Subject: [ipcdn] DOCSIS Cable Device MIB and downref normative references

From: "Woundy, Richard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:51:48 -0500

Folks,

In the process of trying to publish the updated DOCSIS Cable Device MIB,
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipcdn-device-mibv2-11.txt,
we have identified five "downref" normative references that must be
fixed prior to publication.

As RFC 3967 explains:

   IETF procedures generally require that a standards track RFC may not
   have a normative reference to another standards track document at a
   lower maturity level or to a non standards track specification (other
   than specifications from other standards bodies).  For example, a
   standards track document may not have a normative reference to an
   informational RFC.

Per guidance from our Area Director, there are two ways to fix these
downref normative references:

1. Move the references to the informative references section, with WG
consensus, or

2. Explain each downref normative reference in the draft (per RFC 3967),
and perform another IETF Last Call.

My recommendation (both as co-author and as co-chair) is to move the
five references to the informative references section, and complete
publication of this draft as an RFC.

*** If you disagree with this recommendation, please reply to me and the
IPCDN mailing list by Friday December 1.

Here are the results of the new IETF draft/RFC dependency tool, as run
against the latest draft:
http://rtg.ietf.org/~fenner/ietf/deps/index.cgi?doc=draft-ietf-ipcdn-dev
ice-mibv2. The tool identifies normative references to five
Informational RFCs:

   [RFC1858]     Ziemba, G., Reed, D., and P. Traina, "Security
                 Considerations for IP Fragment Filtering", RFC 1858,
                 October 1995.

   [RFC1945]     Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and H. Frystyk,
                 "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945,
                 May 1996.

   [RFC3128]     Miller, I., "Protection Against a Variant of the Tiny
                 Fragment Attack (RFC 1858)", RFC 3128, June 2001.

   [RFC3164]     Lonvick, C., "The BSD Syslog Protocol", RFC 3164,
                 August 2001.

   [RFC3617]     Lear, E., "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Scheme and
                 Applicability Statement for the Trivial File Transfer
                 Protocol (TFTP)", RFC 3617, October 2003.

The Security Considerations (section 6) recommends implementation of RFC
1858 (Informational) and RFC 3128 (Informational) to prevent the "tiny
fragment" and "overlapping fragment" attacks, but does not mandate them.

DOCSIS specifies the use of TFTP (RFC 1350 - Standard) for file
transfers, but this MIB module enables implementation of HTTP 1.0 (RFC
1945 - Informational) or HTTP 1.1 (RFC 2616 - Draft Standard) for file
transfers as well. See section 3.2.1 of the draft for a complete
explanation.

The TFTP URI (RFC 3617 - Informational) is referenced by
docsDevServerConfigTftpAddress, but the syntax of the the object is an
InetAddress, and is not dependent on RFC 3617.

SYSLOG (RFC 3164) is one of several possible event notification
mechanisms supported by this MIB module.

-- Rich

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