RFC 4340
Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP)
Network Working Group E. Kohler Request for Comments: 4340 UCLA Category: Standards Track M. Handley UCL S. Floyd ICIR March 2006 Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) Status of This Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).Abstract
The Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) is a transport protocol that provides bidirectional unicast connections of congestion-controlled unreliable datagrams. DCCP is suitable for applications that transfer fairly large amounts of data and that can benefit from control over the tradeoff between timeliness and reliability.Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................5 2. Design Rationale ................................................6 3. Conventions and Terminology .....................................7 3.1. Numbers and Fields .........................................7 3.2. Parts of a Connection ......................................8 3.3. Features ...................................................9 3.4. Round-Trip Times ...........................................9 3.5. Security Limitation ........................................9 3.6. Robustness Principle ......................................10 4. Overview .......................................................10 4.1. Packet Types ..............................................10 4.2. Packet Sequencing .........................................11 4.3. States ....................................................12 4.4. Congestion Control Mechanisms .............................14
4.5. Feature Negotiation Options ...............................15
4.6. Differences from TCP ......................................16
4.7. Example Connection ........................................17
5. Packet Formats .................................................18
5.1. Generic Header ............................................19
5.2. DCCP-Request Packets ......................................22
5.3. DCCP-Response Packets .....................................23
5.4. DCCP-Data, DCCP-Ack, and DCCP-DataAck Packets .............23
5.5. DCCP-CloseReq and DCCP-Close Packets ......................25
5.6. DCCP-Reset Packets ........................................25
5.7. DCCP-Sync and DCCP-SyncAck Packets ........................28
5.8. Options ...................................................29
5.8.1. Padding Option .....................................31
5.8.2. Mandatory Option ...................................31
6. Feature Negotiation ............................................32
6.1. Change Options ............................................32
6.2. Confirm Options ...........................................33
6.3. Reconciliation Rules ......................................33
6.3.1. Server-Priority ....................................34
6.3.2. Non-Negotiable .....................................34
6.4. Feature Numbers ...........................................35
6.5. Feature Negotiation Examples ..............................36
6.6. Option Exchange ...........................................37
6.6.1. Normal Exchange ....................................38
6.6.2. Processing Received Options ........................38
6.6.3. Loss and Retransmission ............................40
6.6.4. Reordering .........................................41
6.6.5. Preference Changes .................................42
6.6.6. Simultaneous Negotiation ...........................42
6.6.7. Unknown Features ...................................43
6.6.8. Invalid Options ....................................43
6.6.9. Mandatory Feature Negotiation ......................44
7. Sequence Numbers ...............................................44
7.1. Variables .................................................45
7.2. Initial Sequence Numbers ..................................45
7.3. Quiet Time ................................................46
7.4. Acknowledgement Numbers ...................................47
7.5. Validity and Synchronization ..............................47
7.5.1. Sequence and Acknowledgement Number Windows ........48
7.5.2. Sequence Window Feature ............................49
7.5.3. Sequence-Validity Rules ............................49
7.5.4. Handling Sequence-Invalid Packets ..................51
7.5.5. Sequence Number Attacks ............................52
7.5.6. Sequence Number Handling Examples ..................54
7.6. Short Sequence Numbers ....................................55
7.6.1. Allow Short Sequence Numbers Feature ...............55
7.6.2. When to Avoid Short Sequence Numbers ...............56
7.7. NDP Count and Detecting Application Loss ..................56
7.7.1. NDP Count Usage Notes ..............................57
7.7.2. Send NDP Count Feature .............................57
8. Event Processing ...............................................58
8.1. Connection Establishment ..................................58
8.1.1. Client Request .....................................58
8.1.2. Service Codes ......................................59
8.1.3. Server Response ....................................61
8.1.4. Init Cookie Option .................................62
8.1.5. Handshake Completion ...............................63
8.2. Data Transfer .............................................63
8.3. Termination ...............................................64
8.3.1. Abnormal Termination ...............................66
8.4. DCCP State Diagram ........................................66
8.5. Pseudocode ................................................67
9. Checksums ......................................................72
9.1. Header Checksum Field .....................................73
9.2. Header Checksum Coverage Field ............................73
9.2.1. Minimum Checksum Coverage Feature ..................74
9.3. Data Checksum Option ......................................75
9.3.1. Check Data Checksum Feature ........................76
9.3.2. Checksum Usage Notes ...............................76
10. Congestion Control ............................................76
10.1. TCP-like Congestion Control ..............................77
10.2. TFRC Congestion Control ..................................78
10.3. CCID-Specific Options, Features, and Reset Codes .........78
10.4. CCID Profile Requirements ................................80
10.5. Congestion State .........................................81
11. Acknowledgements ..............................................81
11.1. Acks of Acks and Unidirectional Connections ..............82
11.2. Ack Piggybacking .........................................83
11.3. Ack Ratio Feature ........................................84
11.4. Ack Vector Options .......................................85
11.4.1. Ack Vector Consistency ............................88
11.4.2. Ack Vector Coverage ...............................89
11.5. Send Ack Vector Feature ..................................90
11.6. Slow Receiver Option .....................................90
11.7. Data Dropped Option ......................................91
11.7.1. Data Dropped and Normal Congestion Response .......94
11.7.2. Particular Drop Codes .............................95
12. Explicit Congestion Notification ..............................96
12.1. ECN Incapable Feature ....................................96
12.2. ECN Nonces ...............................................97
12.3. Aggression Penalties .....................................98
13. Timing Options ................................................99
13.1. Timestamp Option .........................................99
13.2. Elapsed Time Option ......................................99
13.3. Timestamp Echo Option ...................................100
14. Maximum Packet Size ..........................................101
14.1. Measuring PMTU ..........................................102
14.2. Sender Behavior .........................................103
15. Forward Compatibility ........................................104
16. Middlebox Considerations .....................................105
17. Relations to Other Specifications ............................106
17.1. RTP .....................................................106
17.2. Congestion Manager and Multiplexing .....................108
18. Security Considerations ......................................108
18.1. Security Considerations for Partial Checksums ...........109
19. IANA Considerations ..........................................110
19.1. Packet Types Registry ...................................110
19.2. Reset Codes Registry ....................................110
19.3. Option Types Registry ...................................110
19.4. Feature Numbers Registry ................................111
19.5. Congestion Control Identifiers Registry .................111
19.6. Ack Vector States Registry ..............................111
19.7. Drop Codes Registry .....................................112
19.8. Service Codes Registry ..................................112
19.9. Port Numbers Registry ...................................112
20. Thanks .......................................................114
A. Appendix: Ack Vector Implementation Notes ....................116
A.1. Packet Arrival ..........................................118
A.1.1. New Packets ......................................118
A.1.2. Old Packets ......................................119
A.2. Sending Acknowledgements ................................120
A.3. Clearing State ..........................................120
A.4. Processing Acknowledgements .............................122
B. Appendix: Partial Checksumming Design Motivation .............123
Normative References .............................................124
Informative References ...........................................125
List of Tables
Table 1: DCCP Packet Types .......................................21
Table 2: DCCP Reset Codes ........................................28
Table 3: DCCP Options ............................................30
Table 4: DCCP Feature Numbers.....................................35
Table 5: DCCP Congestion Control Identifiers .....................77
Table 6: DCCP Ack Vector States ..................................86
Table 7: DCCP Drop Codes .........................................92
1. Introduction
The Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) is a transport protocol that implements bidirectional, unicast connections of congestion-controlled, unreliable datagrams. Specifically, DCCP provides the following: o Unreliable flows of datagrams. o Reliable handshakes for connection setup and teardown. o Reliable negotiation of options, including negotiation of a suitable congestion control mechanism. o Mechanisms allowing servers to avoid holding state for unacknowledged connection attempts and already-finished connections. o Congestion control incorporating Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) [RFC3168] and the ECN Nonce [RFC3540]. o Acknowledgement mechanisms communicating packet loss and ECN information. Acks are transmitted as reliably as the relevant congestion control mechanism requires, possibly completely reliably. o Optional mechanisms that tell the sending application, with high reliability, which data