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An Abstract Application Layer Interface to Transport Services
draft-ietf-taps-interface-06

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Authors Brian Trammell , Michael Welzl , Reese Enghardt , Gorry Fairhurst , Mirja Kühlewind , Colin Perkins , Philipp S. Tiesel , Christopher A. Wood , Tommy Pauly
Last updated 2020-03-09
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draft-ietf-taps-interface-06
TAPS Working Group                                      B. Trammell, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                    Google
Intended status: Standards Track                           M. Welzl, Ed.
Expires: 10 September 2020                            University of Oslo
                                                             T. Enghardt
                                                               TU Berlin
                                                            G. Fairhurst
                                                  University of Aberdeen
                                                           M. Kuehlewind
                                                                Ericsson
                                                              C. Perkins
                                                   University of Glasgow
                                                               P. Tiesel
                                                               TU Berlin
                                                                 C. Wood
                                                                T. Pauly
                                                              Apple Inc.
                                                            9 March 2020

     An Abstract Application Layer Interface to Transport Services
                      draft-ietf-taps-interface-06

Abstract

   This document describes an abstract programming interface to the
   transport layer, following the Transport Services Architecture.  It
   supports the asynchronous, atomic transmission of messages over
   transport protocols and network paths dynamically selected at
   runtime.  It is intended to replace the traditional BSD sockets API
   as the lowest common denominator interface to the transport layer, in
   an environment where endpoints have multiple interfaces and potential
   transport protocols to select from.

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."

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 10 September 2020.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 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 Simplified BSD License text
   as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.  Terminology and Notation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Overview of Interface Design  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  API Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.1.  Usage Examples  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       4.1.1.  Server Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       4.1.2.  Client Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       4.1.3.  Peer Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     4.2.  Transport Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       4.2.1.  Transport Property Names  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
       4.2.2.  Transport Property Types  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     4.3.  Scope of the Interface Definition . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   5.  Pre-Establishment Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     5.1.  Specifying Endpoints  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     5.2.  Specifying Transport Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
       5.2.1.  Reliable Data Transfer (Connection) . . . . . . . . .  19
       5.2.2.  Preservation of Message Boundaries  . . . . . . . . .  20
       5.2.3.  Configure Per-Message Reliability . . . . . . . . . .  20
       5.2.4.  Preservation of Data Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
       5.2.5.  Use 0-RTT Session Establishment with an Idempotent
               Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
       5.2.6.  Multistream Connections in Group  . . . . . . . . . .  21
       5.2.7.  Full Checksum Coverage on Sending . . . . . . . . . .  21
       5.2.8.  Full Checksum Coverage on Receiving . . . . . . . . .  21
       5.2.9.  Congestion control  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
       5.2.10. Interface Instance or Type  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
       5.2.11. Provisioning Domain Instance or Type  . . . . . . . .  23
       5.2.12. Use Temporary Local Address . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
       5.2.13. Parallel Use of Multiple Paths  . . . . . . . . . . .  24
       5.2.14. Direction of communication  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25

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       5.2.15. Notification of excessive retransmissions . . . . . .  25
       5.2.16. Notification of ICMP soft error message arrival . . .  25
     5.3.  Specifying Security Parameters and Callbacks  . . . . . .  26
       5.3.1.  Pre-Connection Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
       5.3.2.  Connection Establishment Callbacks  . . . . . . . . .  27
   6.  Establishing Connections  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
     6.1.  Active Open: Initiate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
     6.2.  Passive Open: Listen  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
     6.3.  Peer-to-Peer Establishment: Rendezvous  . . . . . . . . .  30
     6.4.  Connection Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
   7.  Sending Data  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
     7.1.  Basic Sending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
     7.2.  Sending Replies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
     7.3.  Send Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
       7.3.1.  Sent  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
       7.3.2.  Expired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
       7.3.3.  SendError . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
     7.4.  Message Contexts  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
     7.5.  Message Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
       7.5.1.  Lifetime  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
       7.5.2.  Priority  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38
       7.5.3.  Ordered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38
       7.5.4.  Idempotent  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
       7.5.5.  Final . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
       7.5.6.  Corruption Protection Length  . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
       7.5.7.  Reliable Data Transfer (Message)  . . . . . . . . . .  40
       7.5.8.  Message Capacity Profile Override . . . . . . . . . .  40
       7.5.9.  Singular Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
     7.6.  Partial Sends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  41
     7.7.  Batching Sends  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
     7.8.  Send on Active Open: InitiateWithSend . . . . . . . . . .  42
   8.  Receiving Data  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
     8.1.  Enqueuing Receives  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43
     8.2.  Receive Events  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43
       8.2.1.  Received  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44
       8.2.2.  ReceivedPartial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44
       8.2.3.  ReceiveError  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45
     8.3.  Receive Message Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45
       8.3.1.  UDP(-Lite)-specific Property: ECN . . . . . . . . . .  45
       8.3.2.  Early Data  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45
       8.3.3.  Receiving Final Messages  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  46
   9.  Message Framers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  46
     9.1.  Adding Message Framers to Connections . . . . . . . . . .  47
     9.2.  Framing Meta-Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  47
   10. Managing Connections  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  48
     10.1.  Generic Connection Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  49
       10.1.1.  Retransmission Threshold Before Excessive
               Retransmission Notification . . . . . . . . . . . . .  49

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       10.1.2.  Required Minimum Corruption Protection Coverage for
               Receiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  50
       10.1.3.  Priority (Connection)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  50
       10.1.4.  Timeout for Aborting Connection  . . . . . . . . . .  50
       10.1.5.  Connection Group Transmission Scheduler  . . . . . .  51
       10.1.6.  Capacity Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51
       10.1.7.  Bounds on Send or Receive Rate . . . . . . . . . . .  52
       10.1.8.  Read-only Connection Properties  . . . . . . . . . .  53
     10.2.  TCP-specific Properties: User Timeout Option (UTO) . . .  54
       10.2.1.  Advertised User Timeout  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  54
       10.2.2.  User Timeout Enabled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  54
       10.2.3.  Timeout Changeable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  55
     10.3.  Connection Lifecycle Events  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  55
       10.3.1.  Soft Errors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  55
       10.3.2.  Excessive retransmissions  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  55
   11. Connection Termination  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  55
   12. Connection State and Ordering of Operations and Events  . . .  56
   13. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  57
   14. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  57
   15. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  59
   16. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  59
     16.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  59
     16.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  60
   Appendix A.  Convenience Functions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  62
     A.1.  Adding Preference Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  63
     A.2.  Transport Property Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  63
       A.2.1.  reliable-inorder-stream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  63
       A.2.2.  reliable-message  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  64
       A.2.3.  unreliable-datagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  64
   Appendix B.  Relationship to the Minimal Set of Transport Services
           for End Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  65
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  68

1.  Introduction

   This document specifies a modern abstract programming interface atop
   the high-level architecture for transport services defined in
   [I-D.ietf-taps-arch].  It supports the asynchronous, atomic
   transmission of messages over transport protocols and network paths
   dynamically selected at runtime.  It is intended to replace the
   traditional BSD sockets API as the lowest common denominator
   interface to the transport layer, in an environment where endpoints
   have multiple interfaces and potential transport protocols to select
   from.

   As applications adopt this interface, they will benefit from a wide
   set of transport features that can evolve over time, and ensure that
   the system providing the interface can optimize its behavior based on

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   the application requirements and network conditions, without
   requiring changes to the applications.  This flexibility enables
   faster deployment of new features and protocols.  It can also support
   applications by offering racing and fallback mechanisms, which
   otherwise need to be implemented in each application separately.

   It derives specific path and protocol selection properties and
   supported transport features from the analysis provided in [RFC8095],
   [I-D.ietf-taps-minset], and [I-D.ietf-taps-transport-security].  The
   design encourages implementations underneath the interface to
   dynamically choose a transport protocol depending on an application's
   choices rather than statically binding applications to a protocol at
   compile time.  We note that transport system implementations SHOULD
   provide applications a way to override transport selection and
   instantiate a specific stack, e.g. to support servers wanting to
   listen to a specific protocol.  This specific transport stack choice
   is discouraged for general use, as it comes at the cost of reduced
   portability.

2.  Terminology and Notation

   This API is described in terms of Objects, which an application can
   interact with; Actions the application can perform on these Objects;
   Events, which an Object can send to an application asynchronously;
   and Parameters associated with these Actions and Events.

   The following notations, which can be combined, are used in this
   document:

   *  An Action creates an Object:

   Object := Action()

   *  An Action creates an array of Objects:

   []Object := Action()

   *  An Action is performed on an Object:

   Object.Action()

   *  An Object sends an Event:

   Object -> Event<>

   *  An Action takes a set of Parameters; an Event contains a set of
      Parameters.  Action and Event parameters whose names are suffixed
      with a question mark are optional.

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   Action(param0, param1?, ...) / Event<param0, param1, ...>

   Actions associated with no Object are Actions on the abstract
   interface itself; they are equivalent to Actions on a per-application
   global context.

   How these abstract concepts map into concrete implementations of this
   API in a given language on a given platform is largely dependent on
   the features of the language and the platform.  Actions could be
   implemented as functions or method calls, for instance, and Events
   could be implemented via event queues, handler functions or classes,
   communicating sequential processes, or other asynchronous calling
   conventions.

   This specification treats Events and errors similarly.  Errors, just
   as any other Events, may occur asynchronously in network
   applications.  However, it is recommended that implementations of
   this interface also return errors immediately, according to the error
   handling idioms of the implementation platform, for errors that can
   be immediately detected, such as inconsistency in Transport
   Properties.  Errors can provide an optional reason to give the
   application further details as to why the error occured.

   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 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  Overview of Interface Design

   The design of the interface specified in this document is based on a
   set of princples, themselves an elaboration on the architectural
   design principles defined in [I-D.ietf-taps-arch].  The interface
   defined in this document provides:

   *  A single interface to a variety of transport protocols to be used
      in a variety of application design patterns, independent of the
      properties of the application and the Protocol Stacks that will be
      used at runtime, such that all common specialized features of
      these protocol stacks are made available to the application as
      necessary in a transport-independent way, to enable applications
      written to a single API to make use of transport protocols in
      terms of the features they provide;

   *  Message-orientation, as opposed to stream-orientation, using
      application-assisted framing and deframing where the underlying
      transport does not provide these;

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   *  Asynchronous Connection establishment, transmission, and
      reception, allowing concurrent operations during establishment and
      supporting event-driven application interactions with the
      transport layer, in line with developments in modern platforms and
      programming languages;

   *  Explicit support for security properties as first-order transport
      features, and for configuration of cryptographic identities and
      transport security parameters persistent across multiple
      Connections; and

   *  Explicit support for multistreaming and multipath transport
      protocols, and the grouping of related Connections into Connection
      Groups through cloning of Connections, to allow applications to
      take full advantage of new transport protocols supporting these
      features.

4.  API Summary

   The Transport Services API is the basic common abstract application
   programming interface to the Transport Services Architecture defined
   in the TAPS Architecture [I-D.ietf-taps-arch].

   An application primarily interacts with this API through two Objects:
   Preconnections and Connections.  A Preconnection represents a set of
   properties and constraints on the selection and configuration of
   paths and protocols to establish a Connection with a remote Endpoint.
   A Connection represents a transport Protocol Stack on which data can
   be sent to and/or received from a remote Endpoint (i.e., depending on
   the kind of transport, connections can be bi-directional or
   unidirectional).  Connections can be created from Preconnections in
   three ways: by initiating the Preconnection (i.e., actively opening,
   as in a client), through listening on the Preconnection (i.e.,
   passively opening, as in a server), or rendezvousing on the
   Preconnection (i.e. peer to peer establishment).

   Once a Connection is established, data can be sent and received on it
   in the form of Messages.  The interface supports the preservation of
   message boundaries both via explicit Protocol Stack support, and via
   application support through a Message Framer which finds message
   boundaries in a stream.  Messages are received asynchronously through
   event handlers registered by the application.  Errors and other
   notifications also happen asynchronously on the Connection.  It is
   not necessary for an application to handle all events; some events
   may have implementation-specific default handlers.  The application
   should not assume that ignoring events (e.g. errors) is always safe.

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   Section 5, Section 6, Section 7, Section 8, and Section 11 describe
   the details of application interaction with Objects through Actions
   and Events in each phase of a Connection, following the phases (Pre-
   Establishment, Establishment, Data Transfer, and Termination)
   described in Section 4.1 of [I-D.ietf-taps-arch].

4.1.  Usage Examples

   The following usage examples illustrate how an application might use
   a Transport Services Interface to:

   *  Act as a server, by listening for incoming connections, receiving
      requests, and sending responses, see Section 4.1.1.

   *  Act as a client, by connecting to a remote endpoint using
      Initiate, sending requests, and receiving responses, see
      Section 4.1.2.

   *  Act as a peer, by connecting to a remote endpoint using Rendezvous
      while simultaneously waiting for incoming Connections, sending
      Messages, and receiving Messages, see Section 4.1.3.

   The examples in this section presume that a transport protocol is
   available between the endpoints that provides Reliable Data Transfer,
   Preservation of data ordering, and Preservation of Message
   Boundaries.  In this case, the application can choose to receive only
   complete messages.

   If none of the available transport protocols provides Preservation of
   Message Boundaries, but there is a transport protocol that provides a
   reliable ordered byte stream, an application may receive this byte
   stream as partial Messages and transform it into application-layer
   Messages.  Alternatively, an application may provide a Message
   Framer, which can transform a byte stream into a sequence of Messages
   (Section 9).

4.1.1.  Server Example

   This is an example of how an application might listen for incoming
   Connections using the Transport Services Interface, receive a
   request, and send a response.

