Subject: Broken reference in RFC

From: "Jiwoong Lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:54:32 +0900

I think IETF's document track is well established, somewhat. 
At the same time, I see a lot of bugs in it.

Next is a small example. One RFC has got an "broken" reference. The 
RFC was created in March 1999. And the broken reference is still 
"Work in Progress."  

What's in progress ? Standard track or in someone's PC ?

References are not the part of the protocol in that document.
But the grouds of the protocol.

regards,
Jiwoong

 ---

Network Working Group                                         D. Johnson
Request for Comments: 2526                    Carnegie Mellon University
Category: Standards Track                                     S. Deering
                                                     Cisco Systems, Inc.
                                                              March 1999

                 Reserved IPv6 Subnet Anycast Addresses

   ...

   [5] Steve King et al, "The Case for IPv6", Work in Progress.

   ...

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:40:21 -0700

>RFC was created in March 1999. And the broken reference is still

The reference you refer to from RFC 2526 is not a normative 
reference. RFC 2526 reserves an IPv6 anycast address of 126 based on 
a "work in progress", but the title and stable reference for that 
work in progress is not needed for the reservation in this RFC.

This is not to say that there are no bugs in RFCs. In that same RFC, 
the references section lists a document ([5]) which is never referred 
to in the body of the document....

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

---

From: "Jiwoong Lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:38:37 +0900

Paul,

I agree with you on the fact that the broken link does not impair the
substance of the document text.

By the way, if you search the keyword "[5" instead of "[5]", you can find
out the broken reference is referred in the document.. once..

I sincerely thank you for your reply.

Jiwoong
KTF