Subject: Protocol Action: SCTP Checksum Change to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 13:09:37 -0400

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'SCTP Checksum Change'
<draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctpcsum-07.txt> as a Proposed Standard, updating RFC 2960, 
Stream Control Transmission Protocol, also a Proposed Standard.

This document is the product of the Transport Area Working Group Working
Group.  The IESG contact persons are Allison Mankin and Scott Bradner.

Technical Summary
   
   Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) currently uses an Adler-32 
   checksum. For small packets Adler-32 provides weak detection of errors. 
   This document changes that checksum and updates SCTP to use a 32-bit CRC 
   checksum.
   
 Working Group Summary
   
   There was a great deal of discussion on some of the details of this 
   document and the document was changed in response. There was good
   consensus within the working group and during IETF Last-Call to support
   publication of this document.
   
 Protocol Quality

   This document was reviewed for the IESG by Allison Mankin and Scott
   Bradner.

Note to RFC Editor:

Please replace the first paragraph in the introduction with:

    A fundamental weakness has been detected in SCTP's current
    Adler-32 checksum algorithm [STONE]. This document updates and
    replaces the Adler-32 checksum definition in [RFC 2960]. Note that
    there is no graceful transition mechanism for migrating to the new
    checksum. Implementations are expected to immediately switch to
    the new algorithm; use of the old algorithm is deprecated.

    One requirement of an effective checksum is that it evenly and
    smoothly spreads its input packets over the available check bits.