Re: [Idr] Benjamin Kaduk's No Objection on draft-ietf-idr-ext-opt-param-11: (with COMMENT)

[Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 10:17:27PM +0000, John Scudder wrote:
> Hi Ben,
> 
> Thanks for your comments.
> 
> On Apr 21, 2021, at 4:15 PM, Benjamin Kaduk via Datatracker <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> ...
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> COMMENT:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Thanks for this short and sweet document; I have very little to say.
> 
> Section 2
> 
> And we're sure that a two-byte length is going to be enough "for ever",
> right?
> 
> Yep! Well, for small values of “forever” anyway, as your quotation marks imply. The length field in the fixed BGP message header is only two bytes long, so if we need more than that, we’ll be doing BGP-5, and then everything will be up for grabs and we won’t need this spec any more.

Ah, a very good reason; my apologies for missing that fact.

> Section 3
> 
>   MUST NOT be used other than as described above.  If encountered as an
>   actual Optional Parameter Type code, it MUST be treated as an
> 
> Is "actual Option Parameter Type code" synonymous with "in any position
> other than the first option parameter type"?  In some sense "actual
> Option Parameter" seems slightly under-specified.
> 
> Thank you, your wording is better. It now says:
> 
> 
>    Although the Optional Parameter Type code 255 is used in this
>    specification as the indication that the extended encoding is in use,
>    it is not a bona fide Optional Parameter Type in the usual sense, and
>    MUST NOT be used other than as described above.  If encountered in
>    any position other than the first Optional Parameter Type, it MUST be
>    treated as an unrecognized Optional Parameter and handled according
>    to [RFC4271] Section 6.2.

Excellent; thanks!

-Ben