Early IANA Allocation of Standards Track Code Points
RFC 7120

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                         M. Cotton
Request for Comments: 7120                                         ICANN
BCP: 100                                                    January 2014
Obsoletes: 4020
Category: Best Current Practice
ISSN: 2070-1721

          Early IANA Allocation of Standards Track Code Points

Abstract

   This memo describes the process for early allocation of code points
   by IANA from registries for which "Specification Required", "RFC
   Required", "IETF Review", or "Standards Action" policies apply.  This
   process can be used to alleviate the problem where code point
   allocation is needed to facilitate desired or required implementation
   and deployment experience prior to publication of an RFC, which would
   normally trigger code point allocation.  The procedures in this
   document are intended to apply only to IETF Stream documents.

   This document obsoletes RFC 4020.

Status of This Memo

   This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
   BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7120.

Cotton                    Best Current Practice                 [Page 1]
RFC 7120                  Early IANA Allocation             January 2014

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Conditions for Early Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   3.  Process for Early Allocation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.1.  Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     3.2.  Follow-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     3.3.  Expiry  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Cotton                    Best Current Practice                 [Page 2]
RFC 7120                  Early IANA Allocation             January 2014

1.  Introduction

   In protocol specifications documented in RFCs, there is often a need
   to allocate code points for various objects, messages, or other
   protocol entities so that implementations can interoperate.  Many of
   these code point spaces have registries handled by the Internet
   Assigned Number Authority (IANA).  Several IETF policies for IANA
   allocation of protocol parameters are described in RFC 5226
   [RFC5226].  Some of them, such as "First Come First Served" or
   "Expert Review", do not require a formal IETF action before the IANA
   performs allocation.  However, in situations where code points are a
   scarce resource and/or the IETF community has consensus to retain
   tight control of the registry content, policies such as "IETF Review"
   (formerly "IETF Consensus"), or "Standards Action" have been used.
   Such allocation policies present a problem in situations where
   implementation and/or deployment experience are desired or required
   before the document becomes an RFC.

   To break the deadlock, document authors often choose some "seemingly
   unused" code points, often by selecting the next available value from
   the registry; this is problematic because these may turn out to be
   different from those later assigned by IANA.  To make this problem
   worse, "pre-RFC" implementations are often developed and deployed
   based on these code point selections.  This creates several potential
   interoperability problems between early implementations and
   implementations of the final standard, as described below: