CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Art Harkin/Hewlett-Packard

Minutes of the TFTP Extensions Working Group (TFTPEXTS)

The TFTPEXTS Working Group met on 7 December at the 31st IETF.


Summary

The agenda and charter were approved without comment.

The general TFTP extension mechanism was presented, covering
read-request and write-request packets, a new packet type (option
acknowledgment) and examples of both new behavior and backwards
compatibility.

The rationale for the block-size extension is improved performance.

The behavior of current servers with new (option-including) clients was
discussed in some detail.

A suggestion was made that a list of servers tested for backward
compatibility (i.e., protocol analysis) be included as an appendix or
separate document; this was taken as an action item.

A suggestion was made to explicitly specify the maximum allowable length
of a request packet to be 512 bytes; this was taken as an action item.

A suggestion was made for a file-size extension, which would involve a
length value on a write-request, and a 0 value on a read-request, with
the server filling in the value on the ACK.

A time-out extension idea was discussed briefly.

A discussion was held debating the merits of many short extension
documents versus one (or few) longer document.  The area director
pointed out that important extensions should be included, but others
could be delayed.  The RFC Editor mused that he may soon move to a
shortest-document first processing approach.

The final plan was to come out with four documents:  the general
extension mechanism, the block-size option, the file-size and time-out
options, and a protocol analysis.