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   LocalSpecifier := NewLocalEndpoint()
   LocalSpecifier.WithInterface("any")
   LocalSpecifier.WithService("https")

   TransportProperties := NewTransportProperties()
   TransportProperties.Require(preserve-msg-boundaries)
   // Reliable Data Transfer and Preserve Order are Required by default

   SecurityParameters := NewSecurityParameters()
   SecurityParameters.AddIdentity(identity)
   SecurityParameters.AddPrivateKey(privateKey, publicKey)

   // Specifying a remote endpoint is optional when using Listen()
   Preconnection := NewPreconnection(LocalSpecifier,
                                     TransportProperties,
                                     SecurityParameters)

   Listener := Preconnection.Listen()

   Listener -> ConnectionReceived<Connection>

   // Only receive complete messages in a Conn.Received handler
   Connection.Receive()

   Connection -> Received<messageDataRequest, messageContext>

   //---- Receive event handler begin ----
   Connection.Send(messageDataResponse)
   Connection.Close()

   // Stop listening for incoming Connections
   // (this example supports only one Connection)
   Listener.Stop()
   //---- Receive event handler end ----

4.1.2.  Client Example

   This is an example of how an application might connect to a remote
   application using the Transport Services Interface, send a request,
   and receive a response.

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   RemoteSpecifier := NewRemoteEndpoint()
   RemoteSpecifier.WithHostname("example.com")
   RemoteSpecifier.WithService("https")

   TransportProperties := NewTransportProperties()
   TransportProperties.Require(preserve-msg-boundaries)
   // Reliable Data Transfer and Preserve Order are Required by default

   SecurityParameters := NewSecurityParameters()
   TrustCallback := NewCallback({
     // Verify identity of the remote endpoint, return the result
   })
   SecurityParameters.SetTrustVerificationCallback(TrustCallback)

   // Specifying a local endpoint is optional when using Initiate()
   Preconnection := NewPreconnection(RemoteSpecifier,
                                     TransportProperties,
                                     SecurityParameters)

   Connection := Preconnection.Initiate()

   Connection -> Ready<>

   //---- Ready event handler begin ----
   Connection.Send(messageDataRequest)

   // Only receive complete messages
   Connection.Receive()
   //---- Ready event handler end ----

   Connection -> Received<messageDataResponse, messageContext>

   // Close the Connection in a Receive event handler
   Connection.Close()

4.1.3.  Peer Example

   This is an example of how an application might establish a connection
   with a peer using Rendezvous(), send a Message, and receive a
   Message.

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   LocalSpecifier := NewLocalEndpoint()
   LocalSpecifier.WithPort(9876)

   RemoteSpecifier := NewRemoteEndpoint()
   RemoteSpecifier.WithHostname("example.com")
   RemoteSpecifier.WithPort(9877)

   TransportProperties := NewTransportProperties()
   TransportProperties.Require(preserve-msg-boundaries)
   // Reliable Data Transfer and Preserve Order are Required by default

   SecurityParameters := NewSecurityParameters()
   SecurityParameters.AddIdentity(identity)
   SecurityParameters.AddPrivateKey(privateKey, publicKey)

   TrustCallback := New Callback({
     // Verify identity of the remote endpoint, return the result
   })
   SecurityParameters.SetTrustVerificationCallback(trustCallback)

   // Both local and remote endpoint must be specified
   Preconnection := NewPreconnection(LocalSpecifier,
                                     RemoteSpecifier,
                                     TransportProperties,
                                     SecurityParameters)

   Preconnection.Rendezvous()

   Preconnection -> RendezvousDone<Connection>

   //---- Ready event handler begin ----
   Connection.Send(messageDataRequest)

   // Only receive complete messages
   Connection.Receive()
   //---- Ready event handler end ----

   Connection -> Received<messageDataResponse, messageContext>

   // Close the Connection in a Receive event handler
   Connection.Close()

4.2.  Transport Properties

   Each application using the Transport Services Interface declares its
   preferences for how the transport service should operate using
   properties at each stage of the lifetime of a connection using
   Transport Properties, as defined in [I-D.ietf-taps-arch].

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   Transport Properties are divided into Selection, Connection, and
   Message Properties.  During pre-establishment, Selection Properties
   (see Section 5.2) are used to specify which paths and protocol stacks
   can be used and are preferred by the application, and Connection
   Properties (see Section 10.1) can be used to influence decisions made
   during establishment and to fine-tune the eventually established
   connection.  These Connection Properties can also be used later, to
   monitor and fine-tune established connections.  The behavior of the
   selected protocol stack(s) when sending Messages is controlled by
   Message Properties (see Section 7.5).

   All Transport Properties, regardless of the phase in which they are
   used, are organized within a single namespace.  This enables setting
   them as defaults in earlier stages and querying them in later stages:

   *  Connection Properties can be set on Preconnections

   *  Message Properties can be set on Preconnections and Connections

   *  The effect of Selection Properties can be queried on Connections
      and Messages

   Note that configuring Connection Properties and Message Properties on
   Preconnections is preferred over setting them later.  Early
   specification of Connection Properties allows their use as additional
   input to the selection process.  Protocol Specific Properties, which
   enable configuration of specialized features of a specific protocol,
   see Section 3.2 of [I-D.ietf-taps-arch], are not used as an input to
   the selection process but only support configuration if the
   respective prototocol has been selected.

4.2.1.  Transport Property Names

   Transport Properties are referred to by property names.  These names
   are lower-case strings whereby words are separated by hyphens.  These
   names serve two purposes:

   *  Allow different components of a TAPS implementation to pass
      Transport Properties, e.g., between a language frontend and a
      policy manager, or as a representation of properties retrieved
      from a file or other storage.

   *  Make code of different TAPS implementations look similar.

   Transport Property Names are hierarchically organized in the form
   [<Namespace>.]<PropertyName>.

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   *  The Namespace part MUST be empty for well-known, generic
      properties, i.e., for properties that are not specific to a
      protocol and are defined in an RFC.

   *  Protocol Specific Properties MUST use the protocol acronym as
      Namespace, e.g., "tcp" for TCP specific Transport Properties.  For
      IETF protocols, property names under these namespaces SHOULD be
      defined in an RFC.

   *  Vendor or implementation specific properties MUST use a string
      identifying the vendor or implementation as Namespace.

   Namespaces for the keywords provided in the IANA protocol numbers
   registry (see https://www.iana.org/assignments/protocol-numbers/
   protocol-numbers.xhtml) are reserved for Protocol Specific Properties
   and MUST not be used for vendor or implementation specific
   properties.

4.2.2.  Transport Property Types

   Transport Properties can have one of a set of data types:

   *  Boolean: can take the values "true" and "false"; representation is
      implementation-dependent.

   *  Integer: can take positive or negative numeric integer values;
      range and representation is implementation-dependent.

   *  Numeric: can take positive or negative numeric values; range and
      representation is implementation-dependent.

   *  Enumeration: can take one value of a finite set of values,
      dependent on the property itself.  The representation is
      implementation dependent; however, implementations MUST provide a
      method for the application to determine the entire set of possible
      values for each property.

   *  Preference: can take one of five values (Prohibit, Avoid, Ignore,
      Prefer, Require) for the level of preference of a given property
      during protocol selection; see Section 5.2.

4.3.  Scope of the Interface Definition

   This document defines a language- and platform-independent interface
   to a Transport Services system.  Given the wide variety of languages
   and language conventions used to write applications that use the
   transport layer to connect to other applications over the Internet,
   this independence makes this interface necessarily abstract.

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   There is no interoperability benefit in tightly defining how the
   interface is presented to application programmers across diverse
   platforms.  However, maintaining the "shape" of the abstract
   interface across these platforms reduces the effort for programmers
   who learn the transport services interface to then apply their
   knowledge across multiple platforms.

   We therefore make the following recommendations:

   *  Actions, Events, and Errors in implementations of this interface
      SHOULD use the names given for them in the document, subject to
      capitalization, punctuation, and other typographic conventions in
      the language of the implementation, unless the implementation
      itself uses different names for substantially equivalent objects
      for networking by convention.

   *  Implementations of this interface SHOULD implement each Selection
      Property, Connection Property, and Message Context Property
      specified in this document.  Each interface SHOULD be implemented
      even when this will always result in no operation, e.g. there is
      no action when the API specifies a Property that is not available
      in a transport protocol implemented on a specific platform.  For
      example, if TCP is the only underlying transport protocol, the
      Message Property "msg-ordered" can be implemented even if
      disabling ordering will not have any effect TCP because the API
      does not guarantee out-of-order delivery.  Similarly, the msg-
      lifetime" Message Property can be implemented but ignored, as the
      description of this Property states that "it is not guaranteed
      that a Message will not be sent when its Lifetime has expired".

   *  Implementations may use other representations for Transport
      Property Names, e.g., by providing constants, but should provide a
      straight-forward mapping between their representation and the
      property names specified here.

5.  Pre-Establishment Phase

   The Pre-Establishment phase allows applications to specify properties
   for the Connections they are about to make, or to query the API about
   potential Connections they could make.

   A Preconnection Object represents a potential Connection.  It has
   state that describes properties of a Connection that might exist in
   the future.  This state comprises Local Endpoint and Remote Endpoint
   Objects that denote the endpoints of the potential Connection (see
   Section 5.1), the Selection Properties (see Section 5.2), any
   preconfigured Connection Properties (Section 10.1), and the security
   parameters (see Section 5.3):

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      Preconnection := NewPreconnection(LocalEndpoint?,
                                        RemoteEndpoint?,
                                        TransportProperties,
                                        SecurityParams)

   The Local Endpoint MUST be specified if the Preconnection is used to
   Listen() for incoming Connections, but is OPTIONAL if it is used to
   Initiate() connections.  The Remote Endpoint MUST be specified if the
   Preconnection is used to Initiate() Connections, but is OPTIONAL if
   it is used to Listen() for incoming Connections.  The Local Endpoint
   and the Remote Endpoint MUST both be specified if a peer-to-peer
   Rendezvous is to occur based on the Preconnection.

   Message Framers (see Section 9), if required, should be added to the
   Preconnection during pre-establishment.

5.1.  Specifying Endpoints

   The transport services API uses the Local Endpoint and Remote
   Endpoint Objects to refer to the endpoints of a transport connection.
   Actions on these Objects can be used to represent various different
   types of endpoint identifiers, such as IP addresses, DNS names, and
   interface names, as well as port numbers and service names.

   Specify a Remote Endpoint using a hostname and service name:

   RemoteSpecifier := NewRemoteEndpoint()
   RemoteSpecifier.WithHostname("example.com")
   RemoteSpecifier.WithService("https")

   Specify a Remote Endpoint using an IPv6 address and remote port:

   RemoteSpecifier := NewRemoteEndpoint()
   RemoteSpecifier.WithIPv6Address(2001:db8:4920:e29d:a420:7461:7073:0a)
   RemoteSpecifier.WithPort(443)

   Specify a Remote Endpoint using an IPv4 address and remote port:

   RemoteSpecifier := NewRemoteEndpoint()
   RemoteSpecifier.WithIPv4Address(192.0.2.21)
   RemoteSpecifier.WithPort(443)

   Specify a Local Endpoint using a local interface name and local port:

   LocalSpecifier := NewLocalEndpoint()
   LocalSpecifier.WithInterface("en0")
   LocalSpecifier.WithPort(443)

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   As an alternative to specifying an interface name for the Local
   Endpoint, an application can express more fine-grained preferences
   using the "Interface Instance or Type" Selection Property, see
   Section 5.2.10.  However, if the application specifies Selection
   Properties which are inconsistent with the Local Endpoint, this will
   result in an error once the application attempts to open a
   Connection.

   Specify a Local Endpoint using a STUN server:

   LocalSpecifier := NewLocalEndpoint()
   LocalSpecifier.WithStunServer(address, port, credentials)

   Specify a Local Endpoint using a Any-Source Multicast group to join
   on a named local interface:

   LocalSpecifier := NewLocalEndpoint()
   LocalSpecifier.WithIPv4Address(233.252.0.0)
   LocalSpecifier.WithInterface("en0")

   Source-Specific Multicast requires setting both a Local and Remote
   Endpoint:

   LocalSpecifier := NewLocalEndpoint()
   LocalSpecifier.WithIPv4Address(232.1.1.1)
   LocalSpecifier.WithInterface("en0")

   RemoteSpecifier := NewRemoteEndpoint()
   RemoteSpecifier.WithIPv4Address(192.0.2.22)

   Implementations may also support additional endpoint representations
   and provide a single NewEndpoint() call that takes different endpoint
   representations.

   Multiple endpoint identifiers can be specified for each Local
   Endpoint and Remote Endpoint.  For example, a Local Endpoint could be
   configured with two interface names, or a Remote Endpoint could be
   specified via both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.  These multiple
   identifiers refer to the same transport endpoint.

   The transport services API resolves names internally, when the
   Initiate(), Listen(), or Rendezvous() method is called to establish a
   Connection.  The API explicitly does not require the application to
   resolve names, though there is a tradeoff between early and late
   binding of addresses to names.  Early binding allows the API
   implementation to reduce connection setup latency, at the cost of
   potentially limited scope for alternate path discovery during
   Connection establishment, as well as potential additional information

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   leakage about application interest when used with a resolution method
   (such as DNS without TLS) which does not protect query
   confidentiality.

   The Resolve() action on Preconnection can be used by the application
   to force early binding when required, for example with some Network
   Address Translator (NAT) traversal protocols (see Section 6.3).

   Specifying a multicast group address on the Local Endpoint will
   indicate to the transport system that the resulting connection will
   be used to receive multicast messages.  The Remote Endpoint can be
   used to filter by specific senders.  This will restrict the
   application to establishing the Preconnection by calling Listen().
   The accepted Connections are receive-only.

   Similarly, specifying a multicast group address on the Remote
   Endpoint will indicate that the resulting connection will be used to
   send multicast messages.

5.2.  Specifying Transport Properties

   A Preconnection Object holds properties reflecting the application's
   requirements and preferences for the transport.  These include
   Selection Properties for selecting protocol stacks and paths, as well
   as Connection Properties for configuration of the detailed operation
   of the selected Protocol Stacks.

