IAB,
Please consider this input for the IAB discussion on Tony's appeal of the
site local decision. This should not be considered a separate appeal.
(Which I would think would have to start at the beginning with the working
group chairs.)
I do not have an opinion on the particulars of Tony's appeal since I was
not at the meeting in question and only followed the discussion on the
mailing list. Nor is this an opinion based on the technical question under
discussion. (Although I think some of the cures proposed to the site-local
disease are quite a bit worse than the disease itself.)
I would like to reiterate the concern I expressed on the mailing list back
in July - I think there may been a violation of the IETF consensus process
in this case.
It is my opinion that there is a difference between a working group
deciding to adopt a technology and a working group deciding to delete a
technology from an existing IETF specification. It is my opinion that the
second case should require a stronger demonstration of consensus to
change since the decision effects existing implementations, documentation,
text books etc.
But even without any need to show any extra level of consensus I did not
see that even a minimal level of rough consensus was demonstrated to remove
site local addresses.
The claim was made on the list that there was not consensus to keep site
local addresses, I think that is the wrong question to ask - the proposal
was to change a specification after its publication there should have been
a rough consensus to remove the feature.
I did not see rough consensus to do so based on my monitoring the list.
Scott
(this is the letter I sent back in July on the topic)
From sob Mon Jul 28 15:11:01 2003
To: Erik(_dot_)Nordmark(_at_)Sun(_dot_)COM
Subject: Re: state-of-art SLs
Cc: ipng(_at_)sunroof(_dot_)eng(_dot_)sun(_dot_)com
In-Reply-To:
<Roam(_dot_)SIMC(_dot_)2(_dot_)0(_dot_)6(_dot_)1059396655(_dot_)12753(_dot_)nordmark(_at_)bebop(_dot_)france>
The chairs have read all of the messages on the list, and based on your
considerable input, we have determined that the IPv6 WG does have rough
consensus to deprecate the usage of IPv6 site-local unicast addressing AND
to investigate alternative mechanisms for local addressing and local access
. control.
humm - it is not all that often that we have said that 2/3 is rough
consensus in the IETF - in my exterience if 1/3 is not in support
then I would not claim consensus (even 6 grit) - 3/4 would be very
rough indeed, 5/6 would be the mininum I would say was "rough consensus"
just when does "rough consensus" faid out in this model?
Scott