RFC 2410: NULL is not a joke (nor an April Fools joke)

Sat Mar 31 14:34:17 UTC 2012

In 2007 when Peter H. Salus and I published all the April Fools RFCs
in one book we also included the poetry RFCs and the funny RFCs
published outside of April Fools timeframe.

Speaking of which... we included "RFC 2410: The NULL Encryption
Algorithm and Its Use With IPsec" because, well, I thought it was
funny.  Specifying an encryption scheme for IPsec that does not
encrypt the bytes is, well, funny.  It turns out it wasn't published
as a joke.  Oops.  No offense meant to the authors R. Glenn and S.
Kent.

Nobody pointed this out to me until years after the book was printed.
Sadly because this book is printed on dead trees we can't "take it
back".

We don't have a new edition that includes the 2008-2013 RFCs but those
are pretty easy to find online.  The book does include some commentary
that isn't available on-line including forewords by Mike O'Dell, Scott
Bradner, and Brad Templeton.  I re-read them today and was impressed
at how they have stood the test of time.

More about the book here:
     http://rfchumor.com/
Order it on Amazon here:
     http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1573980420/tomontime-20

Tom Limoncelli

-- 
http://EverythingSysadmin.com  -- my blog
http://www.TomOnTime.com -- my videos