Re: Transport I-D: KEXINIT reserved field needs description

[Markus Friedl <markus%openbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 03:44:42PM -0700, Nicolas Williams wrote:
> I think the fact that some implementations do not tolerate KEXINIT
> "extensions" should not precluse the proposed change.  Several
> implementations already map the peer's version string to compatibility
> notes and react accordingly.  While I hope that we can put stop adding
> to this database of compatibility notes I think that this particular
> issue (KEXINIT extensibility) is worth the trouble to fix.

I don't think it's a good idea to break the protocol at
this point.  This compatibility database is always a pain
and you always miss some implementations.

I think you could only assume that the peer is able to deal with
the extension if it sends a non-zero value in the reserved field,
but I doubt this helps for what you want.  On the other hand, you
could send the extension data in an extra packet if the reserved byte
is not zero.