The need for smaller protocol specifications

[Erik Nordmark]

> Aha! You prove my point. Today, (as you ilustrate above) we seem to think
> that any RFC is "an IETF standard". 

No, I don't think I said that.

> By the current official process, a proposed standard is a relatively stable
> work that is acknowledged to be incomplete and not expected to be widely
> implemented. 

RFC 2026 doesn't say "incomplete" instead it says "has resolved
known design choices". That could easily be interpreted as all the pieces
necessary in the protocol has been specified. For instance, having
a proposed standard say "we need X but haven't specified how to do
that yet" seems to violate 2026, whether X is e.g., a security mechanism,
the ability to interact with different forms  of IP address configuration,
or some agent discovery mechanism.

  Erik