[ih] Protocol numbers (was IP version 7)

[vinton cerf]

this makes good sense to me - I remember spending time on the problem of
making TCP work under those conditions by faking acks somehow and
potentially repeated transmissions to reduce probability of loss of
information.
v


On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 9:09 PM Barbara Denny via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>  I will throw out a guess about the mystery EMCON protocol number
> assignment.  It might be related to SRI's work for the Navy. We had a
> project called  Metanet that was looking at how to support TCP/IP
> networking when ships were under emission control.  In 1984, I gave a
> presentation about the work at a Gateway Special Interest Group Meeting
> hosted by Jon Postel at ISI (see RFC 898).  I don't remember us asking for
> a protocol number yet but we could have. I also wonder if Jon may have
> created a placeholder for us. I was working on the Ada implementation of
> the gateway at that point in time.  I don't think we had the EMCON details
> worked out yet.  The project got cancelled unexpectedly and on short notice
> due to a change in personnel if I remember correctly.
> barbara
>     On Tuesday, December 22, 2020, 06:32:29 PM PST, John Gilmore via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>  Bob Hinden via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > BTW, I am not sure why 8 and 9 are labeled as historic, but 7 isn't.
> > I will ask IANA about this off list.
>
> While we're thinking about it, there is another small field that
> threatens to overflow sometime in the foreseeable future, the "Assigned
> Internet Protocol Numbers".  These are 8 bits wide, and exist in every IPv4
> and IPv6 packet:
>
>   https://www.iana.org/assignments/protocol-numbers/protocol-numbers.xhtml
>
> The frequently used ones are TCP (6), UDP (17), ICMP (1), etc.  Then
> there is the dross.  This registry is already more than half full, and
> it lists as actively in use such flashes-in-the-pan as the BR-SAT-MON
> (Backroom SATNET Monitoring), the Sun-ND PROTOCOL ("Temporary") from the
> early 1980s, Ipsilon Flow Management Protocol, Sprite-RPC from 1986,
> CPHB Computer Protocol Heart Beat, Source Demand Routing Protocol, 3PC
> 3rd Party Connect Protocol, and tons of other things that should have
> just gotten a UDP port number assigned from a 16-bit field.  Half of
> these protocols don't even have an RFC that defines the protocol.
>
> There is no defined process for reclaiming them, other than having the
> original requester write an email to IANA and tell them that it isn't in
> use any more.  That seems to be true even if the original requester
> worked for a company that the protocol was used by, and the company
> still exists (like Sun/Oracle) even though the requester has moved on
> decades ago.  Probably, fewer than half of the people who got these
> protocol numbers assigned are now dead, but every year creates more
> such situations.
>
> I succeeded in asking John Ioannidis to release 2 of the 3 protocol
> numbers that he got assigned during the early packet encryption days.
> IANA wouldn't just de-allocate them, but they have at least marked them
> "deprecated".  JI isn't sure if his IPIP, protocol 94, is in use
> anywhere.  We think everybody encapsulating IPv4 in IPv4 or IPv6 packets
> is using protocol 4 nowadays, but how would one actually tell?  So 94
> remains not deprecated.
>
> When designing IPv6, the designers made the address space huge, but the
> protocol space is *smaller* than in IPv4.  Not only do the protocol
> numbers used in IPv4 overlap those used in IPv6, but both of them
> overlap the "IPv6 extension header" allocation space.  Assigning a new
> protocol OR a new extension header burns up space for all three
> protocols.
>
> Could anybody who is reading this list, who at one point got a protocol
> number assigned, please check if it can be released?  You can search the
> above IANA page for your name, to find out if IANA thinks you are in
> charge of any.
>
> Or, perhaps notify a retired researcher not on the list, (e.g. is
> anybody running Noel Chiappa's CHAOSnet, protocol 16, on top of IP?  Or
> Zaw-Sing Su's Packet Radio Measurement protocol 21?  Or the mystery
> EMCON protocol 14 with no known contact person or protocol spec?)
>
> And let's together think up a viable way to release the protocols that
> were used for some research project, and were then left behind by a
> person who has since departed the planet for realms where the protocol
> number space is infinite.
>
>     John
>
>
>
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