Re: [TLS] Should we require implementations to send alerts?

[Dave Garrett <[e-mail]>]

On Wednesday, September 16, 2015 03:23:40 pm Nico Williams wrote:
> *Sending* the fatal alert is not hard at all.  Giving the peer a fair
> chance to get them is the difficult thing.  Strictly speaking then,
> requiring that fata alerts be sent is not difficult to implement.  :^)
> 
> Tongue-in-cheek aside, I think it's fair to say that fata alerts SHOULD
> be sent rather than MUST be sent.  And it's a good idea to explain that
> sending a fatal alert, by itself, does not really mean that the peer is
> even more likely than not to see it, that more effort is required by the
> sender to give the peer a fair chance of seeing it.

I'd be fine with phrasing it as: implementations MUST send all alerts when indicated, and SHOULD make a best-effort to ensure they get delivered to the peer.

If we're hung up on how to define "send"; e.g. as implementation tried or as actually got on the wire and to the peer, then I would formally define it as the former.


Dave