SOCKS Protocol Version 5 (RFC1928)

Publishing Venue

Internet Society Requests For Comment (RFCs)

Related People

M. Leech: AUTHOR [+5][-]

M. Ganis: AUTHOR

Y. Lee: AUTHOR

R. Kuris: AUTHOR

D. Koblas & L. Jones: AUTHOR

Abstract

The use of network firewalls, systems that effectively isolate an organizations internal network structure from an exterior network, such as the INTERNET is becoming increasingly popular. These firewall systems typically act as application-layer gateways between networks, usually offering controlled TELNET, FTP, and SMTP access. With the emergence of more sophisticated application layer protocols designed to facilitate global information discovery, there exists a need to provide a general framework for these protocols to transparently and securely traverse a firewall.

Network Working Group M. Leech

Request for Comments: 1928 Bell-Northern Research Ltd

Category: Standards Track M. Ganis

International Business Machines

Y. Lee

NEC Systems Laboratory

R. Kuris

Unify Corporation

D. Koblas

Independent Consultant

L. Jones

Hewlett-Packard Company

March 1996

SOCKS Protocol Version 5

Status of this Memo

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the

Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for

improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet

Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state

and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Acknowledgments

This memo describes a protocol that is an evolution of the previous

version of the protocol, version 4 [1]. This new protocol stems from

active discussions and prototype implementations. The key

contributors are: Marcus Leech: Bell-Northern Research, David Koblas:

Independent Consultant, Ying-Da Lee: NEC Systems Laboratory, LaMont

Jones: Hewlett-Packard Company, Ron Kuris: Unify Corporation, Matt

Ganis: International Business Machines.

1. Introduction

The use of network firewalls, systems that effectively isolate an

organizations internal network structure from an exterior network,

such as the INTERNET is becoming increasingly popular. These

firewall systems typically act as application-layer gateways between

networks, usually offering controlled TELNET, FTP, and SMTP access.

With the emergence of more sophisticated application layer protocols

designed to facilitate global information discovery, there exists a

need to provide a general framework for these protocols to

transparently and securely traverse a firewall.

There exists, also, a need for strong authentication of such

traversal in as fine-grained a manner as is practical. This

requirement stems from the realization that client-server

relationships emerge between the networks of various o...