   The protocol(s) and path(s) selected as candidates during
   establishment are determined and configured using these properties.
   Since there could be paths over which some transport protocols are
   unable to operate, or remote endpoints that support only specific
   network addresses or transports, transport protocol selection is
   necessarily tied to path selection.  This may involve choosing
   between multiple local interfaces that are connected to different
   access networks.

   Most Selection Properties are represented as preferences, which can
   have one of five preference levels:

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          +------------+----------------------------------------+
          | Preference | Effect                                 |
          +============+========================================+
          | Require    | Select only protocols/paths providing  |
          |            | the property, fail otherwise           |
          +------------+----------------------------------------+
          | Prefer     | Prefer protocols/paths providing the   |
          |            | property, proceed otherwise            |
          +------------+----------------------------------------+
          | Ignore     | No preference                          |
          +------------+----------------------------------------+
          | Avoid      | Prefer protocols/paths not providing   |
          |            | the property, proceed otherwise        |
          +------------+----------------------------------------+
          | Prohibit   | Select only protocols/paths not        |
          |            | providing the property, fail otherwise |
          +------------+----------------------------------------+

                                  Table 1

   In addition, the pseudo-level "Default" can be used to reset the
   property to the default level used by the implementation.  This level
   will never show up when queuing the value of a preference - the
   effective preference must be returned instead.

   The implementation MUST ensure an outcome that is consistent with
   application requirements as expressed using Require and Prohibit.
   While preferences expressed using Prefer and Avoid influence protocol
   and path selection as well, outcomes may vary given the same
   Selection Properties, as the available protocols and paths may vary
   across systems and contexts.  However, implementations are
   RECOMMENDED to aim to provide a consistent outcome to an application,
   given the same Selection Properties.

   Note that application preferences may conflict with each other.  For
   example, if an application indicates a preference for a specific path
   by specifying an interface, but also a preference for a protocol, a
   situation might occur in which the preferred protocol is not
   available on the preferred path.  In such cases, implementations
   SHOULD prioritize Selection Properties that select paths over those
   that select protocols.  Therefore, the transport system SHOULD race
   the path first, ignoring the protocol preference if the protocol does
   not work on the path.

   Selection and Connection Properties, as well as defaults for Message
   Properties, can be added to a Preconnection to configure the
   selection process and to further configure the eventually selected

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   protocol stack(s).  They are collected into a TransportProperties
   object to be passed into a Preconnection object:

   TransportProperties := NewTransportProperties()

   Individual properties are then added to the TransportProperties
   Object:

   TransportProperties.Add(property, value)

   Selection Properties of type "Preference" can be frequently used.
   Implementations MAY therefore provide additional convenience
   functions, see Appendix A.1 for examples.  In addition,
   implementations MAY provide a mechanism to create TransportProperties
   objects that are preconfigured for common use cases as outlined in
   Appendix A.2.

   For an existing Connection, the Transport Properties can be queried
   any time by using the following call on the Connection Object:

   TransportProperties := Connection.GetTransportProperties()

   A Connection gets its Transport Properties either by being explicitly
   configured via a Preconnection, by configuration after establishment,
   or by inheriting them from an antecedent via cloning; see Section 6.4
   for more.

   Section 10.1 provides a list of Connection Properties, while
   Selection Properties are listed in the subsections below.  Note that
   many properties are only considered during establishment, and can not
   be changed after a Connection is established; however, they can be
   queried.  Querying a Selection Property after establishment yields
   the value "Require" for properties of the selected protocol and path,
   Avoid for properties avoided during selection, and Ignore for all
   other properties.

   An implementation of this interface must provide sensible defaults
   for Selection Properties.  The defaults given for each property below
   represent a configuration that can be implemented over TCP.  An
   alternate set of default Protocol Selection Properties would
   represent a configuration that can be implemented over UDP.

5.2.1.  Reliable Data Transfer (Connection)

   Name:  reliability

   Type:  Preference

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   Default:  Require

   This property specifies whether the application needs to use a
   transport protocol that ensures that all data is received on the
   other side without corruption.  This also entails being notified when
   a Connection is closed or aborted.

5.2.2.  Preservation of Message Boundaries

   Name:  preserve-msg-boundaries

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Prefer

   This property specifies whether the application needs or prefers to
   use a transport protocol that preserves message boundaries.

5.2.3.  Configure Per-Message Reliability

   Name:  per-msg-reliability

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Ignore

   This property specifies whether an application considers it useful to
   indicate its reliability requirements on a per-Message basis.  This
   property applies to Connections and Connection Groups.

5.2.4.  Preservation of Data Ordering

   Name:  preserve-order

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Require

   This property specifies whether the application wishes to use a
   transport protocol that can ensure that data is received by the
   application on the other end in the same order as it was sent.

5.2.5.  Use 0-RTT Session Establishment with an Idempotent Message

   Name:  zero-rtt-msg

   Type:  Preference

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   Default:  Ignore

   This property specifies whether an application would like to supply a
   Message to the transport protocol before Connection establishment,
   which will then be reliably transferred to the other side before or
   during Connection establishment, potentially multiple times (i.e.,
   multiple copies of the message data may be passed to the Remote
   Endpoint).  See also Section 7.5.4.  Note that disabling this
   property has no effect for protocols that are not connection-oriented
   and do not protect against duplicated messages, e.g., UDP.

5.2.6.  Multistream Connections in Group

   Name:  multistreaming

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Prefer

   This property specifies that the application would prefer multiple
   Connections within a Connection Group to be provided by streams of a
   single underlying transport connection where possible.

5.2.7.  Full Checksum Coverage on Sending

   Name:  per-msg-checksum-len-send

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Require

   This property specifies whether the application desires protection
   against corruption for all data transmitted on this Connection.
   Disabling this property may enable to control checksum coverage later
   (see Section 7.5.6).

5.2.8.  Full Checksum Coverage on Receiving

   Name:  per-msg-checksum-len-recv

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Require

   This property specifies whether the application desires protection
   against corruption for all data received on this Connection.

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5.2.9.  Congestion control

   Name:  congestion-control

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Require

   This property specifies whether the application would like the
   Connection to be congestion controlled or not.  Note that if a
   Connection is not congestion controlled, an application using such a
   Connection should itself perform congestion control in accordance
   with [RFC2914].  Also note that reliability is usually combined with
   congestion control in protocol implementations, rendering "reliable
   but not congestion controlled" a request that is unlikely to succeed.

5.2.10.  Interface Instance or Type

   Name:  interface

   Type:  Set (Preference, Enumeration)

   Default:  Empty set (not setting a preference for any interface)

   This property allows the application to select which specific network
   interfaces or categories of interfaces it wants to "Require",
   "Prohibit", "Prefer", or "Avoid".  Note that marking a specific
   interface as "Require" strictly limits path selection to a single
   interface, and may often lead to less flexible and resilient
   connection establishment.

   In contrast to other Selection Properties, this property is a tuple
   of an (Enumerated) interface identifier and a preference, and can
   either be implemented directly as such, or for making one preference
   available for each interface and interface type available on the
   system.

   The set of valid interface types is implementation- and system-
   specific.  For example, on a mobile device, there may be "Wi-Fi" and
   "Cellular" interface types available; whereas on a desktop computer,
   there may be "Wi-Fi" and "Wired Ethernet" interface types available.
   An implementation should provide all types that are supported on the
   local system to all remote systems, to allow applications to be
   written generically.  For example, if a single implementation is used
   on both mobile devices and desktop devices, it should define the
   "Cellular" interface type for both systems, since an application may
   want to always "Prohibit Cellular".  Note that marking a specific
   interface type as "Require" limits path selection to a small set of

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   interfaces, and leads to less flexible and resilient connection
   establishment.

   The set of interface types is expected to change over time as new
   access technologies become available.

   Interface types should not be treated as a proxy for properties of
   interfaces such as metered or unmetered network access.  If an
   application needs to prohibit metered interfaces, this should be
   specified via Provisioning Domain attributes (see Section 5.2.11) or
   another specific property.

5.2.11.  Provisioning Domain Instance or Type

   Name:  pvd

   Type:  Set (Preference, Enumeration)

   Default:  Empty set (not setting a preference for any PvD)

   Similar to interface instances and types (see Section 5.2.10), this
   property allows the application to control path selection by
   selecting which specific Provisioning Domains or categories of
   Provisioning Domains it wants to "Require", "Prohibit", "Prefer", or
   "Avoid".  Provisioning Domains define consistent sets of network
   properties that may be more specific than network interfaces
   [RFC7556].

   As with interface instances and types, this property is a tuple of an
   (Enumerated) PvD identifier and a preference, and can either be
   implemented directly as such, or for making one preference available
   for each interface and interface type available on the system.

   The identification of a specific Provisioning Domain (PvD) is defined
   to be implementation- and system-specific, since there is not a
   portable standard format for a PvD identitfier.  For example, this
   identifier may be a string name or an integer.  As with requiring
   specific interfaces, requiring a specific PvD strictly limits path
   selection.

   Categories or types of PvDs are also defined to be implementation-
   and system-specific.  These may be useful to identify a service that
   is provided by a PvD.  For example, if an application wants to use a
   PvD that provides a Voice-Over-IP service on a Cellular network, it
   can use the relevant PvD type to require some PvD that provides this
   service, without needing to look up a particular instance.  While
   this does restrict path selection, it is broader than requiring

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   specific PvD instances or interface instances, and should be
   preferred over these options.

5.2.12.  Use Temporary Local Address

   Name:  use-temporary-local-address

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Avoid for Listeners and Rendezvous Connections.  Prefer for
      other Connections.

   This property allows the application to express a preference for the
   use of temporary local addresses, sometimes called "privacy"
   addresses [RFC4941].  Temporary addresses are generally used to
   prevent linking connections over time when a stable address,
   sometimes called "permanent" address, is not needed.  Note that if an
   application Requires the use of temporary addresses, the resulting
   Connection cannot use IPv4, as temporary addresses do not exist in
   IPv4.

5.2.13.  Parallel Use of Multiple Paths

   Name:  multipath

   Type:  Enumeration

   Default:  Disabled

   This property specifies whether an application wants to take
   advantage of transferring data across multiple paths between the same
   end hosts.  Using multiple paths allows connections to migrate
   between interfaces as availability and performance properties change.
   Possible values are:

   Disabled:  The connection will not attempt using multiple paths once
      established

   Handover:  The connection should attempt to migrate between different
      paths upon interface availability changes

   Interactive:  The connection should attempt to use multiple paths in
      response to loss or delay upon individual paths

   Aggregate:  The connection should attempt to use multiple paths in
      parallel in order to maximize bandwidth

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   Enumeration values other than "Disabled" are interpreted as
   preferences.

5.2.14.  Direction of communication

   Name:  direction

   Type:  Enumeration

   Default:  Bidirectional

   This property specifies whether an application wants to use the
   connection for sending and/or receiving data.  Possible values are:

   Bidirectional:  The connection must support sending and receiving
      data

   Unidirectional send:  The connection must support sending data, and
      the application cannot use the connection to receive any data

   Unidirectional receive:  The connection must support receiving data,
      and the application cannot use the connection to send any data

   Since unidirectional communication can be supported by transports
   offering bidirectional communication, specifying unidirectional
   communication may cause a transport stack that supports bidirectional
   communication to be selected.

5.2.15.  Notification of excessive retransmissions

   Name:  retransmit-notify

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Ignore

   This property specifies whether an application considers it useful to
   be informed in case sent data was retransmitted more often than a
   certain threshold (see Section 10.1.1 for configuration of this
   threshold).

5.2.16.  Notification of ICMP soft error message arrival

   Name:  soft-error-notify

   Type:  Preference

   Default:  Ignore

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   This property specifies whether an application considers it useful to
   be informed when an ICMP error message arrives that does not force
   termination of a connection.  When set to true, received ICMP errors
   will be available as SoftErrors, see Section 10.3.1.  Note that even
   if a protocol supporting this property is selected, not all ICMP
   errors will necessarily be delivered, so applications cannot rely on
   receiving them.

5.3.  Specifying Security Parameters and Callbacks

   Most security parameters, e.g., TLS ciphersuites, local identity and
   private key, etc., may be configured statically.  Others are
   dynamically configured during connection establishment.  Thus, we
   partition security parameters and callbacks based on their place in
   the lifetime of connection establishment.  Similar to Transport
   Properties, both parameters and callbacks are inherited during
   cloning (see Section 6.4).

5.3.1.  Pre-Connection Parameters

   Common parameters such as TLS ciphersuites are known to
   implementations.  Clients should use common safe defaults for these
   values whenever possible.  However, as discussed in
   [I-D.ietf-taps-transport-security], many transport security protocols
   require specific security parameters and constraints from the client
   at the time of configuration and actively during a handshake.  These
   configuration parameters are created as follows:

   SecurityParameters := NewSecurityParameters()

   Security configuration parameters and sample usage follow:

   *  Local identity and private keys: Used to perform private key
      operations and prove one's identity to the Remote Endpoint.
      (Note, if private keys are not available, e.g., since they are
      stored in hardware security modules (HSMs), handshake callbacks
      must be used.  See below for details.)

   SecurityParameters.AddIdentity(identity)
   SecurityParameters.AddPrivateKey(privateKey, publicKey)

   *  Supported algorithms: Used to restrict what parameters are used by
      underlying transport security protocols.  When not specified,
      these algorithms should use known and safe defaults for the
      system.  Parameters include: ciphersuites, supported groups, and
      signature algorithms.

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   SecurityParameters.AddSupportedGroup(secp256k1)
   SecurityParameters.AddCiphersuite(TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256)
   SecurityParameters.AddSignatureAlgorithm(ed25519)

   *  Session cache management: Used to tune cache capacity, lifetime,
      re-use, and eviction policies, e.g., LRU or FIFO.  Constants and
      policies for these interfaces are implementation-specific.

