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The Harmful Consequences of the Robustness Principle
draft-iab-protocol-maintenance-01

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9413.
Author Martin Thomson
Last updated 2018-10-21 (Latest revision 2018-05-03)
Replaces draft-thomson-postel-was-wrong
RFC stream Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
Formats
Stream IAB state (None)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
IAB shepherd (None)
draft-iab-protocol-maintenance-01
Network Working Group                                         M. Thomson
Internet-Draft                                                   Mozilla
Intended status: Informational                          October 22, 2018
Expires: April 25, 2019

          The Harmful Consequences of the Robustness Principle
                   draft-iab-protocol-maintenance-01

Abstract

   Jon Postel's famous statement of "Be liberal in what you accept, and
   conservative in what you send" is a principle that has long guided
   the design and implementation of Internet protocols.  The posture
   this statement advocates promotes interoperability in the short term,
   but can negatively affect the protocol ecosystem.  For a protocol
   that is actively maintained, the Postel's robustness principle can,
   and should, be avoided.

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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   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   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 April 25, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 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 Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of

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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Fallibility of Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Protocol Decay  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Ecosystem Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Active Protocol Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  The Role of Feedback  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     7.1.  Feedback from Implementations . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     7.2.  Virtuous Intolerance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   Of the great many contributions Jon Postel made to the Internet, his
   remarkable technical achievements are often shadowed by his
   contribution of a design and implementation philosophy known as the
   robustness principle:

      Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving.
      Implementations must follow specifications precisely when sending
      to the network, and tolerate faulty input from the network.  When
      in doubt, discard faulty input silently, without returning an
      error message unless this is required by the specification.

   This being the version of the text that appears in IAB RFC 1958
   [PRINCIPLES].

   Postel's robustness principle has been hugely influential in shaping
   the Internet and the systems that use Internet protocols.  Many
   consider the application of the robustness principle to be
   instrumental in the success of the Internet as well as the design of
   interoperable protocols in general.

   Over time, considerable experience has been accumulated with
   protocols that were designed by the application of Postel's maxim.
   That experience shows that there are negative long-term consequences
   to interoperability if an implementation applies Postel's advice.

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   The flaw in Postel's logic originates from the presumption of an
   inability to affect change in a system the size of the Internet.
   That is, once a protocol specification is published, changes that
   might be different to the practice of existing implementations are
   not feasible.

   Many of the shortcomings that lead to applications of the robustness
   principle are avoided for protocols under active maintenance.  Active
   protocol maintenance is where a community of protocol designers,
   implementers, and deployers continuously improve and evolve
   protocols.  A community that takes an active role in the maintenance
   of protocols can greatly reduce and even eliminate opportunities to
   apply Postel's guidance.

   There is good evidence to suggest that many important protocols are
   routinely maintained beyond their inception.  This document serves
   primarily as a record of the hazards inherent in applying the
   robustness principle and to offer an alternative strategy for
   handling interoperability problems in deployments.

   Ideally, protocol implementations never have to apply the robustness
   principle.  Or, where it is unavoidable, any application can be
   quickly reverted.

2.  Fallibility of Specifications

   The context from which the robustness principle was developed
   provides valuable insights into its intent and purpose.  The earliest
   form of the principle in the RFC series (in RFC 760 [IP]) is preceded
   by a sentence that reveals the motivation for the principle:

      While the goal of this specification is to be explicit about the
      protocol there is the possibility of differing interpretations.
      In general, an implementation should be conservative in its
      sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior.

   Here Postel recognizes the possibility that the specification could
   be imperfect.  As a frank admission of fallibility it is a
   significant statement.  However, the same statement is inexplicably
   absent from the later versions in [HOSTS] and [PRINCIPLES].

   An imperfect specification is natural, largely because it is more
   important to proceed to implementation and deployment than it is to
   perfect a specification.  A protocol, like any complex system,
   benefits greatly from experience with its use.  A deployed protocol
   is immeasurably more useful than a perfect protocol.

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   As [SUCCESS] demonstrates, success or failure of a protocol depends
   far more on factors like usefulness than on on technical excellence.
   Postel's timely publication of protocol specifications, even with the
   potential for flaws, likely had a significant effect in the eventual
   success of the Internet.

