GenDispatch Working Group R. Bonica Internet-Draft Juniper Networks Intended status: Best Current Practice A. Farrel Expires: 3 January 2025 Old Dog Consulting 2 July 2024 IETF Experiments draft-bonica-gendispatch-exp-00 Abstract This document describes IETF experiments and provides guidelines for the publication of Experimental RFCs. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on 3 January 2025. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License. Bonica & Farrel Expires 3 January 2025 [Page 1] Internet-Draft IETF Experiments July 2024 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Requirements on Experimental RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2.1. Codepoints in Experimental RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.2. Requirements Level Language and Keywords . . . . . . . . 4 3. Experimental Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1. Introduction Experimental RFCs in the IETF Stream describe IETF experiments. IETF process experiments are described in [RFC3933], but this document is concerned with protocol experiments. An IETF protocol experiment is a procedure that is executed on the Internet for a bounded period of time. The experiment can, but does not always, include the deployment of a new protocol or protocol extension. When two protocols are proposed to solve a single problem, the IETF can initiate an experiment in which each protocol is deployed. Operational experience obtained during the experiments can help to determine which, if either, of the protocols should be progressed to the standards track. An IETF experiment must not harm the Internet or interfere with established network operations. It must be conducted in a carefully controlled manner (for example, using a limited domain [RFC8799]). Furthermore, it must use protocol identifiers that do not conflict with other protocols or experiments. When an IETF protocol experiment concludes, experimental results should be reported in one or more informational RFCs. This document describes IETF protocol experiments and provides guidelines for the publication of Experimental RFCs. Experimental RFCs in the Independent Submissions Stream are out of scope of this document. 2. Requirements on Experimental RFCs An Experimental RFC must: Bonica & Farrel Expires 3 January 2025 [Page 2] Internet-Draft IETF Experiments July 2024 * Describe the experiment in details, so that it can be replicated by non-collaborating parties and recognised when it is seen in deployments. * Describe an experiment that does not harm the Internet or interfere with its established operations. * Include a date at which the experiment will be terminated. * Include metrics and observations that will be collected during the experiment. * Include criteria by which success of the experiment will be determined. When two protocols are proposed to solve a single problem, the IETF can initiate an experiment in which each protocol is deployed. In this case, the same metrics should be collected in each experiment. 2.1. Codepoints in Experimental RFCs [RFC8126] describes guidelines for writing IANA Considerations sections in RFCs. It lists a number of assignment policies that apply to codepoint registries maintained by IANA. Experimental RFCs cannot obtain codepoints from registries or parts of registries that are managed under the following assignment policies: * Standards Action * Hierarchical Allocation An Experimental RFC may request and be granted codepoints from registries or parts of registries that are managed under the following assignment policies: * First Come First Served * Expert Review * Specification Required * RFC Required * IETF Review * IESG Approval Bonica & Farrel Expires 3 January 2025 [Page 3] Internet-Draft IETF Experiments July 2024 Consideration must be given to the fact that the experiment may be temporary in nature and the protocol or protocol extensions may be abandoned. If there is a scarcity of available codepoints in a registry, even more caution should be applied to any codepoint assignments. Some registries or parts of registries are marked as "For Experimental Use: Not to be assigned." These ranges are specifically intended for use by protocol experiments. But assigments are not made from them and Experimental RFCs must not document and codepoints from such ranges. Instead, protocol implementations should allow the codepoints to be configured so that all implementations participating in an experiment can interoperate and so that multiple experiments may co-exist in the same network. Experiemts should not use Private Use registries. Additionally, IANA will not create any new registries or sub- registries as specified in Experimental RFCs. Experimental RFCs that would otherwise ask for the creation of protocol registries can simply enumerate the codepoints within the RFC. 2.2. Requirements Level Language and Keywords An Experimental RFC describing a protocol experiment may use BCP 14 requirements level language and keywords [RFC2119] [RFC8174] to help clarify the description of the protocol or prtocol extension and the expected behavior of implementations. 3. Experimental Reports Experimental Reports shoul include the following information: * Scale of deployment * Effort required to deploy - Was deployment incremental or network-wide? - Was there a need to synchronize configurations at each node or could nodes be configured independently - Did the deployment require hardware upgrade? * Effort required to secure * Performance impact of risk mitigation Bonica & Farrel Expires 3 January 2025 [Page 4] Internet-Draft IETF Experiments July 2024 * Effectiveness of risk mitigation * Cost of risk mitigation * Interoperability * Did you deploy two inter-operable implementations? * Did you experience interoperability problems? * Effectiveness and sufficiency of OAM mechanism 4. IANA Considerations This document does not make any requests of IANA, but see Section 2.1 for details of the use of codepoints in Experimental RFCs. 5. Security Considerations As this document does not introduce any new protocols or operational procedures, it does not introduce any new security considerations Experimental RFCs must include security and privacy considerations as with any other RFC. As well as considering the security and privacy implications of the protocol or protocol extensions, Experimental RFCs should examine the implications for security and privacy of running an experiment on the Internet. 6. Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge TBD for their review and helpful comments. 7. References 7.1. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, . [RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017, . Bonica & Farrel Expires 3 January 2025 [Page 5] Internet-Draft IETF Experiments July 2024 [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, . 7.2. Informative References [RFC3933] Klensin, J. and S. Dawkins, "A Model for IETF Process Experiments", BCP 93, RFC 3933, DOI 10.17487/RFC3933, November 2004, . [RFC8799] Carpenter, B. and B. Liu, "Limited Domains and Internet Protocols", RFC 8799, DOI 10.17487/RFC8799, July 2020, . Authors' Addresses Ron Bonica Juniper Networks Herndon, Virginia United States of America Email: rbonica@juniper.net Adrian Farrel Old Dog Consulting United Kingdom Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk Bonica & Farrel Expires 3 January 2025 [Page 6]