Subject: Re: [port-srv-reg] Questions for the group. Please respond as soon as possible so work can continue.

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 15:54:46 -0400

Playing catch up...

> I have a couple questions for the group before I get started contacting the=
>  registrants of the ports with invalid characters.

> 1) Stuart provided the following text (thank you Stuart!) and Magnus
>  reviewed and liked it.  Can I go ahead with this text and contact
>  those registrants for the invalid port names?

Is the intention to ask them if they are OK with changing the name?

IMO, it would be completely inappropriate to change any registered
name. We have no way of knowing how they are used, especially older
ones. We risk breaking things, and for what purpose?

Do we really want to risk breaking deplohyed software that uses
getservbyname()? 

Asking the original party that requested the port is not enough. There
could be all sort of deployed software out there that making a chance
we could impact.

It is fine to tighten things up going forward, but not to make changes
to recorded entries...

Remind me, what problem is making changes to the names of previously
recorded registration going to fix?

Regarding your proposed message:

> As a result, your original service name "sql*net" is now recorded as
> "sql-net".

Um, it sounds like you have already made a chance. Are you asking if
it is OK, or are you telling them after the fact?

> With people beginning to use these service (port) identifiers in
> programmatic contexts, like DNS SRV records, it is important that we
> have consistent rules for identifier length and allowed character
> set,

If your main argument is SRV, I don't buy it.

IMO, the better way to do SRV names is to have a separate registry
that specifies what the SRV name should be. In many (most?) cases it
can be derived from the well-known name. But this is not required (and
may not even be the case today for all protocols). It is also
perfectly fine to just choose a name. The important thing is that
everyone know which name to use for a given protocol. 

Or am I missing something?
 
> 3) What are we going to do about the underscores?  Will these just
>  be changed to hyphens?  Do I also need to contact these registrants
>  and let them know we'll be changing out the underscore for the
>  hypen?

Again, we shouldn't be doing this...

[sorry if this is out of the blue, this topic interests me, but I have
not followed discussions for a very long time.]

Thomas