3.3.1 Abstract Data Model

This section describes a conceptual model of possible data organization that an implementation maintains to participate in this protocol. The described organization is provided to facilitate the explanation of how the protocol behaves. This document does not mandate that implementations adhere to this model as long as their external behavior is consistent with that described in this document.

The server associates state with each authenticated connection, as specified in [RFC2617]. Specifically, the server associates a client and a server nonce with each connection, along with a nonce count ([RFC2617] section 3.2.2 and [RFC2831] section 2.1.2) for ongoing communications. The server might keep all this information longer than an active connection, depending on the length of time that is allotted for subsequent authentication, as specified in [RFC2617] section 3.3.