[ih] "The Internet runs on Proposed Standards"

[John Lowry]

I agree that the nomenclature is difficult. 

I first encountered the IETF when an “RFC" was a working standard and always viewed
the later STDs as a kind of honorary recognition that an RFC was widely implemented
and accepted.  

I would say that the internet runs or at least ran on RFCs.

2 cents worth.

> On Dec 7, 2022, at 17:45, Carsten Bormann via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 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
> 
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