"Introduction This document specifies a U.S. standard for an Electronic Interactive Agent (IA) to transport Electronic Data Interchange/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration@ Commerce@ and Transport(EDI/EDIFACT)@ extensible Markup Language (XML)@ and/or plain text messages over a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) based network environment utilizing Transport Layer Security (TLS). This standard is based on ITU-T Recommendations Q.814 and Q.815 but has minor differences to improve its efficiency in the U. S. community. Background The base documents for this standard (Q.814 and Q.815) were adopted at the February 2000 meeting of the ITU-T Study Group 4 in Geneva@ Switzerland. The purpose of these specifications was to define a mechanism for the carriage of EDI/EDIFACT data between managed networks of different ITU member agencies/countries. A number of minor changes have been made to the ITU-T specifications and are delineated in this document. These changes remove certain options not commonly used in U.S. based networks and add several optional features that will enhance its use in certain environments. In addition@ specific security parameters that were loosely defined in the International documents have been more rigidly specified herein. Summary of Differences The ITU-T Recommendations Q.814 and Q.815 support a choice between a General String data type and an International Alphabet #5 (IA5) data type. The U.S. standard only supports the IA5 data type. The sole reason for the General String data type was to support EDI/EDIFACT messages constructed in non-Latin character sets that could not be described in single octet per character mechanisms. Q.814 and Q.815 provide for the carriage of EDI/EDIFACT payloads only. This U.S. standard will by extension also support XML and plain text messages. Unique data type tags have been specified@ allowing peer IAs to intersperse messages of all three data types. Changes have been made to the ASN.1 production modules described in both Q.814 and Q.815 to accommodate both of the changes described above. Two additional Status messages have been defined to provide improved testing capabilities. These messages are an ""Echo Requested"" and an ""Echo Response."" Similar to an ICMP ""Ping@"" this mechanism allows verification testing between peer IAs. A number of security parameters specifying TLS encryption protocols@ key lengths@ and X.509 digital certificate characteristics have been more strictly specified."