On Jun 24, 2011, at 09:08 , John C Klensin wrote:
What I saw was what appeared to me to be some fairly strong
arguments for looking at the problem in a different way -- a way
that I've seen no evidence the WG considered at all. That
would be to explore alternatives to the rather blunt instrument
of making a protocol specification historic: explaining what
needs to be done to get it right (your document does a lot of
that) and then figuring out ways to warn against the uses and
configurations that we all (or mostly) agree are bad news.
That's not how it appeared to me when I was participating the WG discussions
and WG last call. What I remember was that we had two drafts, the first,
6to4-advisory, aimed to do exactly what Mr. Klensin describes, and the second,
6to4-to-history, aimed at giving operators an excuse not to read the advisory,
because hey-- 6to4 is history now. The working group considered the option of
publishing one and not the other. That evaluation seemed to me to come to an
end when the author of 6to4-advisory came out in support of publishing both
documents.
In the WG discussions leading to the adoption of both drafts as work items, I
supported 6to4-advisory and strenuously argued against taking up
6to4-to-historic. When it became clear that I was on the losing side of that
argument, and that WG consensus for publishing *both* would be achieved during
LC, I analyzed my own reasons for opposing the 6to4-to-historic draft and
concluded that I didn't really care that much if 6to4-to-historic were
published, because the draft is clearly written to specify something other than
what its authors and most of the WG were intending.
The WG consensus is to throw 6to4 into the historic trash bin. The draft,
however, doesn't do that. It just tells the IETF to stop worrying and learn to
love the bomb, while all the vendors of 6to4-capable equipment keep on keeping
on with exactly what they're doing today. I could live with that, and I said
so. Nobody seemed to care about it, but the observation *was* on the table.
I see that some of those in the opposition to 6to4-to-historic do not agree
with me that the draft is utterly harmless and will be roundly ignored by
industry. To the extent that I can see how 6to4-to-historic may divert its
intended audience from reading the much more important 6to4-advisory draft, I
sympathize, but I don't see that argument moving too many minds. I had kinda
hoped that IESG would put a stop to this nonsense and kick the draft back to
the WG with instructions to develop a phase-out plan for 6to4. Alas, that
didn't happen. Oh well.
I do, however, wonder if we can finally remove 2002::/16 from the default
policy table in the next revision of RFC 3484 on the grounds that 6to4 is
Historic now, just like 3ffe::/16 is... that would be *excellent*.
--
james woodyatt <jhw(_at_)apple(_dot_)com>
member of technical staff, core os networking
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