[noise] "have one joint and keep it oiled"

[Trevor Perrin]

On Wed, Dec 27, 2017 at 4:53 PM, David Wong <davidwong.crypto at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I thought this blog post by nick sullivan was really helpful to
> understand how some (most?) parts of a protocol should be designed to
> be flexible/extensible:
> https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-tls-1-3-isnt-in-browsers-yet/
>
> I think I can see from that why Trevor wants to use something
> flexible/extensible like protobuf in the payload parts of handshake
> patterns.

Handshake payloads are (often) encrypted, so making them extensible is
maybe less about middleboxes and more about not painting yourself into
a corner where you'd like to extend your protocol but can't.


> Is there more discussions on this? I've only found this:
> https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/noise/2017/001373.html

That post is probably the best recent sketch of a negotiaton language.
I still think the ideas in it are good but I'm less sure how to
structure these different documents and layers (should this be a
"NoiseLink" on top of NoiseSocket, or options defined in an appendix
to NoiseSocket, or something else?).

Trevor