Re: [tsvwg] draft-ietf-udp-options issues from IETF 104

["C. M. Heard" <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 3:15 PM Joe Touch wrote:
> We CAN easily set a limit IF we went.
>
> We don't need to design that into the protocol structure.
[...]
> Receivers can do whatever they want to check without us setting
> protocol limits.
>
> A good implementation (of anything) checks resources and limits
> overuse. Period. We should not need to set limits to make that happen.
>
> Besides, such limits *change over time and depend on a particular
> system's resources* anyway.
>
> One size does not fit all for all time.

+1 to all of that.

It may be reasonable to set some lower bounds on what a conforming
implementation is obliged to accept -- something along the lines of
the requirement in RFC 792 that "[a]ll hosts must be prepared to
accept datagrams of up to 576 octets (whether they arrive whole or
in fragments)." But that does not need to be -- and in general should
not be -- baked into the protocol structure. Capabilities change, and
increased limits can find their way over time into new implementations,
but not if the protocol structure imposes an artificial ceiling.

Mike