IETF Experiments
draft-bonica-gendispatch-exp-04

GenDispatch Working Group                                      R. Bonica
Internet-Draft                                          Juniper Networks
Intended status: Best Current Practice                         A. Farrel
Expires: 25 July 2025                                 Old Dog Consulting
                                                         21 January 2025

                            IETF Experiments
                    draft-bonica-gendispatch-exp-04

Abstract

   This document describes IETF protocol experiments and provides
   guidelines for the publication of Experimental RFCs.

Status of This Memo

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   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 25 July 2025.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Requirements on Experimental RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Codepoints in Experimental RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.2.  Requirements Level Language and Keywords  . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Experimental Reports  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Progression to Standards Track  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   According to [RFC2026], the "Experimental" designation for an RFC
   typically denotes a specification that is part of a research or
   development effort.  An Experimental RFC may be published for
   information and as an archival record of the work.  An Experimental
   RFC may be the output of an IRTF Research Group, an IETF Working
   Group, or it may be an individual contribution that is sponsored by
   an Area Director or published on the Independent Submission Stream.

   Experimental RFCs in the IETF Stream describe IETF experiments.  IETF
   process experiments are described in [RFC3933], but this document is
   concerned with protocol experiments.

   An IETF protocol experiment is a procedure that is executed on the
   Internet for a bounded period of time.  The experiment can, but does
   not always, include the deployment of a new protocol or protocol
   extension.  For example, when two protocols are proposed to solve a
   single problem, the IETF can initiate an experiment in which each
   protocol is deployed.  Operational experience obtained during the
   experiments can help to determine which, if either, of the protocols
   should be progressed to the standards track.  Alternatively, when a
   new protocol or protocol extension has been developed, but the
   community is not confident that the approach will be effective or is
   safe, it may be published as an experiment with the specific purpose
   of determining how well it works.

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   All protocol experiments must take care to not harm the Internet or
   interfere with established network operations.  They should be
   conducted in a carefully controlled manner (for example, using a
   limited domain [RFC8799]).  Furthermore, they must use protocol
   identifiers and code points that do not conflict with deployments of
   standardized protocols or other experiments.  This guidance applies
   specifically to experiments described in IETF Experimental RFCs.

   When an IETF protocol experiment concludes, experimental results
   should be reported to the relevant working group usually via an
   Internet-Draft, and may be published in an Informational RFCs.

   This document describes IETF protocol experiments and provides
   guidelines for the publication of Experimental RFCs.  Experimental
   RFCs in the Independent Submissions Stream or published by the IRTF
   are out of scope of this document.

2.  Requirements on Experimental RFCs

   An Experimental RFC must describe the experimental nature of the
   specification or deployment that it documents.  Authors of
   Experimental RFCs may find it helpful to present this material in a
   specific section of their document, such as "Experimental
   Considerations."  Nevertheless, the Abstract and the Introduction of
   the document must make it clear that the specification is an
   experiment, and must give some overview of the purpose and scope of
   the experiment.

   An Experimental RFC should:

   *  Explain why the specification is presented as Experimental and not
      for publication on the Standards Track.

   *  Describe the experiment in detail, so that it can be replicated by
      non-collaborating parties and recognized when it is seen in
      deployments.

   *  Describe how the experiment is safeguarded so that it does not
      harm the Internet or interfere with its established operations.

      -  It should indicate how messages or protocol data units are
         identified and associated with the experiment.

      -  It should describe how backward compatibility is ensured by
         non-participating deployments using pre-existing standardized
         mechanisms to discard or ignore the experiment.

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      -  It should explain how the experiment is controlled so that it
         does not "leak out" into the wider Internet.

   *  List what configuration knobs should be provided on experimental
      implementations

   *  Include a date at which the experiment will be terminated.

   *  Include metrics and observations that will be collected during the
      experiment.

   *  Include criteria by which success of the experiment will be
      determined.

   *  Explain how reports of the success or failure of the experiment
      will be brought to the IETF, what information should be collected
      and reported (see Section 3), and possibly suggest a template for
      reporting experimental results.

   *  Suggest planned next steps if the experiment is fully or partially
      successful.

   When two protocol mechanisms are proposed to solve a single problem,
   the IETF can initiate an experiment in which each protocol is
   deployed.  In this case, the same metrics should be collected in each
   experiment.

2.1.  Codepoints in Experimental RFCs

   [RFC8126] describes guidelines for writing IANA Considerations
   sections in RFCs.  It lists a number of assignment policies that
   apply to codepoint registries maintained by IANA.

