IETF standards are 'band-aids on top of band-aids' says SDN veteran

Tuesday 1st December 2015 08:37 GMT Voland's right hand

So how many RFCs did he participate in?

So how many actual IETF RFCs did he participate in to claim omnipotence and omniscience? Easy to look up.

Sure, the IETF has had quite a few issues in the recent years and most of them can be traced to the specific standardization policy of one particular vendor who has actively sabotaged standard development in all standards bodies (not just the IETF). Same as other standards bodies the IETF has failed to mitigate for that - initially out of political correctness, with other reasons coming into play later on.

As far as IETF having to do band-aids, well, sorry, it is the reality when the key protocol in your network is 24 years old, the key resource on which it depends is exhausted worldwide and nobody is bothering to move to the replacement.

From that perspective it is especially grand to listen to an explanation on how to do things by someone who is so incompetent that they did not account for IPv6 in their 1.0 spec - there is no v6 support in Openflow prior to 1.3. So Openflow as released was not just a bandaid it was the mother of all band-aids. It was bandaided further after that by bolting in some v6 and by adding OXM match extensions.

4 1 Reply
1. Tuesday 1st December 2015 09:25 GMT Adam 52
  
  Re: So how many RFCs did he participate in?
  
  None of the networking grandees that I know participated in the RFC process. They were working on vendor specific products or proper standards-body approved specifications.
  
  Most wouldn't have touched IP, and especially not TCP, with a barge-pole because they could predict the problems it would cause and the various band-aids that would be necessary.
  
  Whilst ultimately IP has won out, primarily because it was easy (and therefore cheap) to implement their opinions are still valid, possibly more so now that they have been proven by history.
  
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  1. Tuesday 1st December 2015 10:37 GMT Voland's right hand
    
    Re: So how many RFCs did he participate in?
    
    Cough, cough, we probably have a different definition of grandee, so let's look at some http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/authactdistr.html
    
    I cannot think of a person I know personally who would qualify, is not in the list and is above the 15 RFC mark.
    
    They all work on vendor specific products too. With the few exemptions that are at chief architect or thereabouts rank in a Tier one SP.
    
    So it looks like we probably have a different definition of grandee - mine is very simple - a person who has come up with at least _ONE_ protocol, design or feature and its implementation which is in _UBIQUITOUS_ _PRODUCTION_ use today.
    
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Tuesday 1st December 2015 09:33 GMT jake

"The IETF standards process, he said, has become “band-aids on top of band-aids”."

Of course. Running code trumps all. Come back and pontificate when you can produce, meat. Until then, kindly DFO. Ta.

“Standards are less important, because you're doing more with computation.”

'The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.'

-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum'

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1. Wednesday 2nd December 2015 04:36 GMT Yes Me
  
  Definitely WTF
  
  @jake, I can't decide whether to up or down vote you because I don't know what you're trying to say... you quoted:
  
  "“Standards are less important, because you're doing more with computation.”"
  
  WTF is that supposed to actually mean? It's like saying inches are less important because you're doing more with bananas. And, er, Openflow is a standard (just a crappy one as someone else pointed out). It's a standard that allows flexible config. BTW it runs over this Internet thingie that people keep talking about. No Internet, no Openflow.
  
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  1. Wednesday 2nd December 2015 10:46 GMT jake
    
    Re: Definitely WTF
    
    I was quoting Dr Dan Pitt.
    
    I replied with a quote from AST.
    
    I know, it's a harmonic discordance. Look between the bells, spot the message.
    
    Try to understand ... The guts of TehIntraWebTubes were not written by marketards.
    
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Tuesday 1st December 2015 23:22 GMT asdf

trollin

tl;dr. Even glancing made me yawn. God what a boring ass topic. Ok click wasted post done moving on.

0 0 Reply