing

   The sending TCP peer must regularly transmit at least one octet of
   new data (if available) or retransmit to the receiving TCP peer even
   if the send window is zero, in order to "probe" the window.  This
   retransmission is essential to guarantee that when either TCP peer
   has a zero window the re-opening of the window will be reliably
   reported to the other.  This is referred to as Zero-Window Probing
   (ZWP) in other documents.

   Probing of zero (offered) windows MUST be supported (MUST-36).

   A TCP implementation MAY keep its offered receive window closed
   indefinitely (MAY-8).  As long as the receiving TCP peer continues to
   send acknowledgments in response to the probe segments, the sending
   TCP peer MUST allow the connection to stay open (MUST-37).  This
   enables TCP to function in scenarios such as the "printer ran out of
   paper" situation described in Section 4.2.2.17 of [20].  The behavior
   is subject to the implementation's resource management concerns, as
   noted in [42].

   When the receiving TCP peer has a zero window and a segment arrives
   it must still send an acknowledgment showing its next expected
   sequence number and current window (zero).

   The transmitting host SHOULD send the first zero-window probe when a
   zero window has existed for the retransmission timeout period (SHLD-
   29) (Section 3.8.1), and SHOULD increase exponentially the interval
   between successive probes (SHLD-30).

3.8.6.2.  Silly Window Syndrome Avoidance

   The "Silly Window Syndrome" (SWS) is a stable pattern of small
   incremental window movements resulting in extremely poor TCP
   performance.  Algorithms to avoid SWS are described below for both
   the sending side and the receiving side.  RFC 1122 contains more
   detailed discussion of the SWS problem.  Note that the Nagle
   algorithm and the sender SWS avoidance algorithm play complementary
   roles in improving performance.  The Nagle algorithm discourages

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   sending tiny segments when the data to be sent increases in small
   increments, while the SWS avoidance algorithm discourages small
   segments resulting from the right window edge advancing in small
   increments.

3.8.6.2.1.  Sender's Algorithm - When to Send Data

   A TCP implementation MUST include a SWS avoidance algorithm in the
   sender (MUST-38).

   The Nagle algorithm from Section 3.7.4 additionally describes how to
   coalesce short segments.

   The sender's SWS avoidance algorithm is more difficult than the
   receiver's, because the sender does not know (directly) the
   receiver's total buffer space RCV.BUFF.  An approach that has been
   found to work well is for the sender to calculate Max(SND.WND), the
   maximum send window it has seen so far on the connection, and to use
   this value as an estimate of RCV.BUFF.  Unfortunately, this can only
   be an estimate; the receiver may at any time reduce the size of
   RCV.BUFF.  To avoid a resulting deadlock, it is necessary to have a
   timeout to force transmission of data, overriding the SWS avoidance
   algorithm.  In practice, this timeout should seldom occur.

   The "usable window" is:

      U = SND.UNA + SND.WND - SND.NXT

   i.e., the offered window less the amount of data sent but not
   acknowledged.  If D is the amount of data queued in the sending TCP
   endpoint but not yet sent, then the following set of rules is
   recommended.

   Send data:

   (1)  if a maximum-sized segment can be sent, i.e., if:

           min(D,U) >= Eff.snd.MSS;

   (2)  or if the data is pushed and all queued data can be sent now,
        i.e., if:

           [SND.NXT = SND.UNA and] PUSHED and D <= U

        (the bracketed condition is imposed by the Nagle algorithm);

   (3)  or if at least a fraction Fs of the maximum window can be sent,
        i.e., if:

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           [SND.NXT = SND.UNA and]

              min(D,U) >= Fs * Max(SND.WND);

   (4)  or if the override timeout occurs.

   Here Fs is a fraction whose recommended value is 1/2.  The override
   timeout should be in the range 0.1 - 1.0 seconds.  It may be
   convenient to combine this timer with the timer used to probe zero
   windows (Section 3.8.6.1).

3.8.6.2.2.  Receiver's Algorithm - When to Send a Window Update

   A TCP implementation MUST include a SWS avoidance algorithm in the
   receiver (MUST-39).

   The receiver's SWS avoidance algorithm determines when the right
   window edge may be advanced; this is customarily known as "updating
   the window".  This algorithm combines with the delayed ACK algorithm
   (Section 3.8.6.3) to determine when an ACK segment containing the
   current window will really be sent to the receiver.

   The solution to receiver SWS is to avoid advancing the right window
   edge RCV.NXT+RCV.WND in small increments, even if data is received
   from the network in small segments.

   Suppose the total receive buffer space is RCV.BUFF.  At any given
   moment, RCV.USER octets of this total may be tied up with data that
   has been received and acknowledged but that the user process has not
   yet consumed.  When the connection is quiescent, RCV.WND = RCV.BUFF
   and RCV.USER = 0.

   Keeping the right window edge fixed as data arrives and is
   acknowledged requires that the receiver offer less than its full
   buffer space, i.e., the receiver must specify a RCV.WND that keeps
   RCV.NXT+RCV.WND constant as RCV.NXT increases.  Thus, the total
   buffer space RCV.BUFF is generally divided into three parts:

                  |<------- RCV.BUFF ---------------->|
                       1             2            3
              ----|---------|------------------|------|----
                         RCV.NXT               ^
                                            (Fixed)

              1 - RCV.USER =  data received but not yet consumed;
              2 - RCV.WND =   space advertised to sender;
              3 - Reduction = space available but not yet
                              advertised.

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   The suggested SWS avoidance algorithm for the receiver is to keep
   RCV.NXT+RCV.WND fixed until the reduction satisfies:

                RCV.BUFF - RCV.USER - RCV.WND  >=

                       min( Fr * RCV.BUFF, Eff.snd.MSS )

   where Fr is a fraction whose recommended value is 1/2, and
   Eff.snd.MSS is the effective send MSS for the connection (see
   Section 3.7.1).  When the inequality is satisfied, RCV.WND is set to
   RCV.BUFF-RCV.USER.

   Note that the general effect of this algorithm is to advance RCV.WND
   in increments of Eff.snd.MSS (for realistic receive buffers:
   Eff.snd.MSS < RCV.BUFF/2).  Note also that the receiver must use its
   own Eff.snd.MSS, making the assumption that it is the same as the
   sender's.

3.8.6.3.  Delayed Acknowledgements - When to Send an ACK Segment

   A host that is receiving a stream of TCP data segments can increase
   efficiency in both the Internet and the hosts by sending fewer than
   one ACK (acknowledgment) segment per data segment received; this is
   known as a "delayed ACK".

   A TCP endpoint SHOULD implement a delayed ACK (SHLD-18), but an ACK
   should not be excessively delayed; in particular, the delay MUST be
   less than 0.5 seconds (MUST-40).  An ACK SHOULD be generated for at
   least every second full-sized segment or 2*RMSS bytes of new data
   (where RMSS is the MSS specified by the TCP endpoint receiving the
   segments to be acknowledged, or the default value if not specified)
   (SHLD-19).  Excessive delays on ACKs can disturb the round-trip
   timing and packet "clocking" algorithms.  More complete discussion of
   delayed ACK behavior is in Section 4.2 of RFC 5681 [8], including
   recommendations to immediately acknowledge out-of-order segments,
   segments above a gap in sequence space, or segments that fill all or
   part of a gap, in order to accelerate loss recovery.

   Note that there are several current practices that further lead to a
   reduced number of ACKs, including generic receive offload (GRO) [73],
   ACK compression, and ACK decimation [29].

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3.9.  Interfaces

   There are of course two interfaces of concern: the user/TCP interface
   and the TCP/lower level interface.  We have a fairly elaborate model
   of the user/TCP interface, but the interface to the lower level
   protocol module is left unspecified here, since it will be specified
   in detail by the specification of the lower level protocol.  For the
   case that the lower level is IP we note some of the parameter values
   that TCP implementations might use.

3.9.1.  User/TCP Interface

   The following functional description of user commands to the TCP
   implementation is, at best, fictional, since every operating system
   will have different facilities.  Consequently, we must warn readers
   that different TCP implementations may have different user
   interfaces.  However, all TCP implementations must provide a certain
   minimum set of services to guarantee that all TCP implementations can
   support the same protocol hierarchy.  This section specifies the
   functional interfaces required of all TCP implementations.

   Section 3.1 of [54] also identifies primitives provided by TCP, and
   could be used as an additional reference for implementers.

   The following sections functionally characterize a USER/TCP
   interface.  The notation used is similar to most procedure or
   function calls in high level languages, but this usage is not meant
   to rule out trap type service calls.

   The user commands described below specify the basic functions the TCP
   implementation must perform to support interprocess communication.
   Individual implementations must define their own exact format, and
   may provide combinations or subsets of the basic functions in single
   calls.  In particular, some implementations may wish to automatically
   OPEN a connection on the first SEND or RECEIVE issued by the user for
   a given connection.

   In providing interprocess communication facilities, the TCP
   implementation must not only accept commands, but must also return
   information to the processes it serves.  The latter consists of:

      (a) general information about a connection (e.g., interrupts,
      remote close, binding of unspecified remote socket).

      (b) replies to specific user commands indicating success or
      various types of failure.

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3.9.1.1.  Open

      Format: OPEN (local port, remote socket, active/passive [,
      timeout] [, DiffServ field] [, security/compartment] [local IP
      address,] [, options]) -> local connection name

      If the active/passive flag is set to passive, then this is a call
      to LISTEN for an incoming connection.  A passive open may have
      either a fully specified remote socket to wait for a particular
      connection or an unspecified remote socket to wait for any call.
      A fully specified passive call can be made active by the
      subsequent execution of a SEND.

      A transmission control block (TCB) is created and partially filled
      in with data from the OPEN command parameters.

      Every passive OPEN call either creates a new connection record in
      LISTEN state, or it returns an error; it MUST NOT affect any
      previously created connection record (MUST-41).

      A TCP implementation that supports multiple concurrent connections
      MUST provide an OPEN call that will functionally allow an
      application to LISTEN on a port while a connection block with the
      same local port is in SYN-SENT or SYN-RECEIVED state (MUST-42).

      On an active OPEN command, the TCP endpoint will begin the
      procedure to synchronize (i.e., establish) the connection at once.

      The timeout, if present, permits the caller to set up a timeout
      for all data submitted to TCP.  If data is not successfully
      delivered to the destination within the timeout period, the TCP
      endpoint will abort the connection.  The present global default is
      five minutes.

      The TCP implementation or some component of the operating system
      will verify the user's authority to open a connection with the
      specified DiffServ field value or security/compartment.  The
      absence of a DiffServ field value or security/compartment
      specification in the OPEN call indicates the default values must
      be used.

      TCP will accept incoming requests as matching only if the
      security/compartment information is exactly the same as that
      requested in the OPEN call.

      The DiffServ field value indicated by the user only impacts
      outgoing packets, may be altered en route through the network, and
      has no direct bearing or relation to received packets.

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      A local connection name will be returned to the user by the TCP
      implementation.  The local connection name can then be used as a
      short-hand term for the connection defined by the <local socket,
      remote socket> pair.

      The optional "local IP address" parameter MUST be supported to
      allow the specification of the local IP address (MUST-43).  This
      enables applications that need to select the local IP address used
      when multihoming is present.

      A passive OPEN call with a specified "local IP address" parameter
      will await an incoming connection request to that address.  If the
      parameter is unspecified, a passive OPEN will await an incoming
      connection request to any local IP address, and then bind the
      local IP address of the connection to the particular address that
      is used.

      For an active OPEN call, a specified "local IP address" parameter
      will be used for opening the connection.  If the parameter is
      unspecified, the host will choose an appropriate local IP address
      (see RFC 1122 section 3.3.4.2).

      If an application on a multihomed host does not specify the local
      IP address when actively opening a TCP connection, then the TCP
      implementation MUST ask the IP layer to select a local IP address
      before sending the (first) SYN (MUST-44).  See the function
      GET_SRCADDR() in Section 3.4 of RFC 1122.

      At all other times, a previous segment has either been sent or
      received on this connection, and TCP implementations MUST use the
      same local address that was used in those previous segments (MUST-
      45).

      A TCP implementation MUST reject as an error a local OPEN call for
      an invalid remote IP address (e.g., a broadcast or multicast
      address) (MUST-46).

3.9.1.2.  Send

      Format: SEND (local connection name, buffer address, byte count,
      PUSH flag (optional), URGENT flag [,timeout])

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      This call causes the data contained in the indicated user buffer
      to be sent on the indicated connection.  If the connection has not
      been opened, the SEND is considered an error.  Some
      implementations may allow users to SEND first; in which case, an
      automatic OPEN would be done.  For example, this might be one way
      for application data to be included in SYN segments.  If the
      calling process is not authorized to use this connection, an error
      is returned.

      A TCP endpoint MAY implement PUSH flags on SEND calls (MAY-15).
      If PUSH flags are not implemented, then the sending TCP peer: (1)
      MUST NOT buffer data indefinitely (MUST-60), and (2) MUST set the
      PSH bit in the last buffered segment (i.e., when there is no more
      queued data to be sent) (MUST-61).  The remaining description
      below assumes the PUSH flag is supported on SEND calls.

      If the PUSH flag is set, the application intends the data to be
      transmitted promptly to the receiver, and the PUSH bit will be set
      in the last TCP segment created from the buffer.

      The PSH bit is not a record marker and is independent of segment
      boundaries.  The transmitter SHOULD collapse successive bits when
      it packetizes data, to send the largest possible segment (SHLD-
      27).

      If the PUSH flag is not set, the data may be combined with data
      from subsequent SENDs for transmission efficiency.  When an
      application issues a series of SEND calls without setting the PUSH
      flag, the TCP implementation MAY aggregate the data internally
      without sending it (MAY-16).  Note that when the Nagle algorithm
      is in use, TCP implementations may buffer the data before sending,
      without regard to the PUSH flag (see Section 3.7.4).

      An application program is logically required to set the PUSH flag
      in a SEND call whenever it needs to force delivery of the data to
      avoid a communication deadlock.  However, a TCP implementation
      SHOULD send a maximum-sized segment whenever possible (SHLD-28),
      to improve performance (see Section 3.8.6.2.1).

      New applications SHOULD NOT set the URGENT flag [40] due to
      implementation differences and middlebox issues (SHLD-13).

