Programmers with network engineering skills

Tue Mar 6 02:36:41 UTC 2012

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Justin M. Streiner
<streiner at cluebyfour.org> wrote:

> Admittedly we (the 'network guys') don't always make it easy for them. RFCs
> get obsoleted by newer RFCs, but the newer RFCs might still reference items
> from the original RFC, etc.  This can turn into developing for something

Yes, this is problematic.    The preferred result should be one specification
for each protocol,   with references only for optional extensions.

> Other common, but misguided assumptions (even in 2012):
> 1. You will be using IPv4.  We have no idea what this IPv6 nonsense is.
> Looks complicated and scary.
> 2. 255.255.255.0 is the only valid netmask.
> 3. You are using Internet Explorer, and our web management interface has
> ActiveX controls that require you to do so.
> 4. You will be assimilated.  Resistance is futile.

Add some additional misguided assumptions:

   (5)  Any IP address whose first octet is 192.  or  1.  is a private IP.
   (6)  Any IP address whose first octet is not 192.  is not a valid LAN IP.
   (7)  Any IP address whose last octet is .0  is an invalid IP host address
   (8)  Any IP address whose last octet is .255 is an invalid IP host address

   (9)  If my DNS service supports DNSSEC validation, even with no trust anchors
         configured,  it's cool to go ahead and send all queries with
the CD and DO bits
         set to 1
         and perform no validation;  it's even cooler if I only
support SHA1 keys and
         no RSA/SHA-256.

  (10)  Everyone enters their NTP,  and AD servers by IP address, so it
         is best to  have a textbox that only allows IPs,  not hostnames.

  (11)  Nobody actually uses SRV records, so don't bother looking for them.

  (12)  Once a DNS lookup has been performed, the IP never changes, so
it makes sense
         to keep this in memory  until we reboot.

  (13)  Nobody has more than 1 recursive DNS server,  1 NTP server, 1
LDAP server,
         1 Syslog server,  and  1 Snmp management station;
         so a single IP entry text box  for each will suffice.

  (14)  Nobody has more than 2 recursive DNS servers, so just allow
only 2 to be entered.

  (15) 30 seconds per resolver seems like a good timeout for DNS queries, so no
        need for a configurable timeout;  just  try each server
sequentially, make the
        UI hang, the user will be happy to wait 5 minutes;  also make
the service
        provided by the device temporarily stop --   users likes it
when their devices
        stop working, to remind them to get their first DNS server back up.

   (16)  The default gateway's IP address is always 192.168.0.1
   (17) The user portion of E-mail addresses never contain special
characters like  "-" "+"  "$"   "~"  "."  ",", "[",  "]"

> jms
--
-JH