Subject: RE: Meta: goals for IETF Routing area

From: Jeff Parker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 11:28:14 -0400

> And then there's NAT. NAT wouldn't be nearly as bad to
> design around if it were written down what NATs do, and
> all NATs adhered to it.
> 
> So it's not just a matter of getting the designs sound and
> the documentation comprehensible and complete. Maybe
> we also need some sort of conformance hurdle, so that
> there won't be widely deployed hacks that sort of work,
> that interact badly with other deployed hacks that sort
> of work.
> 
> Radia
 
Interesting idea.  

Many have pointed out that the larger companies have been very effective at
getting clearance for their new ideas.  What has been less discussed, but is
the other side of this, is that they have the opportunity to block
standardization of any new ideas that they are not ready to ship.

There are a number of new products that came out in the last decade, such as
pure firewalls or load-splitters for web server farms, that could have been
held in IP traffic court by a conformance hurdle.  By the time a startup
jumped through all the hoops required and explained and documented any
IP-specific behaviors they had made, any advantage provided by early release
would be long gone.  Staffing standards-geeks is an expense than many
startups can't afford these days, so this would erect another barrier to
entry.  

The trick is to allow innovation and experimentation while preserving the
integrity of the architecture.  

- jeff parker