      If the URGENT flag is set, segments sent to the destination TCP
      peer will have the urgent pointer set.  The receiving TCP peer
      will signal the urgent condition to the receiving process if the
      urgent pointer indicates that data preceding the urgent pointer
      has not been consumed by the receiving process.  The purpose of
      urgent is to stimulate the receiver to process the urgent data and

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      to indicate to the receiver when all the currently known urgent
      data has been received.  The number of times the sending user's
      TCP implementation signals urgent will not necessarily be equal to
      the number of times the receiving user will be notified of the
      presence of urgent data.

      If no remote socket was specified in the OPEN, but the connection
      is established (e.g., because a LISTENing connection has become
      specific due to a remote segment arriving for the local socket),
      then the designated buffer is sent to the implied remote socket.
      Users who make use of OPEN with an unspecified remote socket can
      make use of SEND without ever explicitly knowing the remote socket
      address.

      However, if a SEND is attempted before the remote socket becomes
      specified, an error will be returned.  Users can use the STATUS
      call to determine the status of the connection.  Some TCP
      implementations may notify the user when an unspecified socket is
      bound.

      If a timeout is specified, the current user timeout for this
      connection is changed to the new one.

      In the simplest implementation, SEND would not return control to
      the sending process until either the transmission was complete or
      the timeout had been exceeded.  However, this simple method is
      both subject to deadlocks (for example, both sides of the
      connection might try to do SENDs before doing any RECEIVEs) and
      offers poor performance, so it is not recommended.  A more
      sophisticated implementation would return immediately to allow the
      process to run concurrently with network I/O, and, furthermore, to
      allow multiple SENDs to be in progress.  Multiple SENDs are served
      in first come, first served order, so the TCP endpoint will queue
      those it cannot service immediately.

      We have implicitly assumed an asynchronous user interface in which
      a SEND later elicits some kind of SIGNAL or pseudo-interrupt from
      the serving TCP endpoint.  An alternative is to return a response
      immediately.  For instance, SENDs might return immediate local
      acknowledgment, even if the segment sent had not been acknowledged
      by the distant TCP endpoint.  We could optimistically assume
      eventual success.  If we are wrong, the connection will close
      anyway due to the timeout.  In implementations of this kind
      (synchronous), there will still be some asynchronous signals, but
      these will deal with the connection itself, and not with specific
      segments or buffers.

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      In order for the process to distinguish among error or success
      indications for different SENDs, it might be appropriate for the
      buffer address to be returned along with the coded response to the
      SEND request.  TCP-to-user signals are discussed below, indicating
      the information that should be returned to the calling process.

3.9.1.3.  Receive

      Format: RECEIVE (local connection name, buffer address, byte
      count) -> byte count, urgent flag, push flag (optional)

      This command allocates a receiving buffer associated with the
      specified connection.  If no OPEN precedes this command or the
      calling process is not authorized to use this connection, an error
      is returned.

      In the simplest implementation, control would not return to the
      calling program until either the buffer was filled, or some error
      occurred, but this scheme is highly subject to deadlocks.  A more
      sophisticated implementation would permit several RECEIVEs to be
      outstanding at once.  These would be filled as segments arrive.
      This strategy permits increased throughput at the cost of a more
      elaborate scheme (possibly asynchronous) to notify the calling
      program that a PUSH has been seen or a buffer filled.

      A TCP receiver MAY pass a received PSH flag to the application
      layer via the PUSH flag in the interface (MAY-17), but it is not
      required (this was clarified in RFC 1122 section 4.2.2.2).  The
      remainder of text describing the RECEIVE call below assumes that
      passing the PUSH indication is supported.

      If enough data arrive to fill the buffer before a PUSH is seen,
      the PUSH flag will not be set in the response to the RECEIVE.  The
      buffer will be filled with as much data as it can hold.  If a PUSH
      is seen before the buffer is filled the buffer will be returned
      partially filled and PUSH indicated.

      If there is urgent data the user will have been informed as soon
      as it arrived via a TCP-to-user signal.  The receiving user should
      thus be in "urgent mode".  If the URGENT flag is on, additional
      urgent data remains.  If the URGENT flag is off, this call to
      RECEIVE has returned all the urgent data, and the user may now
      leave "urgent mode".  Note that data following the urgent pointer
      (non-urgent data) cannot be delivered to the user in the same
      buffer with preceding urgent data unless the boundary is clearly
      marked for the user.

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      To distinguish among several outstanding RECEIVEs and to take care
      of the case that a buffer is not completely filled, the return
      code is accompanied by both a buffer pointer and a byte count
      indicating the actual length of the data received.

      Alternative implementations of RECEIVE might have the TCP endpoint
      allocate buffer storage, or the TCP endpoint might share a ring
      buffer with the user.

3.9.1.4.  Close

      Format: CLOSE (local connection name)

      This command causes the connection specified to be closed.  If the
      connection is not open or the calling process is not authorized to
      use this connection, an error is returned.  Closing connections is
      intended to be a graceful operation in the sense that outstanding
      SENDs will be transmitted (and retransmitted), as flow control
      permits, until all have been serviced.  Thus, it should be
      acceptable to make several SEND calls, followed by a CLOSE, and
      expect all the data to be sent to the destination.  It should also
      be clear that users should continue to RECEIVE on CLOSING
      connections, since the remote peer may be trying to transmit the
      last of its data.  Thus, CLOSE means "I have no more to send" but
      does not mean "I will not receive any more."  It may happen (if
      the user level protocol is not well-thought-out) that the closing
      side is unable to get rid of all its data before timing out.  In
      this event, CLOSE turns into ABORT, and the closing TCP peer gives
      up.

      The user may CLOSE the connection at any time on their own
      initiative, or in response to various prompts from the TCP
      implementation (e.g., remote close executed, transmission timeout
      exceeded, destination inaccessible).

      Because closing a connection requires communication with the
      remote TCP peer, connections may remain in the closing state for a
      short time.  Attempts to reopen the connection before the TCP peer
      replies to the CLOSE command will result in error responses.

      Close also implies push function.

3.9.1.5.  Status

      Format: STATUS (local connection name) -> status data

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      This is an implementation dependent user command and could be
      excluded without adverse effect.  Information returned would
      typically come from the TCB associated with the connection.

      This command returns a data block containing the following
      information:

      -  local socket,

         remote socket,

         local connection name,

         receive window,

         send window,

         connection state,

         number of buffers awaiting acknowledgment,

         number of buffers pending receipt,

         urgent state,

         DiffServ field value,

         security/compartment,

         and transmission timeout.

      Depending on the state of the connection, or on the implementation
      itself, some of this information may not be available or
      meaningful.  If the calling process is not authorized to use this
      connection, an error is returned.  This prevents unauthorized
      processes from gaining information about a connection.

3.9.1.6.  Abort

      Format: ABORT (local connection name)

      This command causes all pending SENDs and RECEIVES to be aborted,
      the TCB to be removed, and a special RESET message to be sent to
      the remote TCP peer of the connection.  Depending on the
      implementation, users may receive abort indications for each
      outstanding SEND or RECEIVE, or may simply receive an ABORT-
      acknowledgment.

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3.9.1.7.  Flush

      Some TCP implementations have included a FLUSH call, which will
      empty the TCP send queue of any data that the user has issued SEND
      calls for but is still to the right of the current send window.
      That is, it flushes as much queued send data as possible without
      losing sequence number synchronization.  The FLUSH call MAY be
      implemented (MAY-14).

3.9.1.8.  Asynchronous Reports

      There MUST be a mechanism for reporting soft TCP error conditions
      to the application (MUST-47).  Generically, we assume this takes
      the form of an application-supplied ERROR_REPORT routine that may
      be upcalled asynchronously from the transport layer:

      -  ERROR_REPORT(local connection name, reason, subreason)

      The precise encoding of the reason and subreason parameters is not
      specified here.  However, the conditions that are reported
      asynchronously to the application MUST include:

      -  * ICMP error message arrived (see Section 3.9.2.2 for
         description of handling each ICMP message type, since some
         message types need to be suppressed from generating reports to
         the application)

      -  * Excessive retransmissions (see Section 3.8.3)

      -  * Urgent pointer advance (see Section 3.8.5)

      However, an application program that does not want to receive such
      ERROR_REPORT calls SHOULD be able to effectively disable these
      calls (SHLD-20).

3.9.1.9.  Set Differentiated Services Field (IPv4 TOS or IPv6 Traffic
          Class)

      The application layer MUST be able to specify the Differentiated
      Services field for segments that are sent on a connection (MUST-
      48).  The Differentiated Services field includes the 6-bit
      Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) value.  It is not
      required, but the application SHOULD be able to change the
      Differentiated Services field during the connection lifetime
      (SHLD-21).  TCP implementations SHOULD pass the current
      Differentiated Services field value without change to the IP
      layer, when it sends segments on the connection (SHLD-22).

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      The Differentiated Services field will be specified independently
      in each direction on the connection, so that the receiver
      application will specify the Differentiated Services field used
      for ACK segments.

      TCP implementations MAY pass the most recently received
      Differentiated Services field up to the application (MAY-9).

3.9.2.  TCP/Lower-Level Interface

   The TCP endpoint calls on a lower level protocol module to actually
   send and receive information over a network.  The two current
   standard Internet Protocol (IP) versions layered below TCP are IPv4
   [1] and IPv6 [13].

   If the lower level protocol is IPv4 it provides arguments for a type
   of service (used within the Differentiated Services field) and for a
   time to live.  TCP uses the following settings for these parameters:

      DiffServ field: The IP header value for the DiffServ field is
      given by the user.  This includes the bits of the DiffServ Code
      Point (DSCP).

      Time to Live (TTL): The TTL value used to send TCP segments MUST
      be configurable (MUST-49).

      -  Note that RFC 793 specified one minute (60 seconds) as a
         constant for the TTL, because the assumed maximum segment
         lifetime was two minutes.  This was intended to explicitly ask
         that a segment be destroyed if it cannot be delivered by the
         internet system within one minute.  RFC 1122 changed this
         specification to require that the TTL be configurable.

      -  Note that the DiffServ field is permitted to change during a
         connection (Section 4.2.4.2 of RFC 1122).  However, the
         application interface might not support this ability, and the
         application does not have knowledge about individual TCP
         segments, so this can only be done on a coarse granularity, at
         best.  This limitation is further discussed in RFC 7657 (sec
         5.1, 5.3, and 6) [51].  Generally, an application SHOULD NOT
         change the DiffServ field value during the course of a
         connection (SHLD-23).

   Any lower level protocol will have to provide the source address,
   destination address, and protocol fields, and some way to determine
   the "TCP length", both to provide the functional equivalent service
   of IP and to be used in the TCP checksum.

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   When received options are passed up to TCP from the IP layer, a TCP
   implementation MUST ignore options that it does not understand (MUST-
   50).

   A TCP implementation MAY support the Time Stamp (MAY-10) and Record
   Route (MAY-11) options.

3.9.2.1.  Source Routing

   If the lower level is IP (or other protocol that provides this
   feature) and source routing is used, the interface must allow the
   route information to be communicated.  This is especially important
   so that the source and destination addresses used in the TCP checksum
   be the originating source and ultimate destination.  It is also
   important to preserve the return route to answer connection requests.

   An application MUST be able to specify a source route when it
   actively opens a TCP connection (MUST-51), and this MUST take
   precedence over a source route received in a datagram (MUST-52).

   When a TCP connection is OPENed passively and a packet arrives with a
   completed IP Source Route option (containing a return route), TCP
   implementations MUST save the return route and use it for all
   segments sent on this connection (MUST-53).  If a different source
   route arrives in a later segment, the later definition SHOULD
   override the earlier one (SHLD-24).

3.9.2.2.  ICMP Messages

   TCP implementations MUST act on an ICMP error message passed up from
   the IP layer, directing it to the connection that created the error
   (MUST-54).  The necessary demultiplexing information can be found in
   the IP header contained within the ICMP message.

   This applies to ICMPv6 in addition to IPv4 ICMP.

   [36] contains discussion of specific ICMP and ICMPv6 messages
   classified as either "soft" or "hard" errors that may bear different
   responses.  Treatment for classes of ICMP messages is described
   below:

   Source Quench
     TCP implementations MUST silently discard any received ICMP Source
     Quench messages (MUST-55).  See [11] for discussion.

   Soft Errors
     For IPv4 ICMP these include: Destination Unreachable -- codes 0, 1,
     5; Time Exceeded -- codes 0, 1; and Parameter Problem.

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     For ICMPv6 these include: Destination Unreachable -- codes 0, 3;
     Time Exceeded -- codes 0, 1; and Parameter Problem -- codes 0, 1,
     2.

     Since these Unreachable messages indicate soft error conditions,
     TCP implementations MUST NOT abort the connection (MUST-56), and it
     SHOULD make the information available to the application (SHLD-25).

   Hard Errors
     For ICMP these include Destination Unreachable -- codes 2-4.

     These are hard error conditions, so TCP implementations SHOULD
     abort the connection (SHLD-26).  [36] notes that some
     implementations do not abort connections when an ICMP hard error is
     received for a connection that is in any of the synchronized
     states.

   Note that [36] section 4 describes widespread implementation behavior
   that treats soft errors as hard errors during connection
   establishment.

3.9.2.3.  Source Address Validation

   RFC 1122 requires addresses to be validated in incoming SYN packets:

      An incoming SYN with an invalid source address MUST be ignored
      either by TCP or by the IP layer (MUST-63) (Section 3.2.1.3 of
      [20]).

      A TCP implementation MUST silently discard an incoming SYN segment
      that is addressed to a broadcast or multicast address (MUST-57).

   This prevents connection state and replies from being erroneously
   generated, and implementers should note that this guidance is
   applicable to all incoming segments, not just SYNs, as specifically
   indicated in RFC 1122.

3.10.  Event Processing

   The processing depicted in this section is an example of one possible
   implementation.  Other implementations may have slightly different
   processing sequences, but they should differ from those in this
   section only in detail, not in substance.

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   The activity of the TCP endpoint can be characterized as responding
   to events.  The events that occur can be cast into three categories:
   user calls, arriving segments, and timeouts.  This section describes
   the processing the TCP endpoint does in response to each of the
   events.  In many cases the processing required depends on the state
   of the connection.

   Events that occur:

      User Calls

      -  OPEN

         SEND

         RECEIVE

         CLOSE

         ABORT

         STATUS

      Arriving Segments

      -  SEGMENT ARRIVES

      Timeouts

      -  USER TIMEOUT

         RETRANSMISSION TIMEOUT

         TIME-WAIT TIMEOUT

   The model of the TCP/user interface is that user commands receive an
   immediate return and possibly a delayed response via an event or
   pseudo interrupt.  In the following descriptions, the term "signal"
   means cause a delayed response.

