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Re: Port numbers and IPv6 (was: I-D

2005-07-15 10:31:51
David,

I was looking more for an explanation of how and why it was decided to
be out of scope.

The arguments for considering it to be in scope would have been:

 - the TCP and UDP "pseudo-headers" needed to be changed anyway to
   accomodate IPv6 addresses (see section 8.1 of RFC 2460);

 - the pressure on well-known port numbers was obvious at the time;

 - supporting 32-bit port numbers in IPv6 stacks could have been done
   at very little incremental cost;

 - a larger port space would have been an additional incentive to
   adopt IPv6;

 - more ambitious changes to TCP would have a low probability of
   adoption within a relevant timeframe;

 - it makes sense for the port number space to be the same size for
   UDP-over-IPv6 and TCP-over-IPv6.

It was for the pragmatic reason of not wanting to redesign IP and TCP at the same time. This would have made the overall IPng effort much harder. At the time, there wasn't a pressing need to redesign TCP. I don't remember any detailed technical analysis.

Bob



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