Stephen McQuistin, Mladen Karan, Prashant Khare, Colin Perkins, Matthew Purver, Patrick Healey, Ignacio Castro, and Gareth Tyson
Proceedings of the IFIP Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference,
June 2023.
DOI:10.23919/TMA58422.2023.10198980
Protocol standards, such as RFCs developed by the IETF, are crucial for
the correct operation of the Internet, but many are published
containing errors. The RFC Editor allows people to report errata,
allowing anybody to flag such errors for subsequent correction. This
represents an important part of the RFC publication process, and may
reveal ways in which standards can be improved. This paper performs the
first study of RFC errata reports. We characterize and perform a
statistical analysis of the scale and nature of these errata and
explore who submits them. Finally, we evaluate the impact, in terms of
the number of errata filings, of three different strategies that are
designed to improve the standards process. We find that specialist
review teams and formal language checkers can reduce the volume of
errata filed against standards documents.
Download: mcquistin2023errare.pdf