The IESG has approved the following document: - 'Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE): A Protocol for Network Address Translator (NAT) Traversal' (draft-ietf-ice-rfc5245bis-20.txt) as Proposed Standard This document is the product of the Interactive Connectivity Establishment Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Adam Roach, Alexey Melnikov and Ben Campbell. A URL of this Internet Draft is: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ice-rfc5245bis/ Technical Summary This document describes a protocol for Network Address Translator (NAT) traversal for UDP-based communication. This protocol is called Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE). ICE makes use of the Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN) protocol and its extension, Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN). This document obsoletes RFC 5245. Working Group Summary The document was discussed and reviewed very actively for many years by many parties. There is much interest in the community because there are many documents which depend on this document, especially in the RTCWEB work, and because there are many deployed implementations of the existing Proposed Standard (RFC 5245). Notable discussions include the decisions of the "Ta" value (how frequently packets are sent), backwards compatibility with RFC 5245 endpoints, removal of "aggressive nomination", generalization of ICE to more than just RTP/RTCP, and generalization of ICE signaling to more than just SDP offer/answer. There was a long-term, lively discussion with a large number of folks followed by thorough review by a smaller number of very interested folks. Consensus was usually not quick, but was broad when finally reached. One particular point of controversy waws around the Ta value and packet pacing, which required significant experimentation by working members in the real world and participation from many other working groups, especially from the transport area. This point was resolved by finding a technical solution that all groups were happy with and which seemed to work well in real world experimentation. Document Quality Reviews on specific areas (such as the Ta value) were done by folks in the transport area. Other reviews were done by members of other working groups (such as RTCWEB and MMUSIC). The reviews were extensive and no further review is necessary. The document shepherd has no specific concerns or issues with the document. There are many RFC 5245 implementations and at least some of those (especially RTCWEB implementations) are already being updated. Personnel The document shepherd is Peter Thatcher. The responsible area director is Ben Campbell.
