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Please feel free to send feedback on your favorite RFC to funnybook at rfc-humor dot com
Many wrote in to tell us that this RFC wasn't a joke. Congrats for spotting our Easter Egg!
Paul Hoffman pointed out:This isn't an April Fools RFC. It's a very useful protocol that allows ESP to be used for providing authentication and integrity.
I'd like to note, flattered though I am to be included, that the version that made it through the RFC Editorial process was not actually the canonical version: they saw fit not to *move*... but to *duplicate* the paragraph about distribution in the lede... which I've always thought made me look a bit daft.
It would have been nice had Peter and Tom mentioned they were *doing* a book ... but what can you do. :-}
The canonical version, modulo centering not in the original, is at http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/97/May/hostnames.html, and thanks to Brad for posting it.
Are we certain that this is intended as humor?
The encoding method specified is theoretically practical. As far as I can tell, the ONLY drawback to this scheme is mentioned in the very last section before the references: the encoded address tends to look like gibberish. (One ramification not mentioned is that if you sit on a keyboard, and happen to enter exactly 20 characters this way, chances are excellent that the result would be a legal (but hopefully unused) IPv6 address.
Whether we would WANT to use this scheme is another issue... but it seems to me that we _could_.