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Re: 4-Byte AS Number soon to come?

  • From: Steven M. Bellovin
  • Date: Tue Aug 23 17:56:53 2005

In message <[email protected]>, Iljitsch van Beijn
um writes:
>
>On 23-aug-2005, at 15:16, Paul Jakma wrote:
>
>>> then i would prefer going ahead with the new solution and picking  
>>> it up if it works!
>
>> Well, in order to justify the hassle of invalidating existing  
>> implementations of the draft as it stands, I suspect there'd need  
>> to be sufficient examples of real-world problems with passive BGP  
>> 'readers' to get consensus in IDR to change.
>
>This is exactly why people shouldn't implement drafts except possibly  
>as a private in-house feasibility study. 

In general, you're right; however, BGP documents have a special status. 
Because of how crucial BGP is to the Internet's functioning, I-Ds won't 
progress to RFC status (at least as Proposed Standard) without two 
interoperating implementations.  For everything else, you're right.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb