Subject: Vendor Specific Message Type

From: "W. Mark Townsley" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 03:19:47 -0800

I would like to propose additional text to indicate that the Message
Type AVP may be used to indicate a Vendor Specific message. I believe
this was the original intent, but the current text does not accurately
reflect this.

Early on, there was discussion of reserving zero for each vendor
specific AVP number space for use as a numeric identifier for Vendor
Type. The prevailing argument against this was that such a definitive
value would foster implementations to make operational decisions based
upon it, increasing complexity and reducing overall interoperabilty. 

Just to be clear, the idea is that if I want to create my own vendor
specific message, I simply include my SMI Enterprise Code value in the
Vendor ID field of the Message Type AVP. Then I can construct whatever
vendor specific AVPs (if any) I wish following it.

My questions are:

(1) Are there any implementations that currently define a vendor
specific AVP of zero?
(2) Would any of you break if you received a control message with a
nonzero Vendor ID in the Message Type AVP? 

Thanks,
 
- Mark

---

From: David Chen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 10:16:49 -0500

Our implementation ignores the message if
the VendorID is not in the vendor id list (include IETF's 0 )
However, if the M bit is set and the Vendor Id is not in the list then
the connection is dropped.
--- David