RFC 3819 (rfc3819) - Page 2 of 60
Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 3819 Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers July 2004
Table of Contents
1. Introduction and Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Maximum Transmission Units (MTUs) and IP Fragmentation . . . . 4
2.1. Choosing the MTU in Slow Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Framing on Connection-Oriented Subnetworks . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Connection-Oriented Subnetworks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. Broadcasting and Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Multicasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) Subnets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Reliability and Error Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8.1. TCP vs Link-Layer Retransmission . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8.2. Recovery from Subnetwork Outages . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
8.3. CRCs, Checksums and Error Detection. . . . . . . . . . . 18
8.4. How TCP Works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
8.5. TCP Performance Characteristics. . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
8.5.1. The Formulae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
8.5.2. Assumptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
8.5.3. Analysis of Link-Layer Effects on TCP
Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
9. Quality-of-Service (QoS) Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . 26
10. Fairness vs Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
11. Delay Characteristics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
12. Bandwidth Asymmetries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
13. Buffering, Flow and Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
14. Compression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
15. Packet Reordering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
16. Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
17. Routing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
18. Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
19. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
20. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
21. Contributors' Addresses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
22. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
23. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
1. Introduction and Overview
IP, the Internet Protocol [RFC 791] [RFC 2460], is the core protocol of
the Internet. IP defines a simple "connectionless" packet-switched
network. The success of the Internet is largely attributed to IP's
simplicity, the "end-to-end principle" [SRC81] on which the Internet
is based, and the resulting ease of carrying IP on a wide variety of
subnetworks, not necessarily designed with IP in mind. A subnetwork
refers to any network operating immediately below the IP layer to
connect two or more systems using IP (i.e., end hosts or routers).
In its simplest form, this may be a direct connection between the IP
systems (e.g., using a length of cable or a wireless medium).
Karn, et al. Best Current Practice