Network Working Group C. Kerrison, Ed. Internet-Draft 1 April 2026 Intended status: Informational Expires: 3 October 2026 Representation of Intricate Communications draft-kerrison-representation-intricate-comms-00 Abstract Complex inter-party communication or relationship dynamics can be implied within the use of more structured protocols. This document proposes a compact binary representation for describing these dynamics in a non-protocol-binding manner that can be readily converted back to a readable format and provide additional context for implementers. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on 3 October 2026. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License. Kerrison Expires 3 October 2026 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Representation of Intricate Comms April 2026 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Relationship Representation and Bitstream Encoding . . . . . 2 3. Lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.1. Separator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.2. Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.3. Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.4. Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. Encoding and Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.1. Example Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. Extended Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Indirect Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1. Introduction The role of this document is to address complex inter-party communication or relationship dynamics in systems, where there may be compliance with a technical specification or protocol but where there are additional conventions or semantics which fall outside of the scope of application layer protocols. This document proposes a common lexicon and compact binary representation for describing these dynamics in a non-protocol- binding manner that can be readily converted back to a readable format and provide additional context for implementers. Distribution This memo is submitted for informational purposes within the IETF community. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. 2. Relationship Representation and Bitstream Encoding A series of high-level statements about the relationship maintained between the two parties will first be created using a limited lexicon. While this may reduce the apparent flexibility of the model, an example will be provided later to demonstrate the flexibility of this approach. Through a reversible mapping of this lexicon to known length bit patterns, a continuous high-density bitstream can be used to represent these complex relationships in a manner that reduces overhead. In all following examples, bit patterns should be read left to right. Kerrison Expires 3 October 2026 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Representation of Intricate Comms April 2026 3. Lexicon These terms allow a flexible representation of the relationship between parties, and were selected to allow encoding of complex relationships. The lexicon is divided into four categories: Separators, Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives. 3.1. Separator The separator token is encoded using the bit pattern 00. Separators may be used to terminate statements, provide structural boundaries, or introduce intentional pauses. When multiple separators appear consecutively, the first is interpreted as a statement boundary, while subsequent occurrences are treated as placeholders or extended pauses for emphasis. * 00 — Separator 3.2. Nouns Nouns are encoded using the bit prefix 01 followed by four additional bits that identify the specific semantic token. * 01 0000 — Transmitting Party * 01 0001 — Receiving Party * 01 0010 — Both Parties * 01 0011 — Internal State * 01 0100 — Connection/Communication * 01 0101 — Protocol Specification * 01 0110 — Malintent * 01 0111 — Sequence/History * 01 1000 — Application * 01 1001 — Operation * 01 1010 — Heuristic * 01 1011 — Reserved * 01 11xx — Illegal or malformed noun Kerrison Expires 3 October 2026 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Representation of Intricate Comms April 2026 3.3. Verbs Verbs are encoded using the bit prefix 10. These tokens describe actions, intentions, or operational semantics between the parties. * 10 0000 — Connect/Transmit * 10 0001 — Disconnect * 10 0010 — Propose/Consider * 10 0011 — Know/Comprehend/Agree * 10 0100 — Option/Choice * 10 0101 — Must * 10 0110 — Will Not * 10 0111 — Drop * 10 1000 — Iterate * 10 1001 — Ignore * 10 1010 — Intend * 10 1011 — Fabricate * 10 1100 — Damage/Impact * 10 1101 — Execute * 10 1110 — Also (Adverb) * 10 1111 — Receive 3.4. Adjectives Adjectives are encoded using the bit prefix 11. These tokens modify or qualify nouns or verbs within the relationship description. * 11 0000 — Established * 11 0001 — Complete * 11 0010 — Not Available Kerrison Expires 3 October 2026 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Representation of Intricate Comms April 2026 * 11 0011 — Other * 11 0100 — No Time * 11 0101 — Short Time * 11 0110 — Moderate Time * 11 0111 — Long Time * 11 1000 — Reluctant * 11 1001 — Unable * 11 1010 — Obscured * 11 1011 — Previous Object * 11 11xx — Illegal or malformed adjective 4. Encoding and Decoding Encoding is performed as an append operation, adding the bit pattern for the new token to the end of the stream. Decoding is performed by taking the preamble of each new token, a 2-bit pattern, to classify which portion of the lexicon is being used. The token is either handled as a separator or the next 4 bits are read to index into the lexicon subset. Overall only a pointer into the bytestream and a count of recently decoded separators are required state to cleanly decode a well-formed bitstream. 4.1. Example Statement The following shows a statement about the relationship between both parties encoded into a bitstream. Whitespace in the encoded form is for readability only and does not appear in the actual bitstream. Example (human-readable form): [Both Parties] [Must] [Know/Comprehend/Agree] [Protocol Specification] [Separator] Encoded bitstream: 01 0010 10 0101 10 0011 01 0101 00 Kerrison Expires 3 October 2026 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Representation of Intricate Comms April 2026 5. Extended Example Much longer descriptions of the dynamic between two nodes expected to communicate can be represented in hexadecimal form. The following example shows a complete encoded relationship description, with four additional separators appended to ensure byte alignment. 4a35d5118d5b90318d088466bfbcd010aa04c96d4630d11461344519cd11a2944d1146db0d1182134460aec444a3cf7114ec466804d28c4a3612b7b244609104c9918119a3d1181184d118119cd11a2944d1146db0d1182134460aec44d11461344519cd11a2944d1146db0d1182134460aec4408118408118434460d1180811840d1183446020461128f3dc453b119a0134a3128d84adec42a81325b518c3445184d1146734468a5134451b6c3446084d1182bb11 6. Conclusion The sample generated above demonstrates a description of communication dynamics first translated from plain English into lexicon tokens then into bitstream representation. The original representation consisted of 2106 bytes of Unicode text. In this compact representation, only 182 bytes were needed to represent the communication. Further, this improved even on the deflated size for the English/Unicode representation of 397 bytes. These results highlight the efficiency of the encoding model, particularly for verbose descriptions of inter-party dynamics. While the lexicon is intentionally limited, the examples illustrate that it is expressive enough to capture a wide range of relationship semantics. The reversible mapping to fixed-length bit patterns ensures that encoded streams remain compact, unambiguous, and straightforward to decode. This approach may be applicable to systems where communication patterns, expectations, or behavioral conventions must be conveyed alongside or outside of traditional protocol structures. 7. IANA Considerations This memo includes no request to IANA. 8. Security Considerations This document should not affect the security of the Internet. Indirect Contributors The author acknowledges the indirect influence of works created by M. Stock, M. Aitken, and P. Waterman, which informed aspects of the extended example. These individuals did not participate in the preparation or submission of this document. Author's Address Clinton Kerrison (editor) Kerrison Expires 3 October 2026 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Representation of Intricate Comms April 2026 Email: aussieklutz@gmail.com Kerrison Expires 3 October 2026 [Page 7]