Re: hotmail not dealing with ECN

H. Peter Anvin
2001-01-26T01:39:33Z

"David S. Miller" wrote:
>
> Secondly, the RFCs are pretty clear that the bits in question used for
> ECN are _reserved_ and to be ignored by implementations. That means
> to not be interpreted, and more importantly not used to discard
> packets.
>

Last I communicated with them, I looked for a reference like that in the
standards RFCs so I could quote chapter and verse at the Hotmail people,
but I couldn't find it. If there is such a reference, someone should
point it out to them, as well as the Cisco patch you point out. As I
said before, I have had good experience with getting them to fix things
if someone actually points the exact violation they're committing.

> > In this case, though, they feel that they don't want to potentially
> > destabilize their network over something that is labelled an
> > experimental standard. I can certainly understand their point.
>
> That's respectible.
>
> However, to my knowledge the fix in question is available from Cisco
> as a fully supported "safe" patch, rather than some haphazard beta
> patch.

Right, but there is a whole mythos around which version of IOS does what
without breaking something. I can certainly understand that people are
reluctant to upgrade if they don't have to.

-hpa

--
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."