ietf-nntp AUTHINFO SASL protocol choices

[Jeffrey M. Vinocur]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, Charles Lindsey wrote:

> In <Pine.LNX.4.33.0204021151010.24120-100000 at marduk.litech.org> "Jeffrey M. Vinocur" <jeff at litech.org> writes:
>
> >Yeah.  Any nontrivial length is guaranteed to be sufficient; if a response
> >needs more than will fit, the mechanism can specify a way to fragment the
> >response into appropriately sized pieces.  The only issue is picking a
> >size large enough to avoid most extra roundtrips, and they seem to think
> >64 K is necessary.  *shrug*
>
> No, I don't *shrug*. There is something seriously wrong with a system
> which requires you to pass 64K just to authenticate yourself, in order
> that you may then post a couple of articles amounting to maybe 2K.

But it doesn't require that much.  Take a look at the existing mechanisms.
It's quite possible that all of the existing mechanisms would have worked
just fine with a 512-character line length limit.  They're permitting the
potential for up to 64K, should somebody find a use for it eventually.
(We have to hope that they will properly vette any proposed mechanisms and
only standardize something using that much state if it really is useful.)


-- 
Jeffrey M. Vinocur
jeff at litech.org