Subject: [midcom] STUN issue #9: Discard flag broken

From: Jonathan Rosenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 03:44:07 -0500

One of the IESG questioned the usage of the discard flag. Little is said 
about it in the spec. I recall it was for supporting "suicide" packets 
meant to prime the nat to create a binding. I was going to tell them 
that, when I realized it doesnt work.

It doesnt work because the creation of the binding needs to be done 
reliably. That is, the client needs to know whether the binding was 
created or not. To know that, it needs to know that its request passed 
through the nat. The only way it can know that is if the stun server 
sends a response. Thus, the request cannot be discarded.

Since the flag was really only saving some overhead of sending a 
response, I propose we just discard the discard flag.

-Jonathan R.
-- 
Jonathan D. Rosenberg, Ph.D.                72 Eagle Rock Ave.
Chief Scientist                             First Floor
dynamicsoft                                 East Hanover, NJ 07936
[email-masked]                     FAX:   (973) 952-5050
http://www.jdrosen.net                      PHONE: (973) 952-5000
http://www.dynamicsoft.com

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