   Error responses in this document are identified by character strings.
   For example, user commands referencing connections that do not exist
   receive "error: connection not open".

   Please note in the following that all arithmetic on sequence numbers,
   acknowledgment numbers, windows, et cetera, is modulo 2**32 (the size
   of the sequence number space).  Also note that "=<" means less than
   or equal to (modulo 2**32).

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   A natural way to think about processing incoming segments is to
   imagine that they are first tested for proper sequence number (i.e.,
   that their contents lie in the range of the expected "receive window"
   in the sequence number space) and then that they are generally queued
   and processed in sequence number order.

   When a segment overlaps other already received segments we
   reconstruct the segment to contain just the new data, and adjust the
   header fields to be consistent.

   Note that if no state change is mentioned the TCP connection stays in
   the same state.

3.10.1.  OPEN Call

      CLOSED STATE (i.e., TCB does not exist)

      -  Create a new transmission control block (TCB) to hold
         connection state information.  Fill in local socket identifier,
         remote socket, DiffServ field, security/compartment, and user
         timeout information.  Note that some parts of the remote socket
         may be unspecified in a passive OPEN and are to be filled in by
         the parameters of the incoming SYN segment.  Verify the
         security and DiffServ value requested are allowed for this
         user, if not return "error: DiffServ value not allowed" or
         "error: security/compartment not allowed."  If passive enter
         the LISTEN state and return.  If active and the remote socket
         is unspecified, return "error: remote socket unspecified"; if
         active and the remote socket is specified, issue a SYN segment.
         An initial send sequence number (ISS) is selected.  A SYN
         segment of the form <SEQ=ISS><CTL=SYN> is sent.  Set SND.UNA to
         ISS, SND.NXT to ISS+1, enter SYN-SENT state, and return.

      -  If the caller does not have access to the local socket
         specified, return "error: connection illegal for this process".
         If there is no room to create a new connection, return "error:
         insufficient resources".

      LISTEN STATE

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      -  If the OPEN call is active and the remote socket is specified,
         then change the connection from passive to active, select an
         ISS.  Send a SYN segment, set SND.UNA to ISS, SND.NXT to ISS+1.
         Enter SYN-SENT state.  Data associated with SEND may be sent
         with SYN segment or queued for transmission after entering
         ESTABLISHED state.  The urgent bit if requested in the command
         must be sent with the data segments sent as a result of this
         command.  If there is no room to queue the request, respond
         with "error: insufficient resources".  If the remote socket was
         not specified, then return "error: remote socket unspecified".

      SYN-SENT STATE

      SYN-RECEIVED STATE

      ESTABLISHED STATE

      FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

      FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

      CLOSE-WAIT STATE

      CLOSING STATE

      LAST-ACK STATE

      TIME-WAIT STATE

      -  Return "error: connection already exists".

3.10.2.  SEND Call

      CLOSED STATE (i.e., TCB does not exist)

      -  If the user does not have access to such a connection, then
         return "error: connection illegal for this process".

      -  Otherwise, return "error: connection does not exist".

      LISTEN STATE

      -  If the remote socket is specified, then change the connection
         from passive to active, select an ISS.  Send a SYN segment, set
         SND.UNA to ISS, SND.NXT to ISS+1.  Enter SYN-SENT state.  Data
         associated with SEND may be sent with SYN segment or queued for
         transmission after entering ESTABLISHED state.  The urgent bit

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         if requested in the command must be sent with the data segments
         sent as a result of this command.  If there is no room to queue
         the request, respond with "error: insufficient resources".  If
         the remote socket was not specified, then return "error: remote
         socket unspecified".

      SYN-SENT STATE

      SYN-RECEIVED STATE

      -  Queue the data for transmission after entering ESTABLISHED
         state.  If no space to queue, respond with "error: insufficient
         resources".

      ESTABLISHED STATE

      CLOSE-WAIT STATE

      -  Segmentize the buffer and send it with a piggybacked
         acknowledgment (acknowledgment value = RCV.NXT).  If there is
         insufficient space to remember this buffer, simply return
         "error: insufficient resources".

      -  If the urgent flag is set, then SND.UP <- SND.NXT and set the
         urgent pointer in the outgoing segments.

      FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

      FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

      CLOSING STATE

      LAST-ACK STATE

      TIME-WAIT STATE

      -  Return "error: connection closing" and do not service request.

3.10.3.  RECEIVE Call

      CLOSED STATE (i.e., TCB does not exist)

      -  If the user does not have access to such a connection, return
         "error: connection illegal for this process".

      -  Otherwise return "error: connection does not exist".

      LISTEN STATE

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      SYN-SENT STATE

      SYN-RECEIVED STATE

      -  Queue for processing after entering ESTABLISHED state.  If
         there is no room to queue this request, respond with "error:
         insufficient resources".

      ESTABLISHED STATE

      FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

      FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

      -  If insufficient incoming segments are queued to satisfy the
         request, queue the request.  If there is no queue space to
         remember the RECEIVE, respond with "error: insufficient
         resources".

      -  Reassemble queued incoming segments into receive buffer and
         return to user.  Mark "push seen" (PUSH) if this is the case.

      -  If RCV.UP is in advance of the data currently being passed to
         the user notify the user of the presence of urgent data.

      -  When the TCP endpoint takes responsibility for delivering data
         to the user that fact must be communicated to the sender via an
         acknowledgment.  The formation of such an acknowledgment is
         described below in the discussion of processing an incoming
         segment.

      CLOSE-WAIT STATE

      -  Since the remote side has already sent FIN, RECEIVEs must be
         satisfied by data already on hand, but not yet delivered to the
         user.  If no text is awaiting delivery, the RECEIVE will get an
         "error: connection closing" response.  Otherwise, any remaining
         data can be used to satisfy the RECEIVE.

      CLOSING STATE

      LAST-ACK STATE

      TIME-WAIT STATE

      -  Return "error: connection closing".

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3.10.4.  CLOSE Call

      CLOSED STATE (i.e., TCB does not exist)

      -  If the user does not have access to such a connection, return
         "error: connection illegal for this process".

      -  Otherwise, return "error: connection does not exist".

      LISTEN STATE

      -  Any outstanding RECEIVEs are returned with "error: closing"
         responses.  Delete TCB, enter CLOSED state, and return.

      SYN-SENT STATE

      -  Delete the TCB and return "error: closing" responses to any
         queued SENDs, or RECEIVEs.

      SYN-RECEIVED STATE

      -  If no SENDs have been issued and there is no pending data to
         send, then form a FIN segment and send it, and enter FIN-WAIT-1
         state; otherwise queue for processing after entering
         ESTABLISHED state.

      ESTABLISHED STATE

      -  Queue this until all preceding SENDs have been segmentized,
         then form a FIN segment and send it.  In any case, enter FIN-
         WAIT-1 state.

      FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

      FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

      -  Strictly speaking, this is an error and should receive an
         "error: connection closing" response.  An "ok" response would
         be acceptable, too, as long as a second FIN is not emitted (the
         first FIN may be retransmitted though).

      CLOSE-WAIT STATE

      -  Queue this request until all preceding SENDs have been
         segmentized; then send a FIN segment, enter LAST-ACK state.

      CLOSING STATE

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      LAST-ACK STATE

      TIME-WAIT STATE

      -  Respond with "error: connection closing".

3.10.5.  ABORT Call

      CLOSED STATE (i.e., TCB does not exist)

      -  If the user should not have access to such a connection, return
         "error: connection illegal for this process".

      -  Otherwise return "error: connection does not exist".

      LISTEN STATE

      -  Any outstanding RECEIVEs should be returned with "error:
         connection reset" responses.  Delete TCB, enter CLOSED state,
         and return.

      SYN-SENT STATE

      -  All queued SENDs and RECEIVEs should be given "connection
         reset" notification, delete the TCB, enter CLOSED state, and
         return.

      SYN-RECEIVED STATE

      ESTABLISHED STATE

      FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

      FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

      CLOSE-WAIT STATE

      -  Send a reset segment:

         o  <SEQ=SND.NXT><CTL=RST>

      -  All queued SENDs and RECEIVEs should be given "connection
         reset" notification; all segments queued for transmission
         (except for the RST formed above) or retransmission should be
         flushed, delete the TCB, enter CLOSED state, and return.

      CLOSING STATE LAST-ACK STATE TIME-WAIT STATE

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      -  Respond with "ok" and delete the TCB, enter CLOSED state, and
         return.

3.10.6.  STATUS Call

      CLOSED STATE (i.e., TCB does not exist)

      -  If the user should not have access to such a connection, return
         "error: connection illegal for this process".

      -  Otherwise return "error: connection does not exist".

      LISTEN STATE

      -  Return "state = LISTEN", and the TCB pointer.

      SYN-SENT STATE

      -  Return "state = SYN-SENT", and the TCB pointer.

      SYN-RECEIVED STATE

      -  Return "state = SYN-RECEIVED", and the TCB pointer.

      ESTABLISHED STATE

      -  Return "state = ESTABLISHED", and the TCB pointer.

      FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

      -  Return "state = FIN-WAIT-1", and the TCB pointer.

      FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

      -  Return "state = FIN-WAIT-2", and the TCB pointer.

      CLOSE-WAIT STATE

      -  Return "state = CLOSE-WAIT", and the TCB pointer.

      CLOSING STATE

      -  Return "state = CLOSING", and the TCB pointer.

      LAST-ACK STATE

      -  Return "state = LAST-ACK", and the TCB pointer.

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      TIME-WAIT STATE

      -  Return "state = TIME-WAIT", and the TCB pointer.

3.10.7.  SEGMENT ARRIVES

3.10.7.1.  CLOSED State

   If the state is CLOSED (i.e., TCB does not exist) then

      all data in the incoming segment is discarded.  An incoming
      segment containing a RST is discarded.  An incoming segment not
      containing a RST causes a RST to be sent in response.  The
      acknowledgment and sequence field values are selected to make the
      reset sequence acceptable to the TCP endpoint that sent the
      offending segment.

      If the ACK bit is off, sequence number zero is used,

      -  <SEQ=0><ACK=SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN><CTL=RST,ACK>

      If the ACK bit is on,

      -  <SEQ=SEG.ACK><CTL=RST>

      Return.

3.10.7.2.  LISTEN State

   If the state is LISTEN then

      first check for an RST

      -  An incoming RST segment could not be valid, since it could not
         have been sent in response to anything sent by this incarnation
         of the connection.  An incoming RST should be ignored.  Return.

      second check for an ACK

      -  Any acknowledgment is bad if it arrives on a connection still
         in the LISTEN state.  An acceptable reset segment should be
         formed for any arriving ACK-bearing segment.  The RST should be
         formatted as follows:

         o  <SEQ=SEG.ACK><CTL=RST>

      -  Return.

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      third check for a SYN

      -  If the SYN bit is set, check the security.  If the security/
         compartment on the incoming segment does not exactly match the
         security/compartment in the TCB then send a reset and return.

         o  <SEQ=0><ACK=SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN><CTL=RST,ACK>

      -  Set RCV.NXT to SEG.SEQ+1, IRS is set to SEG.SEQ and any other
         control or text should be queued for processing later.  ISS
         should be selected and a SYN segment sent of the form:

         o  <SEQ=ISS><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=SYN,ACK>

      -  SND.NXT is set to ISS+1 and SND.UNA to ISS.  The connection
         state should be changed to SYN-RECEIVED.  Note that any other
         incoming control or data (combined with SYN) will be processed
         in the SYN-RECEIVED state, but processing of SYN and ACK should
         not be repeated.  If the listen was not fully specified (i.e.,
         the remote socket was not fully specified), then the
         unspecified fields should be filled in now.

      fourth other data or control

      -  This should not be reached.  Drop the segment and return.  Any
         other control or data-bearing segment (not containing SYN) must
         have an ACK and thus would have been discarded by the ACK
         processing in the second step, unless it was first discarded by
         RST checking in the first step.

3.10.7.3.  SYN-SENT State

   If the state is SYN-SENT then

      first check the ACK bit

      -  If the ACK bit is set

         o  If SEG.ACK =< ISS, or SEG.ACK > SND.NXT, send a reset
            (unless the RST bit is set, if so drop the segment and
            return)

            +  <SEQ=SEG.ACK><CTL=RST>

         o  and discard the segment.  Return.

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         o  If SND.UNA < SEG.ACK =< SND.NXT then the ACK is acceptable.
            Some deployed TCP code has used the check SEG.ACK == SND.NXT
            (using "==" rather than "=<", but this is not appropriate
            when the stack is capable of sending data on the SYN,
            because the TCP peer may not accept and acknowledge all of
            the data on the SYN.

      second check the RST bit

      -  If the RST bit is set

         o  A potential blind reset attack is described in RFC 5961 [9].
            The mitigation described in that document has specific
            applicability explained therein, and is not a substitute for
            cryptographic protection (e.g.  IPsec or TCP-AO).  A TCP
            implementation that supports the RFC 5961 mitigation SHOULD
            first check that the sequence number exactly matches RCV.NXT
            prior to executing the action in the next paragraph.

         o  If the ACK was acceptable then signal the user "error:
            connection reset", drop the segment, enter CLOSED state,
            delete TCB, and return.  Otherwise (no ACK), drop the
            segment and return.

      third check the security

      -  If the security/compartment in the segment does not exactly
         match the security/compartment in the TCB, send a reset

         o  If there is an ACK

            +  <SEQ=SEG.ACK><CTL=RST>

         o  Otherwise

            +  <SEQ=0><ACK=SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN><CTL=RST,ACK>

      -  If a reset was sent, discard the segment and return.

      fourth check the SYN bit

      -  This step should be reached only if the ACK is ok, or there is
         no ACK, and the segment did not contain a RST.

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      -  If the SYN bit is on and the security/compartment is acceptable
         then, RCV.NXT is set to SEG.SEQ+1, IRS is set to SEG.SEQ.
         SND.UNA should be advanced to equal SEG.ACK (if there is an
         ACK), and any segments on the retransmission queue that are
         thereby acknowledged should be removed.

      -  If SND.UNA > ISS (our SYN has been ACKed), change the
         connection state to ESTABLISHED, form an ACK segment

         o  <SEQ=SND.NXT><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=ACK>

      -  and send it.  Data or controls that were queued for
         transmission MAY be included.  Some TCP implementations
         suppress sending this segment when the received segment
         contains data that will anyways generate an acknowledgement in
         the later processing steps, saving this extra acknowledgement
         of the SYN from being sent.  If there are other controls or
         text in the segment then continue processing at the sixth step
         under Section 3.10.7.4 where the URG bit is checked, otherwise
         return.

      -  Otherwise enter SYN-RECEIVED, form a SYN,ACK segment

         o  <SEQ=ISS><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=SYN,ACK>

      -  and send it.  Set the variables:

         o  SND.WND <- SEG.WND

            SND.WL1 <- SEG.SEQ

            SND.WL2 <- SEG.ACK

         If there are other controls or text in the segment, queue them
         for processing after the ESTABLISHED state has been reached,
         return.

      -  Note that it is legal to send and receive application data on
         SYN segments (this is the "text in the segment" mentioned
         above.  There has been significant misinformation and
         misunderstanding of this topic historically.  Some firewalls
         and security devices consider this suspicious.  However, the
         capability was used in T/TCP [22] and is used in TCP Fast Open
         (TFO) [49], so is important for implementations and network
         devices to permit.

      fifth, if neither of the SYN or RST bits is set then drop the
      segment and return.

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3.10.7.4.  Other States

   Otherwise,

      first check sequence number

   -  SYN-RECEIVED STATE

      ESTABLISHED STATE

      FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

      FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

      CLOSE-WAIT STATE

      CLOSING STATE

      LAST-ACK STATE

      TIME-WAIT STATE

   o  Segments are processed in sequence.  Initial tests on
      arrival are used to discard old duplicates, but further
      processing is done in SEG.SEQ order.  If a segment's
      contents straddle the boundary between old and new, only the
      new parts are processed.

   o  In general, the processing of received segments MUST be
      implemented to aggregate ACK segments whenever possible
      (MUST-58).  For example, if the TCP endpoint is processing a
      series of queued segments, it MUST process them all before
      sending any ACK segments (MUST-59).

   o  There are four cases for the acceptability test for an
      incoming segment:

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         Segment Receive  Test
         Length  Window
         ------- -------  -------------------------------------------

            0       0     SEG.SEQ = RCV.NXT

            0      >0     RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND

           >0       0     not acceptable

           >0      >0     RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND
                       or RCV.NXT =< SEG.SEQ+SEG.LEN-1 < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND

   o  In implementing sequence number validation as described
      here, please note Appendix A.2.

   o  If the RCV.WND is zero, no segments will be acceptable, but
      special allowance should be made to accept valid ACKs, URGs
      and RSTs.

   o  If an incoming segment is not acceptable, an acknowledgment
      should be sent in reply (unless the RST bit is set, if so
      drop the segment and return):

      +  <SEQ=SND.NXT><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=ACK>

   o  After sending the acknowledgment, drop the unacceptable
      segment and return.

   o  Note that for the TIME-WAIT state, there is an improved
      algorithm described in [41] for handling incoming SYN
      segments, that utilizes timestamps rather than relying on
      the sequence number check described here.  When the improved
      algorithm is implemented, the logic above is not applicable
      for incoming SYN segments with timestamp options, received
      on a connection in the TIME-WAIT state.

   o  In the following it is assumed that the segment is the
      idealized segment that begins at RCV.NXT and does not exceed
      the window.  One could tailor actual segments to fit this
      assumption by trimming off any portions that lie outside the
      window (including SYN and FIN), and only processing further
      if the segment then begins at RCV.NXT.  Segments with higher
      beginning sequence numbers SHOULD be held for later
      processing (SHLD-31).

   -  second check the RST bit,

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      o  RFC 5961 [9] section 3 describes a potential blind reset
         attack and optional mitigation approach.  This does not
         provide a cryptographic protection (e.g. as in IPsec or TCP-
         AO), but can be applicable in situations described in RFC
         5961.  For stacks implementing the RFC 5961 protection, the
         three checks below apply, otherwise processing for these
         states is indicated further below.

         +  1) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number is
            outside the current receive window, silently drop the
            segment.

         +  2) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number exactly
            matches the next expected sequence number (RCV.NXT), then
            TCP endpoints MUST reset the connection in the manner
            prescribed below according to the connection state.

         +  3) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number does not
            exactly match the next expected sequence value, yet is
            within the current receive window, TCP endpoints MUST
            send an acknowledgement (challenge ACK):

            <SEQ=SND.NXT><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=ACK>

            After sending the challenge ACK, TCP endpoints MUST drop
            the unacceptable segment and stop processing the incoming
            packet further.  Note that RFC 5961 and Errata ID 4772
            contain additional considerations for ACK throttling in
            an implementation.

      o  SYN-RECEIVED STATE

         +  If the RST bit is set

            *  If this connection was initiated with a passive OPEN
               (i.e., came from the LISTEN state), then return this
               connection to LISTEN state and return.  The user need
               not be informed.  If this connection was initiated
               with an active OPEN (i.e., came from SYN-SENT state)
               then the connection was refused, signal the user
               "connection refused".  In either case, the
               retransmission queue should be flushed.  And in the
               active OPEN case, enter the CLOSED state and delete
               the TCB, and return.

      o  ESTABLISHED

         FIN-WAIT-1

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         FIN-WAIT-2

         CLOSE-WAIT

         +  If the RST bit is set then, any outstanding RECEIVEs and
            SEND should receive "reset" responses.  All segment
            queues should be flushed.  Users should also receive an
            unsolicited general "connection reset" signal.  Enter the
            CLOSED state, delete the TCB, and return.

      o  CLOSING STATE

         LAST-ACK STATE

         TIME-WAIT

         +  If the RST bit is set then, enter the CLOSED state,
            delete the TCB, and return.

   -  third check security

      o  SYN-RECEIVED

         +  If the security/compartment in the segment does not
            exactly match the security/compartment in the TCB then
            send a reset, and return.

      o  ESTABLISHED

         FIN-WAIT-1

         FIN-WAIT-2

         CLOSE-WAIT

         CLOSING

         LAST-ACK

         TIME-WAIT

         +  If the security/compartment in the segment does not
            exactly match the security/compartment in the TCB then
            send a reset, any outstanding RECEIVEs and SEND should
            receive "reset" responses.  All segment queues should be
            flushed.  Users should also receive an unsolicited
            general "connection reset" signal.  Enter the CLOSED
            state, delete the TCB, and return.

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      o  Note this check is placed following the sequence check to
         prevent a segment from an old connection between these port
         numbers with a different security from causing an abort of
         the current connection.

   -  fourth, check the SYN bit,

      o  SYN-RECEIVED

         +  If the connection was initiated with a passive OPEN, then
            return this connection to the LISTEN state and return.
            Otherwise, handle per the directions for synchronized
            states below.

         ESTABLISHED STATE

         FIN-WAIT STATE-1

         FIN-WAIT STATE-2

         CLOSE-WAIT STATE

         CLOSING STATE

         LAST-ACK STATE

         TIME-WAIT STATE

         +  If the SYN bit is set in these synchronized states, it
            may be either a legitimate new connection attempt (e.g.
            in the case of TIME-WAIT), an error where the connection
            should be reset, or the result of an attack attempt, as
            described in RFC 5961 [9].  For the TIME-WAIT state, new
            connections can be accepted if the timestamp option is
            used and meets expectations (per [41]).  For all other
            cases, RFC 5961 provides a mitigation with applicability
            to some situations, though there are also alternatives
            that offer cryptographic protection (see Section 7).  RFC
            5961 recommends that in these synchronized states, if the
            SYN bit is set, irrespective of the sequence number, TCP
            endpoints MUST send a "challenge ACK" to the remote peer:

         +  <SEQ=SND.NXT><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=ACK>

         +  After sending the acknowledgement, TCP implementations
            MUST drop the unacceptable segment and stop processing
            further.  Note that RFC 5961 and Errata ID 4772 contain
            additional ACK throttling notes for an implementation.

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         +  For implementations that do not follow RFC 5961, the
            original RFC 793 behavior follows in this paragraph.  If
            the SYN is in the window it is an error, send a reset,
            any outstanding RECEIVEs and SEND should receive "reset"
            responses, all segment queues should be flushed, the user
            should also receive an unsolicited general "connection
            reset" signal, enter the CLOSED state, delete the TCB,
            and return.

         +  If the SYN is not in the window this step would not be
            reached and an ACK would have been sent in the first step
            (sequence number check).

   -  fifth check the ACK field,

      o  if the ACK bit is off drop the segment and return

      o  if the ACK bit is on

         +  RFC 5961 [9] section 5 describes a potential blind data
            injection attack, and mitigation that implementations MAY
            choose to include (MAY-12).  TCP stacks that implement
            RFC 5961 MUST add an input check that the ACK value is
            acceptable only if it is in the range of ((SND.UNA -
            MAX.SND.WND) =< SEG.ACK =< SND.NXT).  All incoming
            segments whose ACK value doesn't satisfy the above
            condition MUST be discarded and an ACK sent back.  The
            new state variable MAX.SND.WND is defined as the largest
            window that the local sender has ever received from its
            peer (subject to window scaling) or may be hard-coded to
            a maximum permissible window value.  When the ACK value
            is acceptable, the processing per-state below applies:

         +  SYN-RECEIVED STATE

            *  If SND.UNA < SEG.ACK =< SND.NXT then enter ESTABLISHED
               state and continue processing with variables below set
               to:

               -  SND.WND <- SEG.WND

                  SND.WL1 <- SEG.SEQ

                  SND.WL2 <- SEG.ACK

            *  If the segment acknowledgment is not acceptable, form
               a reset segment,

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               -  <SEQ=SEG.ACK><CTL=RST>

            *  and send it.

         +  ESTABLISHED STATE

            *  If SND.UNA < SEG.ACK =< SND.NXT then, set SND.UNA <-
               SEG.ACK.  Any segments on the retransmission queue
               that are thereby entirely acknowledged are removed.
               Users should receive positive acknowledgments for
               buffers that have been SENT and fully acknowledged
               (i.e., SEND buffer should be returned with "ok"
               response).  If the ACK is a duplicate (SEG.ACK =<
               SND.UNA), it can be ignored.  If the ACK acks
               something not yet sent (SEG.ACK > SND.NXT) then send
               an ACK, drop the segment, and return.

            *  If SND.UNA =< SEG.ACK =< SND.NXT, the send window
               should be updated.  If (SND.WL1 < SEG.SEQ or (SND.WL1
               = SEG.SEQ and SND.WL2 =< SEG.ACK)), set SND.WND <-
               SEG.WND, set SND.WL1 <- SEG.SEQ, and set SND.WL2 <-
               SEG.ACK.

            *  Note that SND.WND is an offset from SND.UNA, that
               SND.WL1 records the sequence number of the last
               segment used to update SND.WND, and that SND.WL2
               records the acknowledgment number of the last segment
               used to update SND.WND.  The check here prevents using
               old segments to update the window.

         +  FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

            *  In addition to the processing for the ESTABLISHED
               state, if the FIN segment is now acknowledged then
               enter FIN-WAIT-2 and continue processing in that
               state.

         +  FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

            *  In addition to the processing for the ESTABLISHED
               state, if the retransmission queue is empty, the
               user's CLOSE can be acknowledged ("ok") but do not
               delete the TCB.

         +  CLOSE-WAIT STATE

            *  Do the same processing as for the ESTABLISHED state.

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         +  CLOSING STATE

            *  In addition to the processing for the ESTABLISHED
               state, if the ACK acknowledges our FIN then enter the
               TIME-WAIT state, otherwise ignore the segment.

         +  LAST-ACK STATE

            *  The only thing that can arrive in this state is an
               acknowledgment of our FIN.  If our FIN is now
               acknowledged, delete the TCB, enter the CLOSED state,
               and return.

         +  TIME-WAIT STATE

            *  The only thing that can arrive in this state is a
               retransmission of the remote FIN.  Acknowledge it, and
               restart the 2 MSL timeout.

   -  sixth, check the URG bit,

      o  ESTABLISHED STATE

         FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

         FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

         +  If the URG bit is set, RCV.UP <- max(RCV.UP,SEG.UP), and
            signal the user that the remote side has urgent data if
            the urgent pointer (RCV.UP) is in advance of the data
            consumed.  If the user has already been signaled (or is
            still in the "urgent mode") for this continuous sequence
            of urgent data, do not signal the user again.

      o  CLOSE-WAIT STATE

         CLOSING STATE

         LAST-ACK STATE

         TIME-WAIT

         +  This should not occur, since a FIN has been received from
            the remote side.  Ignore the URG.

   -  seventh, process the segment text,

      o  ESTABLISHED STATE

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         FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

         FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

         +  Once in the ESTABLISHED state, it is possible to deliver
            segment data to user RECEIVE buffers.  Data from segments
            can be moved into buffers until either the buffer is full
            or the segment is empty.  If the segment empties and
            carries a PUSH flag, then the user is informed, when the
            buffer is returned, that a PUSH has been received.

         +  When the TCP endpoint takes responsibility for delivering
            the data to the user it must also acknowledge the receipt
            of the data.

         +  Once the TCP endpoint takes responsibility for the data
            it advances RCV.NXT over the data accepted, and adjusts
            RCV.WND as appropriate to the current buffer
            availability.  The total of RCV.NXT and RCV.WND should
            not be reduced.

         +  A TCP implementation MAY send an ACK segment
            acknowledging RCV.NXT when a valid segment arrives that
            is in the window but not at the left window edge (MAY-
            13).

         +  Please note the window management suggestions in
            Section 3.8.

         +  Send an acknowledgment of the form:

            *  <SEQ=SND.NXT><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=ACK>

         +  This acknowledgment should be piggybacked on a segment
            being transmitted if possible without incurring undue
            delay.

      o  CLOSE-WAIT STATE

         CLOSING STATE

         LAST-ACK STATE

         TIME-WAIT STATE

         +  This should not occur, since a FIN has been received from
            the remote side.  Ignore the segment text.

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   -  eighth, check the FIN bit,

      o  Do not process the FIN if the state is CLOSED, LISTEN or
         SYN-SENT since the SEG.SEQ cannot be validated; drop the
         segment and return.

      o  If the FIN bit is set, signal the user "connection closing"
         and return any pending RECEIVEs with same message, advance
         RCV.NXT over the FIN, and send an acknowledgment for the
         FIN.  Note that FIN implies PUSH for any segment text not
         yet delivered to the user.

         +  SYN-RECEIVED STATE

            ESTABLISHED STATE

            *  Enter the CLOSE-WAIT state.

         +  FIN-WAIT-1 STATE

            *  If our FIN has been ACKed (perhaps in this segment),
               then enter TIME-WAIT, start the time-wait timer, turn
               off the other timers; otherwise enter the CLOSING
               state.

         +  FIN-WAIT-2 STATE

            *  Enter the TIME-WAIT state.  Start the time-wait timer,
               turn off the other timers.

         +  CLOSE-WAIT STATE

            *  Remain in the CLOSE-WAIT state.

         +  CLOSING STATE

            *  Remain in the CLOSING state.

         +  LAST-ACK STATE

            *  Remain in the LAST-ACK state.

         +  TIME-WAIT STATE

            *  Remain in the TIME-WAIT state.  Restart the 2 MSL
               time-wait timeout.

   -  and return.

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3.10.8.  Timeouts

      USER TIMEOUT

      -  For any state if the user timeout expires, flush all queues,
         signal the user "error: connection aborted due to user timeout"
         in general and for any outstanding calls, delete the TCB, enter
         the CLOSED state and return.

      RETRANSMISSION TIMEOUT

      -  For any state if the retransmission timeout expires on a
         segment in the retransmission queue, send the segment at the
         front of the retransmission queue again, reinitialize the
         retransmission timer, and return.

      TIME-WAIT TIMEOUT

      -  If the time-wait timeout expires on a connection delete the
         TCB, enter the CLOSED state and return.

4.  Glossary

   ACK    
           A control bit (acknowledge) occupying no sequence space,
           which indicates that the acknowledgment field of this segment
           specifies the next sequence number the sender of this segment
           is expecting to receive, hence acknowledging receipt of all
           previous sequence numbers.

   connection
           A logical communication path identified by a pair of sockets.

   datagram
           A message sent in a packet switched computer communications
           network.

   Destination Address
           The network layer address of the endpoint intended to receive
           a segment.

   FIN    
           A control bit (finis) occupying one sequence number, which
           indicates that the sender will send no more data or control
           occupying sequence space.

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   flush  
           To remove all of the contents (data or segments) from a store
           (buffer or queue).

   fragment
           A portion of a logical unit of data, in particular an
           internet fragment is a portion of an internet datagram.

   header 
           Control information at the beginning of a message, segment,
           fragment, packet or block of data.

   host   
           A computer.  In particular a source or destination of
           messages from the point of view of the communication network.

   Identification
           An Internet Protocol field.  This identifying value assigned
           by the sender aids in assembling the fragments of a datagram.

   internet address
           A network layer address.

   internet datagram
           A unit of data exchanged between internet hosts, together
           with the internet header that allows the datagram to be
           routed from source to destination.

   internet fragment
           A portion of the data of an internet datagram with an
           internet header.

   IP     
           Internet Protocol.  See [1] and [13].

   IRS    
           The Initial Receive Sequence number.  The first sequence
           number used by the sender on a connection.

   ISN    
           The Initial Sequence Number.  The first sequence number used
           on a connection, (either ISS or IRS).  Selected in a way that
           is unique within a given period of time and is unpredictable
           to attackers.

   ISS    
           The Initial Send Sequence number.  The first sequence number
           used by the sender on a connection.

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   left sequence
           This is the next sequence number to be acknowledged by the
           data receiving TCP endpoint (or the lowest currently
           unacknowledged sequence number) and is sometimes referred to
           as the left edge of the send window.

   module 
           An implementation, usually in software, of a protocol or
           other procedure.

   MSL    
           Maximum Segment Lifetime, the time a TCP segment can exist in
           the internetwork system.  Arbitrarily defined to be 2
           minutes.

   octet  
           An eight bit byte.

   Options
           An Option field may contain several options, and each option
           may be several octets in length.

   packet 
           A package of data with a header that may or may not be
           logically complete.  More often a physical packaging than a
           logical packaging of data.

   port   
           The portion of a connection identifier used for
           demultiplexing connections at an endpoint.

   process
           A program in execution.  A source or destination of data from
           the point of view of the TCP endpoint or other host-to-host
           protocol.

   PUSH   
           A control bit occupying no sequence space, indicating that
           this segment contains data that must be pushed through to the
           receiving user.

   RCV.NXT
           receive next sequence number

   RCV.UP 
           receive urgent pointer

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   RCV.WND
           receive window

   receive next sequence number
           This is the next sequence number the local TCP endpoint is
           expecting to receive.

   receive window
           This represents the sequence numbers the local (receiving)
           TCP endpoint is willing to receive.  Thus, the local TCP
           endpoint considers that segments overlapping the range
           RCV.NXT to RCV.NXT + RCV.WND - 1 carry acceptable data or
           control.  Segments containing sequence numbers entirely
           outside this range are considered duplicates or injection
           attacks and discarded.

   RST    
           A control bit (reset), occupying no sequence space,
           indicating that the receiver should delete the connection
           without further interaction.  The receiver can determine,
           based on the sequence number and acknowledgment fields of the
           incoming segment, whether it should honor the reset command
           or ignore it.  In no case does receipt of a segment
           containing RST give rise to a RST in response.

   SEG.ACK
           segment acknowledgment

   SEG.LEN
           segment length

   SEG.SEQ
           segment sequence

   SEG.UP 
           segment urgent pointer field

   SEG.WND
           segment window field

   segment
           A logical unit of data, in particular a TCP segment is the
           unit of data transferred between a pair of TCP modules.

   segment acknowledgment
           The sequence number in the acknowledgment field of the
           arriving segment.

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   segment length
           The amount of sequence number space occupied by a segment,
           including any controls that occupy sequence space.

   segment sequence
           The number in the sequence field of the arriving segment.

   send sequence
           This is the next sequence number the local (sending) TCP
           endpoint will use on the connection.  It is initially
           selected from an initial sequence number curve (ISN) and is
           incremented for each octet of data or sequenced control
           transmitted.

   send window
           This represents the sequence numbers that the remote
           (receiving) TCP endpoint is willing to receive.  It is the
           value of the window field specified in segments from the
           remote (data receiving) TCP endpoint.  The range of new
           sequence numbers that may be emitted by a TCP implementation
           lies between SND.NXT and SND.UNA + SND.WND - 1.
           (Retransmissions of sequence numbers between SND.UNA and
           SND.NXT are expected, of course.)

   SND.NXT
           send sequence

   SND.UNA
           left sequence

   SND.UP 
           send urgent pointer

   SND.WL1
           segment sequence number at last window update

   SND.WL2
           segment acknowledgment number at last window update

   SND.WND
           send window

   socket (or socket number, or socket address, or socket identifier)
           An address that specifically includes a port identifier, that
           is, the concatenation of an Internet Address with a TCP port.

   Source Address
           The network layer address of the sending endpoint.

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   SYN    
           A control bit in the incoming segment, occupying one sequence
           number, used at the initiation of a connection, to indicate
           where the sequence numbering will start.

   TCB    
           Transmission control block, the data structure that records
           the state of a connection.

   TCP    
           Transmission Control Protocol: A host-to-host protocol for
           reliable communication in internetwork environments.

   TOS    
           Type of Service, an obsoleted IPv4 field.  The same header
           bits currently are used for the Differentiated Services field
           [4] containing the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP)
           value and the 2-bit ECN codepoint [6].

   Type of Service
           See "TOS".

   URG    
           A control bit (urgent), occupying no sequence space, used to
           indicate that the receiving user should be notified to do
           urgent processing as long as there is data to be consumed
           with sequence numbers less than the value indicated by the
           urgent pointer.

   urgent pointer
           A control field meaningful only when the URG bit is on.  This
           field communicates the value of the urgent pointer that
           indicates the data octet associated with the sending user's
           urgent call.

5.  Changes from RFC 793

   This document obsoletes RFC 793 as well as RFC 6093 and 6528, which
   updated 793.  In all cases, only the normative protocol specification
   and requirements have been incorporated into this document, and some
   informational text with background and rationale may not have been
   carried in.  The informational content of those documents is still
   valuable in learning about and understanding TCP, and they are valid
   Informational references, even though their normative content has
   been incorporated into this document.

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   The main body of this document was adapted from RFC 793's Section 3,
   titled "FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION", with an attempt to keep formatting
   and layout as close as possible.

   The collection of applicable RFC Errata that have been reported and
   either accepted or held for an update to RFC 793 were incorporated
   (Errata IDs: 573, 574, 700, 701, 1283, 1561, 1562, 1564, 1571, 1572,
   2297, 2298, 2748, 2749, 2934, 3213, 3300, 3301, 6222).  Some errata
   were not applicable due to other changes (Errata IDs: 572, 575, 1565,
   1569, 2296, 3305, 3602).

   Changes to the specification of the Urgent Pointer described in RFCs
   1011, 1122, and 6093 were incorporated.  See RFC 6093 for detailed
   discussion of why these changes were necessary.

   The discussion of the RTO from RFC 793 was updated to refer to RFC
   6298.  The RFC 1122 text on the RTO originally replaced the 793 text,
   however, RFC 2988 should have updated 1122, and has subsequently been
   obsoleted by 6298.

   RFC 1011 [19] contains a number of comments about RFC 793, including
   some needed changes to the TCP specification.  These are expanded in
   RFC 1122, which contains a collection of other changes and
   clarifications to RFC 793.  The normative items impacting the
   protocol have been incorporated here, though some historically useful
   implementation advice and informative discussion from RFC 1122 is not
   included here.  The present document updates RFC 1011, since this is
   now the TCP specification rather than RFC 793, and the comments noted
   in 1011 have been incorporated.

   RFC 1122 contains more than just TCP requirements, so this document
   can't obsolete RFC 1122 entirely.  It is only marked as "updating"
   1122, however, it should be understood to effectively obsolete all of
   the RFC 1122 material on TCP.

   The more secure Initial Sequence Number generation algorithm from RFC
   6528 was incorporated.  See RFC 6528 for discussion of the attacks
   that this mitigates, as well as advice on selecting PRF algorithms
   and managing secret key data.

   A note based on RFC 6429 was added to explicitly clarify that system
   resource management concerns allow connection resources to be
   reclaimed.  RFC 6429 is obsoleted in the sense that this
   clarification has been reflected in this update to the base TCP
   specification now.

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   The description of congestion control implementation was added, based
   on the set of documents that are IETF BCP or Standards Track on the
   topic, and the current state of common implementations.

   RFC EDITOR'S NOTE: the content below is for detailed change tracking
   and planning, and not to be included with the final revision of the
   document.

   This document started as draft-eddy-rfc793bis-00, that was merely a
   proposal and rough plan for updating RFC 793.

   The -01 revision of this draft-eddy-rfc793bis incorporates the
   content of RFC 793 Section 3 titled "FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION".
   Other content from RFC 793 has not been incorporated.  The -01
   revision of this document makes some minor formatting changes to the
   RFC 793 content in order to convert the content into XML2RFC format
   and account for left-out parts of RFC 793.  For instance, figure
   numbering differs and some indentation is not exactly the same.

   The -02 revision of draft-eddy-rfc793bis incorporates errata that
   have been verified:

      Errata ID 573: Reported by Bob Braden (note: This errata report
      basically is just a reminder that RFC 1122 updates 793.  Some of
      the associated changes are left pending to a separate revision
      that incorporates 1122.  Bob's mention of PUSH in 793 section 2.8
      was not applicable here because that section was not part of the
      "functional specification".  Also, the 1122 text on the
      retransmission timeout also has been updated by subsequent RFCs,
      so the change here deviates from Bob's suggestion to apply the
      1122 text.)
      Errata ID 574: Reported by Yin Shuming
      Errata ID 700: Reported by Yin Shuming
      Errata ID 701: Reported by Yin Shuming
      Errata ID 1283: Reported by Pei-chun Cheng
      Errata ID 1561: Reported by Constantin Hagemeier
      Errata ID 1562: Reported by Constantin Hagemeier
      Errata ID 1564: Reported by Constantin Hagemeier
      Errata ID 1565: Reported by Constantin Hagemeier
      Errata ID 1571: Reported by Constantin Hagemeier
      Errata ID 1572: Reported by Constantin Hagemeier
      Errata ID 2296: Reported by Vishwas Manral
      Errata ID 2297: Reported by Vishwas Manral
      Errata ID 2298: Reported by Vishwas Manral
      Errata ID 2748: Reported by Mykyta Yevstifeyev
      Errata ID 2749: Reported by Mykyta Yevstifeyev
      Errata ID 2934: Reported by Constantin Hagemeier
      Errata ID 3213: Reported by EugnJun Yi

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      Errata ID 3300: Reported by Botong Huang
      Errata ID 3301: Reported by Botong Huang
      Errata ID 3305: Reported by Botong Huang
      Note: Some verified errata were not used in this update, as they
      relate to sections of RFC 793 elided from this document.  These
      include Errata ID 572, 575, and 1569.
      Note: Errata ID 3602 was not applied in this revision as it is
      duplicative of the 1122 corrections.

   Not related to RFC 793 content, this revision also makes small tweaks
   to the introductory text, fixes indentation of the pseudo header
   diagram, and notes that the Security Considerations should also
   include privacy, when this section is written.

   The -03 revision of draft-eddy-rfc793bis revises all discussion of
   the urgent pointer in order to comply with RFC 6093, 1122, and 1011.
   Since 1122 held requirements on the urgent pointer, the full list of
   requirements was brought into an appendix of this document, so that
   it can be updated as-needed.

   The -04 revision of draft-eddy-rfc793bis includes the ISN generation
   changes from RFC 6528.

   The -05 revision of draft-eddy-rfc793bis incorporates MSS
   requirements and definitions from RFC 879 [17], 1122, and 6691, as
   well as option-handling requirements from RFC 1122.

   The -00 revision of draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc793bis incorporates several
   additional clarifications and updates to the section on segmentation,
   many of which are based on feedback from Joe Touch improving from the
   initial text on this in the previous revision.

   The -01 revision incorporates the change to Reserved bits due to ECN,
   as well as many other changes that come from RFC 1122.

   The -02 revision has small formatting modifications in order to
   address xml2rfc warnings about long lines.  It was a quick update to
   avoid document expiration.  TCPM working group discussion in 2015
   also indicated that we should not try to add sections on
   implementation advice or similar non-normative information.

