IETF Experiments

Status of This Memo

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

According to [RFC2026], the "Experimental" designation for an RFC typically denotes a specification that is part of a research or development effort. An Experimental RFC may be published for information and as an archival record of the work. An Experimental RFC may be the output of an IRTF Research Group, an IETF Working Group, or it may be an individual contribution that is sponsored by an Area Director or published on the Independent Submission Stream.¶

Experimental RFCs in the IETF Stream describe IETF experiments. IETF process experiments are described in [RFC3933], but this document is concerned with protocol experiments.¶

An IETF protocol experiment is a procedure that is executed on the Internet for a bounded period of time. The experiment can, but does not always, include the deployment of a new protocol or protocol extension. For example, when two protocols are proposed to solve a single problem, the IETF can initiate an experiment in which each protocol is deployed. Operational experience obtained during the experiments can help to determine which, if either, of the protocols should be progressed to the standards track.¶

All protocol experiments must take care to not harm the Internet or interfere with established network operations. They should be conducted in a carefully controlled manner (for example, using a limited domain [RFC8799]). Furthermore, they must use protocol identifiers and code points that do not conflict with deployments of standardized protocols or other experiments. This guidance applies specifically to experiments described in IETF Experimental RFCs.¶

When an IETF protocol experiment concludes, experimental results should be reported to the relevant working group usually via an Internet-Draft, and may be published in an Informational RFCs.¶

This document describes IETF protocol experiments and provides guidelines for the publication of Experimental RFCs. Experimental RFCs in the Independent Submissions Stream or published by the IRTF are out of scope of this document.¶

2. Requirements on Experimental RFCs

An Experimental RFC must describe the experimental nature of the specification or deployment that it documents.¶

An Experimental RFC should:¶

• Describe the experiment in detail, so that it can be replicated by non-collaborating parties and recognized when it is seen in deployments.¶

• Describe how the experiment is safegarded so that it does not harm the Internet or interfere with its established operations.¶

  • It should indicate how messages or protocol data units are identified and associated with the experiment.¶

  • It should describe how backward compatability is ensured by non-participating deployments using pre-existing standardized mechanisms to discard or ignore the experiment.¶

  • It should explain how the experiment is controlled so that it does not "leak out" into the wider Internet.¶

• List what configuration knobs should be provided on experimental implementations¶

• Include a date at which the experiment will be terminated.¶

• Include metrics and observations that will be collected during the experiment.¶

• Include criteria by which success of the experiment will be determined.¶

• Explain how reports of the success or failure of the experiment will be brought to the IETF.¶

• Suggest planned next steps if the experiment is fully or partially successful.¶

When two protocol mechanisms are proposed to solve a single problem, the IETF can initiate an experiment in which each protocol is deployed. In this case, the same metrics should be collected in each experiment.¶

3. Experimental Reports

Experimental Reports should include the following information:¶

• Scale of deployment¶

• Effort required to deploy¶

  • Was deployment incremental or network-wide?¶

  • Was there a need to synchronize configurations at each node or could nodes be configured independently¶

  • Did the deployment require hardware upgrade?¶

• Effort required to secure¶

• Performance impact of risk mitigation¶

• Effectiveness of risk mitigation¶

• Cost of risk mitigation¶

• Interoperability¶

• Did you deploy two inter-operable implementations?¶

• Did you experience interoperability problems?¶

• Effectiveness and sufficiency of OAM mechanism¶

4. IANA Considerations

This document does not make any requests of IANA, but see Section 2.1 for details of the use of codepoints in Experimental RFCs.¶

5. Security Considerations

As this document does not introduce any new protocols or operational procedures, it does not introduce any new security considerations.¶

Experimental RFCs must include security and privacy considerations as with any other RFC. As well as considering the security and privacy implications of the protocol or protocol extensions, Experimental RFCs should examine the implications for security and privacy of running an experiment on the Internet.¶

6. Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Dhruv Dhody, Amanda Barber, and Murray Kucherawy for helpful discussions of experimenal code points.¶

Thanks to Brian Carpenter for review and comments.¶

7. References

Authors' Addresses