RFC 1240 (rfc1240) - Page 1 of 8

OSI connectionless transport services on top of UDP: Version 1

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Network Working Group                                            C. Shue
Request for Comments: 1240                      Open Software Foundation
                                                             W. Haggerty
                                                 Wang Laboratories, Inc.
                                                              K. Dobbins
                                                 Cabletron Systems, Inc.
                                                               June 1991


          OSI Connectionless Transport Services on top of UDP
                               Version: 1

Status of this Memo

   This document describes a protocol for running OSI Connectionless
   service on UDP.  This RFC specifies an IAB standards track protocol
   for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions
   for improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB
   Official Protocol Standards" for the standardization state and status
   of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

1.  Introduction and Philosophy

   The Internet community has a well-developed, mature set of layered
   transport and network protocols, which are quite successful in
   offering both connection-oriented (TCP) and connectionless (UDP)
   transport services over connectionless network services (IP) to end-
   users.  Many popular network applications have been built directly on
   top of the TCP and UDP over the past decade.  These have helped the
   Internet services and protocols to become widely-spread de facto
   standards.  In the past few years, the ISO and CCITT have defined a
   well-architected set of upper layer standards which include
   connection-oriented and connectionless session, presentation, and
   application layer services and protocols.  These OSI upper layer
   standards offer valuable services to application developers (e.g.,
   dialogue control, transfer syntax, peer authentication, directory
   services, etc.) which are not currently offered by the TCP/IP
   standards.

   As indicated in RFC 1006, it is desirable to offer the OSI upper
   layer services directly in the Internet without disrupting existing
   facilities.  This permits a more graceful convergence and transition
   strategy from IP-based networks to OSI-based networks in the future.
   Using the approach of RFC 1006, this memo specifies how to offer OSI
   connectionless transport service using the User Datagram Protocol
   (UDP) [RFC 768] of the TCP/IP suite.

   We will define a Transport Service Access Point (TSAP) which appears



Shue, Haggerty & Dobbins
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