Re: Transfer-codings, mandatory content-coding support and intermediaries

On 21 April 2014 11:10,  <K.Morgan@iaea.org> wrote:
> Thanks for the response.  Do all MUST-level requirements have to be enforceable? (If so, I didn't know that.)

That's not quite the right question.  We use "MUST" to proscribe
behaviour so that an endpoint does not do things (ultimately, generate
or not generate packets in particular patterns) that might affect a
peer endpoint negatively.  In general, if compliance with the "MUST"
cannot be detected, then there's no point in saying it.
Implementations that detect behaviour that contradicts a "MUST" are
entitled to do whatever they want with the connection, since it's
clear at that point the peer is not talking the protocol they
originally thought.  The recommendation we make is to send an error
message using the original protocol and terminate the connection.

For example, there's no way to tell an implementation with a bad
server implementation of HTTP/2 prioritization from one with a badly
misbehaving back-end.  Thus, we don't use MUST when talking about
prioritization (or at least, we shouldn't be).

So, I think that your answer is "yes".

Received on Monday, 21 April 2014 18:31:09 UTC