Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs

Many protocols make use of identifiers consisting of constants and other well-known values. Even after a protocol has been defined and deployment has begun, new values may need to be assigned (e.g., a new option type in DHCP). To insure that such quantities have unique values, their assignment must be administered by a central authority. In the Internet, that role is provided by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). In order for the IANA to manage a given numbering space prudently, it needs guidelines describing the conditions under which new values can be assigned. If the IANA is expected to play a role in the management of a numbering space, the IANA must be given clear and concise draft-iesg-iana-considerations-00.txt [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT October 6, 1997 guidelines describing that role. This document discusses issues that should be considered in formulating an identifier assignment policy and provides guidelines to document authors on the specific text that must be included in documents that place demands on the IANA. draft-iesg-iana-considerations-00.txt [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT October 6, 1997