   SecurityParameters.SetSessionCacheCapacity(MAX_CACHE_ELEMENTS)
   SecurityParameters.SetSessionCacheLifetime(SECONDS_PER_DAY)
   SecurityParameters.SetSessionCachePolicy(CachePolicyOneTimeUse)

   *  Pre-Shared Key import: Used to install pre-shared keying material
      established out-of-band.  Each pre-shared keying material is
      associated with some identity that typically identifies its use or
      has some protocol-specific meaning to the Remote Endpoint.

   SecurityParameters.AddPreSharedKey(key, identity)

5.3.2.  Connection Establishment Callbacks

   Security decisions, especially pertaining to trust, are not static.
   Once configured, parameters may also be supplied during connection
   establishment.  These are best handled as client-provided callbacks.
   Security handshake callbacks that may be invoked during connection
   establishment include:

   *  Trust verification callback: Invoked when a Remote Endpoint's
      trust must be validated before the handshake protocol can proceed.

   TrustCallback := NewCallback({
     // Handle trust, return the result
   })
   SecurityParameters.SetTrustVerificationCallback(trustCallback)

   *  Identity challenge callback: Invoked when a private key operation
      is required, e.g., when local authentication is requested by a
      remote.

   ChallengeCallback := NewCallback({
     // Handle challenge
   })
   SecurityParameters.SetIdentityChallengeCallback(challengeCallback)

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6.  Establishing Connections

   Before a Connection can be used for data transfer, it must be
   established.  Establishment ends the pre-establishment phase; all
   transport properties and cryptographic parameter specification must
   be complete before establishment, as these will be used to select
   candidate Paths and Protocol Stacks for the Connection.
   Establishment may be active, using the Initiate() Action; passive,
   using the Listen() Action; or simultaneous for peer-to-peer, using
   the Rendezvous() Action.  These Actions are described in the
   subsections below.

6.1.  Active Open: Initiate

   Active open is the Action of establishing a Connection to a Remote
   Endpoint presumed to be listening for incoming Connection requests.
   Active open is used by clients in client-server interactions.  Active
   open is supported by this interface through the Initiate Action:

   Connection := Preconnection.Initiate(timeout?)

   The timeout parameter specifies how long to wait before aborting
   Active open.  Before calling Initiate, the caller must have populated
   a Preconnection Object with a Remote Endpoint specifier, optionally a
   Local Endpoint specifier (if not specified, the system will attempt
   to determine a suitable Local Endpoint), as well as all properties
   necessary for candidate selection.

   The Initiate() Action returns a Connection object.  Once Initiate()
   has been called, any changes to the Preconnection MUST NOT have any
   effect on the Connection.  However, the Preconnection can be reused,
   e.g., to Initiate another Connection.

   Once Initiate is called, the candidate Protocol Stack(s) may cause
   one or more candidate transport-layer connections to be created to
   the specified remote endpoint.  The caller may immediately begin
   sending Messages on the Connection (see Section 7) after calling
   Initate(); note that any idempotent data sent while the Connection is
   being established may be sent multiple times or on multiple
   candidates.

   The following Events may be sent by the Connection after Initiate()
   is called:

   Connection -> Ready<>

   The Ready Event occurs after Initiate has established a transport-
   layer connection on at least one usable candidate Protocol Stack over

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   at least one candidate Path.  No Receive Events (see Section 8) will
   occur before the Ready Event for Connections established using
   Initiate.

   Connection -> InitiateError<reason?>

   An InitiateError occurs either when the set of transport properties
   and security parameters cannot be fulfilled on a Connection for
   initiation (e.g. the set of available Paths and/or Protocol Stacks
   meeting the constraints is empty) or reconciled with the local and/or
   remote Endpoints; when the remote specifier cannot be resolved; or
   when no transport-layer connection can be established to the remote
   Endpoint (e.g. because the remote Endpoint is not accepting
   connections, the application is prohibited from opening a Connection
   by the operating system, or the establishment attempt has timed out
   for any other reason).

   See also Section 7.8 to combine Connection establishment and
   transmission of the first message in a single action.

6.2.  Passive Open: Listen

   Passive open is the Action of waiting for Connections from remote
   Endpoints, commonly used by servers in client-server interactions.
   Passive open is supported by this interface through the Listen Action
   and returns a Listener object:

   Listener := Preconnection.Listen()

   Before calling Listen, the caller must have initialized the
   Preconnection during the pre-establishment phase with a Local
   Endpoint specifier, as well as all properties necessary for Protocol
   Stack selection.  A Remote Endpoint may optionally be specified, to
   constrain what Connections are accepted.

   The Listen() Action returns a Listener object.  Once Listen() has
   been called, any changes to the Preconnection MUST NOT have any
   effect on the Listener.  The Preconnection can be disposed of or
   reused, e.g., to create another Listener.

   Listening continues until the global context shuts down, or until the
   Stop action is performed on the Listener object:

   Listener.Stop()

   After Stop() is called, the Listener can be disposed of.

   Listener -> ConnectionReceived<Connection>

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   The ConnectionReceived Event occurs when a Remote Endpoint has
   established a transport-layer connection to this Listener (for
   Connection-oriented transport protocols), or when the first Message
   has been received from the Remote Endpoint (for Connectionless
   protocols), causing a new Connection to be created.  The resulting
   Connection is contained within the ConnectionReceived Event, and is
   ready to use as soon as it is passed to the application via the
   event.

   Listener.SetNewConnectionLimit(value)

   If the caller wants to rate-limit the number of inbound Connections
   that will be delivered, it can set a cap using
   SetNewConnectionLimit().  This mechanism allows a server to protect
   itself from being drained of resources.  Each time a new Connection
   is delivered by the ConnectionReceived Event, the value is
   automatically decremented.  Once the value reaches zero, no further
   Connections will be delivered until the caller sets the limit to a
   higher value.  By default, this value is Infinite.  The caller is
   also able to reset the value to Infinite at any point.

   Listener -> ListenError<reason?>

   A ListenError occurs either when the Properties and Security
   Parameters of the Preconnection cannot be fulfilled for listening or
   cannot be reconciled with the Local Endpoint (and/or Remote Endpoint,
   if specified), when the Local Endpoint (or Remote Endpoint, if
   specified) cannot be resolved, or when the application is prohibited
   from listening by policy.

   Listener -> Stopped<>

   A Stopped Event occurs after the Listener has stopped listening.

6.3.  Peer-to-Peer Establishment: Rendezvous

   Simultaneous peer-to-peer Connection establishment is supported by
   the Rendezvous() Action:

   Preconnection.Rendezvous()

   The Preconnection Object must be specified with both a Local Endpoint
   and a Remote Endpoint, and also the transport properties and security
   parameters needed for Protocol Stack selection.

   The Rendezvous() Action causes the Preconnection to listen on the
   Local Endpoint for an incoming Connection from the Remote Endpoint,
   while simultaneously trying to establish a Connection from the Local

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   Endpoint to the Remote Endpoint.  This corresponds to a TCP
   simultaneous open, for example.

   The Rendezvous() Action returns a Connection object.  Once
   Rendezvous() has been called, any changes to the Preconnection MUST
   NOT have any effect on the Connection.  However, the Preconnection
   can be reused, e.g., for Rendezvous of another Connection.

   Preconnection -> RendezvousDone<Connection>

   The RendezvousDone<> Event occurs when a Connection is established
   with the Remote Endpoint.  For Connection-oriented transports, this
   occurs when the transport-layer connection is established; for
   Connectionless transports, it occurs when the first Message is
   received from the Remote Endpoint.  The resulting Connection is
   contained within the RendezvousDone<> Event, and is ready to use as
   soon as it is passed to the application via the Event.

   Preconnection -> RendezvousError<reason?>

   An RendezvousError occurs either when the Properties and Security
   Parameters of the Preconnection cannot be fulfilled for rendezvous or
   cannot be reconciled with the Local and/or Remote Endpoints, when the
   Local Endpoint or Remote Endpoint cannot be resolved, when no
   transport-layer connection can be established to the Remote Endpoint,
   or when the application is prohibited from rendezvous by policy.

   When using some NAT traversal protocols, e.g., Interactive
   Connectivity Establishment (ICE) [RFC5245], it is expected that the
   Local Endpoint will be configured with some method of discovering NAT
   bindings, e.g., a Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN) server.
   In this case, the Local Endpoint may resolve to a mixture of local
   and server reflexive addresses.  The Resolve() action on the
   Preconnection can be used to discover these bindings:

   []Preconnection := Preconnection.Resolve()

   The Resolve() call returns a list of Preconnection Objects, that
   represent the concrete addresses, local and server reflexive, on
   which a Rendezvous() for the Preconnection will listen for incoming
   Connections.  These resolved Preconnections will share all other
   Properties with the Preconnection from which they are derived, though
   some Properties may be made more-specific by the resolution process.
   This list can be passed to a peer via a signalling protocol, such as
   SIP [RFC3261] or WebRTC [RFC7478], to configure the remote.

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6.4.  Connection Groups

   Entangled Connections can be created using the Clone Action:

   Connection := Connection.Clone()

   Calling Clone on a Connection yields a group of two Connections: the
   parent Connection on which Clone was called, and the resulting cloned
   Connection.  These connections are "entangled" with each other, and
   become part of a Connection Group.  Calling Clone on any of these two
   Connections adds a third Connection to the Connection Group, and so
   on.  Connections in a Connection Group generally share Connection
   Properties.  However, there may be exceptions, such as "Priority
   (Connection)", see Section 10.1.3.  Like all other Properties,
   Priority is copied to the new Connection when calling Clone(), but it
   is not entangled: Changing Priority on one Connection does not change
   it on the other Connections in the same Connection Group.

   In addition, incoming entangled Connections can be received by
   creating a Listener on an existing connection:

   Listener := Connection.ListenClone()

   ListenClone() creates a Listener that listens on the same
   LocalEndpoint as the one the cloned Connection is using.  Any new
   Connection received by this Listener will be entangled with the
   cloned Connection.  Changing one of the Connection Properties on one
   Connection in the group changes it for all others.  Message
   Properties, however, are not entangled.  For example, changing
   "Timeout for aborting Connection" (see Section 10.1.4) on one
   Connection in a group will automatically change this Connection
   Property for all Connections in the group in the same way.  However,
   changing "Lifetime" (see Section 7.5.1) of a Message will only affect
   a single Message on a single Connection, entangled or not.

   If the underlying protocol supports multi-streaming, it is natural to
   use this functionality to implement Clone.  In that case, entangled
   Connections are multiplexed together, giving them similar treatment
   not only inside endpoints but also across the end-to-end Internet
   path.

   Note that calling Clone() may result in on-the-wire signaling, e.g.,
   to open a new connection, depending on the underlying Protocol Stack.
   When Clone() leads to multiple connections being opened instead of
   multi-streaming, the transport system will ensure consistency of
   Connection Properties by uniformly applying them to all underlying
   connections in a group.  Even in such a case, there are possibilities

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   for a transport system to implement prioritization within a
   Connection Group [TCP-COUPLING] [RFC8699].

   Attempts to clone a Connection can result in a CloneError:

   Connection -> CloneError<reason?>

   The Connection Property "Priority" operates on entangled Connections
   as in Section 7.5.2: when allocating available network capacity among
   Connections in a Connection Group, sends on Connections with higher
   Priority values will be prioritized over sends on Connections with
   lower Priority values.  A transport system implementation should, if
   possible, assign each Connection the capacity share (M-N) x C / M,
   where N is the Connection's Priority value, M is the maximum Priority
   value used by all Connections in the group and C is the total
   available capacity.  However, the Priority setting is purely
   advisory, and no guarantees are given about the way capacity is
   shared.  Each implementation is free to implement a way to share
   capacity that it sees fit.

7.  Sending Data

   Once a Connection has been established, it can be used for sending
   data.  Data is sent as Messages, which allow the application to
   communicate the boundaries of the data being transferred.  By
   default, Send enqueues a complete Message, and takes optional per-
   Message properties (see Section 7.1).  All Send actions are
   asynchronous, and deliver events (see Section 7.3).  Sending partial
   Messages for streaming large data is also supported (see
   Section 7.6).

   Messages are sent on a Connection using the Send action:

   Connection.Send(messageData, messageContext?, endOfMessage?)

   where messageData is the data object to send.

   The optional messageContext parameter allows adding Message
   Properties as described in Section 7.5.  Moreover, the messageContext
   can be used to identify Send Events related to a specific Message
   (see Section 7.3) or to inspect meta-data related to the Message sent
   (see Section 7.4).

   The optional endOfMessage parameter supports partial sending and is
   described in Section 7.6.

   Framers can be used to extend or modify the message data with

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   additional information that can be processed at the receiver to
   detect message boundaries.  This is further decribed in Section 9.

7.1.  Basic Sending

   The most basic form of sending on a connection involves enqueuing a
   single Data block as a complete Message, with default Message
   Properties.  Message data is transferred as an array of bytes, and
   the resulting object contains both the byte array and the length of
   the array.

   messageData := "hello".bytes()
   Connection.Send(messageData)

   The interpretation of a Message to be sent is dependent on the
   implementation, and on the constraints on the Protocol Stacks implied
   by the Connection's transport properties.  For example, a Message may
   be a single datagram for UDP Connections; or an HTTP Request for HTTP
   Connections.

   Some transport protocols can deliver arbitrarily sized Messages, but
   other protocols constrain the maximum Message size.  Applications can
   query the Connection Property "Maximum Message size on send"
   (Section 10.1.8.3) to determine the maximum size allowed for a single
   Message.  If a Message is too large to fit in the Maximum Message
   Size for the Connection, the Send will fail with a SendError event
   (Section 7.3.3).  For example, it is invalid to send a Message over a
   UDP connection that is larger than the available datagram sending
   size.

7.2.  Sending Replies

   When a message is sent in response to a message received, the
   application may use the Message Context of the received Message to
   construct a Message Context for the reply.

   replyMessageContext := requestMessageContext.reply()

   By using the "replyMessageContext", the transport system is informed
   that the message to be sent is a response and can map the response to
   the same underlying transport connection or stream the request was
   received from.  The concept of Message Contexts is described in
   Section 7.4.

