RFC 348

Discard Process

📅 published May 1972, from ietf

RFC 348: Discard Process 🎀

okay bestie, this is RFC 348, and it's giving classic early-ARPANET energy 🦋 It was written by Jon Postel from Computer Science at UCLA-NMC, with NIC number 10427, dated 30 May 72. The category is Standard Processes ✨ It doesn't say it obsoletes or updates anything, so there's nothing else to link up 💅

The Big Idea 🧚

Jon's suggestion is that for debugging and measurement purposes, hosts that are willing to implement a "Discard" process should do it 🔍 Honestly so simple and so iconic.

How the Discard Process Works 💖

So the discard process listens for a request for connection, then runs the Initial Connection Protocol (ICP) as specified in NIC 7104, the "Current Network Protocols" notebook 📓 Once the ICP is done, the discard process waits for data from the network. The moment data comes in, it gets thrown away immediately, and the buffer space gets re-allocated 🗑️✨ The discard process ends when the network connections are closed 🫶

References 📚

  • NIC 7104, the "Current Network Protocols" notebook (cited in the body as the specification of the Initial Connection Protocol)
       [ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
       [ into the online RFC archives by BBN Corp. under the   ]
       [ direction of Alex McKenzie.                   12/96   ]
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