On Jul 30, 2013, at 6:33 PM, Dave Cridland <d...@cridland.net> wrote:
> {{citation-needed}} - I've only ever seen specification conformance in
> procurement documents for military systems, never for anything else.
It's quite common to see a list of supported RFCs in the spec sheet for a piece
of network hardware. University of New Hampshire testing lab does a lot of
testing, including home gateway testing, TRILL testing, and so on.
> And moreover, I suspect that this doesn't matter; the kinds of people who're
> procuring, as such - rather than either buying or just living with what
> someone else bought - are a tiny minority. Real people, who drive most of the
> internet's use, wouldn't know or care if their new router supported RFC 6592.
No, they don't, but they care that Comcast says it works, because they know
what happens if they use a router that Comcast doesn't say works.
> Maybe this could be addressed by having a Marketing Label™ to attach to
> internet access, in the same way that WiFi™ has helped 802.11a/b/g/n do so
> well. I'm pretty sure than if (for example) Skype stamped on its box that you
> were recommended to have Halfway Decent™ bandwidth, that an ISP could start
> to market their Halfway Decent™ offering, and would be procuring Halfway
> Decent™ equipment. And for what it's worth, I'd happily pay - indeed, do
> happily pay - a premium to have Halfway Decent™ internet access. But I'm not
> sure this is an IETF activity - perhaps an ISOC one though.
Yes, labeling is another very good solution—see the V6Ready label that was used
for the World IPv6 launch.
