Protocol Action: 'Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction (FEC) Schemes' to Proposed Standard

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction (FEC) Schemes '
   <draft-ietf-rmt-bb-fec-rs-05.txt> as a Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Reliable Multicast Transport Working 
Group. 

The IESG contact persons are Magnus Westerlund and Lars Eggert.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-rmt-bb-fec-rs-05.txt

Technical Summary

    This document is an optional Building Block usable to fully define
    an RMT Protocol.  It fully-specifies Forward Error Correction 
    (FEC) Codes based on the well-known Reed-Solomon algorithm for
    application in the packet erasure channel as consistent with RMT 
    Protocol needs.  This is done within the guidelines of  
    draft-ietf-rmt-fec-bb-revised. It also specifies procedures and 
    packet-header fields, as required by draft-ietf-rmt-fec-bb-revised.

    The combination of this document and draft-ietf-rmt-fec-bb-revised
    allows the implementation of an interoperable Forward Error Correction


    scheme usable in the context of an RMT transport protocol (e.g.
    LCT/ALC or NORM).
    
    The Reed-Solomon code specified is a systematic code.  Parity symbols
    are generated using Galois field mathmatics.  A range of block sizes
    with varying computational complexity are covered with codes with
    individual symbol sizes from 2^^8..2^^16 described.  Reed-Solomon 
    codes belong to the class of Maximum Distance Separable symbols from 
    any set of k received symbols.  This idealized property allows 
    adaptation to maximumally-efficient repair strategies for RMT 
    protocol like NORM that use FEC-based repair.

Working Group Summary

    There is consensus in the WG to publish these documents.

Document Quality

    A very mature working, open source implementation of the FEC 
    algorithms this document describes is available.  The FEC 
    implementation has been used in working RMT NORM implementations.  
    The Reed-Solomon technique described has been successfully used in 
    reliable multicast transport for over 10 years.

Brian Adamson is the Document Shepherd.
Magnus Westerlund is the Responsible Area Director.

Note to RFC Editor

Section 9.2.2 

OLD:
   o  at the packet level, each packet can be digitally signed.  A major
      limitation is the high computational and transmission overheads
      that this solution requires (unless Elliptic Curve Cryptography
      (ECC) is used, but ECC is the subject of proprietary patents). 

NEW: 
   o  at the packet level, each packet can be digitally signed.  A major
      limitation is the high computational and transmission overheads
      that this solution requires (unless Elliptic Curve Cryptography
      (ECC) is used).