RFC 955 (rfc955) - Page 1 of 10
Towards a transport service for transaction processing applications
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group R. Braden
Request for Comments: 955 UCLA OAC
September 1985
Towards a Transport Service for
Transaction Processing Applications
STATUS OF THIS MEMO
This RFC is concerned with the possible design of one or more new
protocols for the ARPA-Internet, to support kinds of applications
which are not well supported at present. The RFC is intended to spur
discussion in the Internet research community towards the development
of new protocols and/or concepts, in order to meet these unmet
application requirements. It does not represent a standard, nor even
a concrete protocol proposal. Distribution of this memo is
unlimited.
1. INTRODUCTION
The DoD Internet protocol suite includes two alternative transport
service [1] protocols, TCP and UDP, which provide virtual circuit and
datagram service, respectively [RFC-793, RFC-768]. These two
protocols represent points in the space of possible transport service
attributes which are quite "far apart". We want to examine an
important class of applications, those which perform what is often
called "transaction processing". We will see that the communication
needs for these applications fall into the gap "between" TCP and UDP
-- neither protocol is very appropriate.
We will then characterize the attributes of a possible new
transport-level protocol, appropriate for these ill-served
transaction-processing applications.
In writing this memo, the author had in mind several assumptions
about Internet protocol development.
* Assumption 1: The members of the Internet research community
now understand a great deal about protocols, and given a list
of consistent attributes we can probably generate a reasonable
protocol to meet that specification.
This is not to suggest that design of good protocols is easy.
It does reflect an assumption (perhaps wrong) that the set of
basic protocol techniques we have invented so far is sufficient
to give a good solution for any point in the attribute space,
and that we can forsee (at least in a general way) many of the
consequences of particular protocol design choices.
Braden