Subject: [MMUSIC] ICE issue 2: TCP or not TCP?

From: Jonathan Rosenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 10:52:01 -0400

At the last meeting, there was lukewarm support (at best) for adding the 
ability to use TCP as a candidate for a media stream that you'd normally 
carry over UDP. My arguments were that there were simply too many 
environments, like it or not, where TCP works and UDP doesn't. Since we 
have a way to carry RTP over TCP, we should allow it to be offered as a 
candidate (with lower priority), so that at least the session works, as 
opposed to not at all.

As folks well know, technologies like Skype do allow tcp fallback, and I 
see no reason why a standards-based solution should not be able to be as 
effective as the proprietary ones.

That said, writing up TCP-based candidates was quite a lot of work, and 
added a lot of text. TCP handling needed to be different from UDP for 
many aspects of ICE operation. As such, it raises a question of whether 
we really want to include it. Some folks have privately suggested to me 
that it be removed.

So, we have a few options:

1. abandon TCP entirely, stick with UDP only
2. keep TCP, but put it in a separate draft that progresses independently
3. keep TCP in the current draft

I am quite reluctant to do (1), for the reasons above. I could live with 
(2) or (3), with a preference for (3). My fear is, if its in another 
draft, it won't get implemented and we'll always have nat traversal 
solutions that are not as effective as they could be.

Comments?

-Jonathan R.
-- 
Jonathan D. Rosenberg, Ph.D.                   600 Lanidex Plaza
Director, Service Provider VoIP Architecture   Parsippany, NJ 07054-2711
Cisco Systems
[email-masked]                              FAX:   (973) 952-5050
http://www.jdrosen.net                         PHONE: (973) 952-5000
http://www.cisco.com

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From: Eunsoo Shim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:17:27 -0400

I support option (3), too.
Regards,

Eunsoo

Jonathan Rosenberg wrote:

> At the last meeting, there was lukewarm support (at best) for adding 
> the ability to use TCP as a candidate for a media stream that you'd 
> normally carry over UDP. My arguments were that there were simply too 
> many environments, like it or not, where TCP works and UDP doesn't. 
> Since we have a way to carry RTP over TCP, we should allow it to be 
> offered as a candidate (with lower priority), so that at least the 
> session works, as opposed to not at all.
>
> As folks well know, technologies like Skype do allow tcp fallback, and 
> I see no reason why a standards-based solution should not be able to 
> be as effective as the proprietary ones.
>
> That said, writing up TCP-based candidates was quite a lot of work, 
> and added a lot of text. TCP handling needed to be different from UDP 
> for many aspects of ICE operation. As such, it raises a question of 
> whether we really want to include it. Some folks have privately 
> suggested to me that it be removed.
>
> I am quite reluctant to do (1), for the reasons above. I could live 
> with (2) or (3), with a preference for (3). My fear is, if its in 
> another draft, it won't get implemented and we'll always have nat 
> traversal solutions that are not as effective as they could be.
>
> Comments?
>
> -Jonathan R.