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7.3.  Send Events

   Like all Actions in this interface, the Send Action is asynchronous.
   There are several Events that can be delivered in response to Sending
   a Message.  Exactly one Event (Sent, Expired, or SendError) will be
   delivered in reponse to each call to Send.

   Note that if partial Sends are used (Section 7.6), there will still
   be exactly one Send Event delivered for each call to Send.  For
   example, if a Message expired while two requests to Send data for
   that Message are outstanding, there will be two Expired events
   delivered.

7.3.1.  Sent

   Connection -> Sent<messageContext>

   The Sent Event occurs when a previous Send Action has completed,
   i.e., when the data derived from the Message has been passed down or
   through the underlying Protocol Stack and is no longer the
   responsibility of this interface.  The exact disposition of the
   Message (i.e., whether it has actually been transmitted, moved into a
   buffer on the network interface, moved into a kernel buffer, and so
   on) when the Sent Event occurs is implementation-specific.  The Sent
   Event contains a reference to the Message to which it applies.

   Sent Events allow an application to obtain an understanding of the
   amount of buffering it creates.  That is, if an application calls the
   Send Action multiple times without waiting for a Sent Event, it has
   created more buffer inside the transport system than an application
   that always waits for the Sent Event before calling the next Send
   Action.

7.3.2.  Expired

   Connection -> Expired<messageContext>

   The Expired Event occurs when a previous Send Action expired before
   completion; i.e. when the Message was not sent before its Lifetime
   (see Section 7.5.1) expired.  This is separate from SendError, as it
   is an expected behavior for partially reliable transports.  The
   Expired Event contains a reference to the Message to which it
   applies.

7.3.3.  SendError

   Connection -> SendError<messageContext, reason?>

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   A SendError occurs when a Message could not be sent due to an error
   condition: an attempt to send a Message which is too large for the
   system and Protocol Stack to handle, some failure of the underlying
   Protocol Stack, or a set of Message Properties not consistent with
   the Connection's transport properties.  The SendError contains a
   reference to the Message to which it applies.

7.4.  Message Contexts

   Using the MessageContext object, the application can set and retrieve
   meta-data of the message, including Message Properties (see
   Section 7.5) and framing meta-data (see Section 9.2).  Therefore, a
   MessageContext object can be passed to the Send action and is
   returned by each Send and Receive related event.

   Message Properties can be set and queried using the Message Context:

   MessageContext.add(scope?, parameter, value)
   PropertyValue := MessageContext.get(scope?, property)

   To get or set Message Properties, the optional scope parameter is
   left empty.  To get or set meta-data for a Framer, the application
   has to pass a reference to this Framer as the scope parameter.

   For MessageContexts returned by send events (see Section 7.3) and
   receive events (see Section 8.2), the application can query
   information about the local and remote endpoint:

   RemoteEndpoint := MessageContext.GetRemoteEndpoint()
   LocalEndpoint := MessageContext.GetLocalEndpoint()

   Message Contexts can also be used to send messages that are flagged
   as a reply to other messages, see Section 7.2 for details.  If the
   message received was sent by the remote endpoint as a reply to an
   earlier message and the Protocol Stack provides this information, the
   MessageContext of the original request can be accessed using the
   Message Context of the reply:

   RequestMessageContext := MessageContext.GetOriginalRequest()

7.5.  Message Properties

   Applications may need to annotate the Messages they send with extra
   information to control how data is scheduled and processed by the
   transport protocols in the Connection.  Therefore a message context
   containing these properties can be passed to the Send Action.  For
   other uses of the message context, see Section 7.4.

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   Note that Message Properties are per-Message, not per-Send if partial
   Messages are sent (Section 7.6).  All data blocks associated with a
   single Message share properties specified in the Message Contexts.
   For example, it would not make sense to have the beginning of a
   Message expire, but allow the end of a Message to still be sent.

   A MessageContext object contains metadata for Messages to be sent or
   received.

   messageData := "hello".bytes()
   messageContext := NewMessageContext()
   messageContext.add(parameter, value)
   Connection.Send(messageData, messageContext)

   The simpler form of Send, which does not take any messageContext, is
   equivalent to passing a default MessageContext without adding any
   Message Properties to it.

   If an application wants to override Message Properties for a specific
   message, it can acquire an empty MessageContext Object and add all
   desired Message Properties to that Object.  It can then reuse the
   same messageContext Object for sending multiple Messages with the
   same properties.

   Properties may be added to a MessageContext object only before the
   context is used for sending.  Once a messageContext has been used
   with a Send call, modifying any of its properties is invalid.

   Message Properties may be inconsistent with the properties of the
   Protocol Stacks underlying the Connection on which a given Message is
   sent.  For example, a Connection must provide reliability to allow
   setting an infinite value for the lifetime property of a Message.
   Sending a Message with Message Properties inconsistent with the
   Selection Properties of the Connection yields an error.

   The following Message Properties are supported:

7.5.1.  Lifetime

   Name:  msg-lifetime

   Type:  Numeric

   Default:  infinite

   Lifetime specifies how long a particular Message can wait to be sent
   to the remote endpoint before it is irrelevant and no longer needs to
   be (re-)transmitted.  This is a hint to the transport system - it is

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   not guaranteed that a Message will not be sent when its Lifetime has
   expired.

   Setting a Message's Lifetime to infinite indicates that the
   application does not wish to apply a time constraint on the
   transmission of the Message, but it does not express a need for
   reliable delivery; reliability is adjustable per Message via the
   "Reliable Data Transfer (Message)" property (see Section 7.5.7).  The
   type and units of Lifetime are implementation-specific.

7.5.2.  Priority

   Name:  msg-prio

   Type:  Integer (non-negative)

   Default:  100

   This property represents a hierarchy of priorities.  It can specify
   the priority of a Message, relative to other Messages sent over the
   same Connection.

   A Message with Priority 0 will yield to a Message with Priority 1,
   which will yield to a Message with Priority 2, and so on.  Priorities
   may be used as a sender-side scheduling construct only, or be used to
   specify priorities on the wire for Protocol Stacks supporting
   prioritization.

   Note that this property is not a per-message override of the
   connection Priority - see Section 10.1.3.  Both Priority properties
   may interact, but can be used independently and be realized by
   different mechanisms.

7.5.3.  Ordered

   Name:  msg-ordered

   Type:  Boolean

   Default:  true

   If true, it specifies that the receiver-side transport protocol stack
   may only deliver the Message to the receiving application after the
   previous ordered Message which was passed to the same Connection via
   the Send Action, when such a Message exists.  If false, the Message
   may be delivered to the receiving application out of order.  This
   property is used for protocols that support preservation of data
   ordering, see Section 5.2.4, but allow out-of-order delivery for

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   certain messages, e.g., by multiplexing independent messages onto
   different streams.

7.5.4.  Idempotent

   Name:  idempotent

   Type:  Boolean

   Default:  false

   If true, it specifies that a Message is safe to send to the remote
   endpoint more than once for a single Send Action.  It is used to mark
   data safe for certain 0-RTT establishment techniques, where
   retransmission of the 0-RTT data may cause the remote application to
   receive the Message multiple times.

   Note that for protocols that do not protect against duplicated
   messages, e.g., UDP, all messages MUST be marked as Idempotent.  In
   order to enable protocol selection to choose such a protocol,
   Idempotent MUST be added to the TransportProperties passed to the
   Preconnection.  If such a protocol was chosen, disabling Idempotent
   on individual messages MUST result in a SendError.

7.5.5.  Final

   Type:  Boolean

   Name:  final

   Default:  false

   If true, this Message is the last one that the application will send
   on a Connection.  This allows underlying protocols to indicate to the
   Remote Endpoint that the Connection has been effectively closed in
   the sending direction.  For example, TCP-based Connections can send a
   FIN once a Message marked as Final has been completely sent,
   indicated by marking endOfMessage.  Protocols that do not support
   signalling the end of a Connection in a given direction will ignore
   this property.

   Note that a Final Message must always be sorted to the end of a list
   of Messages.  The Final property overrides Priority and any other
   property that would re-order Messages.  If another Message is sent
   after a Message marked as Final has already been sent on a
   Connection, the Send Action for the new Message will cause a
   SendError Event.

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7.5.6.  Corruption Protection Length

   Name:  msg-checksum-len

   Type:  Integer (non-negative with -1 as special value)

   Default:  -1 (full coverage)

   This property specifies the minimum length of the section of the
   Message, starting from byte 0, that the application requires to be
   delivered without corruption due to lower layer errors.  It is used
   to specify options for simple integrity protection via checksums.  A
   value of 0 means that no checksum is required, and -1 means that the
   entire Message is protected by a checksum.  Only full coverage is
   guaranteed, any other requests are advisory, meaning that full
   coverage is applied anyway.

7.5.7.  Reliable Data Transfer (Message)

   Name:  msg-reliable

   Type:  Boolean

   Default:  true

   When true, this property specifies that a message should be sent in
   such a way that the transport protocol ensures all data is received
   on the other side without corruption.  Changing the 'Reliable Data
   Transfer' property on Messages is only possible for Connections that
   were established with the Selection Property 'Configure Per-Message
   Reliability' enabled.  When this is not the case, changing it will
   generate an error.  Disabling this property indicates that the
   transport system may disable retransmissions or other reliability
   mechanisms for this particular Message, but such disabling is not
   guaranteed.

7.5.8.  Message Capacity Profile Override

   Name:  msg-capacity-profile

   Type:  Enumeration

   This enumerated property specifies the application's preferred
   tradeoffs for sending this Message; it is a per-Message override of
   the Capacity Profile connection property (see Section 10.1.6).

7.5.9.  Singular Transmission

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   Name:  singular-transmission

   Type:  Boolean

   Default:  false

   This property specifies that a message should be sent and received as
   a single packet without transport-layer segmentation or network-layer
   fragmentation, if possible.  Attempts to send a message with this
   property set with a size greater to the transport's current estimate
   of its maximum transmission segment size will result in a
   "SendError".  When used with transports supporting this functionality
   and running over IP version 4, the Don't Fragment bit will be set.

7.6.  Partial Sends

   It is not always possible for an application to send all data
   associated with a Message in a single Send Action.  The Message data
   may be too large for the application to hold in memory at one time,
   or the length of the Message may be unknown or unbounded.

   Partial Message sending is supported by passing an endOfMessage
   boolean parameter to the Send Action.  This value is always true by
   default, and the simpler forms of Send are equivalent to passing true
   for endOfMessage.

   The following example sends a Message in two separate calls to Send.

   messageContext := NewMessageContext()
   messageContext.add(parameter, value)

   messageData := "hel".bytes()
   endOfMessage := false
   Connection.Send(messageData, messageContext, endOfMessage)

   messageData := "lo".bytes()
   endOfMessage := true
   Connection.Send(messageData, messageContext, endOfMessage)

   All data sent with the same MessageContext object will be treated as
   belonging to the same Message, and will constitute an in-order series
   until the endOfMessage is marked.  Once the end of the Message is
   marked, the MessageContext object may be re-used as a new Message
   with identical parameters.

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7.7.  Batching Sends

   To reduce the overhead of sending multiple small Messages on a
   Connection, the application may want to batch several Send actions
   together.  This provides a hint to the system that the sending of
   these Messages should be coalesced when possible, and that sending
   any of the batched Messages may be delayed until the last Message in
   the batch is enqueued.

   Connection.Batch(
       Connection.Send(messageData)
       Connection.Send(messageData)
   )

7.8.  Send on Active Open: InitiateWithSend

   For application-layer protocols where the Connection initiator also
   sends the first message, the InitiateWithSend() action combines
   Connection initiation with a first Message sent:

   Connection := Preconnection.InitiateWithSend(messageData, messageContext?, timeout?)

   Whenever possible, a messageContext should be provided to declare the
   message passed to InitiateWithSend as idempotent.  This allows the
   transport system to make use of 0-RTT establishment in case this is
   supported by the available protocol stacks.  When the selected
   stack(s) do not support transmitting data upon connection
   establishment, InitiateWithSend is identical to Initiate() followed
   by Send().

   Neither partial sends nor send batching are supported by
   InitiateWithSend().

   The Events that may be sent after InitiateWithSend() are equivalent
   to those that would be sent by an invocation of Initate() followed
   immediately by an invocation of Send(), with the caveat that a send
   failure that occurs because the Connection could not be established
   will not result in a SendError separate from the InitiateError
   signaling the failure of Connection establishment.

8.  Receiving Data

   Once a Connection is established, it can be used for receiving data.
   As with sending, data is received in terms of Messages.  Receiving is
   an asynchronous operation, in which each call to Receive enqueues a
   request to receive new data from the connection.  Once data has been
   received, or an error is encountered, an event will be delivered to
   complete any pending Receive requests (see Section 8.2).  If Messages

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   arrive at the transport system before Receive requests are issued,
   ensuing Receive requests will first operate on these Messages before
   awaiting any further Messages.

8.1.  Enqueuing Receives

   Receive takes two parameters to specify the length of data that an
   application is willing to receive, both of which are optional and
   have default values if not specified.

   Connection.Receive(minIncompleteLength?, maxLength?)

   By default, Receive will try to deliver complete Messages in a single
   event (Section 8.2.1).

   The application can set a minIncompleteLength value to indicate the
   smallest partial Message data size in bytes that should be delivered
   in response to this Receive.  By default, this value is infinite,
   which means that only complete Messages should be delivered (see
   Section 8.2.2 and Section 9 for more information on how this is
   accomplished).  If this value is set to some smaller value, the
   associated receive event will be triggered only when at least that
   many bytes are available, or the Message is complete with fewer
   bytes, or the system needs to free up memory.  Applications should
   always check the length of the data delivered to the receive event
   and not assume it will be as long as minIncompleteLength in the case
   of shorter complete Messages or memory issues.

