Reassignment of System Ports to the IESG
draft-kuehlewind-system-ports-02

Abstract

In the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry a large number of System Ports is currently assigned to individuals or companies who have registered the port for the use with a certain protocol before RFC6335 was published. For some of these ports, RFCs exist that describe the respective protocol; for others, RFCs are under development that define, re-define, or assign the protocol used for the respective port, e.g. in case of so-far unused UDP ports that have been registered together with the respective TCP port. In these cases the IESG has the change control about the protocol used on the port (as described in an RFC) but does not have the change control about the port usage itself. Currently, to transfer the change control to the IESG, the original assignee has to be contacted to initialize this transfer. As it is not always possible to get in touch with the original assignee, e.g. because of out-dated contact information or more severe reasons, and the current practice of case-by-case changes does not scale well, this document instructs IANA to perform actions with the goal to reassigns all System Ports to the IESG that have been assigned to individuals prior to the publication of RFC6335.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on September 6, 2018.

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1. Introduction

RFC 6335 [RFC6335] requires System Ports, also known as the Well Known Ports, in the range from 0 to 1023, to be assigned by the "IETF Review" or "IESG Approval" procedures [RFC5226]. Further, for assignments done through RFCs published via the "IETF Document Stream" [RFC4844], the Assignee will be the IESG with the IETF Chair as the Contact. Therefore, all System Ports must be assigned to the IESG.

However, ports that were assigned before the publication of RFC 6335, are often assigned to individuals, even if they are part of the System Port range. Besides the fact that System Ports that are widely used by IETF protocols under IETF change control, this is especially problematic if the assignment is or should be changed. The Assignee, can change the assignment without confirmation of the IETF. However, if the IETF process requires a change, including de-assignment, this cannot be done without the agreement of the original Assignee. Furthermore, no procedure is defined to change the assignment in cases where the original Assignee is not reachable or for any other reason not available anymore,

This document instructs IANA to perform actions with the goal to re-assign all currently assigned System Ports in the range from 0 to 1023 to the IESG, with will also help to aligning existing entries in the "Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry" with the current procedures defined in RFC 6335.

2. IANA Considerations

IANA [will perform/has performed] action to re-assign all System Ports in the port range from 0 to 1023 that are currently assigned in the "Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry" (https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml) to the IESG <iesg@ietf.org> as Assignee and the IETF Chair <chair@ietf.org> as Contact. The original Assignee and respective contact information should be preserved as a Assignment note "Originally assigned to $Assignee <$Contact>" where $Assignee is the current value in the Assignee column and $Contact is the current value in the Contact column.

To perform the assignment IANA is requested to contact the current Assignees by email with the registered email address to request the transfer. If the provided email address is not valid anymore, IANA is requested to report this to the IESG and the IESG is requested to perform actions, such as sending requests to the ietf@ietf.org mailing list to determine updated contact information. If these action do not show success within 4 weeks, the IESG is requested to make a decision about the re-assignment of the port in question.

IANA is requested to send the following request to each current Assignees:

"Dear $Assignee, you are the assignee for port $Port in the Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry. This port is part of the System Ports range which has a registration policy of "IETF Review" or "IESG Approval" as defined in RFC6335 given the System Ports range is already densely assigned. To enable future documentation in the RFC series of the protocol in use for this port, we would like to request you to confirm that you agree to de-assign the port to enable a subsequent re-assignment to the IESG. We will still note you as the original assignee with this contact information in the registry, expect you prefer to not be noted anymore. Please let us know if there is any reason to not perform this change, or if the port is known to not be used (anymore) and can be reclassified as reserved instead. Also if you have information about a publicly available specification of the protocol in use on the respective port that is not noted in the registry yet, we would be graceful to learn about this and update the notes in the registry accordingly."

If the current Assignee does not agree to the re-assignment or does not reply within four weeks, IANA is requested to inform the IESG which then is requested to make a decision about the re-assignment of the port in question.

Before the start of this re-assignment process, IANA [will also update/has further updated] the Reference column with the following reference for the listed ports that have a corresponding published RFC that uses this port number, as well as the Assignment Notes column for historic RFCs:

As part of this maintainance effort, IANA [will further add/has further added] the following entry in addition to the existing entry for port 441 with the IESG as Assignee and the IETF chair as Contact:

3. Security Considerations

This draft instructs IANA to perform actions on the Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry. It does not change the use of the ports or protocols running on them. Therefore the security of these protocols in not impacted by these changes to the registry.

4. References

4.1. Normative References

4.2. Informative References

Author's Address

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. IANA Considerations
• 3. Security Considerations
• 4. References
• 4.1. Normative References
• 4.2. Informative References
• Author's Address