Re: [tcpm] I-D Action:draft-eggert-tcpm-historicize-01.txt

[Lars Eggert <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On 2011-2-17, at 9:00, Christian Huitema wrote:
> I note that the list of RFC includes RFC 1263, "TCP Extensions Considered Harmful." The purpose of the draft is to make some extensions historic. Since RFC 1263 does not define any particular extension, I don't see the point of including it. RFC 1263 is an informational RFC. It provides advice on protocol design, and that advice appears to be just as informational now as it was then. I don't see why we should reclassify it.

it provides advice on *TCP* protocol design going forward, but the community went the other way. I don't feel strongly about moving it to Historic or not, but someone suggested it (see below).

Scott Bradner brought this up during his ops-dir review as well:

> On 2011-2-11, at 4:24, Scott O. Bradner wrote:
>> I'm not sure why RFC 1263  "TCP Extensions Considered Harmful" should
>> be included in the list since it seems to me that message of the RFC
>> is still valid.  But if it is to be included it seems like the
>> "it is not used" general description does not apply to this RFC and some
>> specific text should be added to say why it should be made historic
> 
> good point. Someone (I can't remember who, might have been Craig Partridge) suggested to include RFC1263 in this list because it argues for an architectural approach which the subsequent TCP evolution with its myriad of options did not follow. (RFC4614 also contains text along those lines.)
> 
> I'm adding this text to my working copy:
> 
> <xref target="RFC1263"/> ("TCP Extensions Considered Harmful") is somewhat of a special case. Unlike the other RFCs made Historic by this memo, it does not specify a TCP option that failed to see deployment, but argued for a way to evolve TCP forward that the community did not choose to follow.

Lars