Change:
The RFC7252 was designed for Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, assuming that UDP RFC0768 and DTLS RFC6347 over UDP can be used <del> unimpeded. The use of CoAP over UDP is focused on simplicity, has a low code footprint, and a small over-the-wire message size.  However, it also suffers from a few limitations: CoAP over UDP is a good choice for transferring small amounts of data across networks that follow the IP architecture.  It is less well suited for transferring larger payloads, such as firmware updates.  For this reason blockwise transfer was added to CoAP, see RFC7959.  With blockwise transfer large data payloads get "chunked" into small(er) blocks and transferred individually. This also allows to suspend a transmission and to continue at a later time to interleave other, more urgent transmissions. CoAP over UDP offers a simple congestion control mechanism only. It uses an exponential backoff strategy for retransmissions and clients must strictly limit the number of simultaneous outstanding interactions to a given server to one.  This means that CoAP clients cannot send multiple concurrent requests to a single CoAP server.  A client will therefore have to wait till the outstanding interaction has been concluded.  When a larger transfer has been started, such as a firmware download, then this transfer will block other exchanges.  This is called "head-of-line blocking". Note that there is ongoing work to add more elaborate congestion control to CoAP as well, see I-D.ietf-core-cocoa. CoAP over UDP does not provide fragmentation and reassembly support but instead relies on lower layers to provide this functionality, such as IP or by an adaption layer, like 6lowpan. Using fragmentation (either at the adaptation layer or at the IP layer) for the transport of larger data payloads would be possible up to the maximum size of the underlying datagram protocol.  With UDP the length field is 16 bit long, which leads to a maximum payload size of a little less than 64 Kbyte (due to the header size).  For firmware images 64 Kbyte may, however, be too small and relying on IP layer fragmentation is inefficient.  Any transmission larger than the path MTU will lead to IP fragmentation.  The path MTU needs to be determined first and it may change over time. Some networks drop UDP packets.  Complete blocking of UDP happens in between about 2% and 4% of terrestrial access networks, according to EK2016.  UDP impairment is especially concentrated in enterprise networks and networks in geographic regions with otherwise challenged connectivity.  Some networks also rate-limit UDP traffic, as reported in BK2015.  QUIC deployment investigations revealed numbers around 0.3 % SW2016. Where NATs are present, CoAP over TCP can help with their traversal.  NATs often calculate expiration timers based on the transport layer protocol being used by application protocols. Many NATs maintain TCP-based NAT bindings for longer periods based on the assumption that a transport layer protocol, such as TCP, offers additional information about the session life cycle.  UDP, on the other hand, does not provide such information to a NAT and </del> <ins> unimpeded.  The use of CoAP over UDP is focused on simplicity, has a low code footprint, and a small over-the-wire message size. The primary reason for introducing CoAP over TCP RFC0793 and TLS RFC5246 is that some networks drop UDP packets.  Complete blocking of UDP happens in between about 2% and 4% of terrestrial access networks, according to EK2016.  UDP impairment is especially concentrated in enterprise networks and networks in geographic regions with otherwise challenged connectivity.  Some networks also rate-limit UDP traffic, as reported in BK2015 and deployment investigations related to the standardization of QUIC revealed numbers around 0.3 % SW2016. The introduction of CoAP over TCP also leads to some side effects, namely Where NATs are present along the communication path, CoAP over TCP leads to different NAT traversal behavior than CoAP over UDP. NATs often calculate expiration timers based on the transport layer protocol being used by application protocols.  Many NATs maintain TCP-based NAT bindings for longer periods based on the assumption that a transport layer protocol, such as TCP, offers additional information about the session lifecycle.  UDP, on the other hand, does not provide such information to a NAT and </ins> timeouts tend to be much shorter HomeGateway.  According to HomeGateway the mean between TCP and UDP NAT binding timeouts is 386 minutes (TCP) and 160 seconds (UDP).  Shorter timeout values <del> require keepalive messages to be sent more more frequently. </del> <ins> require keepalive messages to be sent more frequently.  Hence, the use of CoAP over TCP requires less frequent transmission of keep- alive messages. TCP utilizes more sophisticated congestion and flow control mechanisms, which is useful for the transfer of larger payloads. In the context of IoT deployments, such transfers could be firmware updates.  There is, however, ongoing work to add advanced congestion control to CoAP as well, see I-D.ietf-core-cocoa. Note that the use of CoAP over UDP (and CoAP over DTLS over UDP) is still the recommended transport for use constrained node networks, particularly when used in concert with blockwise transfer.  CoAP over TCP is applicable for those cases where the networking infrastructure leaves no other choice.  