Assigning Experimental and Testing Numbers Considered Useful
RFC 3692, “Assigning Experimental and Testing Numbers Considered Useful”, is a Best Current Practice document published in January 2004 by T. Narten. It updates RFC 2434. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
When experimenting with or extending protocols, it is often necessary to use some sort of protocol number or constant in order to actually test or experiment with the new function, even when testing in a closed environment. For example, to test a new DHCP option, one needs an option number to identify the new function. This document recommends that when writing IANA Considerations sections, authors should consider assigning a small range of numbers for experimentation purposes that implementers can use when testing protocol extensions or other new features. This document reserves some ranges of numbers for experimentation purposes in specific protocols where the need to support experimentation has been identified.
What “Best Current Practice” means
Documents the IETF community's recommended operational or procedural practice rather than a protocol specification.
The canonical text of RFC 3692 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
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