Subject: Re: Shame vs Engineering, also NEW conformance criteria

From: Bruce Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 19:24:52 -0400

On Sat July 30 2005 00:03, John Stanley wrote:

> So, now I'll ask for the justification for the MUST regarding which of the 
> four path-identity options an injecting agent MUST use. Up until now, I 
> had assumed it was proper, but I see no harm in an injecting agent using 
> either a valid IP literal or UUCP name.

The Path field is used to limit retransmissions (see BCP 14) to sites
through which an article has passed.  That requires uniqueness in site
name.  an FQDN guarantees uniqueness.  An IP address literal does not;
10.11.12.13 corresponds to different hosts at different parts of the
network, as do 192.168.0.1, 169.254.0.1, 172.16.1.1, and 127.0.0.1.  A
UUCP name lacks any sort of guarantee of uniqueness and there is
currently no mechanism for uniqueness.  It is known that there have been
duplicate uses of UUCP names.

> The headers will contain enough  
> other information that I can contact the site, or barring that, one of its 
> neighbors who know who the site is. Am I special in my abilities to ferret 
> out contact data?

Contact for abuse reporting is a WIBNI (Wouldn't It Be Nice If...), not
a protocol requirement.  But it's not the purpose of the Path field.

> In fact, I've been trying to follow this "diagnostic information only" 
> debate about allowing IP literals and cannot understand what the problem 
> is with an IP literal in the first place (other than IPv6, where the 
> problem is coding it and not in its use, per se, and where the coding 
> issue can be solved trivially if my suggested "coding" is used.) Yes, IP 
> addresses can change, but so can FQDN. Why is one sacred and the other 
> taboo?

See above.  Foo.example.com may mean different things in the long term;
10.11.12.13 can mean different things at the same time.

On a somewhat related note (one of our co-chairs will be familiar with
this issue), we are supposed to be generating Standards Track RFCs for
1) syntax & semantics and 2) protocol issues.  In order for a Standards
Track specification to advance to the next level (Draft Standard), it
will be necessary to prepare documentation for two independent fully
conforming implementations (BCP 9).  That will be facilitated if our
Standards Track documents have sections summarizing conformance
criteria.  Obviously, any BCP 14 imperative keywords (as these are
supposed to be limited to issues of interoperability and harm
mitigation) would be candidates for inclusion in such a summary.  I
suggest producing conformance criteria summary sections in the usefor
and usepro drafts, the first pass of which could be a list of existing
use of BCP 14 imperative keywords.   That would consolidate in one place
all use of such keywords, which we can then review for appropriateness
per the BCP 14 rules for use of such imperatives as well as review
with respect to the ability to objectively evaluate implementations
for conformance.  A summary of conformance criteria would also be a
convenience for implementers, for obvious reasons.

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 13:29:08 GMT

>duplicate uses of UUCP names.

Please stop shooting at your own strawmen. Nobody has ever suggested that
IP addresses such as 192.168.0.1 and 127.0.0.1 should be permitted. It
would be required that the IP address be that of the host concerned, and
that it be one that would reach that host from the public internet.

The wording that currently expresses that intent is:

   2.   An encoding of the public [RFC 1918] IP address - <IPv4address>
        or <IPv6address> [RFC 3986] - of that news-server. ...

If that is not clear enough, then please suggest improvements.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5