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Re: IPSEC SMIB

On Aug 10,  9:06pm, Stephen D Crocker wrote:
> Subject: Re: IPSEC SMIB
> Jim,
>
> The IANA is usually excellent about honoring requests for assignments
> of numbers or identifiers.  There's almost never a determination of
> the merits of the use.  This is entirely distinct from the creation of
> standards.
>
> If this nonetheless turned out to be a burden, I can imagine it might
> make sense to ask for the allocation of a set of identifiers for
> private experimental use, e.g. EXPALG1, EXPALG2, etc., whose meanings
> are to be known by the users and which might vary from implementation
> to implementation.  (I'm not sure what the accepted practice is on
> this point though; after 25 years, most of the hare-brained ideas have
> been proposed more than once, so there may be a standard answer to
> this one too.)

I agree that experimental stuff could use this, but proprietary algorithms that
either do not want to be interoperable or are forced (for various reasons which
I will not go into) to remain proprietary, may continue to use the experimental
label. This would be a problem.

The use of EXPALG1, EXPALG2, etc., may cause confusion -if- my interpretation
of this field and some other vendor's interpretation of this field are
different -and- these 2 units accidently come into contact.

In the past, NSC has used the enterprise specific SNAP header to create
protocol mappings that are of interest to us, but to no others. I cite the
example of HYPERchannel over FDDI (I am showing my age here). There is no use
in requesting a standard "ethertype" for this. There is no problem with this
method because there will never be a problem with this field being
misinterpreted.

> In any case, until the IANA gives us cause to doubt its efficacy, this
> is a red herring.

Maybe I am wrong.

I need 2 mapping right now for proprietary algorithms. I can disclose the
mappings but can not disclose the algorithms being used.

Will I have a problem getting these mappings?

jim
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