Correct place for network development and theory questions?

Question

As far as I have understood correctly this SE site is NOT the correct site for the following two types of questions:

• Questions about network protocol theory

  Example: "How is a packet routed if the XYZ field in the IPv4 header is set to 123 which is a reserved value according to RFC 123456?"

• Questions about network development

  Example: "I'm working on a router firmware. How should my firmware react on IPv4 packets having the XYZ field set to 123?"

Note that both types of questions might also be related to home networking or OSI layer 5-7 protocols.

The sites linked in the site help seem not to be suitable:

• Stack Overflow

  On this site you may ask questions if you already know how your program (e.g. the router firmware) shall work and you don't know how to implement this.

  You cannot ask a question if you don't know the desired behavior of your program, yet.

• Super User

  This site seems to be focused on the "user view" of networks, not on network theory nor on network development.

• Electrical Engineering

  This site is focused on the hardware which is OSI layers 1 and possibly 2, but not OSI layers 3-7.

Is there any SE site (or SE sites) suitable for this type of questions?

Answer 1

Your first case may seem ok, but it's too broad and will be answered with too much opinion. How a specific device -- and to some extent, the specific firmware -- handles things would be much more concrete. But unless you have the source code, you'd still be flirting with opinion.

The second case either doesn't need to be asked -- specifications cover how to handle out-of-spec / reserved bits -- or is entirely opinion -- i.e. "implementation dependent" when not explicitly part of the spec.

Answer 2

Example: "How is a packet routed if the XYZ field in the IPv4 header is set to 123 which is a reserved value according to RFC 123456?"

Network Engineering is a place to ask questions about protocol theory, as long as the protocol is not above OSI layer 4. Your example question is asking about routing, which happens at OSI layer 3. The question would be off-topic if it asked about that for a consumer-grade router in a home network. "Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about professionally managed networks in a business environment."

Example: "I'm working on a router firmware. How should my firmware react on IPv4 packets having the XYZ field set to 123?"

This question may, or may not, be on-topic here, depending on the context. If you are asking about the protocol theory, it could easily be on-topic, but if you are asking about the programming aspect, it would be off-topic. If you are asking about the hardware itself, the manufacturer must offer optional, paid support for a device to be on-topic here.

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Each SE site has a Help Center with a What topics can I ask about here? page to explain what the community for that site has decided. Our community has no say in what is on- or off-topic on other SE sites. If you want to discover a more appropriate site, you could always ask on StackExchange Meta.

If you do not find an SE site appropriate for your subject, you could always petition SE to start one on the Area 51 SE site.

Answer 3

Both of those questions are definitely "network engineering" questions, as are a huge percentage of all the questions closed here for being off topic. The underlying problem is someone decided to call this SE site "Network Engineering" and not "Professional Networking" or something else that actually represented the limited usefulness of what was discussed here.