RFC 8546 · INFORMATIONAL · 2019
MON · 14 SEP 2026
The Wire Image of a Network Protocol
Overview
RFC 8546, “The Wire Image of a Network Protocol”, is an Informational document published in April 2019 by B. Trammell, M. Kuehlewind. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
This document defines the wire image, an abstraction of the information available to an on-path non-participant in a networking protocol. This abstraction is intended to shed light on the implications that increased encryption has for network functions that use the wire image.
What “Informational” means
Published for the general information of the community. It does not define an IETF standard and carries no standards-track status.
Read this RFC
The canonical text of RFC 8546 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
Other RFCs from 2019
- RFC 8545 Well-Known Port Assignments for the One-Way Active Measurement Protocol and the Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol
- RFC 8547 TCP-ENO: Encryption Negotiation Option
- RFC 8544 Organization Extension for the Extensible Provisioning Protocol
- RFC 8548 Cryptographic Protection of TCP Streams
- RFC 8543 Extensible Provisioning Protocol Organization Mapping
- RFC 8549 Export of BGP Community Information in IP Flow Information Export
- RFC 8542 A YANG Data Model for Fabric Topology in Data-Center Networks
- RFC 8550 Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions Version 4.0 Certificate Handling