Code change:
probes the implementation to see how it responds to various types of error.  Note that if DTLS is run over UDP, then any implementation which does this will be extremely susceptible to denial-of-service <del> (DoS) attacks because UDP forgery is so easy.  Thus, this practice is NOT RECOMMENDED for such transports, both to increase the reliability of DTLS service and to avoid the risk of spoofing attacks sending traffic to unrelated third parties. </del> <ins> (DoS) attacks because UDP forgery is so easy.  Thus, the practice of generating fatal alerts is NOT RECOMMENDED for such transports, both to increase the reliability of DTLS service and to avoid the risk of spoofing attacks sending traffic to unrelated third parties. </ins> If DTLS is being carried over a transport that is resistant to forgery (e.g., SCTP with SCTP-AUTH), then it is safer to send alerts

Related discussion:
text: However, a DTLS implementation which would ordinarily issue an alert SHOULD generate a new alert message if the offending record is received again (e.g., as a retransmitted handshake message). Implementations SHOULD detect when a peer is persistently sending bad messages and terminate the local connection state after such misbehavior is detected. Note that alerts are not reliably transmitted; implementation SHOULD NOT depend on receiving alerts in order to signal errors or connection closure. [BA] For the fatal alert case, it does seem like retransmission would be a good idea; otherwise the peer can be left hanging. Section 7.1 "Disruptions" such as reordering do not affect timers, correct? ACKs SHOULD NOT be sent for these flights unless generating the responding flight takes significant time. What is "significant time"? Editorial Comments (NITs) Section 2 The reader is also as to be familiar with [BA] "as" -> "assumed" Section 3 The basic design philosophy of DTLS is to construct "TLS over datagram transport". Datagram transport does not require nor provide reliable or in-order delivery of data. The DTLS protocol preserves this property for application data. Applications such as media streaming, Internet telephony, and online gaming use datagram transport for communication due to the delay-sensitive nature of transported data. The behavior of such applications is unchanged when the DTLS protocol is used to secure communication, since the DTLS protocol does not compensate for lost or reordered data traffic. [BA] While low-latency streaming and gaming does use DTLS to protect data (e.g. for protection of WebRTC data channel), telephony and RTC Audio/Video uses DTLS/SRTP for key derivation only, and SRTP for protection of data. So you might want to make a distinction. Section 3.1 Note that timeout and retransmission do not apply to the HelloRetryRequest since this would require creating state on the server. The HelloRetryRequest is designed to be small enough that it will not itself be fragmented, thus avoiding concerns about interleaving multiple HelloRetryRequests. [BA] I would add "For more detail on timeouts and retransmission, see Section 5.8." Transport Layer Mapping DTLS messages MAY be fragmented into multiple DTLS records. Each DTLS record MUST fit within a single datagram.