Discard Protocol

E830377

The Discard Protocol is a simple network service that accepts and immediately throws away any data sent to it, primarily used for testing and measurement purposes.

All labels observed (1)

Label Occurrences
Discard Protocol canonical 6

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (45)

Predicate Object
instanceOf application layer protocol
network protocol
belongsTo Internet protocol suite
linked to: TCP/IP
category diagnostic service
testing service
connectionBehavior server may close connection at any time
dataHandling does not return any data to the sender
dataRetention no data is stored
definedBy Jon Postel
definedIn RFC 863
errorReporting no application-level error messages
hasDefaultPort 9
hasServiceCode discard(9/tcp)
discard(9/udp)
interactionPattern client sends data without expecting reply
introducedYear 1983
messageFormat arbitrary binary or text data
operatesAtLayer application layer
portAssignmentAuthority IANA
primaryFunction accepts data and discards it
purpose debugging network connections
measurement
testing
reliabilityWithTCP reliable delivery before discard
reliabilityWithUDP unreliable delivery before discard
requiresClientInitiation true
responseBehavior no response is sent
securityConsideration can be abused for bandwidth consumption
provides no authentication
provides no encryption
serverRole passively receives and discards data
serviceName discard
sessionOrientation connection-oriented over TCP
connectionless over UDP
similarTo Chargen Protocol
linked to: Echo Protocol

Echo Protocol
standardizedBy IETF
status historic
tcpPort 9
typicalImplementation simple loop reading and discarding input
udpPort 9
usedFor network stack diagnostics
throughput testing
usesTransportProtocol TCP
UDP

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (6)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

RFC 862 similarTo Discard Protocol
Echo Protocol relatedTo Discard Protocol
RFC 863 title Discard Protocol
RFC 863 specifies Discard Protocol
RFC 863 defines Discard Protocol
RFC 863 standardizes Discard Protocol