Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-tsvwg-iana-ports-09.txt> (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Procedures for the Management of the Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry) to BCP

[Sam Hartman <[e-mail]>]

Cullen, there's a lot of history with port registrations.  As you're
probably aware in the past, there was a procedure for experts to sign an
NDA before reviewing port requests.  It's my understanding that is no
longer done.  However, it does suggest there's strong desire for
proprietary protocol support.
So, there's lots of complexity specific to this registry here that I
don't know about.

However, the general idea of having experts reviews on a public list, or
even soliciting comments on a public list is well supported. There's
specific discussion of this in RFC 5226. We've done it successfully in a
number of cases.  So, there's reason to believe that things in this
space could be effective for IANA registries.  I think soliciting public
comments on port requests would be bad; I think your proposal of having
the request/response be published would be as far as we should go for
this registry at this time.

So, I don't have the background to say this would be a good fit for the
port registry, but to the extent that my background supports something
like this I can support your idea. It's worked elsewhere at lesat.