   The maxLength argument indicates the maximum size of a Message in
   bytes the application is currently prepared to receive.  The default
   value for maxLength is infinite.  If an incoming Message is larger
   than the minimum of this size and the maximum Message size on receive
   for the Connection's Protocol Stack, it will be delivered via
   ReceivedPartial events (Section 8.2.2).

   Note that maxLength does not guarantee that the application will
   receive that many bytes if they are available; the interface may
   return ReceivedPartial events with less data than maxLength according
   to implementation constraints.  Note also that maxLength and
   minIncompleteLength are intended only to manage buffering, and are
   not interpreted as a receiver preference for message reordering.

8.2.  Receive Events

   Each call to Receive will be paired with a single Receive Event,
   which can be a success or an error.  This allows an application to
   provide backpressure to the transport stack when it is temporarily
   not ready to receive messages.

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8.2.1.  Received

   Connection -> Received<messageData, messageContext>

   A Received event indicates the delivery of a complete Message.  It
   contains two objects, the received bytes as messageData, and the
   metadata and properties of the received Message as messageContext.

   The messageData object provides access to the bytes that were
   received for this Message, along with the length of the byte array.
   The messageContext is provided to enable retrieving metadata about
   the message and referring to the message, e.g., to send replies and
   map responses to their requests.  See Section 7.4 for details.

   See Section 9 for handling Message framing in situations where the
   Protocol Stack only provides a byte-stream transport.

8.2.2.  ReceivedPartial

   Connection -> ReceivedPartial<messageData, messageContext, endOfMessage>

   If a complete Message cannot be delivered in one event, one part of
   the Message may be delivered with a ReceivedPartial event.  In order
   to continue to receive more of the same Message, the application must
   invoke Receive again.

   Multiple invocations of ReceivedPartial deliver data for the same
   Message by passing the same MessageContext, until the endOfMessage
   flag is delivered or a ReceiveError occurs.  All partial blocks of a
   single Message are delivered in order without gaps.  This event does
   not support delivering discontiguous partial Messages.

   If the minIncompleteLength in the Receive request was set to be
   infinite (indicating a request to receive only complete Messages),
   the ReceivedPartial event may still be delivered if one of the
   following conditions is true:

   *  the underlying Protocol Stack supports message boundary
      preservation, and the size of the Message is larger than the
      buffers available for a single message;

   *  the underlying Protocol Stack does not support message boundary
      preservation, and the Message Framer (see Section 9) cannot
      determine the end of the message using the buffer space it has
      available; or

   *  the underlying Protocol Stack does not support message boundary

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      preservation, and no Message Framer was supplied by the
      application

   Note that in the absence of message boundary preservation or a
   Message Framer, all bytes received on the Connection will be
   represented as one large Message of indeterminate length.

8.2.3.  ReceiveError

   Connection -> ReceiveError<messageContext, reason?>

   A ReceiveError occurs when data is received by the underlying
   Protocol Stack that cannot be fully retrieved or parsed, or when some
   other indication is received that reception has failed.  In contrast,
   conditions that irrevocably lead to the termination of the Connection
   are signaled using ConnectionError instead (see Section 11).

   The ReceiveError event passes an optional associated MessageContext.
   This may indicate that a Message that was being partially received
   previously, but had not completed, encountered an error and will not
   be completed.

8.3.  Receive Message Properties

   Each Message Context may contain metadata from protocols in the
   Protocol Stack; which metadata is available is Protocol Stack
   dependent.  These are exposed though additional read-only Message
   Properties that can be queried from the MessageContext object (see
   Section 7.4) passed by the receive event.  The following metadata
   values are supported:

8.3.1.  UDP(-Lite)-specific Property: ECN

   When available, Message metadata carries the value of the Explicit
   Congestion Notification (ECN) field.  This information can be used
   for logging and debugging purposes, and for building applications
   which need access to information about the transport internals for
   their own operation.  This property is specific to UDP and UDP-Lite
   because these protocols do not implement congestion control, and
   hence expose this functionality to the application.

8.3.2.  Early Data

   In some cases it may be valuable to know whether data was read as
   part of early data transfer (before connection establishment has
   finished).  This is useful if applications need to treat early data
   separately, e.g., if early data has different security properties
   than data sent after connection establishment.  In the case of TLS

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   1.3, client early data can be replayed maliciously (see [RFC8446]).
   Thus, receivers may wish to perform additional checks for early data
   to ensure it is idempotent or not replayed.  If TLS 1.3 is available
   and the recipient Message was sent as part of early data, the
   corresponding metadata carries a flag indicating as such.  If early
   data is enabled, applications should check this metadata field for
   Messages received during connection establishment and respond
   accordingly.

8.3.3.  Receiving Final Messages

   The Message Context can indicate whether or not this Message is the
   Final Message on a Connection.  For any Message that is marked as
   Final, the application can assume that there will be no more Messages
   received on the Connection once the Message has been completely
   delivered.  This corresponds to the Final property that may be marked
   on a sent Message, see Section 7.5.5.

   Some transport protocols and peers may not support signaling of the
   Final property.  Applications therefore should not rely on receiving
   a Message marked Final to know that the other endpoint is done
   sending on a connection.

   Any calls to Receive once the Final Message has been delivered will
   result in errors.

9.  Message Framers

   Although most applications communicate over a network using well-
   formed Messages, the boundaries and metadata of the Messages are
   often not directly communicated by the transport protocol itself.
   For example, HTTP applications send and receive HTTP messages over a
   byte-stream transport, requiring that the boundaries of HTTP messages
   be parsed out from the stream of bytes.

   Message Framers allow extending a Connection's Protocol Stack to
   define how to encapsulate or encode outbound Messages, and how to
   decapsulate or decode inbound data into Messages.  Message Framers
   allow message boundaries to be preserved when using a Connection
   object, even when using byte-stream transports.  This facility is
   designed based on the fact that many of the current application
   protocols evolved over TCP, which does not provide message boundary
   preservation, and since many of these protocols require message
   boundaries to function, each application layer protocol has defined
   its own framing.

   Note that while Message Framers add the most value when placed above
   a protocol that otherwise does not preserve message boundaries, they

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   can also be used with datagram- or message-based protocols.  In these
   cases, they add an additional transformation to further encode or
   encapsulate, and can potentially support packing multiple
   application-layer Messages into individual transport datagrams.

   The API to implement a Message Framer can vary depending on the
   implementation; guidance on implementing Message Framers can be found
   in [I-D.ietf-taps-impl].

9.1.  Adding Message Framers to Connections

   The Message Framer object can be added to one or more Preconnections
   to run on top of transport protocols.  Multiple Framers may be added.
   If multiple Framers are added, the last one added runs first when
   framing outbound messages, and last when parsing inbound data.

   The following example adds a basic HTTP Message Framer to a
   Preconnection:

   framer := NewHTTPMessageFramer()
   Preconnection.AddFramer(framer)

9.2.  Framing Meta-Data

   When sending Messages, applications can add specific Message values
   to a MessageContext (Section 7.4) that is intended for a Framer.
   This can be used, for example, to set the type of a Message for a TLV
   format.  The namespace of values is custom for each unique Message
   Framer.

   messageContext := NewMessageContext()
   messageContext.add(framer, key, value)
   Connection.Send(messageData, messageContext)

   When an application receives a MessageContext in a Receive event, it
   can also look to see if a value was set by a specific Message Framer.

   messageContext.get(framer, key) -> value

   For example, if an HTTP Message Framer is used, the values could
   correspond to HTTP headers:

   httpFramer := NewHTTPMessageFramer()
   ...
   messageContext := NewMessageContext()
   messageContext.add(httpFramer, "accept", "text/html")

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10.  Managing Connections

   During pre-establishment and after establishment, connections can be
   configured and queried using Connection Properties, and asynchronous
   information may be available about the state of the connection via
   Soft Errors.

   Connection Properties represent the configuration and state of the
   selected Protocol Stack(s) backing a Connection.  These Connection
   Properties may be Generic, applying regardless of transport protocol,
   or Specific, applicable to a single implementation of a single
   transport protocol stack.  Generic Connection Properties are defined
   in Section 10.1 below.  Specific Protocol Properties are defined in a
   transport- and implementation-specific way, and must not be assumed
   to apply across different protocols.  Attempts to set Specific
   Protocol Properties on a protocol stack not containing that specific
   protocol are simply ignored, and do not raise an error; however, too
   much reliance by an application on Specific Protocol Properties may
   significantly reduce the flexibility of a transport services
   implementation.

   The application can set and query Connection Properties on a per-
   Connection basis.  Connection Properties that are not read-only can
   be set during pre-establishment (see Section 5.2), as well as on
   connections directly using the SetProperty action:

   Connection.SetProperty(property, value)

   Note that changing one of the Connection Properties on one Connection
   in a Connection Group will also change it for all other Connections
   of that group; see further Section 6.4.

   At any point, the application can query Connection Properties.

   ConnectionProperties := Connection.GetProperties()

   Depending on the status of the connection, the queried Connection
   Properties will include different information:

   *  The connection state, which can be one of the following:
      Establishing, Established, Closing, or Closed.

   *  Whether the connection can be used to send data.  A connection can
      not be used for sending if the connection was created with the
      Selection Property "Direction of Communication" set to
      "unidirectional receive" or if a Message marked as "Final" was
      sent over this connection, see Section 7.5.5.

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   *  Whether the connection can be used to receive data.  A connection
      can not be used for reading if the connection was created with the
      Selection Property "Direction of Communication" set to
      "unidirectional send" or if a Message marked as "Final" was
      received, see Section 8.3.3.  The latter is only supported by
      certain transport protocols, e.g., by TCP as half-closed
      connection.

   *  For Connections that are Establishing: Transport Properties that
      the application specified on the Preconnection, see Section 5.2.

   *  For Connections that are Established, Closing, or Closed:
      Selection (Section 5.2) and Connection Properties (Section 10.1)
      of the actual protocols that were selected and instantiated.
      Selection Properties indicate whether or not the Connection has or
      offers a certain Selection Property.  Note that the actually
      instantiated protocol stack may not match all Protocol Selection
      Properties that the application specified on the Preconnection.
      For example, a certain Protocol Selection Property that an
      application specified as Preferred may not actually be present in
      the chosen protocol stack because none of the currently available
      transport protocols had this feature.

   *  For Connections that are Established, additional properties of the
      path(s) in use.  These properties can be derived from the local
      provisioning domain [RFC7556], measurements by the Protocol Stack,
      or other sources.

10.1.  Generic Connection Properties

   Generic Connection Properties are defined independent of the chosen
   protocol stack and therefore available on all Connections.

   Note that many Connection Properties have a corresponding Selection
   Property which enables applications to express their preference for
   protocols providing a supporting transport feature.

10.1.1.  Retransmission Threshold Before Excessive Retransmission
         Notification

   Name:  retransmit-notify-threshold

   Type:  Integer

   Default:  -1

   This property specifies after how many retransmissions to inform the

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   application about "Excessive Retransmissions".  The special value -1
   means that this notification is disabled.

10.1.2.  Required Minimum Corruption Protection Coverage for Receiving

   Name:  recv-checksum-len

   Type:  Integer

   Default:  -1

   This property specifies the part of the received data that needs to
   be covered by a checksum.  It is given in Bytes.  A value of 0 means
   that no checksum is required, and the special value -1 indicates full
   checksum coverage.

10.1.3.  Priority (Connection)

   Name:  conn-prio

   Type:  Integer

   Default:  100

   This Property is a non-negative integer representing the relative
   inverse priority (i.e., a lower value reflects a higher priority) of
   this Connection relative to other Connections in the same Connection
   Group.  It has no effect on Connections not part of a Connection
   Group.  As noted in Section 6.4, this property is not entangled when
   Connections are cloned, i.e., changing the Priority on one Connection
   in a Connection Group does not change it on the other Connections in
   the same Connection Group.

10.1.4.  Timeout for Aborting Connection

   Name:  conn-timeout

   Type:  Numeric

   Default:  -1

   This property specifies how long to wait before deciding that a
   Connection has failed when trying to reliably deliver data to the
   destination.  Adjusting this Property will only take effect when the
   underlying stack supports reliability.  The special value -1 means
   that this timeout is not scheduled to happen.  This can be a valid
   choice with unreliable data transfer (e.g., when UDP is the
   underlying transport protocol).

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10.1.5.  Connection Group Transmission Scheduler

   Name:  conn-scheduler

   Type:  Enumeration

   Default:  Weighted Fair Queueing (see Section 3.6 in [RFC8260])

   This property specifies which scheduler should be used among
   Connections within a Connection Group, see Section 6.4.  The set of
   schedulers can be taken from [RFC8260].

10.1.6.  Capacity Profile

   Name:  conn-capacity-profile

   This property specifies the desired network treatment for traffic
   sent by the application and the tradeoffs the application is prepared
   to make in path and protocol selection to receive that desired
   treatment.  When the capacity profile is set to a value other than
   Default, the transport system SHOULD select paths and configure
   protocols to optimize the tradeoff between delay, delay variation,
   and bandwidth efficiency based on the capacity profile specified.
   How this is realized is implementation-specific.  The Capacity
   Profile MAY also be used to set priorities on the wire for Protocol
   Stacks supporting prioritization.  Recommendations for use with DSCP
   are provided below for each profile; note that when a Connection is
   multiplexed, the guidelines in Section 6 of [RFC7657] apply.

   The following values are valid for the Capacity Profile:

   Default:  The application provides no information about its expected
      capacity profile.  Transport system implementations that map the
      requested capacity profile onto per-connection DSCP signaling
      SHOULD assign the DSCP Default Forwarding [RFC2474] PHB.

   Scavenger:  The application is not interactive.  It expects to send
      and/or receive data without any urgency.  This can, for example,
      be used to select protocol stacks with scavenger transmission
      control and/or to assign the traffic to a lower-effort service.
      Transport system implementations that map the requested capacity
      profile onto per-connection DSCP signaling SHOULD assign the DSCP
      Less than Best Effort [RFC8622] PHB.

