That is actually a pretty good example of an Informational RFC that
was necessary as part of the standards process even if it was not
standard itself.
The IETF had no control over the infrastructure being described so it
was not creating a standard. But the development of an IP based
alternative required a description of the existing legacy system that
simply did not exist at the time. Referencing the standards on which
the legacy system was purportedly based would not be an acceptable
substitute even if the documents were freely available.
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Richard Shockey <richard(_at_)shockey(_dot_)us>
wrote:
And add to that one that Mr Burger should vaguely recall :-)
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3482.txt
Number Portability in the Global Switched Telephone Network (GSTN):
An Overview
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Fred
Baker
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 9:49 PM
To: Eric Burger
Cc: IETF Discussion
Subject: Re: The Evils of Informational RFC's
Please, no.
The RFC Series is not a collection of standards. It is community memory, and
in it we have white papers that have been seminal such as RFC 970, problem
statements, requirements documents, and analyses of a wide variety, all of
which are informational.
Let me give you two specific examples:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2804.txt
2804 IETF Policy on Wiretapping. IAB, IESG. May 2000. (Format:
TXT=18934 bytes) (Status: INFORMATIONAL)
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3924.txt
3924 Cisco Architecture for Lawful Intercept in IP Networks. F. Baker,
B. Foster, C. Sharp. October 2004. (Format: TXT=40826 bytes) (Status:
INFORMATIONAL)
The former gives a view on the topic of lawful interception, and requests
that anyone that develops an interception technology publish it so that it
can be reviewed openly within the community. The latter does exactly that.
The collected experience in the RFC series is at least as valuable as the
protocol descriptions in it.
On Sep 9, 2010, at 12:03 AM, Eric Burger wrote:
Can we please, please, please kill Informational RFC's? Pre-WWW, having
publicly available documentation of hard-to-get proprietary protocols was
certainly useful. However, in today's environment of thousands of
Internet-connected publication venues, why would we possibly ask ourselves
to shoot ourselves in the foot by continuing the practice of Informational
RFC publication?
On Sep 3, 2010, at 7:48 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
With respect, Brian, I don't think this is simply the failure of
journalists to discern the distinction between Informational RFCs and
Standards Track RFCs. Nobody has made the claim that the IETF produced a
standard for accounting and billing for QoS or anything else. Informational
RFCs are a perfectly fine record of what certain people in the IETF
community may be "envisioning" at a given time, as long as people understand
that "envisioning" is not the same as "requiring," which is basic English
literacy.
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