packets reached the receiver, and whether those packets were ECN marked, corrupted, or dropped in the receive buffer. o Path Maximum Transmission Unit (PMTU) discovery [RFC1191]. o A choice of modular congestion control mechanisms. Two mechanisms are currently specified: TCP-like Congestion Control [RFC4341] and TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) [RFC4342]. DCCP is easily extensible to further forms of unicast congestion control. DCCP is intended for applications such as streaming media that can benefit from control over the tradeoffs between delay and reliable in-order delivery. TCP is not well suited for these applications, since reliable in-order delivery and congestion control can cause arbitrarily long delays. UDP avoids long delays, but UDP applications that implement congestion control must do so on their own. DCCP provides built-in congestion control, including ECN
support, for unreliable datagram flows, avoiding the arbitrary delays associated with TCP. It also implements reliable connection setup, teardown, and feature negotiation.2. Design Rationale
One DCCP design goal was to give most streaming UDP applications little reason not to switch to DCCP, once it is deployed. To facilitate this, DCCP was designed to have as little overhead as possible, both in terms of the packet header size and in terms of the state and CPU overhead required at end hosts. Only the minimal necessary functionality was included in DCCP, leaving other functionality, such as forward error correction (FEC), semi- reliability, and multiple streams, to be layered on top of DCCP as desired. Different forms of conformant congestion control are appropriate for different applications. For example, on-line games might want to make quick use of any available bandwidth, while streaming media might trade off this responsiveness for a steadier, less bursty rate. (Sudden rate changes can cause unacceptable UI glitches such as audible pauses or clicks in the playout stream.) DCCP thus allows applications to choose from a set of congestion control mechanisms. One alternative, TCP-like Congestion Control, halves the congestion window in response to a packet drop or mark, as in TCP. Applications using this congestion control mechanism will respond quickly to changes in available bandwidth, but must tolerate the abrupt changes in congestion window typical of TCP. A second alternative, TCP- Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) [RFC3448], a form of equation-based congestion control, minimizes abrupt changes in the sending rate while maintaining longer-term fairness with TCP. Other alternatives can be added as future congestion control mechanisms are standardized. DCCP also lets unreliable traffic safely use ECN. A UDP kernel Application Programming Interface (API) might not allow applications to set UDP packets as ECN capable, since the API could not guarantee that the application would properly detect or respond to congestion. DCCP kernel APIs will have no such issues, since DCCP implements congestion control itself. We chose not to require the use of the Congestion Manager [RFC3124], which allows multiple concurrent streams between the same sender and receiver to share congestion control. The current Congestion Manager can only be used by applications that have their own end-to-end feedback about packet losses, but this is not the case for many of the applications currently using UDP. In addition, the current Congestion Manager does not easily support multiple congestion
control mechanisms or mechanisms where the state about past packet drops or marks is maintained at the receiver rather than the sender. DCCP should be able to make use of CM where desired by the application, but we do not see any benefit in making the deployment of DCCP contingent on the deployment of CM itself. We intend for DCCP's protocol mechanisms, which are described in this document, to suit any application desiring unicast congestion- controlled streams of unreliable datagrams. However, the congestion control mechanisms currently approved for use with DCCP, which are described in separate Congestion Control ID Profiles [RFC4341, RFC4342], may cause problems for some applications, including high- bandwidth interactive video. These applications should be able to use DCCP once suitable Congestion Control ID Profiles are standardized.3. Conventions and Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].3.1. Numbers and Fields
All multi-byte numerical quantities in DCCP, such as port numbers, Sequence Numbers, and arguments to options, are transmitted in network byte order (most significant byte first). We occasionally refer to the "left" and "right" sides of a bit field. "Left" means towards the most significant bit, and "right" means towards the least significant bit. Random numbers in DCCP are used for their security properties and SHOULD be chosen according to the guidelines in [RFC4086]. All operations on DCCP sequence numbers use circular arithmetic modulo 2^48, as do comparisons such as "greater" and "greatest". This form of arithmetic preserves the relationships between sequence numbers as they roll over from 2^48 - 1 to 0. Implementation strategies for DCCP sequence numbers will resemble those for other circular arithmetic spaces, including TCP's sequence numbers [RFC793] and DNS's serial numbers [RFC1982]. It may make sense to store DCCP sequence numbers in the most significant 48 bits of 64-bit integers and set the least significant 16 bits to zero, since this supports a common technique that implements circular comparison A < B by testing whether (A - B) < 0 using conventional two's-complement arithmetic.
