On Jun 9, 2011, at 9:25 PM, Randy Presuhn wrote:
Your argument seems to be that the peculiar operational characteristics of
6to4
should give it additional immunity to being declared historic. I don't find
that
argument persuasive.
That's not my argument. My argument is that declaring 6to4 Historic is
inconsistent with the way we've used Historic in the past - namely to label
something that either 'hardly anybody uses anymore' or something that should be
abandoned because a better alternative is now generally available.
The history of multiple protocols that have been
declared "historic" shows that vendors seem to care about that designation
only when it is convenient for them to do so. Installed base, customer
demand, operational considerations and so on all trump whatever the IETF
might say about a "historic" protocol. This works both ways: folks might
decide to kill something before it becomes historic, or support it long after.
We can't compel people to continue supporting it any more than we can
make them stop. At most, we can give them (hopefully convincing) reasons
to change. If the SNMP experience shows anything, it shows that even
that isn't enough. For that reason, I find it amusing when others write of
"killing" 6to4. We don't have that kind of power.
Declaring 6to4 Historic certainly won't prevent people from implementing it.
But the proposed action is clearly intended to discourage implementation of
6to4. It says so explicitly. Of course some vendors will ignore it, but some
vendors will probably not ignore it.
Keith
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