[jdev] rfc3920 document: use of TLS

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Chen, Hao wrote:

> In the rfc3920 document (XMPP: Core), section 5.2 Narrative, step 5
> states that: "The receiving entity MUST reply with either a <proceed/>
> element or a <failure/> element..."
> 
> My question is upon what conditions the receiving entity replies with
> a <proceed/> and upon what conditions it replies with a <failure/>?

Hmm, that could be better specified, eh? We'll have to fix that in 
rfc3920bis.

I can see two reasons for returning a <failure/>:

1. The server is temporarily not prepared to offer TLS negotiation (some 
internal server problem).

2. The STARTTLS command is malformed (i.e., something other than 
<starttls xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xmpp-tls'/> because the 
namespace is wrong, there is XML character data contained in the 
<starttls/> element, or whatever).

Otherwise the server would return <proceed/>, I think.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
Jabber Software Foundation
http://www.jabber.org/people/stpeter.shtml