The use of CoAP over TCP leads to a larger code size, more roundtrips, increased RAM requirements and larger packet sizes.  Developers implementing CoAP over TCP are encouraged to read I-D.gomez-lwig-tcp-constrained-node-networks for guidance on low-footprint TCP implementations for IoT devices. </ins> Emerging standards such as Lightweight Machine to Machine LWM2M currently use CoAP over UDP as a transport and require support for CoAP over TCP to address the issues above and to protect investments <del> in existing CoAP implementations and deployments.  Although HTTP/2 could also potentially address these requirements, there would be additional costs and delays introduced by such a transition. </del> <ins> in existing CoAP implementations and deployments. Although HTTP/2 could also potentially address the need for enterprise firewall traversal, there would be additional costs and delays introduced by such a transition from CoAP to HTTP/2. </ins> Currently, there are also fewer HTTP/2 implementations available for <del> constrained devices in comparison to CoAP. To address these requirements, this document defines how to transport CoAP over TCP, CoAP over TLS, and CoAP over WebSockets.  For these cases, the reliability offered by the transport protocol subsumes the reliability functions of the message layer used for CoAP over UDP. (Note that both for a reliable transport and the CoAP over UDP message layer, the reliability offered is per transport hop: where proxies -- see Sections 5.7 and 10 of RFC7252 -- are involved, that layer's reliability function does not extend end-to-end.) fig- layering illustrates the layering: Note, however, that the use of CoAP over UDP (and CoAP over DTLS over UDP) is still the recommended transport for use constrained node networks, particularly when used in concert with blockwise transport. CoAP over TCP (and CoAP over TLS over TCP) is applicable for those cases where the networking infrastructure leaves no other choice. The use of CoAP over TCP leads to a larger code size, more roundtrips, increased RAM requirements and larger packet sizes. Developers are encouraged to read I-D.gomez-lwig-tcp-constrained- node-networks for guidance on low-footprint TCP implementations for IoT devices. CoAP may be integrated into a Web environment where the front-end uses CoAP over UDP from IoT devices to a cloud infrastructure and then CoAP over TCP between the back-end services.  A TCP-to-UDP gateway can be used at the cloud boundary to communicate with the UDP-based IoT device. To allow IoT devices to better communicate in these demanding environments, CoAP needs to support different transport protocols, namely TCP RFC0793, in some situations secured by TLS RFC5246. CoAP applications running inside a web browser without access to connectivity other than HTTP and the RFC6455 may cross-proxy their CoAP requests via HTTP to a HTTP-to-CoAP cross-proxy or transport them via the the WebSocket protocol, which provides two-way </del> <ins> constrained devices in comparison to CoAP.  Since CoAP also support group communication using IP layer multicast and unreliable communication IoT devices would have to support HTTP/2 in addition to CoAP. Furthermore, CoAP may be integrated into a Web environment where the front-end uses CoAP over UDP from IoT devices to a cloud infrastructure and then CoAP over TCP between the back-end services. A TCP-to-UDP gateway can be used at the cloud boundary to communicate with the UDP-based IoT device. Finally, CoAP applications running inside a web browser without access to connectivity other than HTTP and the RFC6455 may cross- proxy their CoAP requests via HTTP to a HTTP-to-CoAP cross-proxy or transport them via the the WebSocket protocol, which provides two-way </ins> communication between a WebSocket client and a WebSocket server after upgrading an RFC7230 connection. <ins> Finally, CoAP applications running inside a web browser may be without access to connectivity other than HTTP.  In this case, the WebSocket protocol RFC6455 may be used to either cross-proxy their CoAP requests via HTTP to an HTTP-to-CoAP cross-proxy or transport them via the WebSocket protocol.  This would, in turn, provide two- way communication between a WebSocket client and a WebSocket server after upgrading an HTTP/1.1 RFC7230 connection. To address the above-mentioned deployment requirements, this document defines how to transport CoAP over TCP, CoAP over TLS, and CoAP over WebSockets.  For these cases, the reliability offered by the transport protocol subsumes the reliability functions of the message layer used for CoAP over UDP.  (Note that both for a reliable transport and the CoAP over UDP message layer, the reliability offered is per transport hop: where proxies -- see Sections 5.7 and 10 of RFC7252 -- are involved, that layer's reliability function does not extend end-to-end.) fig-layering illustrates the layering: </ins> This document specifies how to access resources using CoAP requests and responses over the TCP, TLS and WebSocket protocols.  This allows connectivity-limited applications to obtain end-to-end CoAP

Discussion:
This new version of the introduction focuses on the main reason for introducing CoAP over TCP, namely the problem encountered with enterprise firewalls. It provides references to data about how often such problems occur in the wild. I removed the other differences between CoAP over UDP and TCP since they appear to be secondary and a distraction.