IPv7 Selection Criteria

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Ref:  Your note of Wed, 23 Dec 92 10:06:37 -0500


In his message to Dave Crocker Noel said:

	"You and I have clearly have a different model for what is likely
	to happen with this thing."

I think it would be helpful to poll the community for what kind of
model is expected. Does the IETF community believe it needs to vote
on this topic ? This is actually a break from tradition, as Noel pointed
out. In effect, the Internet has *always* been market driven.

Further down, Noel said:

	"People who back scheme X, and truly believe in their hearts is it the
	right thing, simply aren't going to go away because an IETF vote
	went to something else."

If that is the case, then one may ask about the purpose of the IETF
vote. It have been suggested before, that the decision on such an
important issue as IPv7 should not be made by an IETF vote, but
should rather be left to the marketplace. There will be enough
reasons in the end for the marketplace to converge on a single solution.

Further down,

	"The challenge, as always, is to minimize the bad feeling between
	the design teams, and confusion to the outside world...."

May be one way to accomplish this is to say that the IETF *is not*
going to vote on IPv7, but would rather leave this to the marketplace.
Instead, the IETF would just provide an environment where different
proposals for IPv7 would be developed, tested and reviewed. The role
of the IETF should also be the place where the "rough edges" of many
of the proposals could be worked off. It is unfortunate that presently
we have a split into design teams. This split may actually be the root
of the problem. It is not clear that this work could not have been done
colloboratively instead of competition.

Note that there is still a strong role for the criteria. They
should reflect the needs of the users of "open systems and networking".
People working on proposals should use these to guide their work.

Yakov.