RFC 6938

Deprecation of BGP Path Attributes: DPA, ADVERTISER, and RCID_PATH / CLUSTER_ID 💖

okay bestie, RFC 6938 is short but lowkey iconic 🦋 here's the title block tea first:

• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 🌸
• RFC 6938, Standards Track, May 2013
• Author: John Scudder, Juniper Networks
• ISSN: 2070-1721
• Obsoletes / Updates: the title block doesn't list either one, so this RFC doesn't obsolete or update anything 🙈

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Abstract ✨

okay so this doc asks IANA to deprecate three BGP path attributes: DPA, ADVERTISER, and RCID_PATH / CLUSTER_ID 💅 they're tied to an abandoned Internet-Draft and a Historic RFC, so they're basically retired 🪦

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Status of This Memo 📜

this is an Internet Standards Track document, which means it's a product of the IETF and reflects the consensus of the IETF community 🫶 it got public review and was approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).

for more on Internet Standards, check out Section 2 of RFC 5741 🌈

for the current status, any errata, and how to give feedback, head to http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6938 🎀

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Copyright Notice 🔥

Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

this document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication. please review those docs carefully, because they describe your rights and restrictions for this document 👑 code components pulled out of this doc must include Simplified BSD License text, as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License 💀

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1. Introduction 🧚

so as of writing, the BGP Path Attributes registry (run by IANA) has entries for DPA, ADVERTISER, and RCID_PATH / CLUSTER_ID 🍓 the first one is tied to [BGPDPA], an Internet-Draft that got abandoned in 1996. the latter ones are tied to [RFC1863], which [RFC4223] reclassified as Historic in 2005. neither spec is in use right now, and honestly neither one ever was 😭

quick aside: the deprecated CLUSTER_ID is totally different from CLUSTER_LIST [RFC4456]. CLUSTER_LIST is not being deprecated, so don't mix them up bestie 🙅‍♀️

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2. IANA Considerations 🦋

per this document, IANA has marked the BGP Path Attributes registry entries for DPA (Value 11), ADVERTISER (Value 12), and RCID_PATH / CLUSTER_ID (Value 13) as "deprecated" 💜

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3. Security Considerations 🔒

there are no meaningful security consequences arising from this registry update ✨ (it's just a label change, so no drama here 🙏)

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4. Informative References 📚

[BGPDPA]   Chen, E. and T. Bates, "Destination Preference Attribute
           for BGP", Work in Progress, March 1996.

[RFC1863]  Haskin, D., "A BGP/IDRP Route Server alternative to a full
           mesh routing", RFC 1863, October 1995.

[RFC4223]  Savola, P., "Reclassification of RFC 1863 to Historic",
           RFC 4223, October 2005.

[RFC4456]  Bates, T., Chen, E., and R. Chandra, "BGP Route
           Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
           (IBGP)", RFC 4456, April 2006.

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Author's Address 🎀

John Scudder
Juniper Networks
1194 N. Mathilda Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA  94089
USA

EMail: jgs@juniper.net