FW: inconsistency in RFC 5176

["Murtaza Chiba (mchiba)" <mchiba@cisco.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Alfred HÎnes [mailto:ah@tr-sys.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 5:51 PM
To: Murtaza Chiba (mchiba); Gopal Dommety (gdommety); Mark Eklund (meklund); david@mitton.com
Cc: rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org
Subject: inconsistency in RFC 5176

Hello,
after studying the recently published RFC 5176 (RADIUS Dyn.Auth.) authored by you, I stumbled over an apparent serious inconsistency in Section 3.5 of that memo.

The first clause there (on page 16) says:

3.5.  Error-Cause

   Description

      It is possible that a Dynamic Authorization Server cannot honor
      Disconnect-Request or CoA-Request packets for some reason.  The
      Error-Cause Attribute provides more detail on the cause of the
|     problem.  It MAY be included within CoA-NAK and Disconnect-NAK
|     packets.

The last sentence is consistent with the tables in Section 3.6 (pages 20..22) that also exclude the use of the Error-Clause Attribute for the CoA-ACK and Disconnect-ACK messages/packets.

But surprisingly, the text in the "Value" clause in Section 3.5, from the bottom of page 16 until page 18 repeatedly deals with inclusion or non-inclusion of the Error-Clause Attribute into the CoA-ACK and Disconnect-ACK messages/packets.  Some of these sentences are only confusing, but those that state applicability of the Error-Clause Attribute contradict the intent ot the other parts of the memo.

Please check.

I suggest that this issue should be resolved by RFC Errata Notes invalidating/removing all phrases in the "Value" clause that mention CoA-ACK and Disconnect-ACK.


Kind regards,
  Alfred HÎnes.

P.S.: Due to inappropriate blackholing of DNS requests, apparently
      caused by packet filtering based on *sorce* port somewhere
      in Redmont, I cannot send a copy of this message to your
      co-author Bernard Aboba.  Please arrange to forward to him
      a copy of this message -- thanks in advance.

-- 

+------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| TR-Sys Alfred Hoenes   |  Alfred Hoenes   Dipl.-Math., Dipl.-Phys.  |
| Gerlinger Strasse 12   |  Phone: (+49)7156/9635-0, Fax: -18         |
| D-71254  Ditzingen     |  E-Mail:  ah@TR-Sys.de                     |
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