Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!AI.AI.MIT.EDU!JBVB
From: JBVB@AI.AI.MIT.EDU ("James B. VanBokkelen")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Life in the Swamps / Testing
Message-ID: <330665.880223.JBVB@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Date: 23 Feb 88 16:47:34 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26

Well, the unclear comments and generalizations had better not get any stamp
of approval from the organization involved (just like a good bug-reporting
system will bounce anything like that right back to the originator for
clarification without a developer ever having to read it...).  The list
needs an editor.

I think a simple list of easy-to-prove facts would do a good deal of good,
and it could be done in fairly short order.  List the vendors who are
perpetuating 4.2 bugs (UDP checksums, TFTP, non-RFC959 FTP, the old broadcast
address, thinking they're a router by default).  List the vendors who don't
support nameservers (the majority).  List the vendors who don't support
subnets (maybe a minority, now?).  List the vendors who don't support ICMP
redirects (harder to determine).  Millitary-related people might even be
able to collect a list of who can and can't handle IP packets with options.

The sophisticated, repeatable data from a test suite is desirable, but we
can begin the process much sooner.  Perhaps we can even get many of the simple
problems out of the way (RFC959 FTP only requires adding 4 table entries to
the server's parser), and maybe even get most of the vendors used to
sophisticated input from the field, perhaps even including directions for
new development...

jbvb

PS: maybe it all looks too easy for me, because both of my PCs can run our
network monitor program at a moment's notice, but the Sun people have
their own tools, too.