Reserved bitfields in DCCP packet headers MUST be set to zero by senders and MUST be ignored by receivers, unless otherwise specified. This allows for future protocol extensions. In particular, DCCP processors MUST NOT reset a DCCP connection simply because a Reserved field has non-zero value [RFC3360].3.2. Parts of a Connection
Each DCCP connection runs between two hosts, which we often name DCCP A and DCCP B. Each connection is actively initiated by one of the hosts, which we call the client; the other, initially passive host is called the server. The term "DCCP endpoint" is used to refer to either of the two hosts explicitly named by the connection (the client and the server). The term "DCCP processor" refers more generally to any host that might need to process a DCCP header; this includes the endpoints and any middleboxes on the path, such as firewalls and network address translators. DCCP connections are bidirectional: data may pass from either endpoint to the other. This means that data and acknowledgements may flow in both directions simultaneously. Logically, however, a DCCP connection consists of two separate unidirectional connections, called half-connections. Each half-connection consists of the application data sent by one endpoint and the corresponding acknowledgements sent by the other endpoint. We can illustrate this as follows: +--------+ A-to-B half-connection: +--------+ | | --> application data --> | | | | <-- acknowledgements <-- | | | DCCP A | | DCCP B | | | B-to-A half-connection: | | | | <-- application data <-- | | +--------+ --> acknowledgements --> +--------+ Although they are logically distinct, in practice the half- connections overlap; a DCCP-DataAck packet, for example, contains application data relevant to one half-connection and acknowledgement information relevant to the other. In the context of a single half-connection, the terms "HC-Sender" and "HC-Receiver" denote the endpoints sending application data and acknowledgements, respectively. For example, DCCP A is the HC-Sender and DCCP B is the HC-Receiver in the A-to-B half-connection.
3.3. Features
A DCCP feature is a connection attribute on whose value the two endpoints agree. Many properties of a DCCP connection are controlled by features, including the congestion control mechanisms in use on the two half-connections. The endpoints achieve agreement through the exchange of feature negotiation options in DCCP headers. DCCP features are identified by a feature number and an endpoint. The notation "F/X" represents the feature with feature number F located at DCCP endpoint X. Each valid feature number thus corresponds to two features, which are negotiated separately and need not have the same value. The two endpoints know, and agree on, the value of every valid feature. DCCP A is the "feature location" for all features F/A, and the "feature remote" for all features F/B.3.4. Round-Trip Times
DCCP round-trip time measurements are performed by congestion control mechanisms; different mechanisms may measure round-trip time in different ways, or not measure it at all. However, the main DCCP protocol does use round-trip times occasionally, such as in the initial values for certain timers. Each DCCP implementation thus defines a default round-trip time for use when no estimate is available. This parameter should default to not less than 0.2 seconds, a reasonably conservative round-trip time for Internet TCP connections. Protocol behavior specified in terms of "round-trip time" values actually refers to "a current round-trip time estimate taken by some CCID, or, if no estimate is available, the default round-trip time parameter". The maximum segment lifetime, or MSL, is the maximum length of time a packet can survive in the network. The DCCP MSL should equal that of TCP, which is normally two minutes.3.5. Security Limitation
DCCP provides no protection against attackers who can snoop on a connection in progress, or who can guess valid sequence numbers in other ways. Applications desiring stronger security should use IPsec [RFC2401]; depending on the level of security required, application- level cryptography may also suffice. These issues are discussed further in Sections 7.5.5 and 18.
3.6. Robustness Principle
DCCP implementations will follow TCP's "general principle of robustness": "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others" [RFC793].4. Overview
DCCP's high-level connection dynamics echo those of TCP. Connections progress through three phases: initiation, including a three-way handshake; data transfer; and termination. Data can flow both ways over the connection. An acknowledgement framework lets senders discover how much data has been lost and thus avoid unfairly congesting the network. Of course, DCCP provides unreliable datagram semantics, not TCP's reliable bytestream semantics. The application must package its data into explicit frames and must retransmit its own data as necessary. It may be useful to think of DCCP as TCP minus bytestream semantics and reliability, or as UDP plus congestion control, handshakes, and acknowledgements.4.1. Packet Types
Ten packet types implement DCCP's protocol functions. For example, every new connection attempt begins with a DCCP-Request packet sent by the client. In this way a DCCP-Request packet resembles a TCP SYN, but since DCCP-Request is a packet type there is no way to send an unexpected flag combination, such as TCP's SYN+FIN+ACK+RST. Eight packet types occur during the progress of a typical connection, shown here. Note the three-way handshakes during initiation and termination. Client Server ------ ------ (1) Initiation DCCP-Request --> <-- DCCP-Response DCCP-Ack --> (2) Data transfer DCCP-Data, DCCP-Ack, DCCP-DataAck --> <-- DCCP-Data, DCCP-Ack, DCCP-DataAck (3) Termination <-- DCCP-CloseReq DCCP-Close --> <-- DCCP-Reset The two remaining packet types are used to resynchronize after bursts of loss.