   Low Latency/Interactive:  The application is interactive, and prefers
      loss to latency.  Response time should be optimized at the expense
      of bandwidth efficiency and delay variation when sending on this
      connection.  This can be used by the system to disable the

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      coalescing of multiple small Messages into larger packets (Nagle's
      algorithm); to prefer immediate acknowledgment from the peer
      endpoint when supported by the underlying transport; and so on.
      Transport system implementations that map the requested capacity
      profile onto per-connection DSCP signaling without multiplexing
      SHOULD assign a DSCP Assured Forwarding (AF41,AF42,AF43,AF44)
      [RFC2597] PHB.  Inelastic traffic that is expected to conform to
      the configured network service rate could be mapped to the DSCP
      Expedited Forwarding [RFC3246] or [RFC5865] PHBs.

   Low Latency/Non-Interactive:  The application prefers loss to latency
      but is not interactive.  Response time should be optimized at the
      expense of bandwidth efficiency and delay variation when sending
      on this connection.  Transport system implementations that map the
      requested capacity profile onto per-connection DSCP signaling
      without multiplexing SHOULD assign a DSCP Assured Forwarding
      (AF21,AF22,AF23,AF24) [RFC2597] PHB.

   Constant-Rate Streaming:  The application expects to send/receive
      data at a constant rate after Connection establishment.  Delay and
      delay variation should be minimized at the expense of bandwidth
      efficiency.  This implies that the Connection may fail if the
      desired rate cannot be maintained across the Path.  A transport
      may interpret this capacity profile as preferring a circuit
      breaker [RFC8084] to a rate-adaptive congestion controller.
      Transport system implementations that map the requested capacity
      profile onto per-connection DSCP signaling without multiplexing
      SHOULD assign a DSCP Assured Forwarding (AF31,AF32,AF33,AF34)
      [RFC2597] PHB.

   High Throughput Data:  The application expects to send/receive data
      at the maximum rate allowed by its congestion controller over a
      relatively long period of time.  Transport system implementations
      that map the requested capacity profile onto per-connection DSCP
      signaling without multiplexing SHOULD assign a DSCP Assured
      Forwarding (AF11,AF12,AF13,AF14) [RFC2597] PHB per Section 4.8 of
      [RFC4594].

   The Capacity Profile for a selected protocol stack may be modified on
   a per-Message basis using the Transmission Profile Message Property;
   see Section 7.5.8.

10.1.7.  Bounds on Send or Receive Rate

   Name:  max-send-rate / max-recv-rate

   Type:  Numeric / Numeric

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   Default:  -1 / -1 (unlimited, for both values)

   This property specifies an upper-bound rate that a transfer is not
   expected to exceed (even if flow control and congestion control allow
   higher rates), and/or a lower-bound rate below which the application
   does not deem a data transfer useful.  It is given in bits per
   second.  The special value -1 indicates that no bound is specified.

10.1.8.  Read-only Connection Properties

   The following generic Connection Properties are read-only, i.e. they
   cannot be changed by an application.

10.1.8.1.  Maximum Message Size Concurrent with Connection Establishment

   Name:  zero-rtt-msg-max-len

   Type:  Integer

   This property represents the maximum Message size that can be sent
   before or during Connection establishment, see also Section 7.5.4.
   It is given in Bytes.

10.1.8.2.  Maximum Message Size Before Fragmentation or Segmentation

   Name:  singular-transmission-msg-max-len

   Type:  Integer

   This property, if applicable, represents the maximum Message size
   that can be sent without incurring network-layer fragmentation or
   transport layer segmentation at the sender.  This property exposes
   the Maximum Packet Size (MPS) as described in Datagram PLPMTUD
   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-datagram-plpmtud].

10.1.8.3.  Maximum Message Size on Send

   Name:  send-msg-max-len

   Type:  Integer

   This property represents the maximum Message size that can be sent
   using a send operation.

10.1.8.4.  Maximum Message Size on Receive

   Name:  recv-msg-max-len

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   Type:  Integer

   This numeric property represents the maximum Message size that can be
   received.

10.2.  TCP-specific Properties: User Timeout Option (UTO)

   These properties specify configurations for the User Timeout Option
   (UTO), in case TCP becomes the chosen transport protocol.
   Implementation is optional and of course only sensible if TCP is
   implemented in the transport system.

   These TCP-specific properties are included here because the feature
   "Suggest timeout to the peer" is part of the minimal set of transport
   services [I-D.ietf-taps-minset], where this feature was categorized
   as "functional".  This means that when an implementation offers this
   feature, it has to expose an interface to it to the application.
   Otherwise, the implementation might violate assumptions by the
   application, which could cause the application to fail.

   All of the below properties are optional (e.g., it is possible to
   specify "User Timeout Enabled" as true, but not specify an Advertised
   User Timeout value; in this case, the TCP default will be used).

10.2.1.  Advertised User Timeout

   Name:  tcp.user-timeout-value

   Type:  Integer

   Default:  the TCP default

   This time value is advertised via the TCP User Timeout Option (UTO)
   [RFC5482] at the remote endpoint to adapt its own "Timeout for
   aborting Connection" (see Section 10.1.4) value accordingly.

10.2.2.  User Timeout Enabled

   Name:  tcp.user-timeout

   Type:  Boolean

   Default:  false

   This property controls whether the UTO option is enabled for a
   connection.  This applies to both sending and receiving.

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10.2.3.  Timeout Changeable

   Name:  tcp.user-timeout-recv

   Type:  Boolean

   Default:  true

   This property controls whether the "Timeout for aborting Connection"
   (see Section 10.1.4) may be changed based on a UTO option received
   from the remote peer.  This boolean becomes false when "Timeout for
   aborting Connection" (see Section 10.1.4) is used.

10.3.  Connection Lifecycle Events

   During the lifetime of a connection there are events that can occur
   when configured.

10.3.1.  Soft Errors

   Asynchronous introspection is also possible, via the SoftError Event.
   This event informs the application about the receipt and contents of
   an ICMP error message related to the Connection.  This will only
   happen if the underlying protocol stack supports access to soft
   errors; however, even if the underlying stack supports it, there is
   no guarantee that a soft error will be signaled.

   Connection -> SoftError<>

10.3.2.  Excessive retransmissions

   This event notifies the application of excessive retransmissions,
   based on a configured threshold (see Section 10.1.1).  This will only
   happen if the underlying protocol stack supports reliability and,
   with it, such notifications.

   Connection -> ExcessiveRetransmission<>

11.  Connection Termination

   Close terminates a Connection after satisfying all the requirements
   that were specified regarding the delivery of Messages that the
   application has already given to the transport system.  For example,
   if reliable delivery was requested for a Message handed over before
   calling Close, the transport system will ensure that this Message is
   indeed delivered.  If the Remote Endpoint still has data to send, it
   cannot be received after this call.

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   Connection.Close()

   The Closed Event can inform the application that the Remote Endpoint
   has closed the Connection; however, there is no guarantee that a
   remote Close will indeed be signaled.

   Connection -> Closed<>

   Abort terminates a Connection without delivering remaining data:

   Connection.Abort()

   A ConnectionError informs the application that data to could not be
   delivered after a timeout, or the other side has aborted the
   Connection; however, there is no guarantee that an Abort will indeed
   be signaled.

   Connection -> ConnectionError<reason?>

12.  Connection State and Ordering of Operations and Events

   As this interface is designed to be independent of an
   implementation's concurrency model, the details of how exactly
   actions are handled, and how events are dispatched, are
   implementation dependent.

   Each transition of connection state is associated with one of more
   events:

   *  Ready<> occurs when a Connection created with Initiate() or
      InitiateWithSend() transitions to Established state.

   *  ConnectionReceived<> occurs when a Connection created with
      Listen() transitions to Established state.

   *  RendezvousDone<> occurs when a Connection created with
      Rendezvous() transitions to Established state.

   *  Closed<> occurs when a Connection transitions to Closed state
      without error.

   *  InitiateError<> occurs when a Connection created with Initiate()
      transitions from Establishing state to Closed state due to an
      error.

   *  ConnectionError<> occurs when a Connection transitions to Closed
      state due to an error in all other circumstances.

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   The interface provides the following guarantees about the ordering of
   operations:

   *  Sent<> events will occur on a Connection in the order in which the
      Messages were sent (i.e., delivered to the kernel or to the
      network interface, depending on implementation).

   *  Received<> will never occur on a Connection before it is
      Established; i.e. before a Ready<> event on that Connection, or a
      ConnectionReceived<> or RendezvousDone<> containing that
      Connection.

   *  No events will occur on a Connection after it is Closed; i.e.,
      after a Closed<> event, an InitiateError<> or ConnectionError<> on
      that connection.  To ensure this ordering, Closed<> will not occur
      on a Connection while other events on the Connection are still
      locally outstanding (i.e., known to the interface and waiting to
      be dealt with by the application).  ConnectionError<> may occur
      after Closed<>, but the interface must gracefully handle all cases
      where application ignores these errors.

13.  IANA Considerations

   RFC-EDITOR: Please remove this section before publication.

   This document has no Actions for IANA.  Later versions of this
   document may create IANA registries for generic transport property
   names and transport property namespaces (see Section 4.2.1).

14.  Security Considerations

   This document describes a generic API for interacting with a
   transport services (TAPS) system.  Part of this API includes
   configuration details for transport security protocols, as discussed
   in Section 5.3.  It does not recommend use (or disuse) of specific
   algorithms or protocols.  Any API-compatible transport security
   protocol should work in a TAPS system.  Security consideration for
   these protocols should be discussed in the respective specifications.

   The desribed API is used to exchange information between an
   application and the transport system.  While it is not necessarily
   expected that both systems are implemented by the same authority, it
   is expected that the transport system implementation is either
   provided as a library that is selected by the application from a
   trusted party, or that it is part of the operating system that the
   application also relies on for other tasks.

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   In either case, the TAPS API is an internal interface that is used to
   change information locally between two systems.  However, as the
   transport system is responsible for network communication, it is in
   the position to potentially share any information provided by the
   application with the network or another communication peer.  Most of
   the information provided over the TAPS API are useful to configure
   and select protocols and paths and are not necessarily privacy
   sensitive.  Still, there is some information that could be privacy
   sensitve because this might reveal usage characteristics and habits
   of the user of an application.

   Of course any communication over a network reveals usage
   characteristics, as all packets as well as their timing and size are
   part of the network-visible wire image [RFC8546].  However, the
   selection of a protocol and its configuration also impacts which
   information is visible, potentially in clear text, and which other
   enties can access it.  In most cases information that is provided for
   protocol and path selection should not directly translate to
   information that is can be observed by network devices on the path.
   But there might be specific configuration information that are
   intended for path exposure, such as e.g. a DiffServ codepoint
   setting, that is either povided directly by the application or
   indirectly configured over a traffic profile.

   Further, applications should be aware that communication attempts can
   lead to more than one connection establishment.  This is for example
   the case when the transport system also excecutes name resolution; or
   when support mechanisms such as TURN or ICE are used to establish
   connectivity; or if protocols or paths are raised; or if a path fails
   and fallback or re-establishment is supported in the transport
   system.

   These communication activities are not different from what is used
   today, however, the goal of a TAPS transport system is to support
   such mechanisms as a generic service within the transport layer.
   This enables applications to more dynamically benefit from
   innovations and new protocols in the transport system but at the same
   time may reduce transparency of the underlying communication actions
   to the application itself.  The TAPS API is designed such that
   protocol and path selection can be limited to a small and controlled
   set if required by the application for functional or security
   purposes.  Further, TAPS implementations should provide an interface
   to poll information about which protocol and path is currently in use
   as well as provide logging about the communication events of each
   connection.

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15.  Acknowledgements

   This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020
   research and innovation programme under grant agreements No. 644334
   (NEAT) and No. 688421 (MAMI).

   This work has been supported by Leibniz Prize project funds of DFG -
   German Research Foundation: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Preis 2011 (FKZ
   FE 570/4-1).

   This work has been supported by the UK Engineering and Physical
   Sciences Research Council under grant EP/R04144X/1.

   This work has been supported by the Research Council of Norway under
   its "Toppforsk" programme through the "OCARINA" project.

   Thanks to Stuart Cheshire, Josh Graessley, David Schinazi, and Eric
   Kinnear for their implementation and design efforts, including Happy
   Eyeballs, that heavily influenced this work.  Thanks to Laurent Chuat
   and Jason Lee for initial work on the Post Sockets interface, from
   which this work has evolved.  Thanks to Maximilian Franke for asking
   good questions based on implementation experience and for
   contributing text, e.g., on multicast.

16.  References

16.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-taps-arch]
              Pauly, T., Trammell, B., Brunstrom, A., Fairhurst, G.,
              Perkins, C., Tiesel, P., and C. Wood, "An Architecture for
              Transport Services", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-ietf-taps-arch-06, 23 December 2019,
              <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-taps-arch-
              06.txt>.

   [RFC2119]  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>.

   [RFC4941]  Narten, T., Draves, R., and S. Krishnan, "Privacy
              Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in
              IPv6", RFC 4941, DOI 10.17487/RFC4941, September 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4941>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC

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              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8303]  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>.

   [RFC8446]  Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
              Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.

16.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-taps-impl]
              Brunstrom, A., Pauly, T., Enghardt, T., Grinnemo, K.,
              Jones, T., Tiesel, P., Perkins, C., and M. Welzl,
              "Implementing Interfaces to Transport Services", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-taps-impl-05, 4
              November 2019, <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-
              ietf-taps-impl-05.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-taps-minset]
              Welzl, M. and S. Gjessing, "A Minimal Set of Transport
              Services for End Systems", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-ietf-taps-minset-11, 27 September 2018,
              <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-taps-
              minset-11.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-taps-transport-security]
              Enghardt, T., Pauly, T., Perkins, C., Rose, K., and C.
              Wood, "A Survey of the Interaction Between Security
              Protocols and Transport Services", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-taps-transport-security-11, 5
              March 2020, <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-
              ietf-taps-transport-security-11.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-tsvwg-datagram-plpmtud]
              Fairhurst, G., Jones, T., Tuexen, M., Ruengeler, I., and
              T. Voelker, "Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery for
              Datagram Transports", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-ietf-tsvwg-datagram-plpmtud-15, 24 February 2020,
              <http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-tsvwg-
              datagram-plpmtud-15.txt>.

