into the following subsections:

         (1)  Introduction

         (2)  Protocol Walk-Through -- considers the protocol
              specification documents section-by-section, correcting
              errors, stating requirements that may be ambiguous or
              ill-defined, and providing further clarification or
              explanation.

         (3)  Specific Issues -- discusses protocol design and
              implementation issues that were not included in the walk-
              through.

         (4)  Interfaces -- discusses the service interface to the next
              higher layer.

         (5)  Summary -- contains a summary of the requirements of the
              section.


         Under many of the individual topics in this document, there is
         parenthetical material labeled "DISCUSSION" or
         "IMPLEMENTATION". This material is intended to give
         clarification and explanation of the preceding requirements
         text.  It also includes some suggestions on possible future
         directions or developments.  The implementation material
         contains suggested approaches that an implementor may want to
         consider.

         The summary sections are intended to be guides and indexes to
         the text, but are necessarily cryptic and incomplete.  The
         summaries should never be used or referenced separately from
         the complete RFC.

      1.3.2  Requirements

         In this document, the words that are used to define the
         significance of each particular requirement are capitalized.




 



RFC1122                       INTRODUCTION                  October 1989


         These words are:

         *    "MUST"

              This word or the adjective "REQUIRED" means that the item
              is an absolute requirement of the specification.

         *    "SHOULD"

              This word or the adjective "RECOMMENDED" means that there
              may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to
              ignore this item, but the full implications should be
              understood and the case carefully weighed before choosing
              a different course.

         *    "MAY"

              This word or the adjective "OPTIONAL" means that this item
              is truly optional.  One vendor may choose to include the
              item because a particular marketplace requires it or
              because it enhances the product, for example; another
              vendor may omit the same item.


         An implementation is not compliant if it fails to satisfy one
         or more of the MUST requirements for the protocols it
         implements.  An implementation that satisfies all the MUST and
         all the SHOULD requirements for its protocols is said to be
         "unconditionally compliant"; one that satisfies all the MUST
         requirements but not all the SHOULD requirements for its
         protocols is said to be "conditionally compliant".

      1.3.3  Terminology

         This document uses the following technical terms:

         Segment
              A segment is the unit of end-to-end transmission in the
              TCP protocol.  A segment consists of a TCP header followed
              by application data.  A segment is transmitted by
              encapsulation inside an IP datagram.

         Message
              In this description of the lower-layer protocols, a
              message is the unit of transmission in a transport layer
              protocol.  In particular, a TCP segment is a message.  A
              message consists of a transport protocol header followed
              by application protocol data.  To be transmitted end-to-