RE: Revising full standards

["Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: Revising full standards

Although HTTP has effectively displaced FTP the functionality is quite different and very few people would consider them interchangeable to the extent that a common identifier would be useful or meaningful.

 

The replacement of Telnet by SSH is closer but I still don't think that there are many people who want a single identifier to refer to them both.

 

I don't think HTTP is ever going to superceed the terminal interaction style mode of FTP. I can however see the residual functionality of FTP being absorbed into SSH-Plus. This would be logical for another reason, it would allow the problem of tunelling and encrypting the data channel through NAT to be solved.

 

 

Given that Iain was raising an objection to a proposal nobody was actually making I think it can be dropped.

---

From: Tony Finch [mailto:dot@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wed 12/12/2007 10:43 AM
To: Iain Calder
Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Revising full standards

On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, Iain Calder wrote:
>
> Protocols *can* get pushed aside by challengers that aren't their
> descendants.  For example, suppose a completely different protocol
> called IEP (Internet Email Protocol) arises in the future and, due to
> its vastly superior characteristics, becomes the dominant mail transport
> system.  SMTP would then become historic and IEP would need to be marked
> as the current standard.  Under these circumstances, an IETF-SMTP label
> proves a poor choice. The usefulness of the STD-10 label, however, is
> unaffected.

This has already happened in at least two cases. Telnet and rsh have
largely been displaced by ssh, and FTP and Gopher by HTTP. I'm not sure
that it's useful to have a formal numeric label for remote login, or file
transfer, or email, when we have perfectly adequate generic terminology.
I'm not even sure the IETF should make a de jure choice between
competitors, especially when it's likely to be embarrassingly different
from the market's de facto choice. That, too, has already happened, to the
OSI protocols.

Tony.
--
f.a.n.finch  <dot@xxxxxxxx>  http://dotat.at/
LUNDY FASTNET IRISH SEA: SOUTH 5 TO 7. MODERATE OR ROUGH. DRIZZLE. MODERATE OR
GOOD.

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

_______________________________________________

Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf