Subject: A formality.... (Re: axfr-clarify's fraudulent claims of consensus)

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 10:19:19 +0100

--On fredag, februar 14, 2003 17:57:45 -0500 Dean Anderson <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> As you note, they didn't conform to a BCP. There is no requirement (or
> implication even) that one should conform to a Best Common Practice.
> These serve to distribute helpful advice to the community and document
> practices that have worked for others, in situations that may be
> different.
>
> The AXFR issue is compliance with a required standard, and its definition.
> Much more serious concerns and issues are at stake.

Note: The IETF has never made *any* standard that the IETF required people 
to conform to, unless they wanted to truthfully claim conformance to that 
standard.
At one point in time it made sense to say that "to be an Internet device, 
you have to conform to this set of standards"; currently, the ways in which 
IETF standards depend on each other are complex enough that this doesn't 
make much sense any more.

As a result, the distinction between "Elective", "Recommended" and 
"Required" protocols has largely fallen into disuse; RFC 2400 was the last 
version of the Official Protocol Standards document that even bothered to 
list them - the current version is RFC 3300.

At the time of RFC 2400, the set of Required standards were:

--------   Internet Official Protocol Standards      Req      2400   1
--------   Assigned Numbers                          Req      1700   2
--------   Host Requirements - Communications        Req      1122   3
--------   Host Requirements - Applications          Req      1123   3
IP         Internet Protocol                         Req       791   5
--------     IP Subnet Extension                     Req       950   5
--------     IP Broadcast Datagrams                  Req       919   5
--------     IP Broadcast Datagrams with Subnets     Req       922   5
ICMP       Internet Control Message Protocol         Req       792   5

Here is the status of the DNS standards in that document:

DOMAIN     Domain Name System                        Rec 1034,1035  13
DNS-MX     Mail Routing and the Domain System        Rec       974  14

axfr-clarify will have to enter the process as a Proposed Standard.
Both Proposed Standards and BCPs are encouraging people to do things a 
certain way; if anything, I consider a BCP slightly more forceful.

                  Harald Alvestrand