nanog mailing list archives
Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe.
From: Laszlo Hanyecz <laszlo () heliacal net>
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 13:04:19 +0000
On 2018-10-17 02:35, Michael Thomas wrote:
I believe that the IETF party line these days is that Postel was wrong on this point. Security is one consideration, but there are others.
Postel's maxim also allowed extensibility. If our network code rejects (or crashes) on things we don't currently understand and use, it ensures that they can't be used by apps that come along later either. The attitude of rejecting everything in the name of security is what has forced app developers to tunnel APIs and everything else inside HTTP/DNS.
Mike On 10/16/2018 07:18 PM, bzs () theworld com wrote:What it's trying to say is that you have control over your own code but not others', in general. So make your own code (etc) robust and forgiving since you can't edit others' code to conform to your own understanding of what they should be sending you. I suppose that pre-dates github but nonetheless much of the code which generates bits flung at you is proprietary and otherwise out of your control but what you can control is your code's reaction to it. And of course the bits you generate which should try to make conservative assumptions about what they might accept and interpret as you expect. For example just because they sent you a seemingly malformed HTTP request, and given that 4xx is for error codes, doesn't mean you should return "420 You must be high!" and expect to be understood.
Current thread:
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe., (continued)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Fred Baker (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. bzs (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Michael Thomas (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. bzs (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Michael Thomas (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Scott Brim (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Michael Thomas (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Florian Weimer (Oct 17)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. bzs (Oct 17)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Robert Brockway (Oct 16)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Laszlo Hanyecz (Oct 17)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Florian Weimer (Oct 17)
- Re: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Michael Thomas (Oct 17)
- RE: It's been 20 years today (Oct 16, UTC). Hard to believe. Keith Medcalf (Oct 16)