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Playing with wireshark, I see a bunch of packets that say something like 

rgtp > https [ACK] Seq=???? Ack=?????? Win=????? Len=0

What is a Reverse Gossip Ttransfer Protocol? What is it used for, and by whom?

p.s. Google takes me to http://www.groggs.group.cam.ac.uk/protocol.txt which indicates acronym is a place-holder for Reverse Gossip Transfer Protocol but what does it mean in English

Everyone
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2 Answers2

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It's not actually using RGTP. TCP connections have a randomised source port, and this just happens to have used port 1431, which IANA has assigned to that protocol. It's actually an HTTPS connection.

pjc50
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  • +1: For pointing out it is HTTPS rather than RGTP. Uh. Would you happen to know what RGTP is? – Everyone Jan 18 '12 at 15:49
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    It's as described in that document - it's a bit like NNTP, a protocol for transferring news items. It's rather old and, so far as I know, only used by one site run for a small community of ex-Cambridge people. – pjc50 Jan 19 '12 at 11:24
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The Reverse Gossip Transfer Protocol aka RGTP is a TCP-based command-response protocol similar to Internet SMTP or NNTP. To protocol RGTP has been allocated port number 1431 by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Items of the Distributed GROGGS system (a central server containing all the items) are accessed using Reverse Gossip Transfer Protocol.

GROGGS was till 1997 a distributed discussion board system on the Cambridge University Data Network, open to all users.

Paul afk
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