Borman discussed the specific technical problems with the extensions, and discovered that both the CRAY implementation and the LBL implementation of this protocol interpret the documents differently. Borman feels that the protocol needs a bit more engineering, but is essentially functional as demonstrated by the error free interoperation between the two independent implementations. A question was raised about the proposed standard status. There was the notion that a proposed standard needs a credible specification, but does not need to be perfect. Changes are expected as experience with implementation and testing is gained prior to draft standard.
Several things are unclear.
Braden is one of the authors of the documents, as is Van Jacobsen. It is unknown whether Jacobsen in fact desires to delay the standardization of these protocol extensions. If both authors wish to withdraw the specification from consideration, the IESG agreed that is should not push the specification forward. There are now two other proposals for extending the TCP sequence space, one of which is under discussion in the End to End Research group. A new proposal from UCL has been circulated privately.