Re: #282: Recommend minimum sizes for protocol elements

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 06:35:21AM +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> In message <FEEB46BC-14A2-4131-9309-584EA8813358@mnot.net>, Mark Nottingham wri
> tes:
> 
> >Again -- this is NOT recommending how large people should make cookies, 
> >but recommending a floor for implementations to support, to improve 
> >interop.
> 
> I agree, but the floor should not be set punishingly high to cater
> for clueless people.
> 
> Standards should promote interoperability, not stupid behaviour.

Indeed. My observations in field is that clueless people justify their
stupid designs by "but look, it's permitted". Till now I've only been
able to show them they were doing stupid things by giving examples of
various implementations' limits, for instance by reminding them that
the ubiquitous Apache server had a 8kB limit per header and that that
should ring a bell in the guy's head.

Also Mark, I agree the Alteon would be faulty for 1.5kB right now, but
it was 10 years ago (WebOS 8). With WebOS 10 one year later, they
increased the limit to 4.5kB. But seeing that people were already able
to send about 2kB of cookies 10 years ago when DSL was still rare, we
surely can imagine what they'll do today if the standard suggests that
everything in the path should be able to support at least 20kB.

Regards,
Willy

Received on Wednesday, 22 June 2011 07:04:10 UTC