   The problem is therefore not with the premise, but with its
   conclusion: the robustness principle itself.

3.  Protocol Decay

   Divergent implementations of a specification emerge over time.  When
   variations occur in the interpretation or expression of semantic
   components, implementations cease to be perfectly interoperable.

   Implementation bugs are often identified as the cause of variation,
   though it is often a combination of factors.  Application of a
   protocol to new and unanticipated uses, and ambiguities or errors in
   the specification are often confounding factors.  Situations where
   two peers disagree on interpretation should be expected over the
   lifetime of a protocol.

   Even with the best intentions, the pressure to interoperate can be
   significant.  No implementation can hope to avoid having to trade
   correctness for interoperability indefinitely.

   An implementation that reacts to variations in the manner advised by
   Postel sets up a feedback cycle:

   o  Over time, implementations progressively add new code to constrain
      how data is transmitted, or to permit variations in what is
      received.

   o  Errors in implementations, or confusion about semantics can
      thereby be masked.

   o  These errors can become entrenched, forcing other implementations
      to be tolerant of those errors.

   A flaw can become entrenched as a de facto standard.  Any
   implementation of the protocol is required to replicate the aberrant
   behavior, or it is not interoperable.  This is both a consequence of
   applying Postel's advice, and a product of a natural reluctance to
   avoid fatal error conditions.  Ensuring interoperability in this
   environment is often colloquially referred to as aiming to be "bug
   for bug compatible".

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   For example, TLS demonstrates the effect of bugs.  In TLS [TLS]
   extensions use a tag-length-value format, and they can be added to
   messages in any order.  However, some server implementations
   terminate connections if they encounter a TLS ClientHello message
   that ends with an empty extension.  To maintain interoperability,
   client implementations are required to be aware of this bug and
   ensure that a ClientHello message ends in a non-empty extension.

   The original JSON specification [JSON] demonstrates the effect of
   specification shortcomings.  RFC 4627 omitted critical details on a
   range of key details including Unicode handling, ordering and
   duplication of object members, and number encoding.  Consequently, a
   range of interpretations were used by implementations.  An updated
   specification [JSON-BIS] did not correct these errors, concentrating
   instead on identifying the interoperable subset of JSON.  I-JSON
   [I-JSON] takes that subset and defines a new format that prohibits
   the problematic parts of JSON.  Of course, that means that I-JSON is
   not fully interoperable with JSON.  Consequently, I-JSON is not
   widely implemented in parsers.  Many JSON parsers now implement the
   more precise algorithm specified in [ECMA262].

   The robustness principle therefore encourages a reaction that
   compounds and entrenches interoperability problems.

4.  Ecosystem Effects

   Once deviations become entrenched, it can be extremely difficult - if
   not impossible - to rectify the situation.

   For widely used protocols, the massive scale of the Internet makes
   large-scale interoperability testing infeasible for all but a
   privileged few.  The cost of building a new implementation increases
   as the number of implementations and bugs increases.  Worse, the set
   of tweaks necessary for interoperability can be difficult to learn.

   Consequently, new implementations can be restricted to niche uses,
   where the problems arising from interoperability issues can be more
   closely managed.  Restricting new implementations to narrow contexts
   also risks causing forks in the protocol.  If implementations do not
   interoperate, little prevents those implementations from diverging
   more over time.

   This has a negative impact on the ecosystem of a protocol.  New
   implementations are important in ensuring the continued viability of
   a protocol.  New protocol implementations are also more likely to be
   developed for new and diverse use cases and often are the origin of
   features and capabilities that can be of benefit to existing users.

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   The need to work around interoperability problems also reduces the
   ability of established implementations to change.  For instance, an
   accumulation of mitigations for interoperability issues makes
   implementations more difficult to maintain.

   Sometimes what appear to be interoperability problems are symptomatic
   of issues in protocol design.  A community that is willing to make
   changes to the protocol, by revising or extending it, makes the
   protocol better in the process.  Applying the robustness principle
   might conceal the problem.  That can make it harder, or even
   impossible, to fix later.

   A similar class of problems is described in RFC 5704 [UNCOORDINATED],
   which addresses conflict or competition in the maintenance of
   protocols.  This document concerns itself primarily with the absence
   of maintenance, though the problems are similar.

