Overview#
The Heartbeat Extension provides a new protocol for TLS/DTLS allowing the usage of keep-alive functionality without performing a Renegotiation and a basis for path MTU (PMTU) discovery for DTLS.Heartbeat Protocol is defined in RFC 6250.
The Heartbeat Protocol is a new protocol running on top of the Record Protocol.
Although TLS is generally used over TCP, which has a keep-alive functionality builtin, Heartbeat Protocol is deployed over unreliable networks as UDP.
