Network Working Group J. Arkko Internet-Draft Ericsson Updates: 2780 (if approved) S. Bradner Intended status: Standards Track Harvard University Expires: May 8, 2008 November 5, 2007 IANA Allocation Guidelines for the Protocol Field draft-arkko-rfc2780-proto-update-00 Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on May 8, 2008. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). Abstract This document revises the IANA guidelines for allocating new Protocol field values in IPv4, as well as new Next Header field values in IPv6. It modifies the rules specified in RFC 2780 by removing the Expert Review option. Arkko & Bradner Expires May 8, 2008 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Protocol Field IANA Rules November 2007 1. Introduction This document revises the IANA guidelines for allocating new Protocol field values in IPv4. The same guidelines will also apply for IPv6 Next Header values. Previously, RFC 2780 allowed such allocations to happen through IESG Approval, Standards action, or Expert Review processes [RFC2780, RFC2434]. The Expert Review process was specified to be used only in the case where a non-disclosure agreement was involved: IANA allocates values from the IPv4 Protocol name space following an Expert Review, IESG Approval or Standards Action process. The Expert Review process should only be used in those special cases where non- disclosure information is involved. In these cases the expert(s) should be designated by the IESG. The need for the Standards Action rule is obvious as the IETF keeps developing new protocols. It is equally obvious that there is a need to allow experimental allocations in this space, see RFC 4727 [RFC4727] for an example. Similarly, there are cases when it makes sense to allocate values out of this space for other non- Standards Track or non-IETF uses. However, the size of the field is 256 values, and 55% of these were in use at the time this document was written. As a result, a sanity check is needed to ensure that allocations are not made needlessly. RFC 2780 specifies the IESG Approval rule to take care of these sanity checks for the non- Standards Track cases. The judgment call can take into account the existence of a stable protocol specification, constituency that wants to use it, need to avoid duplicated allocations for the same purpose, whether protocol number allocation is the right solution for this problem as opposed to, say, a TCP port, and so on. However, we now believe that the non-disclosure agreement option is not appropriate for allocations in this space. Traditionally, non- disclosure agreements have been used by the IANA when a company was developing a proprietary protocol and did not want to disclose new areas of research or future products. The protocol space is limited enough that we no longer believe that it is reasonable to use of the resource for such proprietary protocols. Thus, we believe that allocations should only be made using the IESG Approval or Standards Action processes when there are public specifications that can be reviewed. As a result, this document revises the RFC 2780 rules by removing the option for Expert Review for the IPv4 Protocol and IPv6 Next Header fields. This document takes no position on the allocation of other parameters with non-disclosure agreements, as those parameters may Arkko & Bradner Expires May 8, 2008 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Protocol Field IANA Rules November 2007 require different policies. 2. IANA Considerations This document replaces the current rule in section 4.3 with the following: IANA allocates values from the IPv4 Protocol name space following an IESG Approval or Standards Action process. This document makes no change to the rule for the IPv6 Next Header field in Section 5.3 but notes that the rule in section 4.3 that is referred to is the revised one without the Expert Review option. 3. Security Considerations This specification does not change the security properties of the affected protocols. 4. Acknowledgments Issues with the original RFC 2780 rules were uncovered in discussions of the IETF - IANA team. The team also provided background information on the practical difficulties encountered with non- disclosure agreements. The authors would like to thank Thomas Narten, Bill Fenner, and Michelle Cotton in particular. 5. References 5.1. Normative References [RFC2434] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434, October 1998. [RFC2780] Bradner, S. and V. Paxson, "IANA Allocation Guidelines For Values In the Internet Protocol and Related Headers", BCP 37, RFC 2780, March 2000. 5.2. Informative References [RFC4727] Fenner, B., "Experimental Values In IPv4, IPv6, ICMPv4, ICMPv6, UDP, and TCP Headers", RFC 4727, November 2006. Arkko & Bradner Expires May 8, 2008 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Protocol Field IANA Rules November 2007 Authors' Addresses Jari Arkko Ericsson Jorvas 02420 Finland Email: jari.arkko@piuha.net Scott Bradner Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138 US Phone: +1 617 495 3864 Email: sob@harvard.edu Arkko & Bradner Expires May 8, 2008 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Protocol Field IANA Rules November 2007 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY, THE IETF TRUST AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Intellectual Property The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA). Arkko & Bradner Expires May 8, 2008 [Page 5]
