Re: [saag] should we revise rfc 3365?

[Mouse <[e-mail]>]

>> [RFC 3365]
> To open a can of worms, this would also be a good doc in which to
> discuss the need for secure ports, and whether (or not) to ever
> assign meaning to the difference between system and user ports...

I submit that attempting to make such a distinction is effectively
meaningless, and has been ever since single-user machines - machines
owned personally by individuals who are their administrators - became
even moderately common.  It meant something (though even then not much)
in the days of large multi-user machines whose administrators could
reasonably be treated by the rest of the net as more trusted than the
bulk of their users.  Those days are long past; between personal
machines and pwn3d windows boxen, I think it is now pointless.

To look at it another way, there can be no distinction between system
and user ports from the point of view of network-observable behaviour,
since the "system"-vs-"user" distinction, to the extent that it exists
at all, is entirely private to each host; it is, therefore, pointless
to try to mandate any such difference.

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