careless protocol extensions

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

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All of this was discussed in detail a long time ago. In any legitimate
standards organization, the results of that discussion would have been
recorded for future reference.

Andreas Gustafsson writes:
> Although it is not necessary for interoperability of the base
> protocol, it is necessary in order to support protocol extensions that
> send out-of-band data in sections other than the answer section, such
> as TSIG signed transfers.

No, it is not necessary. Backwards compatibility is not rocket science.
Servers must not---and, according to you, BIND does not---send TSIG junk
to clients that haven't indicated that they want it. (I have no desire
to support TSIG; IPSEC is a vastly better solution.)

If the TSIG specification fails to impose this basic interoperability
requirement, then that's a bug in the TSIG specification. It is the
responsibility of optional protocol extensions to maintain perfect
compatibility with the unextended protocol. The alternative---forcing
the entire Internet to change its software for every careless protocol
extension that comes along---is insane.

How would you like it if Microsoft wrote an RFC on some incompatible
protocol extension, hid the interoperability problems until the RFC was
published as an elective Proposed Standard, and then demanded that every
BIND installation be ``upgraded'' to deal with the junk produced by that
protocol extension? How do you think your users would like it?

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago



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