5.  Active Protocol Maintenance

   The robustness principle can be highly effective in safeguarding
   against flaws in the implementation of a protocol by peers.
   Especially when a specification remains unchanged for an extended
   period of time, the inclination to be tolerant accumulates over time.
   Indeed, when faced with divergent interpretations of an immutable
   specification, the best way for an implementation to remain
   interoperable is to be tolerant of differences in interpretation and
   an occasional outright implementation error.

   From this perspective, application of Postel's advice to the
   implementation of a protocol specification that does not change is
   logical, even necessary.  But that suggests that the problem is with
   the assumption that the situation - existing specifications and
   implementations - are unable to change.

   As already established, this is not a sustainable.  For a protocol to
   be viable, it is necessary for both specifications and
   implementations to be responsive to changes, in addition to handling
   new and old problems that might arise over time.

   Active maintenance of a protocol is critical in ensuring that
   specifications correctly reflect the requirements for
   interoperability with existing implementations.  Maintenance enables
   both new implementations and the continued improvement of the
   protocol.  New use cases are an indicator that the protocol could be
   successful [SUCCESS].

   Protocol designers are strongly encouraged to continue to maintain
   and evolve protocols beyond their initial inception and definition.

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   Involvement of protocol implementers is a critical part of this
   process, as they provide input on their experience with
   implementation and deployment of the protocol.

   Maintenance does not necessarily involve the development of new
   versions of protocols or protocol specifications.  For instance, the
   most effective means of dealing with a defective implementation in a
   peer is often to email the developer of the stack.  It is far more
   efficient in the long term to fix one isolated bug than it is to deal
   with the consequences of workarounds.

   Neglect can quickly produce the negative consequences this document
   describes.  Restoring the protocol to a state where it can be
   maintained involves first discovering the properties of the protocol
   as it is deployed, rather than the protocol as it was originally
   documented.  This can be difficult and time-consuming, particularly
   if the protocol has a diverse set of implementations.  Such a process
   was undertaken for HTTP [HTTP] after a period of minimal maintenance.
   Restoring HTTP specifications to currency took significant effort.

6.  Extensibility

   Good extensibility [EXT] can make it easier to respond to new use
   cases or changes in the environment in which the protocol is
   deployed.

   Extensibility is sometimes mistaken for an application of the
   robustness principle.  After all, if one party wants to start using a
   new feature before another party is prepared to receive it, it might
   be assumed that the receiving party is being tolerant of unexpected
   inputs.

   A well-designed extensibility mechanism establishes clear rules for
   the handling of things like new messages or parameters.  If an
   extension mechanism is designed and implemented correctly, the user
   of a new protocol feature can confidently predict the effect that
   feature will have on existing implementations.

   Relying on implementations consistently applying the robustness
   principle is not a good strategy for extensibility.  Using
   undocumented or accidental features of a protocol as the basis of an
   extensibility mechanism can be extremely difficult, as is
   demonstrated by the case study in Appendix A.3 of [EXT].

   A protocol could be designed to permit a narrow set of valid inputs,
   or it could allow a wide range of inputs as a core feature (see for
   example [HTML]).  Specifying and implementing a more flexible

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   protocol is more difficult; allowing less variation is preferable in
   the absence of strong reasons to be flexible.

7.  The Role of Feedback

   Protocol maintenance is only possible if there is sufficient
   information about the deployment of the protocol.  Feedback from
   deployment is critical to effective protocol maintenance.

   For a protocol specification, the primary and most effective form of
   feedback comes from people who implement and deploy the protocol.
   This comes in the form of new requirements, or in experience with the
   protocol as it is deployed.

   Managing and deploying changes to implementations can be expensive.
   However, it is widely recognized that regular updates are a vital
   part of the deployment of computer systems for security reasons (see
   for example [IOTSU]).

7.1.  Feedback from Implementations

   Automated error reporting mechanisms in protocol implementations
   allows for better feedback from deployments.  Exposing faults through
   operations and management systems is highly valuable, but it might be
   necessary to ensure that the information is propagated further.

   Building telemetry and error logging systems that report faults to
   the developers of the implementation is superior in many respects.
   However, this is only possible in deployments that are conducive to
   the collection of this type of information.  Giving due consideration
   to protection of the privacy of protocol participants is critical
   prior to deploying any such system.

