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IPsec IANA registry



Thank you to the people who contributed to the IANA registry work so 
far. The current proposal for the new registry is at 
<http://www.vpnc.org/iana-ipsec/current-propsal.txt>.

It is *very important* that all serious IPsec implementers look over 
the proposal. We have found numerous bugs in the registry, and some 
were only found by one implementor and not others. There are many 
Internet Drafts that will hopefully become RFCs soon, and IANA needs 
the registry to be correct and understandable before those RFCs can 
be issued.

A few important notes:

The IANA registry only covers issued RFCs, plus some messages from 
individuals. IANA tries not to assign numbers used in Internet 
Drafts. To date, those messages fall into three categories:

a) use this value for a defined-but-not-RFC-defined purpose

b) reserve this value because some people are using it but there will 
probably never be an RFC

c) use this value for a not-yet-RFC-defined purpose

There is only one instance in group (a): TIGER. In group (b), there 
are values for things that were in Internet Drafts and went into some 
shipping products, but those drafts are not expected to become RFCs 
for various reasons.

In group (c), there are a bunch of EC numbers from now-expired 
Internet Drafts that are expected to be re-issued and probably move 
to RFC. Also in group (c), Marcus Leech reserved values for AES and 
SHA-2 on the assumption that Internet Drafts and RFCs would follow; 
so far, that has not happened for some of the values.

So, what should we recommend for the items in group (c)? Should IANA 
go back to not giving numbers for Internet Drafts and we remove these 
numbers from the IANA registry until the RFCs issue (if ever)? Should 
we make a special case here?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium