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Re: IANA Action: Assignment of an IPV6 Hop-by-hop Option

2005-06-24 10:08:53
  | The IESG declines Dr. Roberts's request for a hop-by-hop option for
  | QOS purposes.

I have no idea whether the option is actually any good or not, nor whether
it should be approved, so don't consider this a message in support of
the option.

However, the IESG's stated reasons for declining to register the option
are utter nonsense, and cannot be allowed to remain as a precedent for
the way the IETF and IESG does business.

Let me add my perspective, even though I wasn't involved in the IESG
decision at all.

RFC 2780 says:

5.5 IPv6 Hop-by-Hop and Destination Option Fields

   Values for the IPv6 Hop-by-Hop Options and Destination Options fields
   are allocated using an IESG Approval, IETF Consensus or Standards
   Action processes.

(where those terms are defined in RFC2434.)

The clear intention of the above is that assignments for HBH code
points be conditioned on IETF review (and approval). That is, a
document that gets published as an Internet Draft, gets reviewed, and
then pops out as an RFC.

The "IESG Approval" case is a bit of an escape clause, allowing for
unusual/exceptional situations where getting an RFC published isn't
appropriate or would take too long. So I view that not as a "normal"
way of getting a code point, but one where there are "extenuating
circumstances". The clear intention is the way to get a HBH code point
is to publish an Internet Draft and bring it to the IETF for proper
review.

That was never done for this document. AFAIK, this document has never
been discussed in the IPv6 WG, for instance.  (Indeed, there is no
draft for it, AFAIK.)

The right thing to do is to have this document reviewed proper in the
IETF and then let the IETF decide what it wants to do with it.

IMO, it would have been completely inappropriate for the IESG to have
approved this code point assignment. Indeed, had they done so, I am
certain that a large number of folk would have immediately screamed
that the IESG had no right to do so (i.e., had exceed its authority,
etc.), and that it should have consulted with the IETF instead.

Thomas

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