[port-srv-reg] Four final points for discussion

[Stuart Cheshire <[e-mail]>]

I have four final points for discussion

1. Name of the Registry

Right now the document calls it:

   Transport Protocol Port Number and Service Name Registry

However, Section 5 says:

   Service names are the unique key in the Port and Service Name registry.

Since Service names really are the primary identifier, and the port number is optional, and we expect to see more and more registrations without port numbers, would it make sense to switch the order of the words, and make it:

   Registry of Service Names and Transport Protocol Port Numbers

2. Service Name Rules

I liked Joe's earlier suggestion to disallow all-numeric service names, to avoid service names that look like a numeric port number. However, even with that rule, we still allow service names like this: "6000-6063" (looks like the X Window System port range). Do we care? We could prevent that by requiring that all service names contain at least one alphabetic character.

3. Inconsistent terminology.

We use the term "Registered Ports" in some places to mean "ports in the range 1024-49151", and in other places to mean any "port recorded by IANA in the Registry".

For example, the first meaning:

          <t>the Well Known Ports, also known as the System Ports, from 0-1023
          (assigned by IANA)</t>

          <t>the Registered Ports, also known as the User Ports, from
          1024-49151 (assigned by IANA)</t>

          <t>the Dynamic Ports, also known as the Private Ports, from
          49152-65535 (never assigned)</t>

and now the second:

      <t>It is important to note that ownership of registered port numbers and
      service names remains with IANA. For protocols developed by IETF working

      Thousands of applications and application-level
      protocols have registered ports and service names for their use, and
      there is every reason to believe that this trend will continue into the
      future.

Would it be better to strictly use the terms "System Ports" and "User Ports" to denote the ranges, and keep the term "registered port" to just mean generically, "recorded by IANA in the Registry"?

4. Aliases

The document says:

      <t>IANA is also instructed to indicate which service name aliases in the
      existing registry are the primary aliases (see <xref target="srvname"/>).</t>

Why should we burden IANA with this decision making? I bet there aren't that many. Let's just work it out ourselves, and list them in the document. I'll grep the IANA ports page and send a followup email with the list of aliased names.

Stuart Cheshire <[e-mail]>
* Wizard Without Portfolio, Apple Inc.
* www.stuartcheshire.org