Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!BRUBECK.PROTEON.COM!jnc
From: jnc@BRUBECK.PROTEON.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.proteon
Subject: Re: Re: p4200 routing
Message-ID: <8812300700.AA11395@devvax.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: 30 Dec 88 06:35:31 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jnc@proteon.com
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 30


	I'm just going to make a quick comment about standards documents,
wearing my Standards Committee hat. One of the problems with RFC-1009 is
the amount of ambiguity about exactly what you must, should and may do.
As some of the previous messages on this issue indicate, there is some
confusion and contradiction in the document as to how gateways should
handle net 127.
	I think RFC1009 is the among the last of the 'old-style' RFC's,
which were written in a breezy, informal style suitable to researchers.
With the larger deployment of TCP/IP as a service which people depend on,
this style had to be modified a bit, and I think there is general agreement
that we need a little more formality (although not ISO-ese :-).
	There is a group working under Bob Braden to produce the host
equivalent of RFC-1009 (of which I am a member), and as those of you who
have seen drafts of this can attest, it works much harder to be explicit
and consistent. There will probably be a revision of 1009 to match the
same standards (and to catch up with changes) once the Host one is done.
	At that time, it should be much easier to determine whether or not
a given implementation is abiding by the spec. What to do with ones which
do abide by the spec but don't do what you want will still be an issue, of
course, but at least users will have a mechanism for legitimate gripes with
vendors who aren't following specs, and vendors will have a bit of protection
from unwarranted angst if they are following the spec.
	So, I think (and hope) that the situation in the future will improve
wth regard to standards, and people following them. The Internet, as a large,
multi-vendor system, will not work unless things do improve.


	Noel
-------