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Re: When is an idea a good idea?

2014-01-30 11:28:34
Comments at the end.

At 03:14 PM 1/28/2014, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

So, if you don't intend for your draft to be used on the global Internet, 
please say so! As per 
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-3.3>http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-3.3,
it's not necessary to put an Applicability Statement in a different draft; 
just a section that says (another actual example) "this has been tested using 
these parameters on a lightly-loaded LAN, and it works there", that is more 
helpful than a tug of war(*) about whether something is a good idea or a bad 
idea in all situations, in front of a live studio audience.



To add to your list of possible limiters:

Subnet Scaling:  How large of a subnet will this work with before blowing up?  
(mesh routing protocols, multicast security stuff etc).

Field of Use:  What was this designed to do?  What can this do without fear?  
What shouldn't this do?  (e.g. DNS being used as a swiss army knife because its 
a global database implementation, TLS being used as the only security protocol 
including link layer for mesh).

Layer Violations:  What layer violations are acceptable for this protocol 
without breaking the model?  Does this assume a specific LLP (e.g. TCP using 
the IP address in a pseudo-header as part of the header checksum calculation)?

Convention Violations:  What violations of normal IETF and network standards 
convention does this protocol depend on?  (e.g.  current discussion in TLS 
about using little-endian on-the-wire representation for Curve22519 suites 
instead of the normal big-endian).  

Global vs Common vs Limited:  Is this protocol designed to be deployed in all 
or almost all internet devices (Global e.g. IP, UDP, TCP, DNS), in many devices 
- generic types (Common HTTP client and server, smtp, pop/imap), or in specific 
limited numbers or classes of devices (Limited - smart energy protocols, sensor 
node protocols - things like thermostats, street lights, bridge sensors, 
security systems).

Static vs Dynamic:  Is this protocol designed for use with clusters of internet 
nodes that can self-organize (dynamic) and change over time, or for clusters 
that are set-up/configured and remain relatively stable?

*sigh*  It might be Taxonomy time....

Mike

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