Further Key Words for Use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels
RFC 6919, “Further Key Words for Use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels”, is an Experimental document published in April 2013 by R. Barnes, S. Kent, E. Rescorla. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
RFC 2119 defines a standard set of key words for describing requirements of a specification. Many IETF documents have found that these words cannot accurately capture the nuanced requirements of their specification. This document defines additional key words that can be used to address alternative requirements scenarios. Authors who follow these guidelines should incorporate this phrase near the beginning of their document:
The key words "MUST (BUT WE KNOW YOU WON\'T)", "SHOULD CONSIDER", "REALLY SHOULD NOT", "OUGHT TO", "WOULD PROBABLY", "MAY WISH TO", "COULD", "POSSIBLE", and "MIGHT" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 6919.
What “Experimental” means
Describes a specification that is part of a research or development effort, published so the community can gain experience with it.
The canonical text of RFC 6919 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
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- RFC 6920 Naming Things with Hashes
- RFC 6917 Media Resource Brokering
- RFC 6921 Design Considerations for Faster-Than-Light Communication
- RFC 6916 Algorithm Agility Procedure for the Resource Public Key Infrastructure
- RFC 6922 The application/sql Media Type
- RFC 6915 Flow Identity Extension for HTTP-Enabled Location Delivery
- RFC 6923 MPLS Transport Profile Identifiers Following ITU-T Conventions