Hi John,

I think looking at the diffs that all of my comments have made it to the
new proposed text so I am not sure if what you are saying means that you
have commented hinting to revert all the changes again or for some other
reason.

IMO to your comment (and I did have in the past direct discussions with the
original authors of RFC4360) on why the T bit was called transitive and not
something else that was not just a coincidence of "similar name". It was
meant to indicate transitivness as defined in base BGP spec.

Cheers,
R.

On Fri, Aug 29, 2025 at 9:12 PM John Scudder <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Robert,
>
> Your quote from RFC 4271 and discussion of Path Attribute transitivity
> isn’t relevant to this conversation. The former refers to bit 1 of the
> Attribute Flags. The current context is about the T bit of the Extended
> Community type field. They’re two different bits, in two different fields,
> and each has its own semantics, even though they’re similarly named. If
> 4360 intended to inherit 4271’s semantics, it could have said that. But it
> didn’t. Expecting implementors to intuitively know how to construe it is
> not a recipe for interoperable implementations.
>
> I think there’s ample evidence that the rule of “if it ain’t broke, don’t
> fix it” doesn’t apply here, because examples have been provided of vendors
> who did implement the spec differently. Saying “oh that’s a bug in the
> implementation” is all very well, but that only works if you can point to
> specific text that is unambiguously violated. That isn’t the case here.
> Q.E.D. it’s a bug in the specification, and here we are.
>
> Since you agree that you “are fine to clarify” the semantics, I suggest it
> would be best to focus on reviewing the text if the document is adopted,
> and if you disagree with the semantics that are defined there, we can have
> a substantive discussion with reference to specifics. (I’m sure the chairs
> will note your objection to adoption when they evaluate the WG consensus.)
>
> —John
>
> On Aug 26, 2025, at 11:36 AM, Robert Raszuk <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Jeff,
>
> This update has everything to do with the treatment of the T flag when
>> interacting with iBGP vs. eBGP speakers.  You're in the rough if you
>> believe otherwise.  The discussion point and your suggestion about the
>> wording vs. attached has been already noted.[1]
>>
>
> Please be kind to observe that T flag indicates transitiveness .. here of
> the specific type of extended community.
>
> Since the beginning of BGP transitiveness is about what BGP speaker has to
> do with *UNRECOGNIZED* attribute
>
> Quote from RFC4271:
>
> It is not required or expected that all BGP implementations support all
> optional attributes. The handling of an *unrecognized* optional attribute
> is determined by the setting of the Transitive bit in the attribute flags
> octet.
>
> It should be crystal clear to anyone that BGP speaker which is originating
> an attribute or specific type of extended community MUST recognize it.
> Hence it is implicit that  transitiveness has nothing to do with how and
> where it is sent irrespective if it is set to 0 or 1 in specific type of
> extended community.
>
> Sure you may say that I am in rough or you may try to put your own
> definitions of top of BGP specifications. I am just pointing out that you
> are wrong.
>
> And to make it very clear I am fine to clarify *(if this is really
> needed)* one sentence can be added to say that it is fine to send
> originated extended community over EBGP session even it is has T bit set to
> 1.
>
> https://github.com/ietf-wg-idr/draft-ietf-idr-rfc4360-bis/issues/5
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/ietf-wg-idr/draft-ietf-idr-rfc4360-bis/issues/5__;!!NEt6yMaO-gk!GVOd0lSHz-HfjsDPZEgL63Z0tgCtxf4Ru_BoKTjwIyf5sj2uGh-W9J_AX793-g8Vu5QMY0l9_qvGkA$>
>
> But I question the necessity to do so based on the BGP specification and
> clearly stated definition and concept of of transitiveness in BGP
> protocol.
>
> But I am against putting such clarification text in a place where it does
> not belong and leads to generate even further confusion down the road.
>
> Cheers,
> Robert
>
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