Subject: Re: [TLS] Request to register value in TLS extension registry

From: Peter Gutmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2018 06:17:09 +0000

[CC'd back to the TLS list because this affects other TLS work as well]

Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]> writes:

>Having looked a bit harder, it seems that perhaps I need to point out that,
>if you want IANA to allocate a value, you need to *ask IANA for it*.  The
>[email-masked] list is not a supported IANA entrypoint;

That's not what the RFC appears to say:

   Specification Required [RFC8126] registry requests are registered
   after a three-week review period on the <[email-masked]>
   mailing list, on the advice of one or more designated experts.

   [...]

   Registration requests sent to the mailing list for review SHOULD use
   an appropriate subject (e.g., "Request to register value in TLS bar
   registry").

This is exactly what I did, I sent a registration request to the list for
review.

   Within the review period, the designated experts will either approve
   or deny the registration request, communicating this decision to the
   review list and IANA.

This never happened.

Did anyone actually test RFC 8447 before it was published?  You send a request
to a mailing list that doesn't seem to work, to be reviewed by a secret panel
(well, we know that Rich Salz is one member :-), with no public discussion or
list archives you can examine to see what happened, and in my case no response
to the registration request submitted as per the RFC.

Peter.

---

From: Sean Turner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2018 11:29:23 -0400

> On Oct 3, 2018, at 02:17, Peter Gutmann <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Did anyone actually test RFC 8447 before it was published?

You are the first.

> You send a request

The “panel” is not secret.  The experts were identified when draft-ietf-tls-tls13 and draft-ietf-tls-iana-registry-updates were approved [0][1] and are/were enshrined in the IANA registry [2][3].

We are in the process of changing the archives to be public accessible.

Since you have been squatting on a code point for a bit [4], I am hoping that you can bear with us while we work the kinks out.

spt

[0] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg25837.html
[1] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg26316.html
[2] https://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-extensiontype-values/tls-extensiontype-values.xhtml
[3] https://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-parameters/tls-parameters.xhtml
[4] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/rxIiS3pn63yp9YaZMODWXCk8mTg

---

From: Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2018 12:19:47 -0500

> [CC'd back to the TLS list because this affects other TLS work as well]

(I responded privately to Peter about this already.)

> This is exactly what I did, I sent a registration request to the list for

I'll note that there is a different interpretation of the text of the RFC,
namely that it is guidance to IANA, not guidance to those requesting codepoints.
(In particular, the IANA Considerations section says that the whole document
is IANA considerations.)

IANA is the authoritative source for both the numbers in the registries
and what the registration procedure is for getting new allocations; they have
full-time professional staff to answer questions and an SLA.  If you're
uncertain of the process, asking them seems like a great plan, rather than
assuming you will guess correctly.

Interestingly, https://datatracker.ietf.org/list/nonwg only has three other
foo-reg-review lists, one of which has something funky happening with the
MHonArc archivs.  The other two have some pretty sparse traffic, but all
successful requests do seem to end with someone actively sending mail to IANA.
That is, IANA is not monitoring the list so as to take action.
I suppose if you want to count on the kindness and organizational skills of
the volunteer experts and have them remember to tell IANA about the end of a
review period, you could do that ... or you could tell IANA yourself and
be sure that they know.

I'll also give some general background that the whole reason we have
designated experts is to provide the technical advice that IANA does not have
in-house, as needed by certain registration policies.  For Standards-Action,
the technical expertise is wholly delegated to the IETF; for RFC-Required, the
IETF/IAB/ISE.  FCFS requires no expertise at all, but Specification-Required
and Expert-Review need the experts, to provide guidance to IANA on technical
questions.  Nonetheless, it's still IANA making the registration, just acting on
the advice of the experts.  My advice remains: talk to the professionals
first.

>    or deny the registration request, communicating this decision to the

I don't think you actually had enough public data when you sent this to be
confident it was true.  After all, the experts could have sent the decision to
IANA and IANA dropped it on the floor.

> to the registration request submitted as per the RFC.

Sean has already clarified much of this.  But I'm curious; if you think you
have followed the proper procedure, why did you not act on the escalation
procedure I pointed out to you previously, rather than continuing to complain
on the TLS WG list?

-Ben

---

From: Mike Bishop <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2018 18:49:21 +0000

Actually, I submitted a request to IANA while this RFC was in process which got sent to the tls-reg-review alias for approval.  There was apparently a hiccup, where the alias members did not receive the request from IANA, but did receive my follow-up e-mail asking if anyone had looked at it.  IANA's understanding of the new process at the time was:

    >> Thank you for contacting us. We've sent this on to the new team of
    >> IESG-designated experts. The Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation
    >> (ALPN) Protocol IDs registry will be updated soon to include a link to
    >> recently-approved document draft-ietf-tls-iana-registry-updates, which
    >> provides new instructions for submitting registration requests for
    >> some of the TLS registries. Specifically, in the future, new requests
    >> should be sent to a mailing list (rather than IANA) for a three-week
    >> review period. The experts will then contact us if they approve a
    >> registration.

-----Original Message-----
From: TLS <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Sean Turner
Sent: Wednesday, October 3, 2018 8:29 AM
To: Peter Gutmann <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [TLS] Request to register value in TLS extension registry

>> Having looked a bit harder, it seems that perhaps I need to point out 
>> that, if you want IANA to allocate a value, you need to *ask IANA for 
>> it*.  The [email-masked] list is not a supported IANA 
>> entrypoint;
> 
> This is exactly what I did, I sent a registration request to the list 
> for review.
> 

You are the first.

> You send a request
> to a mailing list that doesn't seem to work, to be reviewed by a 
> secret panel (well, we know that Rich Salz is one member :-), with no 
> public discussion or list archives you can examine to see what 
> happened, and in my case no response to the registration request submitted as per the RFC.

spt

[0] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg25837.html
[1] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg26316.html
[2] https://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-extensiontype-values/tls-extensiontype-values.xhtml
[3] https://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-parameters/tls-parameters.xhtml
[4] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/rxIiS3pn63yp9YaZMODWXCk8mTg
_______________________________________________
TLS mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls

---

From: Peter Gutmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2018 02:51:51 +0000

Sean Turner <[email-masked]> writes:

>The “panel” is not secret.  The experts were identified when 
>draft-ietf-tls-tls13 and draft-ietf-tls-iana-registry-updates were 
>approved [0][1] and are/were enshrined in the IANA registry [2][3].

Ah, OK.  When I checked, the membership of [email-masked]
was listed as private... the whole process seemed rather opaque
(e.g. no public discussion or list archives), which was why I cc'd 
it to the main TLS list, to give anyone who wanted to add their 
$0.10 a chance.

>We are in the process of changing the archives to be public 

Thanks!  I wasn't sure if the non-public nature was deliberate or
a configuration error.

Peter.

---

From: Peter Gutmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2018 03:18:31 +0000

Benjamin Kaduk <[email-masked]> writes:

>if you think you have followed the proper procedure, why did you not act on 
>the escalation procedure I pointed out to you previously, rather than 
>continuing to complain on the TLS WG list?

Because I wanted to get it fixed for others who may be going down the same 
path in the future, not just myself.  I could have also directly contacted
people to try and get it resolved, but that wouldn't help the next person
who's faced with the same issue.  Thus my attempt to try and point out 
problems so they can be cleared up for others in the future.

Peter.