On Sat, Oct 31, 2026 at 2:52 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
Informational RFCs have their place. I am not arguing that they do not. This particular subject is perfectly acceptable as an info RFC.
Fully agreed!
However, a long-running trend exists where people publish an info RFC, and then proceed to promote it in a way that implies it's an accepted standard to garner adoption. The OP didn't here, but has done that elsewhere.
This is also true. I'd consider many Informational to be "Virtually Standard", though, and even some BCPs require Informationals as requisite for implementation. So it's certainly not as clear-cut over the years as the IETF likely originally intended it to be. (Though you are right in that it doesn't help that there's plenty of ...*opportunistic*, to be generous, framing of some of them.)
I know that you know the distinctions between the RFC types, but many don't, and that's the only reason I replied as such.
Of course, I just thought it important to mention the grain of salt of "your network's probably going to break and you'll get many angry phonecalls if you ignore Informational". ;)