RFC 451 (rfc451) - Page 1 of 3

Tentative proposal for a Unified User Level Protocol

Network Working Group                                  M.A. Padlipsky
Request for Comments # 451                             MIT-Multics
NIC # 14135                                            February 22, 1973


          Tentative Proposal for a Unified User Level Protocol


Now that proposals for expansions to the Telnet Protocol are in vogue
again (RFC's 426 and 435, for example), I'd like to promote some
discussion of a particular favorite of my own.  Please note that this is
presented as a tentative proposal: it's an attempt to consider the
desirability of a new approach, not a rigorous specification.  To begin
somewhat obliquely, for some time I've felt that we (the NWG) have
fallen into a trap in regard to the Initial Connection Protocol.  The
point is that even though the ICP gives us the ability to define a
"family" of ICPlets by varying the contact socket, there's no compelling
reason why we should do so.  That we have done so in the FTP and RJEP I
view as unfortunate--but also undesirable and unnecessary.

To take the "undesirable" aspects first, consider the following: If we
continue to define a new contact socket for every new "user level"
protocol we come up with, we'll continue to need another new mechanism
(process, procedure, or patch) to respond to requests for connection for
each new protocol.  By Occam's Razor (or the principle of economy of
mechanism, if you prefer), this is a bad thing.  Irrespective of the
relative difficulty of implementing such mechanisms on the various
Hosts, to implement them at all leads to a kind of conceptual clutter.
Further, a different kind of confusion is introduced by the notion which
some of our number seem to be entertaining, that the "later" user level
protocols such as FTP are somehow still another level of abstraction up
from Telnet.  So it seems to me that we could spare ourselves a lot of
bother, both practical and theoretical, if we could avoid spawning
contact sockets needlessly.

Turning to the "unnecessary" aspects, I think that even if the case
against the current approach isn't completely convincing the case for a
particular alternative might be.  So to show that the multiple contact
socket ICP is unnecessary, I'll try to show that what I call the
"unified user level protocol" (UULP) is better.  The first thing to
notice is that all the "later" protocols "speak Telnet".  This is
sensible: Telnet works, by and large.  Why not make use of it?  Right.
But why not make even more use of it?  In view of the fact that FTP,
RJEP, and even the initiating part of the Network Graphics Protocol, are
really just ways of letting a user say to a Server "I don't know what
you call it on your system, but please perform the whatever function
(push or pull a file, start or stop a batch job, funnel some of my
output through the Network Virtual Graphics Terminal module) for me now,



Padlipsky