RE: Request for NAS-Port-Type Allocation

["Glen Zorn" <glenzorn@comcast.net>]

David B. Nelson <mailto://dnelson@elbrysnetworks.com> writes:

> Glen Zorn writes...
> 
> > I forgot: what is the rationale behind such careful rationing
> > of the 4 billion (!) NAS-Port-Type values again?
> 
> I don't think the value is in rationing.  As you point out, it's not an
> overly scarce resource.  I think the value is in maintaining a decent
> signal-to-noise ratio in the IANA registry.  Given that there are 4
> billion
> possible values, 

Micro-managing the namespace is a waste of time.

> it's preferable to avoid duplicates or nearly-
> duplicates
> with ambiguously subtle distinctions.

The level of distinction that is considered to be subtle tends to vary both
with the state of the art & the expertise of the observer: the difference
between uranium-238 and u-235 certainly seems subtle to me (what's a couple
of neutrons between friends? ;-) but is certainly not subtle to a modern
physicist & even less so to a maker of atomic bombs.  My point is that,
because NAS-Port-Type values generally represent L2 protocols, it is
somewhat likely that IETF "experts" will lack the expertise to make these
kinds of decisions in the exotic cases anyway.  The current request is a
case in point: I will admit that I had no idea what PHS was (let alone
PHS-MoU) until I went off to the Web site to check.  I wonder how many other
people on this list did?  In fact, I'm still not sure what, exactly, makes
it unique enough to require a separate number but (given that there are
3,999,999,965 of them left) I really don't care.

...



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