RFC 1025 (rfc1025) - Page 1 of 6
TCP and IP bake off
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group J. Postel
Request for Comments: 1025 ISI
September 1987
TCP AND IP BAKE OFF
Status of This Memo
This memo describes some of the procedures, scoring, and tests used
in the TCP and IP bake offs held in the early development of these
protocols. These procedures and tests may still be of use in testing
newly implemented TCP and IP modules. Distribution of this memo is
unlimited.
Introduction
In the early days of the development of TCP and IP, when there were
very few implementations and the specifications were still evolving,
the only way to determine if an implementation was "correct" was to
test it against other implementations and argue that the results
showed your own implementation to have done the right thing. These
tests and discussions could, in those early days, as likely change
the specification as change the implementation.
There were a few times when this testing was focused, bringing
together all known implementations and running through a set of tests
in hopes of demonstrating the N squared connectivity and correct
implementation of the various tricky cases. These events were called
"Bake Offs".
An early version of the list of tests included here appears in IEN-69
of October 1978. A demonstration of four TCP implementations was
held at the Defense Communication Engineering Center in Reston,
Virginia on 4 December 1978, and reported in IEN-70 of December 1978.
A bake off of six implementations was held 27-28 January 1979 at
USC-Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey, California and
reported in IEN-77 of February 1979. And a distributed bake off was
held in April 1980 over the network and reported in IEN-145 of May
1980.
The following section reproduces (with very slight editing) the
procedure, tests, and scoring of the April 1980 Bake Off.
Postel