Re: [tcpm] IANA TCP options registry

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

Fernando Gont wrote:
> Joe,
> 
>> Some of the info in Alfred's registry may be useful in other places, but
>> not necessarily in areas managed by IANA. IANA isn't chartered to
>> provide detailed spec info, except as it affects registrations (e.g.,
>> system vs. user ports) - they provide pointers to other docs.
> 
> That's the point. What pointer does it have for, e.g., the Bubba option
> or for options #20 through #23? -- FWIW, I'd rather have a pointer to a
> spec rather than an e-mail address. In particular when the e-mail
> addresses may become obsolete, and when there's no guarantee that you'll
> get a response if you send e-mail to those e-mail addresses.

IANA tends to maintain as much registry information as they have, but
only the specs or a general pointer is on the web page, AFAICT. That
seems appropriate, as you note. If someone wants to contact the last
known 'owner' (who registered it), they can contact IANA.

>> Some would be useful in an informational summary doc (SYN only, etc).
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> Other information on current use isn't clearly appropriate IMO for
>> either a doc or IANA tables, such as active use information.
> 
> I don't expect "usage" information with a granularity of one year or two
> years, but at least I'd be interested in "usage" information with a more
> coarse granularity (e.g., "was this ever deployed on the Internet?", "Is
> it fair to assume that nobody is using this anymore?")

The IETF would take this on by declaring something Historic, e.g. I
don't think it's in IANA's charter to either make these assessments, and
that seems like something that, while useful, isn't "IANA".

>> Putting up web pages with this "other" (IMO, non-IANA) info may be
>> useful, but seems outside IANA's scope. I'm not sure who could maintain
>> those pages, other than individuals on personal sites (which, given
>> search engines, ought to be sufficient anyway).
> 
> I disagree with this. Yes, there are search engines. But they don't tell
> you the accuracy of the information that they provide in their results.

No disagreement there, but individual pages can often have as useful
information as those by organizations ;-)

> Secondly (and probably more importantly), why should we rely on some
> external agent to provide this information??? Why should this useful
> stuff need to be produced elsewhere?

I agree this info is useful in general. It doesn't seem appropriate for
IANA to either collect or maintain that info. I'm not even sure the IETF
would do this, except in the process of standards elevation/demotion.

I'm not saying it's not useful, but I just don't know who should "own"
or "endorse" this - the Internet doesn't have a compliance or deployment
monitoring function AFAICT.

Joe