Subject: Re: RFC-1829 to historic!

From: "William Allen Simpson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 98 20:59:09 GMT

> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
> There are new 3DES etc. drafts from the working group, aren't there?
>
Nope.  The WG is completely disfunctional.

Just like they could not agree 3 years ago to make 3DES a proposed
standard, and we had to go with experimental, they still could not
agree on 3DES last year.  So, 3DES was stuck on the back burner, and
combined into a document of other optional algorithms like RC5-40,
CAST-40, and other such cruft.

I have a deep antipathy toward that document, for both technical and
process reasons.

IMnsHO, the Cisco folks are behaving just like Bound did at the Plenary
a few years back over DES, saying we should "standardize" bad
algorithms, because they are going to be limited to them anyway and so
they will have to ship them.  They don't face up to the fact that they
are going to get their pants beaten off competitively.

> I agree that as a symbolic act, the DES RFC be made Historic as
> quickly as possible, but we should let the working group do its job in
> replacing it, probably with 3DES.
>
We've waited for the WG yet another year.

Let the WG finish off the Kent Arch, AH, and ESP revisions, and disband.

[email-masked]
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32