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Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide
book

Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide

by Eric Hall
February 2000
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
464 pages
15h 57m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide

Requirement levels

Because there are so many different types of documents published, not all of which are suggested or required, RFC 2026 also defines a set of “requirement levels” that should be applied to each RFC that gets published. These requirement levels are listed in Table 1.1.

Table A.1. Requirement Levels Listed in RFC 2026

Level

Description

Required

The specification is required in order for an implementation to be considered as Internet-compliant. For example, RFC 791 and RFC 1122 are required to be followed in order for a vendor’s implementation of the IP protocol to be considered compliant.

Recommended

The specification is not required in order for the implementation to be considered as Internet-compliant, but experience shows that the system and/or network would benefit from the specification being implemented.

Elective

Neither the system nor the network will be helped or harmed by the specification being implemented.

Limited Use

The specification should be used only in extraordinary situations. This is commonly seen with experimental and historic RFCs that may cause some problems if implemented in production implementations.

Not Recommended

This is the same as “limited use,” except its usage is strongly discouraged. RFCs labelled as “not recommended” should only be used when they absolutely have to be.

STD 1 acts as a clearinghouse for the status of each RFC, and also provides the current requirement level status for each of them. Only standards-track documents will have requirement ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 1565925726Supplemental ContentErrata Page