On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 01:59:22AM -0500, Randy Bush wrote:
somehow we seem to have survived similar issues in IP quad representation.
Or domain names. I'm concerned by the kind of discussion I'm seeing here. RFC's are not law, and if your router vendor adopts this informational document in such a way that it breaks your scripts then that's an issue to take up with your router vendor(s). I don't see why there's any reason it can't be made so (excuse me for using what little Cisco configuration language I can remember): o 'conf t' accepts: router bgp 255.255.255.254 neighbor 10.0.0.1 remote-as 255.255.255.255 o 'wr mem/term' writes out: router bgp 4294967294 # 255.255.255.254 neighbor 10.0.0.1 remote-as 4294967295 # 255.255.255.255 or even: # BGP 255.255.255.254 router bgp 4294967294 # EZ-ASN: 255.255.255.255 neighbor 10.0.0.1 remote-as 4294967295 One or both of which probably won't break anyone's scripts. The point is that this is a configuration language versioning issue, which isn't something I think of the IETF having either a lot of interest or ability to define. As Shields has indicated, email the IETF mailing lists if you must. I'm in favor of people sending mail to lists to which I do not subscribe. But it's just /weird/ to ask the IETF to have this kind of role...one it has never had to my memory, and seeks constantly not to fulfill. -- ISC Training! October 16-20, 2006, in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering topics from DNS to DDNS & DHCP. Email training@isc.org. -- David W. Hankins "If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins