Hi Matt,
This is so typical of the modern IETF -- 102 people were persuaded
by handwaving arguments that "something bad might happen" if a new
and useful technique were deployed, and they are being allowed to
overwhelm the 20 who were willing to dig in and find and solve any
real problems.
I do not believe that your characterization is fair in this
case. The discussion was thoughtful and informative, and we did
have several experts from different IETF areas involved, including
application developers, operators, routing experts, DNS experts,
etc. I do not believe that group consensus was unduly influenced
by "handwaving arguments".
You didn't attend the meeting, and the minutes have not been
published yet. You are typically a very reasonable person, and I
am surprised at your willingness to characterize this meeting
so negatively, without any good source of information regarding what
actually happened...
How many of your 22 speakers had implementation and deployment
experience to report?
The discussion of the appropriate usage of site-local addressing
in IPv6 has been taking place for several years. There have been
numerous discussions in many forums, including multiple WG meetings
and several lengthy discussions (encompassing 1000's of messages) on
the IPv6 mailing list. At least three internet-drafts have been
published on this subject, including our current scoped addressing
architecture, a draft that attempts to summarize the benefits and
issues associated with site-locals, and two proposals to limit
site-local addressing to specific usage cases.
Considerably more than 22 people have expressed an opinion on this
subject in the last 8 months alone, and these people have included
many people with real implementation and deployment experience,
as well as a vast array of experts in different technology areas.
No active IPv6 WG participant (whether or not he attends IETF
meetings) could credibly claim that he was unaware that this
discussion was taking place, or that he has been denied an
opportunity to voice his opinion on this subject (in-person, on
the mailing list, or both). In fact, given the size and scope of
this discussion, there are probably very few IETF participants who
managed to miss the fact that this discussion has been taking place.
If you would like to express your technical opinion on the site-local
issue, I would suggest that you take it to the IPv6 WG mailing list.
I would be happy to continue a technical discussion with you on that
list.
We will be publishing the minutes to the IPv6 meeting soon and
checking all of the consensus points reached during our meetings
on the IPv6 list shortly. Your input is definitely welcome.
Margaret