On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 02:56:41PM -0800, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote: > We like to see interoperability reports contain information about > features of a protocol that are used vs. unused, so that if and when > the protocol seeks advancement along the standards track, we can > decide whether we want to keep it in the revision. I'd support Randy's point about implemented vs. used for an "interoperability" report, but only because I think of the "assessment" part as separate, not unnecessary. Such assessments need to consider what's implemented, what's used, and yes, probably some element of context for both. However: > Should we consider a protocol feature only used by abusive actors to > be one that deserves to be kept, or is only legitimate use worth > considering? ....is an overly simplistic way to pose the question. Aside from the difficulty of judging "legitimate" use, there's the question of why the feature is in the protocol in the first place. Presumably protocol features exist because people anticipate some net benefit from including them, and it seems that the right question when deciding whether to keep a feature is not only whether it's provided some benefit so far (i.e. it's implemented and used) but also, if it hasn't, why not? In answering the "why" question, "We haven't needed it yet but we expect to in the following use case in the next 18 months" leads in a very different direction to "so far, it's useful only to attackers working against us" or to "the problem still exists but we have a better way to solve it" or to "the use case never materialized in practice." A slightly broader discussion of how the real-world deployment of the protocol resembles (or doesn't) the anticipated deployment seems more useful than trying to answer the question you're posing here. It's difficult to have such a discussion without ratholing, but it seems to me that the same can be said of trying to define "legitimate" use. Suzanne _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf