--On Friday, May 31, 2013 17:23 -0700 Randy Bush <randy(_at_)psg(_dot_)com>
wrote:
< rant >
the sad fact is that the ietf culture is often not very good at
listening to the (ops) customer. look at the cf we have made
out of ipv6. the end user, and the op, want the absolute
minimal change and cost, let me get an ipv6 allocation from
the integer rental monopoly, flip a switch or two, and get 96
more bits no magic. 15 years later, dhcp is still a cf, i
have to run a second server (why the hell does isc not merge
them?), i can not use it for finding my gateway or vrrp exit,
... at least we got rid of the tla/nla classful insanity. but
u/g? puhleeze.
Randy,
I suggest that characterizing that set of issues as IETF versus
Ops is probably not completely right either. For example, with
IPv6, the IETF has proposed multiple transition solutions with
no roadmap as to which one to apply under what circumstances and
growing evidence that some of those solutions are unworkable in
practice and others are incompatible with what are claimed to be
fundamental and important features of the Internet. It doesn't
take a skilled operations person to understand that is a
problem; someone with a pointy head and barely enough clue to
figure out what a "bit" is much less how many of them are in
various addresses can derive a "don't be the first person on the
block" or "don't migrate if you can figure out an alternative"
lesson from that.
Similarly, various applications folks within the IETF have
pointed out repeatedly that any approach that assigns multiple
addresses, associated with different networks and different
policies and properties, either requires the applications to
understand those policies, properties, and associated routing
(and blows up all of the historical application-layer APIs in
the process) or requires request/response negotiation that TCP
doesn't allow for (and blows up most of the historical
application-layer APIs). One of the original promises about
IPv6 was no need for changes to TCP and consequent transparency
to most applications. Ha!
I have never been convinced that "longer addresses and nothing
else" was the only viable solution for IPng, but I don't think
it requires an advanced degree in economics to understand that,
if the incentives to do something don't exceed the costs and
risks of doing it, one shouldn't expect a lot of rational folks
to charge off and do it. A complex system with high deployment
costs and risks and a dubious set of advantages is not a story
that is going to sell itself. And, again, it doesn't require a
sophisticated operator to figure that out.
None of this takes away from your rant (or Warren's). But I
suggest that, on several of the dimensions you identify, the
operators are not being singled out for abusive treatment
because we don't listen to each other or elementary
decision-making or economic realities either... at least where
broad issues, rather than fine-tuning of a spec are concerned.
john