Subject: 2222bis: use of "authentication protocol exchange"

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 10:56:54 +0100

Hi,

The issue discussed below was raised by Kurt. He suggested to replace 
"authentication protocol exchange" to "authentication exchange" 
everywhere in the document.

Kurt wrote:

>The problem here is this usage causes the term 'protocol'
>to be overloaded, making this and other uses of the term
>ambiguous.  We need to consistently use the term 'protocol'
>to refer to the application-level protocol making use of
>SASL.  Other protocols, in particular that of mechanisms,
>should be referred to by other terms, such as an
>'authentication exchange'.

The term "authentication protocol exchange" comes from RFC 2222. It 
tries to say that an "authentication exchange" produced by a SASL 
mechanism is carried by a SASL aware protocol. (I personally find the 
original term unambiguous, although it is cumbersome.) So I am a bit 
worried about changing "authentication protocol exchange" to 
"authentication exchange" at this stage, as this seems to be a 
[significant] terminology change from RFC 2222.

It is probably Ok to say in the Introduction that "authentication 
protocol exchange" and "authentication exchange" are synonyms and that 
the document will use the latter term everywhere.

I would like to hear opinions of other WG members.

Thanks,
Alexey