ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: When should a new IANA registry be created

2004-12-20 06:53:35
In general, any time you have a set of values that can change over time, and there is a reason for the community to know the currently-valid set of values, a registry is a Good Thing.

One example of when a registry is NOT needed: error codes in draft-ietf-rohc-sigcomp-nack, where the author says:

RFC3320 is very explicit in calling out what conditions can lead to
decompression failures. Quite simply, if a set of circumstances isn't
detailed as a decompression failure in RFC3320, then it can't get
reported in a NACK. By the working group's analysis, for version 0x02 of
SigComp (defined in the draft being discussed), there are precisely 25
things that can go wrong.

This list of errors, then, can not change unless and until a new version
of SigComp is issued. If you consider the NACK codes to be scoped to the
version of SigComp being used, then the need for a registry disappears.

The same draft uses a registry for the version numbers for the SigComp protocol itself - here, people can encounter the value "2" when they expected "1", and can use the registry to figure out which document defines the new version:

5. IANA Considerations

  This document defines a new value for the IANA registered attribute
  SigComp_version.

  Value (in hex): 02

  Description: SigComp version 2 (NACK support)

  Reference: [RFCXXXX]

So the answer is "it depends".....

--On 18. desember 2004 11:58 -0800 Cullen Jennings 
<fluffy(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:


There is the beginning of yet another debate on the SIMPLE mailing list
about do we need an IANA registry from some fields in a specific draft.
There does not seem to be a clear opinion on when to create a registry or
not and past activities are not 100% consistent. I'm sure this has come up
many times before. Are there some things I should go read that help shed
light on this?

Could the IAB give any advice here? Is it good to use IANA just as a
convenient place to go find links to all the RFC you might need to know
about? Should we only have a registry only if there is a real possibility
to two values being allocated to two different things (when the value was
supposed to be unique). Who can is in a good position to help sort this
out IAB? IESG? Other?

Thanks, Cullen




_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf







_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>