Subject: Re: Problem: Multiple Incompatible Specifications

From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 14:35:35 -0400 (EDT)

note that in saying that there are times when more than one solution
may need to be worked on I do not mean to imply that we should
progress multiple standards track documents - in the cases I can think of
it is a better idea to publish the competing ideas as
experimental RFCs to see what the market thinks and then, if a clear
message can be seen at some later date, focus attention on one solution
which can then be brought to the standards track

there are exceptions (SNMP vs CMOT is one and OSPF & ISIS is another) but I
do not think that it is the general case that there should be multiple stds
track technologies addressing the same problem.

Scott

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 09:44:26 +0200

> track technologies addressing the same problem.

Exactly. While the general principle of avoiding duplicate solutions
is clearly correct, there will be exceptions, but I don't see this
as an active problem in the IETF.

You can find occasional errors of judgement perhaps -- but where's
the evidence of a systematic problem?

By the way, this principle is documented in RFC 1958:

   3.2 If there are several ways of doing the same thing, choose one.
   If a previous design, in the Internet context or elsewhere, has
   successfully solved the same problem, choose the same solution unless
   there is a good technical reason not to.  Duplication of the same
   protocol functionality should be avoided as far as possible, without
   of course using this argument to reject improvements.

       Brian