On Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 7:52 AM Jen Linkova <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Bill,
>
> On Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 8:19 AM Bill Fenner <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> A question: if [I-D.ietf-intarea-rfc8335bis] acknowledges that
> inferring the
> >> length is suboptimal, and this draft solves the issue: what prevents us
> from
> >> using the mechanism defined in THIS document for
> [I-D.ietf-intarea-rfc8335bis]?
> >> Is it just because this draft was written before
> I-D.ietf-intarea-rfc8335bis?
> >> Now this draft seems to "overtake" [I-D.ietf-intarea-rfc8335bis], so I'm
> >> wondering: if it gest published before [I-D.ietf-intarea-rfc8335bis] -
> would it
> >> make sense for [I-D.ietf-intarea-rfc8335bis] to use it?
> >
> >
> > When I started the rfc8335bis update, I started with an implementation
> survey. None of the implementations that I could find actually implemented
> what RFC8335 + RFC4884 specify : in particular, they all added extra data
> after the extension objects, where RFC4884 implies that the extension
> objects extend to the end of the packet.
> >
> > We decided that my update would reflect with the deployed
> implementations, as opposed to trying to say that they're incorrect (by
> strictly requiring RFC4884 behavior) or incomplete (by defining an RFC4884
> object for "extra data after the ping").
> >
> > Defining RFC8335bis to use icmp-exten-hdr-len is contrary to that
> decision. If we have carte blanche to redefine the PROBE packet format, I'd
> rather just have defined an RFC4884 object for extra data and use that.
>
> Ah yes, thanks for refreshing my memory on this, I did forget the
> details of that story.
> It all makes sense but there is no reason for future implementations
> of the PROBE to also use the length field, right?
> (Let's say I'm writing a new library to support ICMP extensions, after
> draft-ietf-intarea-icmp-exten-hdr-len is published. Now, when crafting
> the ICMP extension header for a packet, I'd either need to handle
> PROBE packets differently from any other packets (set length = 0) or
> just set the length).
> Anyway this discussion is more in scope for rfc8335bis than for
> draft-ietf-intarea-icmp-exten-hdr-len.
>

Ok.

RFC8335bis just says "use RFC4884" and says almost nothing about the 4884
packet format, so  as long as draft-ietf-intarea-icmp-exten-hdr-len updates
RFC4884, I don't know that there's anything to say in 8335bis.

  Bill
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