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   The -03 revision incorporates more content from RFC 1122: Passive
   OPEN Calls, Time-To-Live, Multihoming, IP Options, ICMP messages,
   Data Communications, When to Send Data, When to Send a Window Update,
   Managing the Window, Probing Zero Windows, When to Send an ACK
   Segment.  The section on data communications was re-organized into
   clearer subsections (previously headings were embedded in the 793
   text), and windows management advice from 793 was removed (as
   reviewed by TCPM working group) in favor of the 1122 additions on
   SWS, ZWP, and related topics.

   The -04 revision includes reference to RFC 6429 on the ZWP condition,
   RFC1122 material on TCP Connection Failures, TCP Keep-Alives,
   Acknowledging Queued Segments, and Remote Address Validation.  RTO
   computation is referenced from RFC 6298 rather than RFC 1122.

   The -05 revision includes the requirement to implement TCP congestion
   control with recommendation to implement ECN, the RFC 6633 update to
   1122, which changed the requirement on responding to source quench
   ICMP messages, and discussion of ICMP (and ICMPv6) soft and hard
   errors per RFC 5461 (ICMPv6 handling for TCP doesn't seem to be
   mentioned elsewhere in standards track).

   The -06 revision includes an appendix on "Other Implementation Notes"
   to capture widely-deployed fundamental features that are not
   contained in the RFC series yet.  It also added mention of RFC 6994
   and the IANA TCP parameters registry as a reference.  It includes
   references to RFC 5961 in appropriate places.  The references to TOS
   were changed to DiffServ field, based on reflecting RFC 2474 as well
   as the IPv6 presence of traffic class (carrying DiffServ field)
   rather than TOS.

   The -07 revision includes reference to RFC 6191, updated security
   considerations, discussion of additional implementation
   considerations, and clarification of data on the SYN.

   The -08 revision includes changes based on:

      describing treatment of reserved bits (following TCPM mailing list
      thread from July 2014 on "793bis item - reserved bit behavior"
      addition a brief TCP key concepts section to make up for not
      including the outdated section 2 of RFC 793
      changed "TCP" to "host" to resolve conflict between 1122 wording
      on whether TCP or the network layer chooses an address when
      multihomed
      fixed/updated definition of options in glossary
      moved note on aggregating ACKs from 1122 to a more appropriate
      location
      resolved notes on IP precedence and security/compartment

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      added implementation note on sequence number validation
      added note that PUSH does not apply when Nagle is active
      added 1122 content on asynchronous reports to replace 793 section
      on TCP to user messages

   The -09 revision fixes section numbering problems.

   The -10 revision includes additions to the security considerations
   based on comments from Joe Touch, and suggested edits on RST/FIN
   notification, RFC 2525 reference, and other edits suggested by
   Yuchung Cheng, as well as modifications to DiffServ text from Yuchung
   Cheng and Gorry Fairhurst.

   The -11 revision includes a start at identifying all of the
   requirements text and referencing each instance in the common table
   at the end of the document.

   The -12 revision completes the requirement language indexing started
   in -11 and adds necessary description of the PUSH functionality that
   was missing.

   The -13 revision contains only changes in the inline editor notes.

   The -14 revision includes updates with regard to several comments
   from the mailing list, including editorial fixes, adding IANA
   considerations for the header flags, improving figure title
   placement, and breaking up the "Terminology" section into more
   appropriately titled subsections.

   The -15 revision has many technical and editorial corrections from
   Gorry Fairhurst's review, and subsequent discussion on the TCPM list,
   as well as some other collected clarifications and improvements from
   mailing list discussion.

   The -16 revision addresses several discussions that rose from
   additional reviews and follow-up on some of Gorry Fairhurst's
   comments from revision 14.

   The -17 revision includes errata 6222 from Charles Deng, update to
   the key words boilerplate, updated description of the header flags
   registry changes, and clarification about connections rather than
   users in the discussion of OPEN calls.

   The -18 revision includes editorial changes to the IANA
   considerations, based on comments from Richard Scheffenegger at the
   IETF 108 TCPM virtual meeting.

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   The -19 revision includes editorial changes from Errata 6281 and 6282
   reported by Merlin Buge.  It also includes WGLC changes noted by
   Mohamed Boucadair, Rahul Jadhav, Praveen Balasubramanian, Matt Olson,
   Yi Huang, Joe Touch, and Juhamatti Kuusisaari.

   The -20 revision includes text on congestion control based on mailing
   list and meeting discussion, put together in its final form by Markku
   Kojo.  It also clarifies that SACK, WS, and TS options are
   recommended for high performance, but not needed for basic
   interoperability.  It also clarifies that the length field is
   required for new TCP options.

   The -21 revision includes slight changes to the header diagram for
   compatibility with tooling, from Stephen McQuistin, clarification on
   the meaning of idle connections from Yuchung Cheng, Neal Cardwell,
   Michael Scharf, and Richard Scheffenegger, editorial improvements
   from Markku Kojo, notes that some stacks suppress extra
   acknowledgments of the SYN when SYN-ACK carries data from Richard
   Scheffenegger, and adds MAY-18 numbering based on note from Jonathan
   Morton.

   The -22 revision includes small clarifications on terminology (might
   versus may) and IPv6 extension headers versus IPv4 options, based on
   comments from Gorry Fairhurst.

   The -23 revision has a fix to indentation from Michael Tuexen and
   idnits issues addressed from Michael Scharf.

   The -24 revision incorporates changes after Martin Duke's AD review,
   including further feedback on those comments from Yuchung Cheng and
   Joe Touch.  Important changes for review include (1) removal of the
   need to check for the PUSH flag when evaluating the SWS override
   timer expiration, (2) clarification about receding urgent pointer,
   and (3) de-duplicating handling of the RST checking between step 4
   and step 1.

   The -25 revision incorporates changes based on the GENART review from
   Francis Dupont, SECDIR review from Kyle Rose, and OPSDIR review from
   Sarah Banks.

   The -26 revision incorporates changes stemming from the IESG reviews,
   and INTDIR review from Bernie Volz.

   The -27 revision fixes a few small editorial incompatibilities that
   Stephen McQuistin found related to automated code generation.

   The -28 revision addresses some COMMENTs from Ben Kaduk's IESG
   review.

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   Some other suggested changes that will not be incorporated in this
   793 update unless TCPM consensus changes with regard to scope are:

   1.  Tony Sabatini's suggestion for describing DO field
   2.  Per discussion with Joe Touch (TAPS list, 6/20/2015), the
       description of the API could be revisited
   3.  Reducing the R2 value for SYNs has been suggested as a possible
       topic for future consideration.

   Early in the process of updating RFC 793, Scott Brim mentioned that
   this should include a PERPASS/privacy review.  This may be something
   for the chairs or AD to request during WGLC or IETF LC.

6.  IANA Considerations

   In the "Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Header Flags" registry,
   IANA is asked to make several changes described in this section.

   RFC 3168 originally created this registry, but only populated it with
   the new bits defined in RFC 3168, neglecting the other bits that had
   previously been described in RFC 793 and other documents.  Bit 7 has
   since also been updated by RFC 8311.

   The "Bit" column is renamed below as the "Bit Offset" column, since
   it references each header flag's offset within the 16-bit aligned
   view of the TCP header in Figure 1.  The bits in offsets 0 through 4
   are the TCP segment Data Offset field, and not header flags.

   IANA should add a column for "Assignment Notes".

   IANA should assign values indicated below.

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   TCP Header Flags

   Bit      Name                                       Reference       Assignment Notes
  Offset
   ---      ----                                       ---------       ----------------
   4        Reserved for future use                    (this document)
   5        Reserved for future use                    (this document)
   6        Reserved for future use                    (this document)
   7        Reserved for future use                    [RFC8311]             [1]
   8        CWR (Congestion Window Reduced)            [RFC3168]
   9        ECE (ECN-Echo)                             [RFC3168]
   10       Urgent Pointer field is significant (URG)  (this document)
   11       Acknowledgment field is significant (ACK)  (this document)
   12       Push Function (PSH)                        (this document)
   13       Reset the connection (RST)                 (this document)
   14       Synchronize sequence numbers (SYN)         (this document)
   15       No more data from sender (FIN)             (this document)

   FOOTNOTES:
   [1] Previously used by Historic [RFC3540] as NS (Nonce Sum).

   This TCP Header Flags registry should also be moved to a sub-registry
   under the global "Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Parameters
   registry (https://www.iana.org/assignments/tcp-parameters/tcp-
   parameters.xhtml).

   The registry's Registration Procedure should remain Standards Action,
   but the Reference can be updated to this document, and the Note
   removed.

7.  Security and Privacy Considerations

   The TCP design includes only rudimentary security features that
   improve the robustness and reliability of connections and application
   data transfer, but there are no built-in cryptographic capabilities
   to support any form of confidentiality, authentication, or other
   typical security functions.  Non-cryptographic enhancements (e.g.
   [9]) have been developed to improve robustness of TCP connections to
   particular types of attacks, but the applicability and protections of
   non-cryptographic enhancements are limited (e.g. see section 1.1 of
   [9]).  Applications typically utilize lower-layer (e.g.  IPsec) and
   upper-layer (e.g.  TLS) protocols to provide security and privacy for
   TCP connections and application data carried in TCP.  Methods based
   on TCP options have been developed as well, to support some security
   capabilities.

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   In order to fully provide confidentiality, integrity protection, and
   authentication for TCP connections (including their control flags)
   IPsec is the only current effective method.  For integrity protection
   and authentication, the TCP Authentication Option (TCP-AO) [39] is
   available, with a proposed extension to also provide confidentiality
   for the segment payload.  Other methods discussed in this section may
   provide confidentiality or integrity protection for the payload, but
   for the TCP header only cover either a subset of the fields (e.g.
   tcpcrypt [57]) or none at all (e.g.  TLS).  Other security features
   that have been added to TCP (e.g.  ISN generation, sequence number
   checks, and others) are only capable of partially hindering attacks.

   Applications using long-lived TCP flows have been vulnerable to
   attacks that exploit the processing of control flags described in
   earlier TCP specifications [34].  TCP-MD5 was a commonly implemented
   TCP option to support authentication for some of these connections,
   but had flaws and is now deprecated.  TCP-AO provides a capability to
   protect long-lived TCP connections from attacks, and has superior
   properties to TCP-MD5.  It does not provide any privacy for
   application data, nor for the TCP headers.

   The "tcpcrypt" [57] Experimental extension to TCP provides the
   ability to cryptographically protect connection data.  Metadata
   aspects of the TCP flow are still visible, but the application stream
   is well-protected.  Within the TCP header, only the urgent pointer
   and FIN flag are protected through tcpcrypt.

   The TCP Roadmap [50] includes notes about several RFCs related to TCP
   security.  Many of the enhancements provided by these RFCs have been
   integrated into the present document, including ISN generation,
   mitigating blind in-window attacks, and improving handling of soft
   errors and ICMP packets.  These are all discussed in greater detail
   in the referenced RFCs that originally described the changes needed
   to earlier TCP specifications.  Additionally, see RFC 6093 [40] for
   discussion of security considerations related to the urgent pointer
   field, that has been deprecated.

   Since TCP is often used for bulk transfer flows, some attacks are
   possible that abuse the TCP congestion control logic.  An example is
   "ACK-division" attacks.  Updates that have been made to the TCP
   congestion control specifications include mechanisms like Appropriate
   Byte Counting (ABC) [30] that act as mitigations to these attacks.

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   Other attacks are focused on exhausting the resources of a TCP
   server.  Examples include SYN flooding [33] or wasting resources on
   non-progressing connections [42].  Operating systems commonly
   implement mitigations for these attacks.  Some common defenses also
   utilize proxies, stateful firewalls, and other technologies outside
   the end-host TCP implementation.

   The concept of a protocol's "wire image" is described in RFC 8546
   [56], which describes how TCP's cleartext headers expose more
   metadata to nodes on the path than is strictly required to route the
   packets to their destination.  On-path adversaries may be able to
   leverage this metadata.  Lessons learned in this respect from TCP
   have been applied in the design of newer transports like QUIC [60].
   Additionally, based partly on experiences with TCP and its
   extensions, there are considerations that might be applicable for
   future TCP extensions and other transports that the IETF has
   documented in RFC 9065 [61], along with IAB recommendations in RFC
   8558 [58] and [68].

   There are also methods of "fingerprinting" that can be used to infer
   the host TCP implementation (operating system) version or platform
   information.  These collect observations of several aspects such as
   the options present in segments, the ordering of options, the
   specific behaviors in the case of various conditions, packet timing,
   packet sizing, and other aspects of the protocol that are left to be
   determined by an implementer, and can use those observations to
   identify information about the host and implementation.

8.  Acknowledgements

   This document is largely a revision of RFC 793, which Jon Postel was
   the editor of.  Due to his excellent work, it was able to last for
   three decades before we felt the need to revise it.

   Andre Oppermann was a contributor and helped to edit the first
   revision of this document.

   We are thankful for the assistance of the IETF TCPM working group
   chairs, over the course of work on this document:

      Michael Scharf

      Yoshifumi Nishida

      Pasi Sarolahti

      Michael Tuexen

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   During the discussions of this work on the TCPM mailing list, in
   working group meetings, and via area reviews, helpful comments,
   critiques, and reviews were received from (listed alphabetically by
   last name): Praveen Balasubramanian, David Borman, Mohamed Boucadair,
   Bob Briscoe, Neal Cardwell, Yuchung Cheng, Martin Duke, Francis
   Dupont, Ted Faber, Gorry Fairhurst, Fernando Gont, Rodney Grimes, Yi
   Huang, Rahul Jadhav, Markku Kojo, Mike Kosek, Juhamatti Kuusisaari,
   Kevin Lahey, Kevin Mason, Matt Mathis, Stephen McQuistin, Jonathan
   Morton, Matt Olson, Tommy Pauly, Tom Petch, Hagen Paul Pfeifer, Kyle
   Rose, Anthony Sabatini, Michael Scharf, Greg Skinner, Joe Touch,
   Michael Tuexen, Reji Varghese, Bernie Volz, Tim Wicinski, Lloyd Wood,
   and Alex Zimmermann.

   Joe Touch provided additional help in clarifying the description of
   segment size parameters and PMTUD/PLPMTUD recommendations.  Markku
   Kojo helped put together the text in the section on TCP Congestion
   Control.

