IETF Experiments
draft-bonica-gendispatch-exp-05
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draft-bonica-gendispatch-exp-05
GenDispatch Working Group R. Bonica
Internet-Draft Juniper Networks
Intended status: Best Current Practice A. Farrel
Expires: 20 January 2026 Old Dog Consulting
19 July 2025
IETF Experiments
draft-bonica-gendispatch-exp-05
Abstract
This document describes IETF protocol experiments and provides
guidelines for the publication of Experimental RFCs.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 20 January 2026.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
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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 . . . . . . . . 6
3. Experimental Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Progression to Standards Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
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.
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
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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 RFC.
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.
- It should explain how the experiment is controlled so that it
does not "leak out" into the wider Internet. Thus, while the
experiment may be run between consenting implementations over
the Internet (for example, application layer experiments), this
does not require the nodes within the Internet infrastructure
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being exposed to the experiment. The required control,
therefore, is that the experiment needs to ensure that the
protocol elements of the experiment are not accisdntally
received and processed by parts of the Internet that could be
disrupted by that activity.
* List what configuration knobs should be provided on experimental
implementations
* Include a date at which the experiment will be terminated.
If it is intended that the experiment should be long-lasting or
open-ended, this needs to be explicitly stated, and the reasoning
given. This is important because the Experimental RFC should not
be used to produce a de facto protocol specification by-passing
full IETF review.
* Include metrics and observations that will be collected during the
experiment, and contrast the behavior with pre-existing IETF
protocol solutions.
* 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. The ruels exist fo
a number of reasons including the preservation of scarce resources in
small codeplint spaces, the avoidance of standardisation-by-default
without proper review and cooperation, and the "baking in" of
codepoints into deployed equipment.
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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
* 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
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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
requirements level language and keywords [BCP14] to help clarify the
description of the protocol or protocol extension and the expected
behavior of implementations.
3. Experimental Reports
Experimental Reports may be viewed as reports from individual
implementers or experimenters, and a more general collection of all
experimental results.
Individual Experimental Reports should include the following
information:
* Scale of deployment
* 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
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Aggregated reports may be written up as the experimental period
continues, and should be produced when the IETF protocol experiment
concludes. Such reporting may be tracked through a wiki or via
github (for example, on the working group's IETF-hosted wiki or git
repository), or shared through an Internet-Draft. The final report
might or might not end up published as an Informational RFC depending
on its lasting value (especially in the case of the 'failure' of the
experiment), but archiving the results in the Internet-Draft or
through a web page may be sufficient if work progresses to promote a
successful experiment to a Standards Track specification.
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. Operational Considerations
As this document does not introduce any new protocols or operational
procedures, nor define any architectures of protocol requirements,
there are no new operations or manageability requirements introduced
by this document.
Authors of Experimental RFCs that describe ptorocols or protocol
extensions need to pay particular attention to:
* How the protocol will be operated and managed.
* How the experiment will be configured and managed so that it can
be distinguished from normal network operations and from other
experiments.
* How the experiment will interact with operations and management of
other deployed protocols.
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This material should normally be included in a dedicated "Operational
Considerations" section of the Experimental RFC. Advice and guidance
about the content of this section can be found in
[I-D.opsarea-rfc5706bis].
7. Security Considerations
As this document does not introduce any new protocols or operational
procedures, it does not introduce any new security considerations.
Per [BCP72], Experimental RFCs must include security considerations
as with any other RFC. Additionally, [RFC6973] offers guidance on
writing privacy considerations, and while it is not mandatory to to
include such material in Experimental RFCs, it is best practice to do
so.
Note that additional boilerplate material for RFCs containing YANG
modules also exists and applies to Experimental RFCs. See [YANG-SEC]
for up-to-date details.
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/
over the Internet.
There may also be security issues with running an experimental
protocol a long time after an experiment has ended. This might cause
clashes with re-use of experimental code points or have other
unpredicted results. A good approach is to ensure that
implementations require active configuration to enable the use of
experimental protocols (i.e., the experimental protocol features
require the setting of a configuration option that is off by
default).
8. 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, Paul Hoffmann, and
Alan DeKoK for review and comments.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[BCP14] Best Current Practice 14,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp14>.
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At the time of writing, this BCP comprises the following:
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/info/rfc2119>.
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/info/rfc8174>.
[BCP72] Best Current Practice 72,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp72>.
At the time of writing, this BCP comprises the following:
Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3552, July 2003,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3552>.
Gont, F. and I. Arce, "Security Considerations for
Transient Numeric Identifiers Employed in Network
Protocols", BCP 72, RFC 9416, DOI 10.17487/RFC9416, July
2023, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9416>.
[I-D.opsarea-rfc5706bis]
Claise, B., Clarke, J., Farrel, A., Barguil, S.,
Pignataro, C., and R. Chen, "Guidelines for Considering
Operations and Management in IETF Specifications", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-opsarea-rfc5706bis-03, 7
July 2025, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
opsarea-rfc5706bis-03>.
[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6973>.
[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/info/rfc8126>.
9.2. Informative References
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[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/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/info/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/info/rfc3933>.
[RFC8799] Carpenter, B. and B. Liu, "Limited Domains and Internet
Protocols", RFC 8799, DOI 10.17487/RFC8799, July 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8799>.
[YANG-SEC] IETF Operations and Management Area, "YANG module security
considerations", Wiki IETF Operations and Management Area
Wiki, May 2013, <https://wiki.ietf.org/en/group/ops/yang-
security-guidelines>.
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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