On Jul 18, 2012, at 1:36 PM, Fernando Gont wrote: > Folks, > > There's one issue that came up during my recent exchange with Suresh on > which I'd like others (including Suresh) to weigh in: > > Since first-fragments that fail to include the entire header chain will > be illegal, I think it would be appropriate to include an additional > requirement in draft-ietf-6man-oversized-header-chain along the lines of: > > "A host that receives a first-fragment that fails to include the entire > IPv6 header chain MUST silently drop the aforementioned fragment". > > Clearly, since such packets are illegal, they shouldn't exist in the > first place... so dropping them makes sense. > > Thoughts?
I would say "SHOULD", but I'm OK with the fundamental statement. The Robustness Principle has some built-in tension: "be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send" often works out to mean "accept a technically-illegal message if you can work out an unambiguous intent"; what you are saying is to "be strict in what you accept", which in this case is (as you suggest) probably the right thing to do. The distinction between "SHOULD" and "MUST" is a little of a chinese wall. The rule I use, which is neither specified nor universal, is that I say something "MUST" be obeyed if failing to obey results in an identifiable failure (fragmenting a DNF packet, for example, fails in that if a recipient of DNF fragments will refuse to reassemble them, this prevents communication that was intended to be supported, so a packet marked DNF "MUST" not be fragmented), and I use "SHOULD" when I would like to say "MUST" but can't identify the failure mode and therefore might have a case in which it is inappropriate. The argument for "MUST" in this case would be that there will be a reasonable chance that the recommendations of the draft will not be given teeth apart from being "strict"; the argument for "SHOULD" is that this could be handled as an exception case operationally. > Thanks! > > Best regards, > -- > Fernando Gont > SI6 Networks > e-mail: fg...@si6networks.com > PGP Fingerprint: 6666 31C6 D484 63B2 8FB1 E3C4 AE25 0D55 1D4E 7492 > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > IETF IPv6 working group mailing list > ipv6@ietf.org > Administrative Requests: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6 > -------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially. - Marshall McLuhan -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPv6 working group mailing list ipv6@ietf.org Administrative Requests: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6 --------------------------------------------------------------------