   [RFC2474]  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,

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              DOI 10.17487/RFC2474, December 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2474>.

   [RFC2597]  Heinanen, J., Baker, F., Weiss, W., and J. Wroclawski,
              "Assured Forwarding PHB Group", RFC 2597,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2597, June 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2597>.

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

   [RFC3246]  Davie, B., Charny, A., Bennet, J.C.R., Benson, K., Le
              Boudec, J.Y., Courtney, W., Davari, S., Firoiu, V., and D.
              Stiliadis, "An Expedited Forwarding PHB (Per-Hop
              Behavior)", RFC 3246, DOI 10.17487/RFC3246, March 2002,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3246>.

   [RFC3261]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
              A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
              Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3261, June 2002,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3261>.

   [RFC4594]  Babiarz, J., Chan, K., and F. Baker, "Configuration
              Guidelines for DiffServ Service Classes", RFC 4594,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4594, August 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4594>.

   [RFC5245]  Rosenberg, J., "Interactive Connectivity Establishment
              (ICE): A Protocol for Network Address Translator (NAT)
              Traversal for Offer/Answer Protocols", RFC 5245,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5245, April 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5245>.

   [RFC5482]  Eggert, L. and F. Gont, "TCP User Timeout Option",
              RFC 5482, DOI 10.17487/RFC5482, March 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5482>.

   [RFC5865]  Baker, F., Polk, J., and M. Dolly, "A Differentiated
              Services Code Point (DSCP) for Capacity-Admitted Traffic",
              RFC 5865, DOI 10.17487/RFC5865, May 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5865>.

   [RFC7478]  Holmberg, C., Hakansson, S., and G. Eriksson, "Web Real-
              Time Communication Use Cases and Requirements", RFC 7478,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7478, March 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7478>.

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   [RFC7556]  Anipko, D., Ed., "Multiple Provisioning Domain
              Architecture", RFC 7556, DOI 10.17487/RFC7556, June 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7556>.

   [RFC7657]  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>.

   [RFC8084]  Fairhurst, G., "Network Transport Circuit Breakers",
              BCP 208, RFC 8084, DOI 10.17487/RFC8084, March 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8084>.

   [RFC8095]  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>.

   [RFC8260]  Stewart, R., Tuexen, M., Loreto, S., and R. Seggelmann,
              "Stream Schedulers and User Message Interleaving for the
              Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC 8260,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8260, November 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8260>.

   [RFC8546]  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>.

   [RFC8622]  Bless, R., "A Lower-Effort Per-Hop Behavior (LE PHB) for
              Differentiated Services", RFC 8622, DOI 10.17487/RFC8622,
              June 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8622>.

   [RFC8699]  Islam, S., Welzl, M., and S. Gjessing, "Coupled Congestion
              Control for RTP Media", RFC 8699, DOI 10.17487/RFC8699,
              January 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8699>.

   [TCP-COUPLING]
              "ctrlTCP: Reducing Latency through Coupled, Heterogeneous
              Multi-Flow TCP Congestion Control", IEEE INFOCOM Global
              Internet Symposium (GI) workshop (GI 2018) , 15 April
              2018.

Appendix A.  Convenience Functions

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A.1.  Adding Preference Properties

   As Selection Properties of type "Preference" will be added to a
   TransportProperties object quite frequently, implementations should
   provide special actions for adding each preference level i.e,
   "TransportProperties.Add(some_property, avoid)" is equivalent to
   "TransportProperties.Avoid(some_property)":

   TransportProperties.Require(property)
   TransportProperties.Prefer(property)
   TransportProperties.Ignore(property)
   TransportProperties.Avoid(property)
   TransportProperties.Prohibit(property)
   TransportProperties.Default(property)

A.2.  Transport Property Profiles

   To ease the use of the interface specified by this document,
   implementations should provide a mechanism to create Transport
   Property objects (see Section 5.2) that are pre-configured with
   frequently used sets of properties.  Implementations should at least
   offer short-hands to specify the following property profiles:

A.2.1.  reliable-inorder-stream

   This profile provides reliable, in-order transport service with
   congestion control.  An example of a protocol that provides this
   service is TCP.  It should consist of the following properties:

                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | Property                | Value   |
                   +=========================+=========+
                   | reliability             | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | preserve-order          | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | congestion-control      | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | preserve-msg-boundaries | ignore  |
                   +-------------------------+---------+

                                  Table 2

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A.2.2.  reliable-message

   This profile provides message-preserving, reliable, in-order
   transport service with congestion control.  An example of a protocol
   that provides this service is SCTP.  It should consist of the
   following properties:

                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | Property                | Value   |
                   +=========================+=========+
                   | reliability             | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | preserve-order          | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | congestion-control      | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | preserve-msg-boundaries | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+

                                  Table 3

A.2.3.  unreliable-datagram

   This profile provides unreliable datagram transport service.  An
   example of a protocol that provides this service is UDP.  It should
   consist of the following properties:

                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | Property                | Value   |
                   +=========================+=========+
                   | reliability             | ignore  |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | preserve-order          | ignore  |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | congestion-control      | ignore  |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | preserve-msg-boundaries | require |
                   +-------------------------+---------+
                   | idempotent              | true    |
                   +-------------------------+---------+

                                  Table 4

   Applications that choose this Transport Property Profile for latency
   reasons should also consider setting the Capacity Profile Property,
   see Section 10.1.6 accordingly and my benefit from controlling
   checksum coverage, see Section 5.2.7 and Section 5.2.8.

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Appendix B.  Relationship to the Minimal Set of Transport Services for
             End Systems

   [I-D.ietf-taps-minset] identifies a minimal set of transport services
   that end systems should offer.  These services make all non-security-
   related transport features of TCP, MPTCP, UDP, UDP-Lite, SCTP and
   LEDBAT available that 1) require interaction with the application,
   and 2) do not get in the way of a possible implementation over TCP
   (or, with limitations, UDP).  The following text explains how this
   minimal set is reflected in the present API.  For brevity, it is
   based on the list in Section 4.1 of [I-D.ietf-taps-minset], updated
   according to the discussion in Section 5 of [I-D.ietf-taps-minset].
   This list is a subset of the transport features in Appendix A of
   [I-D.ietf-taps-minset], which refers to the primitives in "pass 2"
   (Section 4) of [RFC8303] for further details on the implementation
   with TCP, MPTCP, UDP, UDP-Lite, SCTP and LEDBAT.

   *  Connect: "Initiate" Action (Section 6.1).

   *  Listen: "Listen" Action (Section 6.2).

   *  Specify number of attempts and/or timeout for the first
      establishment message: "timeout" parameter of "Initiate"
      (Section 6.1) or "InitiateWithSend" Action (Section 7.8).

   *  Disable MPTCP: "Parallel Use of Multiple Paths" Property
      (Section 5.2.13).

   *  Hand over a message to reliably transfer (possibly multiple times)
      before connection establishment: "InitiateWithSend" Action
      (Section 7.8).

   *  Change timeout for aborting connection (using retransmit limit or
      time value): "Timeout for Aborting Connection" property, using a
      time value (Section 10.1.4).

   *  Timeout event when data could not be delivered for too long:
      "ConnectionError" Event (Section 11).

   *  Suggest timeout to the peer: "TCP-specific Property: User Timeout"
      (Section 10.2).

   *  Notification of Excessive Retransmissions (early warning below
      abortion threshold): "Notification of excessive retransmissions"
      property (Section 5.2.15).

   *  Notification of ICMP error message arrival: "Notification of ICMP
      soft error message arrival" property (Section 5.2.16).

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   *  Choose a scheduler to operate between streams of an association:
      "Connection Group Transmission Scheduler" property
      (Section 10.1.5).

   *  Configure priority or weight for a scheduler: "Priority
      (Connection)" property (Section 10.1.3).

   *  "Specify checksum coverage used by the sender" and "Disable
      checksum when sending": "Corruption Protection Length" property
      (Section 7.5.6) and "Full Checksum Coverage on Sending" property
      (Section 5.2.7).

   *  "Specify minimum checksum coverage required by receiver" and
      "Disable checksum requirement when receiving": "Required Minimum
      Corruption Protection Coverage for Receiving" property
      (Section 10.1.2) and "Full Checksum Coverage on Receiving"
      property (Section 5.2.8).

   *  "Specify DF" field and "Request not to bundle messages": the
      "Singular Transmission" Message Property combines both of these
      requests, i.e. if a request not to bundle messages is made, this
      also turns off fragmentation (i.e., sets DF=1) in case of
      protocols that allow this (only UDP and UDP-Lite, which cannot
      bundle messages anyway) (Section 7.5.9).

   *  Get max. transport-message size that may be sent using a non-
      fragmented IP packet from the configured interface: "Maximum
      Message Size Before Fragmentation or Segmentation" property
      (Section 10.1.8.2).

   *  Get max. transport-message size that may be received from the
      configured interface: "Maximum Message Size on Receive" property
      (Section 10.1.8.4).

   *  Obtain ECN field: "ECN" is a defined UDP(-Lite)-specific read-only
      Message Property of the MessageContext object (Section 8.3.1).

   *  "Specify DSCP field", "Disable Nagle algorithm", "Enable and
      configure a 'Low Extra Delay Background Transfer'": as suggested
      in Section 5.5 of [I-D.ietf-taps-minset], these transport features
      are collectively offered via the "Capacity Profile" property
      (Section 10.1.6).  Per-Message control is offered via the "Message
      Capacity Profile Override" property (Section 7.5.8).

   *  Close after reliably delivering all remaining data, causing an
      event informing the application on the other side: this is offered
      by the "Close" Action with slightly changed semantics in line with

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      the discussion in Section 5.2 of [I-D.ietf-taps-minset]
      (Section 11).

   *  "Abort without delivering remaining data, causing an event
      informing the application on the other side" and "Abort without
      delivering remaining data, not causing an event informing the
      application on the other side": this is offered by the "Abort"
      action without promising that this is signaled to the other side.
      If it is, a "ConnectionError" Event will fire at the peer
      (Section 11).

   *  "Reliably transfer data, with congestion control", "Reliably
      transfer a message, with congestion control" and "Unreliably
      transfer a message": data is transferred via the "Send" action
      (Section 7).  Reliability is controlled via the "Reliable Data
      Transfer (Connection)" (Section 5.2.1) property and the "Reliable
      Data Transfer (Message)" Message Property (Section 7.5.7).
      Transmitting data as a message or without delimiters is controlled
      via Message Framers (Section 9).  The choice of congestion control
      is provided via the "Congestion control" property (Section 5.2.9).

   *  Configurable Message Reliability: the "Lifetime" Message Property
      implements a time-based way to configure message reliability
      (Section 7.5.1).

   *  "Ordered message delivery (potentially slower than unordered)" and
      "Unordered message delivery (potentially faster than ordered)":
      these two transport features are controlled via the Message
      Property "Ordered" (Section 7.5.3).

   *  Request not to delay the acknowledgement (SACK) of a message:
      should the protocol support it, this is one of the transport
      features the transport system can apply when an application uses
      the "Capacity Profile" Property (Section 10.1.6) or the "Message
      Capacity Profile Override" Message Property (Section 7.5.8) with
      value "Low Latency/Interactive".

   *  Receive data (with no message delimiting): "Received" Event
      (Section 8.2.1).  See Section 9 for handling Message framing in
      situations where the Protocol Stack only provides a byte-stream
      transport.

   *  Receive a message: "Received" Event (Section 8.2.1), using Message
      Framers (Section 9).

   *  Information about partial message arrival: "ReceivedPartial" Event
      (Section 8.2.2).

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   *  Notification of send failures: "Expired" Event (Section 7.3.2) and
      "SendError" Event (Section 7.3.3).

   *  Notification that the stack has no more user data to send:
      applications can obtain this information via the "Sent" Event
      (Section 7.3.1).

   *  Notification to a receiver that a partial message delivery has
      been aborted: "ReceiveError" Event (Section 8.2.3).

Authors' Addresses

   Brian Trammell (editor)
   Google
   Gustav-Gull-Platz 1
   CH- 8004 Zurich
   Switzerland

   Email: ietf@trammell.ch

   Michael Welzl (editor)
   University of Oslo
   PO Box 1080 Blindern
   0316  Oslo
   Norway

   Email: michawe@ifi.uio.no

   Theresa Enghardt
   TU Berlin
   Marchstrasse 23
   10587 Berlin
   Germany

   Email: theresa@inet.tu-berlin.de

   Godred Fairhurst
   University of Aberdeen
   Fraser Noble Building
   Aberdeen, AB24 3UE

   Email: gorry@erg.abdn.ac.uk
   URI:   http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/

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   Mirja Kuehlewind
   Ericsson
   Ericsson-Allee 1
   Herzogenrath
   Germany

   Email: mirja.kuehlewind@ericsson.com

   Colin Perkins
   University of Glasgow
   School of Computing Science
   Glasgow  G12 8QQ
   United Kingdom

   Email: csp@csperkins.org

   Philipp S. Tiesel
   TU Berlin
   Einsteinufer 25
   10587 Berlin
   Germany

   Email: philipp@tiesel.net

   Chris Wood
   Apple Inc.
   One Apple Park Way
   Cupertino, California 95014,
   United States of America

   Email: cawood@apple.com

   Tommy Pauly
   Apple Inc.
   One Apple Park Way
   Cupertino, California 95014,
   United States of America

   Email: tpauly@apple.com

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