Internet Engineering Task Force

Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (dccp)

In addition to this official charter maintained by the IETF Secretariat, there is additional information about this working group on the Web at:
Additional DCCP Web Page

Last Modified: 2009-05-20

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/dccp

Chair(s):

Transport Area Director(s):

Transport Area Advisor:

Lars Eggert <lars.eggert@nokia.com>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: dccp@ietf.org
To Subscribe: dccp-request@ietf.org
In Body: (un)subscribe
Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/dccp/index.html

Description of Working Group:

The Datagram Control Protocol working group is chartered to develop and
standardize the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP). DCCP is a
minimal general purpose transport-layer protocol providing only two
core functions:

- the establishment, maintenance and teardown of an unreliable packet
flow.

- congestion control of that packet flow.

Within the constraints of providing these core functions, DCCP aims to
be a general purpose protocol, minimizing the overhead of packet
header
size or end-node processing as much as possible. Therefore, DCCP is as
simple as possible, and as far as reasonably possible, it should avoid
providing higher-level transport functionality. DCCP will provide a
congestion-controlled, unreliable packet stream, without TCP's
reliability or in-order delivery semantics. Additional unicast,
flow-based application functionality can be layered over DCCP.

SCOPE

Drafts for DCCP, and several associated congestion control IDs, already
exist. The first task before the working group will be an abbreviated
functional requirement validation of those drafts. There are two
possible outcomes:

1) The current DCCP draft is declared suitable for further work, with
some areas listed for possible extension.

2) The current DCCP draft is declared unsuitable for further work, and
more formal functional requirement exploration begins.

Prior to the final development of the protocol, the working group will
investigate areas of functionality that should be integrated into DCCP
because they are difficult or impossible to layer above it. These areas
include security and multi-homing/mobility, at a minimum. The protocol
will be for both IPv4 and IPv6. It will not encompass multicast. It
is strictly a unicast transport.

For security, the working group will endeavor to ensure that DCCP
incorporates good non-cryptographic mechanisms that make it resistant
to denial-of-service attacks on DCCP connections and DCCP servers. A
related topic that will be explored is whether DCCP can be a candidate
to replace UDP in the transport of security management protocols such
as IKE and JFK.

The working group will also investigate DCCP's relationship with RTP
(the Real-time Transport Protocol).

Once the DCCP specification has stabilized, the WG will produce a
document providing guidance to potential users of DCCP. The precise
form of this document will be determined by WG discussion, but it
might
include example APIs, an applicability statement, or other forms of
guidance about appropriate usage of DCCP.

Goals and Milestones:

Done		Publish summary of required protocol functions/requirements
Done		Decision to build on proposed DCCP protocol, alternate protocol, or quit and go home
Done		Detailed review of spec and CCIDs
Done		Public design review at IETF meeting
Done		Working group last call for spec and CCIDs
Done		Submit DCCP spec for IESG/IETF review to be Proposed Standard
Done		Submit DCCP CCIDs for IESG/IETF review to be Proposed Standard
Done		Complete WGLC draft-ietf-dccp-problem-xx as Informational
Done		Complete WGLC draft-ietf-dccp-tfrc-voip as Experimental
Done		Complete WGLC 'RTP over DCCP' as PS
Done		Complete WGLC 'DTLS over DCCP' as PS
Done		Complete WGLC for draft-ietf-dccp-rfc3448bis as PS
Done		Complete WGLC for draft-ietf-dccp-serv-codes as PS
Jul 2008		Complete WGLC draft-ietf-dccp-ccid4 as Experimental
Sep 2008		Complete WGLC draft-ietf-dccp-tfrc-faster-restart as Experimental
Done		Complete WGLC for draft-ietf-dccp-simul-open as PS
Mar 2009		Complete WGLC draft-ietf-dccp-quickstart as Experimental

Internet-Drafts:

RTP and the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) (39080 bytes)
The DCCP Service Code (61359 bytes)
Profile for Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) Congestion ID 4: TCP-Friendly Rate Control for Small Packets (TFRC-SP) (49191 bytes)
DCCP Simultaneous-Open Technique to Facilitate NAT/Middlebox Traversal (63569 bytes)
Quick-Start for Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) (56605 bytes)

Request For Comments: