Subject: RE: Header in TCP Mapping

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 12:00:18 -0400

> 2. Speaking as a pragmatist, I would suggest leaving things 
> as they are.
> There's no real benefit in the change except from the purist 
> point of view,
> and I'm in the final stages of getting a server up right now. 
> If it changes
> in the next draft, then I and my clients will have to make 
> one more change
> to live software with no net benefit. I'm all for improving the
> specification, but please bear in mind that there are several
> implementations based on drafts out there already. I realise 
> that when EPP
> gets finally approved, we will all be obliged to upgrade to the final
> release, but let's keep things as simple as possible in the meantime.

While I appreciate what you're saying, we can't let implementations to I-Ds
dictate what we can or can't do to get the specifications finished.  Having
said that, though, I'm inclined to leave things as-is unless someone comes
up with a real compelling reason for the change.

-Scott-

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From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 08:25:33 -0400

>up with a real compelling reason for the change.

Looking at IP and TCP, the length fields include the length field 
(noting that the length fields are embedded in the header structure). 
My inclination as a chair is to not change this (other that to clean 
up the byte ordering), i.e., leave the length field to cover itself. 
The reason is that past protocols have done it that way.

'Course, there's a potential counter example in DNS - the TCP version 
of the datagram is preceded by a length field that does not include 
itself.  But in this case, the length field is an addition for the 
connection-oriented version of the protocol only.  The datagram that 
follows is all that appears in the connection-less version, which 
means that the datagram is most likely prepared prior to knowing if 
the length field will be needed.

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Edward Lewis                                          +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer