[ih] "The Internet runs on Proposed Standards"

[Carsten Bormann]

> On 2022-12-07, at 03:34, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> For those who don't know, the IESG maintains a "downref registry" for non-standards track RFCs that can be cited as if they were standards: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/downref

This list contains an entry that may be of interest for those who still care about the thread about the history of standards levels:

> RFC 7251             AES-CCM Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Cipher Suites for TLS
(Used as a normative reference by:)
> draft-ietf-core-coap The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)

RFC 7251 is an “informational” RFC (which is why it is on this list).
RFC 7251 was used as a normative reference by RFC 7252 (draft-ietf-core-coap), which is a standards-track document (“Proposed Standard”).

Both RFC 7251 and RFC 7252 were published on 2014-06-27.

So we knew, at the very day RFC 7251 was published, that the “informational” status of RFC 7251 was a misstatement and this was used as a part of a standard (RFC 7252).

(That part of) the Internet deliberately runs on an “informational” standard.

This nomenclature still boggles my mind.

It is regularly done, though, and there is nothing *wrong* about this weird procedure (except maybe for the English language meaning of the labels being used).

Grüße, Carsten