[ntpwg] KISS codes

[Danny Mayer]

Harlan Stenn wrote:
> Karen,
> 
>> I was wondering about this issue earlier today as I was working through 
>> all the comments received. My question is based on other discussions on
>> this mailing list related to whether or not we are representing 
>> current practice.
> 
> I believe Danny's change does not represent current practice.

Correct. Certainly the reference implementation doesn't implement it but
that shouldn't prevent us adding it to the RFC and we really should
implement this no matter what happens to the standard.

> 
> The problem is that current practice is ... lame (at best) in this
> regard and there needs to be, IMO, a way for a server to tell clients to
> "go away" where there is better instruction that the clients really
> should listen and do what it is told.
> 
>> Along that vein, would it make sense to change
>> "MUST" to "SHOULD" in Danny's proposed text? I can go either way
>> but I was struggling with identifying the consensus...
> 
> SHOULD could be arguably better, and if that's the way we go I expect
> that RSN we'll want to upgrade that word to a MUST.
> 

Revisiting RFC's is hard and takes a long time. Put it into the
standards now as a MUST and we have a chance of getting people to
implement it. Make it a SHOULD means that it will never happen as it is
after all extra code that needs to be written.

> And I would love to hear back from more folks on this one, as I suspect
> that MUST really is the right way to go.
> 
> But if we're gonna make a change here, I can see the reason for taking
> the conservative approach first.
> 

I don't know which approach you consider to be conservative here.

Danny