Diameter - New RFC but More Work Ahead!

 
Xavier Milà (pictured) and Victor Pascual, Acme Packet, provide more information on the "a new version of Diameter, RFC 6733 (this was previously known as RFC 3588bis)".

"The main improvements in this new version include:

• Improved transport efficiency and clarifications of security mechanisms, adopting TLS/TCP and DTLS/SCTP as primary security mechanisms and IPsec as a secondary alternative
  
• Correlation of application-Id fields, which are necessary due to the proliferation of applications based on Diameter

• Clarifications and enhancements regarding routing and agent discovery
   
• Advanced redirect capabilities to reflect modern requirements for flexibility to route based on multiple parameters including user, realm, application, etc. 

Beyond this, the new specification contains a number of clarifications related to the state machine, extensibility guidelines, caching, deprecation of the end-to-end security framework and other miscellaneous fixes .. However, the Diameter protocol standardization has not concluded with RFC 6733. There are a number of RFCs in development or published related to security, prioritization, dynamic capabilities exchange, NAT, application design guidelines and routing".

See also "F5 Adds RFC 6733 Support to the Diameter Router; Better Security" - here.


See "A New Spin on the Diameter Protocol: RFC 6733" - here.