> Is this true? Can you interoperate with the Internet by just implementing the spec? I've never implemented the entire stack. Few people have. But from the pr

> Is this true? Can you interoperate with the Internet by just implementing the spec? I've never implemented the entire stack. Few people have. But from the protocols I've implemented, that's only a slight exaggeration. As soon as a popular implementation has a bug or decides not to behave according to spec, everyone has to adapt. You can typically use the spec to get 95% of the way to full interoperability.