Re: Routing requirements draft

[Eliot Lear <lear@cisco.com>]

Dan,

For personal reasons I can't attend.  However...


>    - Control of Function and Policy
>    - Information and Data Models, e.g. MIB module
>    - Liveness Detection and Monitoring
>    - Verifying Correct Operation
>    - Requirements on Other Protocols and Functional Components
>    - Impact on Network Operation
>   

Could you imagine what the statements for BGP4 would have been at the
time?  There was no AS-PATH prepending and a zillion other things that
are now common with most vendor implementations.  So if they had a
section it would have quickly been outdated.  But more importantly the
protocol would never have gotten out.  One of the biggest problems with
the routing area is that vendors try to get to market quickly with
"pre-standard" functionality.  And this has been the case since BGP4's
release.  So why on earth would we want to make it harder for people to
document existing practices?!

I'm not saying these things are unimportant.  They're very important. 
But it's in everyone's best interest to keep the Internet running
smoothly.  Text in a document won't do it.  Only testing and experience
will.

So this is a big, fat vote for the authors THINKING about this stuff,
but let's not cram this down their throats.

Eliot