Every DCCP packet starts with a fixed-size generic header.
Particular packet types include additional fixed-size header data;
for example, DCCP-Acks include an Acknowledgement Number. DCCP
options and any application data follow the fixed-size header.
The packet types are as follows:
DCCP-Request
Sent by the client to initiate a connection (the first part of the
three-way initiation handshake).
DCCP-Response
Sent by the server in response to a DCCP-Request (the second part
of the three-way initiation handshake).
DCCP-Data
Used to transmit application data.
DCCP-Ack
Used to transmit pure acknowledgements.
DCCP-DataAck
Used to transmit application data with piggybacked acknowledgement
information.
DCCP-CloseReq
Sent by the server to request that the client close the
connection.
DCCP-Close
Used by the client or the server to close the connection; elicits
a DCCP-Reset in response.
DCCP-Reset
Used to terminate the connection, either normally or abnormally.
DCCP-Sync, DCCP-SyncAck
Used to resynchronize sequence numbers after large bursts of loss.
4.2. Packet Sequencing
Each DCCP packet carries a sequence number so that losses can be
detected and reported. Unlike TCP sequence numbers, which are byte-
based, DCCP sequence numbers increment by one per packet. For
example:
DCCP A DCCP B ------ ------ DCCP-Data(seqno 1) --> DCCP-Data(seqno 2) --> <-- DCCP-Ack(seqno 10, ackno 2) DCCP-DataAck(seqno 3, ackno 10) --> <-- DCCP-Data(seqno 11) Every DCCP packet increments the sequence number, whether or not it contains application data. DCCP-Ack pure acknowledgements increment the sequence number; for instance, DCCP B's second packet above uses sequence number 11, since sequence number 10 was used for an acknowledgement. This lets endpoints detect all packet loss, including acknowledgement loss. It also means that endpoints can get out of sync after long bursts of loss. The DCCP-Sync and DCCP- SyncAck packet types are used to recover (Section 7.5). Since DCCP provides unreliable semantics, there are no retransmissions, and having a TCP-style cumulative acknowledgement field doesn't make sense. DCCP's Acknowledgement Number field equals the greatest sequence number received, rather than the smallest sequence number not received. Separate options indicate any intermediate sequence numbers that weren't received.4.3. States
DCCP endpoints progress through different states during the course of a connection, corresponding roughly to the three phases of initiation, data transfer, and termination. The figure below shows the typical progress through these states for a client and server.
Client Server ------ ------ (0) No connection CLOSED LISTEN (1) Initiation REQUEST DCCP-Request --> <-- DCCP-Response RESPOND PARTOPEN DCCP-Ack or DCCP-DataAck --> (2) Data transfer OPEN <-- DCCP-Data, Ack, DataAck --> OPEN (3) Termination <-- DCCP-CloseReq CLOSEREQ CLOSING DCCP-Close --> <-- DCCP-Reset CLOSED TIMEWAIT CLOSED The nine possible states are as follows. They are listed in increasing order, so that "state >= CLOSEREQ" means the same as "state = CLOSEREQ or state = CLOSING or state = TIMEWAIT". Section 8 describes the states in more detail. CLOSED Represents nonexistent connections. LISTEN Represents server sockets in the passive listening state. LISTEN and CLOSED are not associated with any particular DCCP connection. REQUEST A client socket enters this state, from CLOSED, after sending a DCCP-Request packet to try to initiate a connection. RESPOND A server socket enters this state, from LISTEN, after receiving a DCCP-Request from a client. PARTOPEN A client socket enters this state, from REQUEST, after receiving a DCCP-Response from the server. This state represents the third phase of the three-way handshake. The client may send application data in this state, but it MUST include an Acknowledgement Number on all of its packets.
