At 13:23 06-05-2013, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
I don't that is quite right. The problem in this case is not to do
with linguistic quality. It's due to a lack of formal verification
Quoting from the detective story:
"At [censored] we have changed our mail server configuration in the past few
months, and are now using a mail server from [censored] namely the
[censored] Server."
There isn't any mention of whether the mail server was tested.
"Seemingly at random my efforts to send mail just fail."
There would likely be an error code with text providing an
explanation. I would probably follow a different debugging
path. Anyway, the session showed:
"EHLO [IPv6:2001:df9::4015:1430:8367:2073:5d0]
501 5.5.4 Invalid domain name"
This is where I go and read RFC 6409 and I find that:
"The MSA SHOULD log message errors, especially apparent
misconfigurations of client software."
And then follow up with RFC 5321 where I find a mention of address
literals. I go and read RFC 4291 which is a Draft Standard. I see
an update in RFC 5952 which is a Proposed Standard. As I was told
that the Internet runs on Proposed Standards that update must be
right. I see the following:
"The recommendation in this section SHOULD be followed by systems
when generating an address to be represented as text, but all
implementations MUST accept and be able to handle any legitimate
[RFC4291] format."
Back to the detective story:
"The writing if RFC5952 is incredibly sloppy for a Proposed Standard"
I look at the write-up:
"The 6MAN working group reviewed and discussed this document several
times. There is a strong consensus to move this forward."
"This document has been reviewed by key members of the 6MAN working
group and the chairs."
I look at the IESG evaluation and I see:
"Language & grammar are rough."
Between you and me, these Area Directors are trouble-makers. :-)
I verify compliance (2010), RFC 2821, RFC 4409; there isn't any
mention of the IPv6 specifications mentioned in the detective story.
There are people out there who have to fix problems like this. There
are people out there who have to read those specifications and figure
out where is the head and where is the tail.
Regards,
-sm