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.Ah, that makes sense. So how does that work for work on TCP (which is
even more crucial than BGP)? You have to have interoperable
implementations before writing the draft?
No. TCP is end-to-end; a problem shows up on that connection. By
contrast, a BGP issue can affect everyone else, since your peers see
only what you advertise based on your policy and what you've learned
from others. Put another way, your problems (or your implementation's
problems) affect others. That's not true for TCP, with the exception
of congestion control behavior.
(I knew the IETF had some trouble with its internal organization. I
had no idea it was this bad.)
Some would say that it's a feature -- rely on running code.
--Steven M. Bellovin, Steven M. Bellovin