RFC863 - Discard Protocol

Network Working Group J. Postel

Request for Comments: 863 ISI

May 1983

Discard Protocol

This RFCspecifies a standard for the ARPA Internet community. Hosts on

the ARPA Internet that choose to implement a Discard Protocol are

eXPected to adopt and implement this standard.

A useful debugging and measurement tool is a discard service. A discard

service simply throws away any data it receives.

TCP Based Discard Service

One discard service is defined as a connection based application on

TCP. A server listens for TCP connections on TCP port 9. Once a

connection is established any data received is thrown away. No

response is sent. This continues until the calling user terminates

the connection.

UDP Based Discard Service

Another discard service is defined as a datagram based application on

UDP. A server listens for UDP datagrams on UDP port 9. When a

datagram is received, it is thrown away. No response is sent.