Re: [kitten] An idea to go beyond 32 flags in draft-ietf-kitten-kerberos-iana-registries-03

[Rick van Rein <[e-mail]>]

Hello Greg and Ben,

Thanks for your responses.  On a scale between idealism and pragmatism,
perhaps I'm leaning over too much towards idealism.

I am not deeply concerned if KDC implementations choose to setup 32 bit
flags; a KDC is run centrally and can be upgraded.  I'm already more
concerned about clients but mostly about services that make same this
choice in firmware; firmware is at some point not updated anymore.  I
can't remember the instance, but have seen in this group how such
backlog drove choices away from what would otherwise be possible.  It is
this backlog that concerns me.

I understand that the registry can be updated, but I think a registry
that states a 32 bit limit gives rise to the creation of aforementioned
backlog, especially because there is no reason to state the limitation
there.  Given that the values are registered under a formal
specification process, and so that values 32+ are not going to be
released easily, I see no positive side but a potentially strongly
negative side, to making a statement in the registry about an upper
limit to the number of flags.

The rest of my change proposal introduced uses for 32+ values, as a
suggestion to implementations to care for those flags.  As Greg stated,
there is a little more to this than silently ignoring them, so we could
discuss whether that is such a good idea.  To me, that's a gray area; it
is desirable to have Experimental / Private flags but requiring
implementations to support such flags may be too much asked.  The
Specification Required suggestion is more something that arose as a
side-effect possibility, it is not that important on its own.

Cheers,
 -Rick