RFC 7120: Early IANA Allocation of Standards Track Code Points | RFC Editor

Skip to content Primary navigationThe RFC SeriesFor AuthorsAbout UsHomeRFC 7120 View as: Plain Text, Compact HTML Info RFC 7120: BCP 100: Early IANA Allocation of Standards Track Code PointsIANAIETF processJanuary 2014. M. CottonBest Current PracticeSubscribe44 subscribed Add to Set Added to 3 Sets Read aloud Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Cotton Request for Comments: 7120 ICANN BCP: 100 January 2014 Obsoletes: 4020 Category: Best Current Practice ISSN: 2070-1721 Early IANA Allocation of Standards Track Code Points Abstract This memo describes the process for early allocation of code points by IANA from registries for which "Specification Required", "RFC Required", "IETF Review", or "Standards Action" policies apply. This process can be used to alleviate the problem where code point allocation is needed to facilitate desired or required implementation and deployment experience prior to publication of an RFC, which would normally trigger code point allocation. The procedures in this document are intended to apply only to IETF Stream documents. This document obsoletes RFC 4020. Status of This Memo This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7120. Cotton Best Current Practice [Page 1] RFC 7120 Early IANA Allocation January 2014 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Conditions for Early Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Process for Early Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.2. Follow-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.3. Expiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Appendix A. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Cotton Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 7120 Early IANA Allocation January 2014 1. Introduction In protocol specifications documented in RFCs, there is often a need to allocate code points for various objects, messages, or other protocol entities so that implementations can interoperate. Many of these code point spaces have registries handled by the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). Several IETF policies for IANA allocation of protocol parameters are described in RFC 5226 [RFC5226]. Some of them, such as "First Come First Served" or "Expert Review", do not require a formal IETF action before the IANA performs allocation. However, in situations where code points are a scarce resource and/or the IETF community has consensus to retain tight control of the registry content, policies such as "IETF Review" (formerly "IETF Consensus"), or "Standards Action" have been used. Such allocation policies present a problem in situations where implementation and/or deployment experience are desired or required before the document becomes an RFC. To break the deadlock, document authors often choose some "seemingly unused" code points, often by selecting the next available value from the registry; this is problematic because these may turn out to be different from those later assigned by IANA. To make this problem worse, "pre-RFC" implementations are often developed and deployed based on these code point selections. This creates several potential interoperability problems between early implementations and implementations of the final standard, as described below: 1. IANA allocates code points different from those that early implementations assumed would be allocated. Early implementations won't interoperate with standard ones. 2. IANA allocates code points for one extension while a "pre-RFC" implementation of a different extension chooses the same code point. The different extensions will collide on the same code point in the field. This gets in the way of the main purpose of standards; namely, to facilitate interoperable implementations. It is easy to say that pre-RFC implementations should be kept private and should not be deployed; however, both the length of the standards process and the immense value of early implementations and early deployments suggest that finding a better solution is worthwhile. As an example, in the case of documents produced by Working Groups in the Routing Area, a pre-RFC implementation is highly desirable and sometimes even required [RFC4794], and early deployments provide useful feedback on the technical and operational quality of the specification. Cotton Best Current Practice [Page 3] RFC 7120 Early IANA Allocation January 2014 This memo addresses the early allocation of code points so that reservations are ma