3.3. Overriding Registration Procedures

3.3. Overriding Registration Procedures

Experience has shown that the documented IANA considerations for individual protocols do not always adequately cover the reality of registry operation or are not sufficiently clear. In addition, documented IANA considerations are sometimes found to be too stringent to allow even working group documents (for which there is strong consensus) to perform a registration in advance of actual RFC publication.

In order to allow assignments in such cases, the IESG is granted authority to override registration procedures and approve assignments on a case-by-case basis.

The intention here is not to overrule properly documented procedures or to obviate the need for protocols to properly document their IANA considerations. Rather, it is to permit assignments in specific cases where it is obvious that the assignment should just be made, but updating the IANA process beforehand is too onerous.

When the IESG is required to take action as described above, it is a strong indicator that the applicable registration procedures should be updated, possibly in parallel with the work that instigated it.

IANA always has the discretion to ask the IESG for advice or intervention when they feel it is needed, such as in cases where policies or procedures are unclear to them, where they encounter issues or questions they are unable to resolve, or where registration requests or patterns of requests appear to be unusual or abusive.