Subject: [AAA-WG]: AAA URI syntax

From: Pete McCann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 00:59:48 -0600

Hi,

Following up to the point I raised at the meeting today:

According to my reading of RFC 2396 (Uniform Resource Identifiers
(URI): Generic Syntax), the syntax given for the AAA URI in RFC 3588
is broken.

See Appendix A of 2396.  Because we are using a //, the thing after
the slash is a "hier_part".  In a "hier_part", we have an "authority"
followed by an optional "abs_path".  The only way to get a ";" "path" 
is to use an "abs_path", and an "abs_path" must begin with a /.  In
the examples given in RFC 3588, there is no / before the parameters.

So, there seem to be two options here.  We could remove the // from
our URI syntax, making it into scheme:opaque_part.  We can format the
opaque_part however we would like.  Alternatively, we could add a /
after the authority name before we add parameters.  This would mean:

    aaa://host.example.com/;transport=tcp

This would be the least amount of change; however, it looks a little ugly.

-Pete

p.s. Thanks to Adam Costello for first noticing this and pointing it out.

-Pete