OPEN
The central data transfer portion of a DCCP connection. Client
and server sockets enter this state from PARTOPEN and RESPOND,
respectively. Sometimes we speak of SERVER-OPEN and CLIENT-OPEN
states, corresponding to the server's OPEN state and the client's
OPEN state.
CLOSEREQ
A server socket enters this state, from SERVER-OPEN, to order the
client to close the connection and to hold TIMEWAIT state.
CLOSING
Server and client sockets can both enter this state to close the
connection.
TIMEWAIT
A server or client socket remains in this state for 2MSL (4
minutes) after the connection has been torn down, to prevent
mistakes due to the delivery of old packets. Only one of the
endpoints has to enter TIMEWAIT state (the other can enter CLOSED
state immediately), and a server can request its client to hold
TIMEWAIT state using the DCCP-CloseReq packet type.
4.4. Congestion Control Mechanisms
DCCP connections are congestion controlled, but unlike in TCP, DCCP
applications have a choice of congestion control mechanism. In fact,
the two half-connections can be governed by different mechanisms.
Mechanisms are denoted by one-byte congestion control identifiers, or
CCIDs. The endpoints negotiate their CCIDs during connection
initiation. Each CCID describes how the HC-Sender limits data packet
rates, how the HC-Receiver sends congestion feedback via
acknowledgements, and so forth. CCIDs 2 and 3 are currently defined;
CCIDs 0, 1, and 4-255 are reserved. Other CCIDs may be defined in
the future.
CCID 2 provides TCP-like Congestion Control, which is similar to that
of TCP. The sender maintains a congestion window and sends packets
until that window is full. Packets are acknowledged by the receiver.
Dropped packets and ECN [RFC3168] indicate congestion; the response
to congestion is to halve the congestion window. Acknowledgements in
CCID 2 contain the sequence numbers of all received packets within
some window, similar to a selective acknowledgement (SACK) [RFC2018].
CCID 3 provides TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC), an equation-based
form of congestion control intended to respond to congestion more
smoothly than CCID 2. The sender maintains a transmit rate, which it
updates using the receiver's estimate of the packet loss and mark
rate. CCID 3 behaves somewhat differently than TCP in the short term, but is designed to operate fairly with TCP over the long term. Section 10 describes DCCP's CCIDs in more detail. The behaviors of CCIDs 2 and 3 are fully defined in separate profile documents [RFC4341, RFC4342].4.5. Feature Negotiation Options
DCCP endpoints use Change and Confirm options to negotiate and agree on feature values. Feature negotiation will almost always happen on the connection initiation handshake, but it can begin at any time. There are four feature negotiation options in all: Change L, Confirm L, Change R, and Confirm R. The "L" options are sent by the feature location and the "R" options are sent by the feature remote. A Change R option says to the feature location, "change this feature value as follows". The feature location responds with Confirm L, meaning, "I've changed it". Some features allow Change R options to contain multiple values sorted in preference order. For example: Client Server ------ ------ Change R(CCID, 2) --> <-- Confirm L(CCID, 2) * agreement that CCID/Server = 2 * Change R(CCID, 3 4) --> <-- Confirm L(CCID, 4, 4 2) * agreement that CCID/Server = 4 * Both exchanges negotiate the CCID/Server feature's value, which is the CCID in use on the server-to-client half-connection. In the second exchange, the client requests that the server use either CCID 3 or CCID 4, with 3 preferred; the server chooses 4 and supplies its preference list, "4 2". The Change L and Confirm R options are used for feature negotiations initiated by the feature location. In the following example, the server requests that CCID/Server be set to 3 or 2, with 3 preferred, and the client agrees.
