[ih] "The Internet runs on Proposed Standards"

[Andrew G. Malis]

Jack,

I've been on both the sending and receiving side of Internet Backbone
Equipment RFPs. All you need to do is take a look at the cited RFCs and
drafts (not even yet RFCs) and you'll see what I mean. I realize that's not
public information and thus hard to defend.

However, you can easily take a look at the online documentation for any
big-iron router from Cisco or Juniper, or other router vendor.

I just picked, at random, Cisco's "MPLS Configuration Guide for Cisco 8000
Series Routers, IOS XR Release 7.5.x", which you can find at
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/iosxr/cisco8000/mpls/75x/b-mpls-cg-cisco8000-75x/implementing-mpls-ldp-75x.html
. MPLS is a major feature in today's backbone routers, and goes back to the
early 2000s for first backbone deployments. If you scroll down to the
referenced RFCs at the end of the document, they are all Proposed Drafts.

There are many many other examples out there.

Cheers,
Andy


On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 4:34 PM Tony Li <tony.li at tony.li> wrote:

>
>
> On Dec 3, 2022, at 12:37 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> I still have doubts about "The Internet runs on Proposed Standards".
> Does anybody know -- Is it true?  How do you know? Personally I haven't
> found any way, at least as a User, to tell what technology is inside all
> the equipment, software, services, protocols, algorithms, et al that are
> operating between my keyboard/screen and yours.  It could be all Standards
> of some ilk, or it could all be Proprietary.   It might conform to the
> spec, or have some zero-day flaw.  How do you tell?
>
>
>
> Data point: BGP is still a draft standard.
>
> Some might argue that the Internet cannot run without BGP.
>
> I’m not quite convinced.  I suggest we turn it off and find out.  It
> should be an interesting experiment.
>
> Regards,
> Tony
>
>