Internet DRAFT - draft-iesg-info-exp
draft-iesg-info-exp
Network Working Group B. Carpenter (ed.)
Internet-Draft IESG
Expires: December 8, 2005 June 6, 2005
Choosing between Informational and Experimental Status
draft-iesg-info-exp-01.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
Abstract
This document reproduces the rules for classifying documents as
Informational and Experimental from RFC 2026, and amplifies those
rules with guidelines relevant to ongoing IESG evaluations. It is
not intended to change any of the underlying principles.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. The Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 6
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1. Introduction
In addition to standards-track documents (proposed, draft, standard
and BCP), the RFC series contains three other categories:
Informational, Experimental and Historic.
People, including the IESG, are often confused about whether a given
document should be Informational or Experimental; this document tries
to make that determination simpler. While this serves as commentary
on the IETF process rules, it is not intended to change any of the
underlying principles. The IESG would welcome comments on this
document, which is expected to end up as an informational web page
(and therefore doesn't contain all the required sections for RFCs).
2. The Rules
The following sections are reproduced from RFC 2026, including the
original section numbers.
4.2 Non-Standards Track Maturity Levels
Not every specification is on the standards track. A specification
may not be intended to be an Internet Standard, or it may be intended
for eventual standardization but not yet ready to enter the standards
track. A specification may have been superseded by a more recent
Internet Standard, or have otherwise fallen into disuse or disfavor.
Specifications that are not on the standards track are labeled with
one of three "off-track" maturity levels: "Experimental",
"Informational", or "Historic". The documents bearing these labels
are not Internet Standards in any sense.
4.2.1 Experimental
The "Experimental" designation typically denotes a specification that
is part of some research or development effort. Such a specification
is published for the general information of the Internet technical
community and as an archival record of the work, subject only to
editorial considerations and to verification that there has been
adequate coordination with the standards process (see below). An
Experimental specification may be the output of an organized Internet
research effort (e.g., a Research Group of the IRTF), an IETF Working
Group, or it may be an individual contribution.
4.2.2 Informational
An "Informational" specification is published for the general
information of the Internet community, and does not represent an
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Internet community consensus or recommendation. The Informational
designation is intended to provide for the timely publication of a
very broad range of responsible informational documents from many
sources, subject only to editorial considerations and to verification
that there has been adequate coordination with the standards process
(see section 4.2.3).
Specifications that have been prepared outside of the Internet
community and are not incorporated into the Internet Standards
Process by any of the provisions of section 10 may be published as
Informational RFCs, with the permission of the owner and the
concurrence of the RFC Editor.
3. Guidelines
The rules above are not always precise. In particular, the reasons
for declaring something "part of a research and development effort"
aren't clear, and the word "typically" allows a lot of wiggle room.
So more guidelines are often needed in order to interpret the rules.
The following set of guidelines will be used by the IESG. The list
is read from top to bottom; the first one that seems to apply is
probably the one that makes sense to follow.
1. If it can't be practiced, it's Informational. Unless it's a
protocol, a procedure or a format, it is hard to see what kind of
experiment it can be. Case in point: "Terminology for ATM ABR
benchmarking" (RFC 3134).
2. If it's not going to be changed no matter what the result is,
it's Informational. This is typically the case with vendor
protocols; the vendor will publish it for the good of the
community, but retains full change control, and gives no promises
about listening to community feedback. Case in point: "Microsoft
Point-To-Point Encryption (MPPE) Protocol" (RFC 3078).
3. A similar case is work that could be practiced, was developed in
the IETF, has been dropped for some reason, but is being
published for the record. That's Informational, unless the IESG
determines that Historic status is more appropriate. Case in
point: "A Delay Bound alternative revision of RFC 2598" (RFC
3248).
4. If the IETF may publish something based on this on the standards
track once we know how well this one works, it's Experimental.
This is the typical case of not being able to decide which
protocol is "better" before we have experience of dealing with
them from a stable specification. Case in point: "PGM Reliable
Transport Protocol Specification" (RFC 3208)
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5. If the document contains implicit or explicit success/failure
criteria, and it's clear that the outcome can be used as the
basis for a recommendation to the IETF community, it's
Experimental. Case in point: RFC 1797 "Class A Subnet
Experiment" which led to RFC 1879 "Class A Subnet Experiment
Results and Recommendations"
Note that guideline 4 above is not intended to say that by publishing
this, the IETF is promising to do a followup; the IETF may later
decide that the experiment failed, and may sometimes believe this
outcome to be very probable even when publishing the document.
Guideline 2 may sometimes be hard to evaluate, because it requires
evaluating the intent of the proposer; still, often it is very easy,
and nothing further needs to be said.
4. Security considerations
The IESG believes that the security of the Internet is not directly
affected by the difference between Experimental and Informational
RFCs.
5. Acknowledgements
This document was originally drafted by Harald Alvestrand. An XML
source was created by Bill Fenner. Useful comments were received
from Scott Bradner, Fred Baker and others.
This document was produced using the xml2rfc tool (RFC2629).
Author's Address
Brian Carpenter (ed.)
IESG
Email: iesg@ietf.org
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Acknowledgment
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