7.2.  Virtuous Intolerance

   A well-specified protocol includes rules for consistent handling of
   aberrant conditions.  This increases the changes that implementations
   have interoperable handling of unusual conditions.

   Intolerance of any deviation from specification, where
   implementations generate fatal errors in response to observing
   undefined or unusal behaviour, can be harnessed to reduce occurrences
   of abherrent implementations.  Choosing to generate fatal error for
   unspecified conditions instead of attempting error recovery can
   ensure that faults receive attention.

   This improves feedback for new implementations in particular.  When a
   new implementation encounters a virtuously intolerant implementation,

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   it receives strong feedback that allows problems to be discovered
   quickly.

   To be effective, virtuously intolerant implementations need to be
   sufficiently widely deployed that they are encountered by new
   implementations with high probability.  This could depend on multiple
   implementations of the same strict checks.  Any intolerance also
   needs to be strongly supported by specifications, otherwise they
   encourage fracturing of the protocol community or proliferation of
   workarounds.

   Virtuous intolerance can be used to motivate compliance with any
   protocol requirement.  For instance, the INADEQUATE_SECURITY error
   code and associated requirements in HTTP/2 [HTTP2] resulted in
   improvements in the security of the deployed base.

8.  Security Considerations

   Sloppy implementations, lax interpretations of specifications, and
   uncoordinated extrapolation of requirements to cover gaps in
   specification can result in security problems.  Hiding the
   consequences of protocol variations encourages the hiding of issues,
   which can conceal bugs and make them difficult to discover.

   The consequences of the problems described in this document are
   especially acute for any protocol where security depends on agreement
   about semantics of protocol elements.

9.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

10.  Informative References

   [ECMA262]  "ECMAScript(R) 2017 Language Specification", ECMA-262 8th
              Edition, June 2017, <http://www.ecma-
              international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm>.

   [EXT]      Carpenter, B., Aboba, B., Ed., and S. Cheshire, "Design
              Considerations for Protocol Extensions", RFC 6709,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6709, September 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6709>.

   [HOSTS]    Braden, R., Ed., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
              Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1122, October 1989,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1122>.

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   [HTML]     "HTML", WHATWG Living Standard, October 2017,
              <https://html.spec.whatwg.org/>.

   [HTTP]     Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
              Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
              RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.

   [HTTP2]    Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7540>.

   [I-JSON]   Bray, T., Ed., "The I-JSON Message Format", RFC 7493,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7493, March 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7493>.

   [IOTSU]    Tschofenig, H. and S. Farrell, "Report from the Internet
              of Things Software Update (IoTSU) Workshop 2016",
              RFC 8240, DOI 10.17487/RFC8240, September 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8240>.

   [IP]       Postel, J., "DoD standard Internet Protocol", RFC 760,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC0760, January 1980,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc760>.

   [JSON]     Crockford, D., "The application/json Media Type for
              JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)", RFC 4627,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4627, July 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4627>.

   [JSON-BIS]
              Bray, T., Ed., "The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data
              Interchange Format", RFC 7159, DOI 10.17487/RFC7159, March
              2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7159>.

   [PRINCIPLES]
              Carpenter, B., Ed., "Architectural Principles of the
              Internet", RFC 1958, DOI 10.17487/RFC1958, June 1996,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1958>.

   [SUCCESS]  Thaler, D. and B. Aboba, "What Makes for a Successful
              Protocol?", RFC 5218, DOI 10.17487/RFC5218, July 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5218>.

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   [TLS]      Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5246, August 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5246>.

   [UNCOORDINATED]
              Bryant, S., Ed., Morrow, M., Ed., and IAB, "Uncoordinated
              Protocol Development Considered Harmful", RFC 5704,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5704, November 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5704>.

Appendix A.  Acknowledgments

   Constructive feedback on this document has been provided by a
   surprising number of people including Bernard Aboba, Brian Carpenter,
   Mark Nottingham, Russ Housley, Henning Schulzrinne, Robert Sparks,
   Brian Trammell, and Anne Van Kesteren.  Please excuse any omission.

Author's Address

   Martin Thomson
   Mozilla

   Email: martin.thomson@gmail.com

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