On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Kelly J. Cooper wrote:
It is a known thing that this type of request doesn't meet the criteria of the RFC and lots of different folks are hoping that the RFC will change. I'm wondering whether there's any duplication of effort to that end (or any effort at all) going on.
Nose around here http://www.ietf.org/ID.html and see if you find anything. If not, gather one or two other folks and write up a revised RFC or better yet, just write up a document describing the old paragraph, your proposed change, and why you think it needs to be changed. Read this ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt for formatting guidlines and when it is written submit it to internet-drafts@ietf.org Then hang out on the IETF discussion list http://www.ietf.org/maillist.html and answer questions. Since this is a standards track RFC you'll need to do more than this to actually get the RFC changed but this should start the ball rolling. Technically, RFC 1812 is only a proposed standard which is the lowest of the three positions on the standards track. According to RFC 2026: A Proposed Standard ... has received significant community review, and appears to enjoy enough community interest to be considered valuable. However, further experience might result in a change or even retraction of the specification before it advances. It also says: Implementors should treat Proposed Standards as immature specifications. It is desirable to implement them in order to gain experience and to validate, test, and clarify the specification. However, since the content of Proposed Standards may be changed if problems are found or better solutions are identified, deploying implementations of such standards into a disruption-sensitive environment is not recommended. So basically, you can stop this RFC in its tracks by clearly stating your objections in the form of an Internet draft and it might even be possible to get vendors to change this before the RFC is revised because the Internet IMHO qualifies as a disruption sensitive environment. -- Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com