John C Klensin wrote: > To me, the fundamental question here is whether, in the last > analysis, we consider it more important to have > > * the best and most extensive Internet interoperability > possible or > > * a maximum of real or imagined IETF control over all > protocols in use on the Internet. > > We claim to believe the former and then often behave as if we > believe the latter. There are also cases when the latter can also promote the former. The hurdle of getting IETF consensus and publishing an RFC does weed out many crazy proposals that, in all fairness, would not have made the Internet work better, and would not have promoted interoperability. Or in other words: we do have many proposals for extending IETF protocols whose primary motivation is not solving a real-world need, but rather finding some work for the standardization guys to do (or getting a PhD or something). Those extensions might even get "implemented" in some sense of the word (anyone can set up a SourceForge project), but are not even meant to be deployed. If by having some control over IANA allocations we weed out of this stuff, I have no problems with it. But I agree that the controls should not be too strict, so that protocols that actually get deployed are able to get the numbers, and are documented as RFCs (but IMHO something stricter that "first come first served" is usually beneficial). Best regards, Pasi _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf