Discard Protocol
also
- std-21
Extracted elements (7)
The Discard Protocol is described as a useful debugging and measurement tool. Its sole function is to silently drop all received data, making it suitable for testing connectivity and measuring throughput without requiring a meaningful application-layer peer.
Both TCP and UDP variants use port 9, allowing a single port number to serve both transport protocols. Implementations choosing to support only one transport variant still use port 9 for that variant.
A server implementing the TCP-based Discard service MUST listen on TCP port 9 and discard all received data without sending any response.
A server implementing the UDP-based Discard service MUST listen on UDP port 9 and discard all received datagrams without sending any response.
The Discard Protocol defines a TCP-based service in which a server listens for connections on TCP port 9, throws away all received data, and sends no response. The connection persists until the client terminates it.
The Discard Protocol defines a UDP-based service in which a server listens for datagrams on UDP port 9. Each received datagram is thrown away and no response is sent.
The Discard Protocol is assigned well-known port 9 for both TCP and UDP. This port assignment applies to both the connection-oriented (TCP) and datagram (UDP) variants of the service.