   This document includes content from errata that were reported by
   (listed chronologically): Yin Shuming, Bob Braden, Morris M.  Keesan,
   Pei-chun Cheng, Constantin Hagemeier, Vishwas Manral, Mykyta
   Yevstifeyev, EungJun Yi, Botong Huang, Charles Deng, Merlin Buge.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [1]        Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0791, September 1981,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc791>.

   [2]        Mogul, J. and S. Deering, "Path MTU discovery", RFC 1191,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1191, November 1990,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1191>.

   [3]        Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [4]        Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F., and D. Black,
              "Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
              Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2474, December 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2474>.

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   [5]        Floyd, S., "Congestion Control Principles", BCP 41,
              RFC 2914, DOI 10.17487/RFC2914, September 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2914>.

   [6]        Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S., and D. Black, "The Addition
              of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP",
              RFC 3168, DOI 10.17487/RFC3168, September 2001,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3168>.

   [7]        Floyd, S. and M. Allman, "Specifying New Congestion
              Control Algorithms", BCP 133, RFC 5033,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5033, August 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5033>.

   [8]        Allman, M., Paxson, V., and E. Blanton, "TCP Congestion
              Control", RFC 5681, DOI 10.17487/RFC5681, September 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5681>.

   [9]        Ramaiah, A., Stewart, R., and M. Dalal, "Improving TCP's
              Robustness to Blind In-Window Attacks", RFC 5961,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5961, August 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5961>.

   [10]       Paxson, V., Allman, M., Chu, J., and M. Sargent,
              "Computing TCP's Retransmission Timer", RFC 6298,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6298, June 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6298>.

   [11]       Gont, F., "Deprecation of ICMP Source Quench Messages",
              RFC 6633, DOI 10.17487/RFC6633, May 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6633>.

   [12]       Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [13]       Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
              (IPv6) Specification", STD 86, RFC 8200,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8200, July 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8200>.

   [14]       McCann, J., Deering, S., Mogul, J., and R. Hinden, Ed.,
              "Path MTU Discovery for IP version 6", STD 87, RFC 8201,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8201, July 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8201>.

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   [15]       Allman, M., "Requirements for Time-Based Loss Detection",
              BCP 233, RFC 8961, DOI 10.17487/RFC8961, November 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8961>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [16]       Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
              RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc793>.

   [17]       Postel, J., "The TCP Maximum Segment Size and Related
              Topics", RFC 879, DOI 10.17487/RFC0879, November 1983,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc879>.

   [18]       Nagle, J., "Congestion Control in IP/TCP Internetworks",
              RFC 896, DOI 10.17487/RFC0896, January 1984,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc896>.

   [19]       Reynolds, J. and J. Postel, "Official Internet protocols",
              RFC 1011, DOI 10.17487/RFC1011, May 1987,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1011>.

   [20]       Braden, R., Ed., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
              Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1122, October 1989,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1122>.

   [21]       Almquist, P., "Type of Service in the Internet Protocol
              Suite", RFC 1349, DOI 10.17487/RFC1349, July 1992,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1349>.

   [22]       Braden, R., "T/TCP -- TCP Extensions for Transactions
              Functional Specification", RFC 1644, DOI 10.17487/RFC1644,
              July 1994, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1644>.

   [23]       Mathis, M., Mahdavi, J., Floyd, S., and A. Romanow, "TCP
              Selective Acknowledgment Options", RFC 2018,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2018, October 1996,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2018>.

   [24]       Paxson, V., Allman, M., Dawson, S., Fenner, W., Griner,
              J., Heavens, I., Lahey, K., Semke, J., and B. Volz, "Known
              TCP Implementation Problems", RFC 2525,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2525, March 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2525>.

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   [25]       Borman, D., Deering, S., and R. Hinden, "IPv6 Jumbograms",
              RFC 2675, DOI 10.17487/RFC2675, August 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2675>.

   [26]       Xiao, X., Hannan, A., Paxson, V., and E. Crabbe, "TCP
              Processing of the IPv4 Precedence Field", RFC 2873,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2873, June 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2873>.

   [27]       Floyd, S., Mahdavi, J., Mathis, M., and M. Podolsky, "An
              Extension to the Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) Option
              for TCP", RFC 2883, DOI 10.17487/RFC2883, July 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2883>.

   [28]       Lahey, K., "TCP Problems with Path MTU Discovery",
              RFC 2923, DOI 10.17487/RFC2923, September 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2923>.

   [29]       Balakrishnan, H., Padmanabhan, V., Fairhurst, G., and M.
              Sooriyabandara, "TCP Performance Implications of Network
              Path Asymmetry", BCP 69, RFC 3449, DOI 10.17487/RFC3449,
              December 2002, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3449>.

   [30]       Allman, M., "TCP Congestion Control with Appropriate Byte
              Counting (ABC)", RFC 3465, DOI 10.17487/RFC3465, February
              2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3465>.

   [31]       Fenner, B., "Experimental Values In IPv4, IPv6, ICMPv4,
              ICMPv6, UDP, and TCP Headers", RFC 4727,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4727, November 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4727>.

   [32]       Mathis, M. and J. Heffner, "Packetization Layer Path MTU
              Discovery", RFC 4821, DOI 10.17487/RFC4821, March 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4821>.

   [33]       Eddy, W., "TCP SYN Flooding Attacks and Common
              Mitigations", RFC 4987, DOI 10.17487/RFC4987, August 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4987>.

   [34]       Touch, J., "Defending TCP Against Spoofing Attacks",
              RFC 4953, DOI 10.17487/RFC4953, July 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4953>.

   [35]       Culley, P., Elzur, U., Recio, R., Bailey, S., and J.
              Carrier, "Marker PDU Aligned Framing for TCP
              Specification", RFC 5044, DOI 10.17487/RFC5044, October
              2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5044>.

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   [36]       Gont, F., "TCP's Reaction to Soft Errors", RFC 5461,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5461, February 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5461>.

   [37]       StJohns, M., Atkinson, R., and G. Thomas, "Common
              Architecture Label IPv6 Security Option (CALIPSO)",
              RFC 5570, DOI 10.17487/RFC5570, July 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5570>.

   [38]       Sandlund, K., Pelletier, G., and L-E. Jonsson, "The RObust
              Header Compression (ROHC) Framework", RFC 5795,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5795, March 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5795>.

   [39]       Touch, J., Mankin, A., and R. Bonica, "The TCP
              Authentication Option", RFC 5925, DOI 10.17487/RFC5925,
              June 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5925>.

   [40]       Gont, F. and A. Yourtchenko, "On the Implementation of the
              TCP Urgent Mechanism", RFC 6093, DOI 10.17487/RFC6093,
              January 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6093>.

   [41]       Gont, F., "Reducing the TIME-WAIT State Using TCP
              Timestamps", BCP 159, RFC 6191, DOI 10.17487/RFC6191,
              April 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6191>.

   [42]       Bashyam, M., Jethanandani, M., and A. Ramaiah, "TCP Sender
              Clarification for Persist Condition", RFC 6429,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6429, December 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6429>.

   [43]       Gont, F. and S. Bellovin, "Defending against Sequence
              Number Attacks", RFC 6528, DOI 10.17487/RFC6528, February
              2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6528>.

   [44]       Borman, D., "TCP Options and Maximum Segment Size (MSS)",
              RFC 6691, DOI 10.17487/RFC6691, July 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6691>.

   [45]       Touch, J., "Updated Specification of the IPv4 ID Field",
              RFC 6864, DOI 10.17487/RFC6864, February 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6864>.

   [46]       Touch, J., "Shared Use of Experimental TCP Options",
              RFC 6994, DOI 10.17487/RFC6994, August 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6994>.

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   [47]       McPherson, D., Oran, D., Thaler, D., and E. Osterweil,
              "Architectural Considerations of IP Anycast", RFC 7094,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7094, January 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7094>.

   [48]       Borman, D., Braden, B., Jacobson, V., and R.
              Scheffenegger, Ed., "TCP Extensions for High Performance",
              RFC 7323, DOI 10.17487/RFC7323, September 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7323>.

   [49]       Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Radhakrishnan, S., and A. Jain, "TCP
              Fast Open", RFC 7413, DOI 10.17487/RFC7413, December 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7413>.

   [50]       Duke, M., Braden, R., Eddy, W., Blanton, E., and A.
              Zimmermann, "A Roadmap for Transmission Control Protocol
              (TCP) Specification Documents", RFC 7414,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7414, February 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7414>.

   [51]       Black, D., Ed. and P. Jones, "Differentiated Services
              (Diffserv) and Real-Time Communication", RFC 7657,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7657, November 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7657>.

   [52]       Fairhurst, G. and M. Welzl, "The Benefits of Using
              Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)", RFC 8087,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8087, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8087>.

   [53]       Fairhurst, G., Ed., Trammell, B., Ed., and M. Kuehlewind,
              Ed., "Services Provided by IETF Transport Protocols and
              Congestion Control Mechanisms", RFC 8095,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8095, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8095>.

   [54]       Welzl, M., Tuexen, M., and N. Khademi, "On the Usage of
              Transport Features Provided by IETF Transport Protocols",
              RFC 8303, DOI 10.17487/RFC8303, February 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8303>.

   [55]       Chown, T., Loughney, J., and T. Winters, "IPv6 Node
              Requirements", BCP 220, RFC 8504, DOI 10.17487/RFC8504,
              January 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8504>.

   [56]       Trammell, B. and M. Kuehlewind, "The Wire Image of a
              Network Protocol", RFC 8546, DOI 10.17487/RFC8546, April
              2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8546>.

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   [57]       Bittau, A., Giffin, D., Handley, M., Mazieres, D., Slack,
              Q., and E. Smith, "Cryptographic Protection of TCP Streams
              (tcpcrypt)", RFC 8548, DOI 10.17487/RFC8548, May 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8548>.

   [58]       Hardie, T., Ed., "Transport Protocol Path Signals",
              RFC 8558, DOI 10.17487/RFC8558, April 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8558>.

   [59]       Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., Bonaventure, O., and C.
              Paasch, "TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with
              Multiple Addresses", RFC 8684, DOI 10.17487/RFC8684, March
              2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8684>.

   [60]       Iyengar, J., Ed. and M. Thomson, Ed., "QUIC: A UDP-Based
              Multiplexed and Secure Transport", RFC 9000,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9000, May 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9000>.

   [61]       Fairhurst, G. and C. Perkins, "Considerations around
              Transport Header Confidentiality, Network Operations, and
              the Evolution of Internet Transport Protocols", RFC 9065,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9065, July 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9065>.

   [62]       IANA, "Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Parameters,
              https://www.iana.org/assignments/tcp-parameters/tcp-
              parameters.xhtml", 2019.

   [63]       IANA, "Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Header Flags,
              https://www.iana.org/assignments/tcp-header-flags/tcp-
              header-flags.xhtml", 2019.

   [64]       Gont, F., "Processing of IP Security/Compartment and
              Precedence Information by TCP", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-gont-tcpm-tcp-seccomp-prec-00, 29
              March 2012, <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-
              gont-tcpm-tcp-seccomp-prec-00.txt>.

   [65]       Gont, F. and D. Borman, "On the Validation of TCP Sequence
              Numbers", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-gont-
              tcpm-tcp-seq-validation-04, 11 March 2019,
              <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-gont-tcpm-tcp-
              seq-validation-04.txt>.

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   [66]       Touch, J. and W. Eddy, "TCP Extended Data Offset Option",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-tcpm-tcp-edo-
              10, 19 July 2018, <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
              draft-ietf-tcpm-tcp-edo-10.txt>.

   [67]       McQuistin, S., Band, V., Jacob, D., and C. Perkins,
              "Describing Protocol Data Units with Augmented Packet
              Header Diagrams", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              mcquistin-augmented-ascii-diagrams-08, 5 May 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-mcquistin-
              augmented-ascii-diagrams-08.txt>.

   [68]       Thomson, M. and T. Pauly, "Long-term Viability of Protocol
              Extension Mechanisms", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-iab-use-it-or-lose-it-02, 23 August 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iab-use-it-or-lose-
              it-02.txt>.

   [69]       Minshall, G., "A Proposed Modification to Nagle's
              Algorithm", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              minshall-nagle-01, June 1999,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-minshall-
              nagle-01>.

   [70]       Dalal, Y. and C. Sunshine, "Connection Management in
              Transport Protocols", Computer Networks Vol. 2, No. 6, pp.
              454-473, December 1978.

   [71]       Faber, T., Touch, J., and W. Yui, "The TIME-WAIT state in
              TCP and Its Effect on Busy Servers", Proceedings of IEEE
              INFOCOM pp. 1573-1583, March 1999.

   [72]       Postel, J., "Comments on Action Items from the January
              Meeting", IEN 177, March 1981,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien177.txt>.

   [73]       "Segmentation Offloads", Linux Networking Documentation ,
              <https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/
              segmentation-offloads.html>.

Appendix A.  Other Implementation Notes

   This section includes additional notes and references on TCP
   implementation decisions that are currently not a part of the RFC
   series or included within the TCP standard.  These items can be
   considered by implementers, but there was not yet a consensus to
   include them in the standard.

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A.1.  IP Security Compartment and Precedence

   The IPv4 specification [1] includes a precedence value in the (now
   obsoleted) Type of Service field (TOS) field.  It was modified in
   [21], and then obsoleted by the definition of Differentiated Services
   (DiffServ) [4].  Setting and conveying TOS between the network layer,
   TCP implementation, and applications is obsolete, and replaced by
   DiffServ in the current TCP specification.

   RFC 793 required checking the IP security compartment and precedence
   on incoming TCP segments for consistency within a connection, and
   with application requests.  Each of these aspects of IP have become
   outdated, without specific updates to RFC 793.  The issues with
   precedence were fixed by [26], which is Standards Track, and so this
   present TCP specification includes those changes.  However, the state
   of IP security options that may be used by MLS systems is not as
   apparent in the IETF currently.

   Resetting connections when incoming packets do not meet expected
   security compartment or precedence expectations has been recognized
   as a possible attack vector [64], and there has been discussion about
   amending the TCP specification to prevent connections from being
   aborted due to non-matching IP security compartment and DiffServ
   codepoint values.

A.1.1.  Precedence

   In DiffServ the former precedence values are treated as Class
   Selector codepoints, and methods for compatible treatment are
   described in the DiffServ architecture.  The RFC 793/1122 TCP
   specification includes logic intending to have connections use the
   highest precedence requested by either endpoint application, and to
   keep the precedence consistent throughout a connection.  This logic
   from the obsolete TOS is not applicable for DiffServ, and should not
   be included in TCP implementations, though changes to DiffServ values
   within a connection are discouraged.  For discussion of this, see RFC
   7657 (sec 5.1, 5.3, and 6) [51].

