Subject: [Dime] Protocol Action: 'Updated IANA Considerations for Diameter Command Code Allocations' to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:59:31 -0700 (PDT)

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'Updated IANA Considerations for Diameter Command Code Allocations '
   <draft-ietf-dime-diameter-cmd-iana-01.txt> as a Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Diameter Maintenance and Extensions Working Group. 

The IESG contact persons are Ron Bonica and Dan Romascanu.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-dime-diameter-cmd-iana-01.txt

Technical Summary

The Diameter Base specification, described in RFC 3588, provides a number
of ways to extend Diameter, with new Diameter commands, i.e. messages used
by Diameter applications, and applications as the most extensive
enhancements.  RFC 3588 illustrates the conditions that lead to the need
to define a new Diameter application or a new command code.  Depending on
the scope of the Diameter extension IETF actions are necessary.  Although
defining new Diameter applications does not require IETF consensus,
defining new Diameter commands requires IETF consensus per RFC 3588.  This
has lead to questionable design decisions by other Standards Development
Organizations which chose to define new applications on existing commands
rather than asking for assignment of new command codes for the pure
purpose of avoiding bringing their specifications to the IETF.  In some
cases interoperability problems were causes as an effect of the poor
design caused by overloading existing commands.

This document aligns the extensibility rules of Diameter application with
the Diameter commands offering ways to delegate work on Diameter to other
SDOs to extend Diameter in a way that does not lead to poor design
choices.

 Working Group Summary

This document is the product of the DIME working group. The extensibility
rules of Diameter have been investigated by a design team and the
alignment of policy for extending Diameter applications and Diameter
commands has been agreed. 

Document Quality

This document focuses on the description of the allocation policy change
in the IANA consideration section and has been discussed for some time.

Personnel

Victor Fajardo is the document shepherd for this document.

Ron Bonica is the responsible AD.

RFC Editor Note

Section 3 content should be modified as follows: 

OLD

   This document modifies the IANA allocation of Diameter Command Codes
   in relationship to RFC 3588.  This process change itself does not
   raise security concerns, but the command codes space is split into a
   standards commands space and a vendor-specific command codes space,
   the later being allocated on a First Come, First Served basis by IANA
   at the request of vendors or other standards organizations.  Whenever
   work gets delegated to organizations outside the IETF there is always
   the chance that fewer security reviews are conducted and hence the
   quality of the resulting protocol document is weaker compared to the
   rather extensive reviews performed in the IETF.  The members of the
   DIME working group are aware of the tradeoff between better
   specification quality and the desire to offload work (e.g., to reduce
   the workload in the IETF) to other organizations.  Other
   organizations are therefore made responsible for the quality of the
   specifications they produce.

NEW

   This document modifies the IANA allocation of Diameter Command Codes
   in relationship to RFC 3588.  This process change itself does not
   raise security concerns, but the command codes space is split into a
   standards commands space and a vendor-specific command codes space,
   the later being allocated on a First Come, First Served basis by IANA
   at the request of vendors or other standards organizations.  Whenever
   work gets delegated to organizations outside the IETF there is always
   the chance that security reviews are conducted in different manner
   and the criteria and style of the reviews are different than the
reviews 
   performed in the IETF.  The members of the DIME working group are
aware 
   of the risks involved in using different security and quality review
processes
   and the desire to offload work (e.g., to reduce the workload in the
IETF) to 
   other organizations.  Other organizations are therefore made
responsible for 
   the quality of the specifications they produce.