Client Server ------ ------ <-- Change L(CCID, 3 2) Confirm R(CCID, 3, 3 2) --> * agreement that CCID/Server = 3 * Section 6 describes the feature negotiation options further, including the retransmission strategies that make negotiation reliable.4.6. Differences from TCP
DCCP's differences from TCP apart from those discussed so far include the following: o Copious space for options (up to 1008 bytes or the PMTU). o Different acknowledgement formats. The CCID for a connection determines how much acknowledgement information needs to be transmitted. For example, in CCID 2 (TCP-like), this is about one ack per 2 packets, and each ack must declare exactly which packets were received. In CCID 3 (TFRC), it is about one ack per round- trip time, and acks must declare at minimum just the lengths of recent loss intervals. o Denial of Service (DoS) protection. Several mechanisms help limit the amount of state that possibly-misbehaving clients can force DCCP servers to maintain. An Init Cookie option analogous to TCP's SYN Cookies [SYNCOOKIES] avoids SYN-flood-like attacks. Only one connection endpoint has to hold TIMEWAIT state; the DCCP-CloseReq packet, which may only be sent by the server, passes that state to the client. Various rate limits let servers avoid attacks that might force extensive computation or packet generation. o Distinguishing different kinds of loss. A Data Dropped option (Section 11.7) lets an endpoint declare that a packet was dropped because of corruption, because of receive buffer overflow, and so on. This facilitates research into more appropriate rate-control responses for these non-network-congestion losses (although currently such losses will cause a congestion response). o Acknowledgeability. In TCP, a packet may be acknowledged only once the data is reliably queued for application delivery. This does not make sense in DCCP, where an application might, for example, request a drop-from-front receive buffer. A DCCP packet may be acknowledged as soon as its header has been successfully processed. Concretely, a packet becomes acknowledgeable at Step 8
of Section 8.5's packet processing pseudocode. Acknowledgeability
does not guarantee data delivery, however: the Data Dropped option
may later report that the packet's application data was discarded.
o No receive window. DCCP is a congestion control protocol, not a
flow control protocol.
o No simultaneous open. Every connection has one client and one
server.
o No half-closed states. DCCP has no states corresponding to TCP's
FINWAIT and CLOSEWAIT, where one half-connection is explicitly
closed while the other is still active. The Data Dropped option's
Drop Code 1, Application Not Listening (Section 11.7), can achieve
a similar effect, however.
4.7. Example Connection
The progress of a typical DCCP connection is as follows. (This
description is informative, not normative.)
Client Server
------ ------
0. [CLOSED] [LISTEN]
1. DCCP-Request -->
2. <-- DCCP-Response
3. DCCP-Ack -->
4. DCCP-Data, DCCP-Ack, DCCP-DataAck -->
<-- DCCP-Data, DCCP-Ack, DCCP-DataAck
5. <-- DCCP-CloseReq
6. DCCP-Close -->
7. <-- DCCP-Reset
8. [TIMEWAIT]
1. The client sends the server a DCCP-Request packet specifying the
client and server ports, the service being requested, and any
features being negotiated, including the CCID that the client
would like the server to use. The client may optionally piggyback
an application request on the DCCP-Request packet. The server may
ignore this application request.
2. The server sends the client a DCCP-Response packet indicating that
it is willing to communicate with the client. This response
indicates any features and options that the server agrees to,
begins other feature negotiations as desired, and optionally
includes Init Cookies that wrap up all this information and that
must be returned by the client for the connection to complete.
3. The client sends the server a DCCP-Ack packet that acknowledges
the DCCP-Response packet. This acknowledges the server's initial
sequence number and returns any Init Cookies in the DCCP-Response.
It may also continue feature negotiation. The client may
piggyback an application-level request on this ack, producing a
DCCP-DataAck packet.
4. The server and client then exchange DCCP-Data packets, DCCP-Ack
packets acknowledging that data, and, optionally, DCCP-DataAck
packets containing data with piggybacked acknowledgements. If the
client has no data to send, then the server will send DCCP-Data
and DCCP-DataAck packets, while the client will send DCCP-Acks
exclusively. (However, the client may not send DCCP-Data packets
before receiving at least one non-DCCP-Response packet from the
server.)
5. The server sends a DCCP-CloseReq packet requesting a close.
6. The client sends a DCCP-Close packet acknowledging the close.
7. The server sends a DCCP-Reset packet with Reset Code 1, "Closed",
and clears its connection state. DCCP-Resets are part of normal
connection termination; see Section 5.6.
8. The client receives the DCCP-Reset packet and holds state for two
maximum segment lifetimes, or 2MSL, to allow any remaining packets
to clear the network.
An alternative connection closedown sequence is initiated by the
client:
5b. The client sends a DCCP-Close packet closing the connection.
6b. The server sends a DCCP-Reset packet with Reset Code 1, "Closed",
and clears its connection state.
7b. The client receives the DCCP-Reset packet and holds state for
2MSL to allow any remaining packets to clear the network.
(page 18 continued on part 2)