   The obsoleted TOS processing rules in TCP assumed bidirectional (or
   symmetric) precedence values used on a connection, but the DiffServ
   architecture is asymmetric.  Problems with the old TCP logic in this
   regard were described in [26] and the solution described is to ignore
   IP precedence in TCP.  Since RFC 2873 is a Standards Track document
   (although not marked as updating RFC 793), current implementations
   are expected to be robust to these conditions.  Note that the
   DiffServ field value used in each direction is a part of the
   interface between TCP and the network layer, and values in use can be
   indicated both ways between TCP and the application.

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A.1.2.  MLS Systems

   The IP security option (IPSO) and compartment defined in [1] was
   refined in RFC 1038 that was later obsoleted by RFC 1108.  The
   Commercial IP Security Option (CIPSO) is defined in FIPS-188
   (withdrawn by NIST in 2015), and is supported by some vendors and
   operating systems.  RFC 1108 is now Historic, though RFC 791 itself
   has not been updated to remove the IP security option.  For IPv6, a
   similar option (CALIPSO) has been defined [37].  RFC 793 includes
   logic that includes the IP security/compartment information in
   treatment of TCP segments.  References to the IP "security/
   compartment" in this document may be relevant for Multi-Level Secure
   (MLS) system implementers, but can be ignored for non-MLS
   implementations, consistent with running code on the Internet.  See
   Appendix A.1 for further discussion.  Note that RFC 5570 describes
   some MLS networking scenarios where IPSO, CIPSO, or CALIPSO may be
   used.  In these special cases, TCP implementers should see section
   7.3.1 of RFC 5570, and follow the guidance in that document.

A.2.  Sequence Number Validation

   There are cases where the TCP sequence number validation rules can
   prevent ACK fields from being processed.  This can result in
   connection issues, as described in [65], which includes descriptions
   of potential problems in conditions of simultaneous open, self-
   connects, simultaneous close, and simultaneous window probes.  The
   document also describes potential changes to the TCP specification to
   mitigate the issue by expanding the acceptable sequence numbers.

   In Internet usage of TCP, these conditions are rarely occurring.
   Common operating systems include different alternative mitigations,
   and the standard has not been updated yet to codify one of them, but
   implementers should consider the problems described in [65].

A.3.  Nagle Modification

   In common operating systems, both the Nagle algorithm and delayed
   acknowledgements are implemented and enabled by default.  TCP is used
   by many applications that have a request-response style of
   communication, where the combination of the Nagle algorithm and
   delayed acknowledgements can result in poor application performance.
   A modification to the Nagle algorithm is described in [69] that
   improves the situation for these applications.

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   This modification is implemented in some common operating systems,
   and does not impact TCP interoperability.  Additionally, many
   applications simply disable Nagle, since this is generally supported
   by a socket option.  The TCP standard has not been updated to include
   this Nagle modification, but implementers may find it beneficial to
   consider.

A.4.  Low Watermark Settings

   Some operating system kernel TCP implementations include socket
   options that allow specifying the number of bytes in the buffer until
   the socket layer will pass sent data to TCP (SO_SNDLOWAT) or to the
   application on receiving (SO_RCVLOWAT).

   In addition, another socket option (TCP_NOTSENT_LOWAT) can be used to
   control the amount of unsent bytes in the write queue.  This can help
   a sending TCP application to avoid creating large amounts of buffered
   data (and corresponding latency).  As an example, this may be useful
   for applications that are multiplexing data from multiple upper level
   streams onto a connection, especially when streams may be a mix of
   interactive / real-time and bulk data transfer.

Appendix B.  TCP Requirement Summary

   This section is adapted from RFC 1122.

   Note that there is no requirement related to PLPMTUD in this list,
   but that PLPMTUD is recommended.

                                                  |        | | | |S| |
                                                  |        | | | |H| |F
                                                  |        | | | |O|M|o
                                                  |        | |S| |U|U|o
                                                  |        | |H| |L|S|t
                                                  |        |M|O| |D|T|n
                                                  |        |U|U|M| | |o
                                                  |        |S|L|A|N|N|t
                                                  |        |T|D|Y|O|O|t
 FEATURE                                          | ReqID  | | | |T|T|e
 -------------------------------------------------|--------|-|-|-|-|-|--
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Push flag                                        |        | | | | | |
   Aggregate or queue un-pushed data              | MAY-16 | | |x| | |
   Sender collapse successive PSH flags           | SHLD-27| |x| | | |
   SEND call can specify PUSH                     | MAY-15 | | |x| | |
     If cannot: sender buffer indefinitely        | MUST-60| | | | |x|
     If cannot: PSH last segment                  | MUST-61|x| | | | |
   Notify receiving ALP of PSH                    | MAY-17 | | |x| | |1

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   Send max size segment when possible            | SHLD-28| |x| | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Window                                           |        | | | | | |
   Treat as unsigned number                       | MUST-1 |x| | | | |
   Handle as 32-bit number                        | REC-1  | |x| | | |
   Shrink window from right                       | SHLD-14| | | |x| |
   - Send new data when window shrinks            | SHLD-15| | | |x| |
   - Retransmit old unacked data within window    | SHLD-16| |x| | | |
   - Time out conn for data past right edge       | SHLD-17| | | |x| |
   Robust against shrinking window                | MUST-34|x| | | | |
   Receiver's window closed indefinitely          | MAY-8  | | |x| | |
   Use standard probing logic                     | MUST-35|x| | | | |
   Sender probe zero window                       | MUST-36|x| | | | |
     First probe after RTO                        | SHLD-29| |x| | | |
     Exponential backoff                          | SHLD-30| |x| | | |
   Allow window stay zero indefinitely            | MUST-37|x| | | | |
   Retransmit old data beyond SND.UNA+SND.WND     | MAY-7  | | |x| | |
   Process RST and URG even with zero window      | MUST-66|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Urgent Data                                      |        | | | | | |
   Include support for urgent pointer             | MUST-30|x| | | | |
   Pointer indicates first non-urgent octet       | MUST-62|x| | | | |
   Arbitrary length urgent data sequence          | MUST-31|x| | | | |
   Inform ALP asynchronously of urgent data       | MUST-32|x| | | | |1
   ALP can learn if/how much urgent data Q'd      | MUST-33|x| | | | |1
   ALP employ the urgent mechanism                | SHLD-13| | | |x| |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 TCP Options                                      |        | | | | | |
   Support the mandatory option set               | MUST-4 |x| | | | |
   Receive TCP option in any segment              | MUST-5 |x| | | | |
   Ignore unsupported options                     | MUST-6 |x| | | | |
   Include length for all options except EOL+NOP  | MUST-68|x| | | | |
   Cope with illegal option length                | MUST-7 |x| | | | |
   Process options regardless of word alignment   | MUST-64|x| | | | |
   Implement sending & receiving MSS option       | MUST-14|x| | | | |
   IPv4 Send MSS option unless 536                | SHLD-5 | |x| | | |
   IPv6 Send MSS option unless 1220               | SHLD-5 | |x| | | |
   Send MSS option always                         | MAY-3  | | |x| | |
   IPv4 Send-MSS default is 536                   | MUST-15|x| | | | |
   IPv6 Send-MSS default is 1220                  | MUST-15|x| | | | |
   Calculate effective send seg size              | MUST-16|x| | | | |
   MSS accounts for varying MTU                   | SHLD-6 | |x| | | |
   MSS not sent on non-SYN segments               | MUST-65| | | | |x|
   MSS value based on MMS_R                       | MUST-67|x| | | | |
   Pad with zero                                  | MUST-69|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 TCP Checksums                                    |        | | | | | |
   Sender compute checksum                        | MUST-2 |x| | | | |

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   Receiver check checksum                        | MUST-3 |x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 ISN Selection                                    |        | | | | | |
   Include a clock-driven ISN generator component | MUST-8 |x| | | | |
   Secure ISN generator with a PRF component      | SHLD-1 | |x| | | |
   PRF computable from outside the host           | MUST-9 | | | | |x|
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Opening Connections                              |        | | | | | |
   Support simultaneous open attempts             | MUST-10|x| | | | |
   SYN-RECEIVED remembers last state              | MUST-11|x| | | | |
   Passive Open call interfere with others        | MUST-41| | | | |x|
   Function: simultan. LISTENs for same port      | MUST-42|x| | | | |
   Ask IP for src address for SYN if necc.        | MUST-44|x| | | | |
     Otherwise, use local addr of conn.           | MUST-45|x| | | | |
   OPEN to broadcast/multicast IP Address         | MUST-46| | | | |x|
   Silently discard seg to bcast/mcast addr       | MUST-57|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Closing Connections                              |        | | | | | |
   RST can contain data                           | SHLD-2 | |x| | | |
   Inform application of aborted conn             | MUST-12|x| | | | |
   Half-duplex close connections                  | MAY-1  | | |x| | |
     Send RST to indicate data lost               | SHLD-3 | |x| | | |
   In TIME-WAIT state for 2MSL seconds            | MUST-13|x| | | | |
     Accept SYN from TIME-WAIT state              | MAY-2  | | |x| | |
     Use Timestamps to reduce TIME-WAIT           | SHLD-4 | |x| | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Retransmissions                                  |        | | | | | |
   Implement exponential backoff, slow start, and | MUST-19|x| | | | |
     congestion avoidance                         |        | | | | | |
   Retransmit with same IP ident                  | MAY-4  | | |x| | |
   Karn's algorithm                               | MUST-18|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Generating ACKs:                                 |        | | | | | |
   Aggregate whenever possible                    | MUST-58|x| | | | |
   Queue out-of-order segments                    | SHLD-31| |x| | | |
   Process all Q'd before send ACK                | MUST-59|x| | | | |
   Send ACK for out-of-order segment              | MAY-13 | | |x| | |
   Delayed ACKs                                   | SHLD-18| |x| | | |
     Delay < 0.5 seconds                          | MUST-40|x| | | | |
     Every 2nd full-sized segment or 2*RMSS ACK'd | SHLD-19| |x| | | |
   Receiver SWS-Avoidance Algorithm               | MUST-39|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Sending data                                     |        | | | | | |
   Configurable TTL                               | MUST-49|x| | | | |
   Sender SWS-Avoidance Algorithm                 | MUST-38|x| | | | |
   Nagle algorithm                                | SHLD-7 | |x| | | |
     Application can disable Nagle algorithm      | MUST-17|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |

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 Connection Failures:                             |        | | | | | |
   Negative advice to IP on R1 retxs              | MUST-20|x| | | | |
   Close connection on R2 retxs                   | MUST-20|x| | | | |
   ALP can set R2                                 | MUST-21|x| | | | |1
   Inform ALP of  R1<=retxs<R2                    | SHLD-9 | |x| | | |1
   Recommended value for R1                       | SHLD-10| |x| | | |
   Recommended value for R2                       | SHLD-11| |x| | | |
   Same mechanism for SYNs                        | MUST-22|x| | | | |
     R2 at least 3 minutes for SYN                | MUST-23|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Send Keep-alive Packets:                         | MAY-5  | | |x| | |
   - Application can request                      | MUST-24|x| | | | |
   - Default is "off"                             | MUST-25|x| | | | |
   - Only send if idle for interval               | MUST-26|x| | | | |
   - Interval configurable                        | MUST-27|x| | | | |
   - Default at least 2 hrs.                      | MUST-28|x| | | | |
   - Tolerant of lost ACKs                        | MUST-29|x| | | | |
   - Send with no data                            | SHLD-12| |x| | | |
   - Configurable to send garbage octet           | MAY-6  | | |x| | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 IP Options                                       |        | | | | | |
   Ignore options TCP doesn't understand          | MUST-50|x| | | | |
   Time Stamp support                             | MAY-10 | | |x| | |
   Record Route support                           | MAY-11 | | |x| | |
   Source Route:                                  |        | | | | | |
     ALP can specify                              | MUST-51|x| | | | |1
       Overrides src rt in datagram               | MUST-52|x| | | | |
     Build return route from src rt               | MUST-53|x| | | | |
     Later src route overrides                    | SHLD-24| |x| | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Receiving ICMP Messages from IP                  | MUST-54|x| | | | |
   Dest. Unreach (0,1,5) => inform ALP            | SHLD-25| |x| | | |
   Abort on Dest. Unreach (0,1,5) =>nn            | MUST-56| | | | |x|
   Dest. Unreach (2-4) => abort conn              | SHLD-26| |x| | | |
   Source Quench => silent discard                | MUST-55|x| | | | |
   Abort on Time Exceeded =>                      | MUST-56| | | | |x|
   Abort on Param Problem =>                      | MUST-56| | | | |x|
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Address Validation                               |        | | | | | |
   Reject OPEN call to invalid IP address         | MUST-46|x| | | | |
   Reject SYN from invalid IP address             | MUST-63|x| | | | |
   Silently discard SYN to bcast/mcast addr       | MUST-57|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 TCP/ALP Interface Services                       |        | | | | | |
   Error Report mechanism                         | MUST-47|x| | | | |
   ALP can disable Error Report Routine           | SHLD-20| |x| | | |
   ALP can specify DiffServ field for sending     | MUST-48|x| | | | |
     Passed unchanged to IP                       | SHLD-22| |x| | | |

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   ALP can change DiffServ field during connection| SHLD-21| |x| | | |
   ALP generally changing DiffServ during conn.   | SHLD-23| | | |x| |
   Pass received DiffServ field up to ALP         | MAY-9  | | |x| | |
   FLUSH call                                     | MAY-14 | | |x| | |
   Optional local IP addr parm. in OPEN           | MUST-43|x| | | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 RFC 5961 Support:                                |        | | | | | |
   Implement data injection protection            | MAY-12 | | |x| | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Explicit Congestion Notification:                |        | | | | | |
   Support ECN                                    | SHLD-8 | |x| | | |
                                                  |        | | | | | |
 Alternative Congestion Control:                  |        | | | | | |
   Implement alternative conformant algorithm(s)  | MAY-18 | | |x| | |
 -------------------------------------------------|--------|-|-|-|-|-|-

   FOOTNOTES: (1) "ALP" means Application-Layer Program.

Author's Address

   Wesley M. Eddy (editor)
   MTI Systems
   United States of America
   Email: wes@mti-systems.com

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