Subject: Re: [Tsvwg] Status changes of "TCP Congestion Window Validation"

From: Vern Paxson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 23:36:43 PDT

> Can anyone help me understand the reasons behind the status changes of the
> "TCP Congestion Window Validation" RFC?
> 
> In the mail to tsvwg of 30 Oct 99 it talks about considering it as a
> "Proposed Standard". Then in April 2000 it was approved by the IESG for
> publication, but as an "Informational" RFC. Then just a few days ago it was
> published as RFC 2861, but as an "Experimental" RFC.
> 
> I guess I've got two questions:
> 
> 1) What was the reasoning behind (and implications of) the status changes in
> this RFC? So far I haven't been able to find any email discussion about it.

It started off as a candidate for Proposed because we initially thought it
would be a non-controversial change.  The discussion at the DC IETF brought
up a point of contention (what constants to use when decaying the window),
and consequently the ADs decided to target it for Experimental.

The document was never being considered for Informational - the approval
announcement with that status rather than Experimental was an error by the
IESG secretariat in the post-Adelaide crunch, which was fixed as soon as
it was detected.

> 2) More generally, does this mean that it's not possible to assume anything
> about the final status of an internet draft ie do you really have to wait
> for it to be published by the RFC editor?

It will usually have the status for which it's last-called.  Documents
are sometimes downgraded by the IESG from Proposed to Experimental or
Informational, if the technology has some significant problems or
unanswered questions, or is critical enough that it's important to
encourage experimentation (this is often the case for changes to TCP).

		Vern

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