In message <C4572125-356D-49B9-BE24-AA55B1C014E7@muada.com>, Iljitsch van Beijn um writes:
On 23-aug-2005, at 15:16, Paul Jakma wrote:
then i would prefer going ahead with the new solution and picking it up if it works!
Well, in order to justify the hassle of invalidating existing implementations of the draft as it stands, I suspect there'd need to be sufficient examples of real-world problems with passive BGP 'readers' to get consensus in IDR to change.
This is exactly why people shouldn't implement drafts except possibly as a private in-house feasibility study.
In general, you're right; however, BGP documents have a special status. Because of how crucial BGP is to the Internet's functioning, I-Ds won't progress to RFC status (at least as Proposed Standard) without two interoperating implementations. For everything else, you're right. --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb