An Inventory of Transport-Centric Functions Provided by Middleboxes: An Operator Perspective

This document summarizes an operator's perception of the benefits that may be provided by intermediary devices that execute functions beyond normal IP forwarding. Such intermediary devices are often called "middleboxes". RFC3234 defines a taxonomy of middleboxes and issues in the Internet. Most of those middleboxes utilize or modify application-layer data. This document primarily focuses on devices that observe and act on information carried in the transport layer, and especially information carried in TCP packets.