   Experimental RFCs cannot obtain codepoints from registries or parts
   of registries that are managed under the following assignment
   policies:

   *  Standards Action

   *  Hierarchical Allocation

   An Experimental RFC may request and be granted codepoints from
   registries or parts of registries that are managed under the
   following assignment policies:

   *  First Come First Served

   *  Expert Review

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   *  Specification Required

   *  RFC Required

   *  IETF Review

   *  IESG Approval

   Consideration must be given to the fact that the experiment may be
   temporary in nature and the protocol or protocol extensions may be
   abandoned.  If there is a scarcity of available codepoints in a
   registry, even more caution should be applied to any codepoint
   assignments.

   Some registries or parts of registries are marked as "For
   Experimental Use: Not to be assigned."  These ranges are specifically
   intended for use by protocol experiments, and this may be
   particularly valuable as described in [RFC3692].  But assignments are
   not made from these codepoint ranges, and Experimental RFCs must not
   document any codepoints from such ranges.  Instead, protocol
   implementations should allow the codepoints to be configured so that
   all implementations participating in an experiment can interoperate
   and so that multiple experiments may co-exist in the same network.
   Where assignable codepoints are scarce, consideration should be given
   to using Experimental Use ranges rather than assigning new
   codepoints.

   Experiments may additionally use codepoints from Private Use ranges,
   but these codepoints are also not recorded

   IANA may be requested to create new registries specified in
   Experimental RFCs.  Experimental RFCs that would otherwise ask for
   the creation of protocol registries may alternatively simply
   enumerate the codepoints within the RFC.

2.2.  Requirements Level Language and Keywords

   An Experimental RFC describing a protocol experiment may use BCP 14
   requirements level language and keywords [RFC2119] [RFC8174] to help
   clarify the description of the protocol or protocol extension and the
   expected behavior of implementations.

3.  Experimental Reports

   Experimental Reports should include the following information:

   *  Scale of deployment

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   *  Effort required to deploy

      -  Was deployment incremental or network-wide?

      -  Was there a need to synchronize configurations at each node or
         could nodes be configured independently

      -  Did the deployment require hardware upgrade?

   *  Effort required to secure

   *  Performance impact of risk mitigation

   *  Effectiveness of risk mitigation

   *  Cost of risk mitigation

   *  Interoperability

   *  Did you deploy two inter-operable implementations?

   *  Did you experience interoperability problems?

   *  Effectiveness and sufficiency of OAM mechanism

4.  Progression to Standards Track

   If, after successful completion of an experiment, there is IETF
   consensus to progress the work for publication on the Standards
   Track, the completed RFC should include:

   *  Notes indicating any changes from the experimental version of the
      protocol.

   *  Advice for network operators on how to migrate from Experimental
      deployments to Standards Track deployments.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not make any requests of IANA, but see Section 2.1
   for details of the use of codepoints in Experimental RFCs.

6.  Security Considerations

   As this document does not introduce any new protocols or operational
   procedures, it does not introduce any new security considerations.

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   Experimental RFCs must include security and privacy considerations as
   with any other RFC.  As well as considering the security and privacy
   implications of the protocol or protocol extensions, Experimental
   RFCs should examine the implications for security and privacy of
   running an experiment on the Internet.

7.  Acknowledgements

   The authors wish to acknowledge Dhruv Dhody, Amanda Barber, and
   Murray Kucherawy for helpful discussions of experimental code points.

   Thanks to Brian Carpenter, Michael Richardson, and Paul Hoffmann for
   review and comments.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8126]  Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
              Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
              RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8126>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [RFC2026]  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
              3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2026>.

   [RFC3692]  Narten, T., "Assigning Experimental and Testing Numbers
              Considered Useful", BCP 82, RFC 3692,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3692, January 2004,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3692>.

   [RFC3933]  Klensin, J. and S. Dawkins, "A Model for IETF Process
              Experiments", BCP 93, RFC 3933, DOI 10.17487/RFC3933,
              November 2004, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3933>.

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   [RFC8799]  Carpenter, B. and B. Liu, "Limited Domains and Internet
              Protocols", RFC 8799, DOI 10.17487/RFC8799, July 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8799>.

Authors' Addresses

   Ron Bonica
   Juniper Networks
   Herndon, Virginia
   United States of America
   Email: rbonica@juniper.net

   Adrian Farrel
   Old Dog Consulting
   United Kingdom
   Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk

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