Re: [dhcwg] I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-dhc-timezone-option-02.txt

John,

Thanks for your contributions to this discussion.
> Unfortunately, it still contains the following unnecessary text, which
> conflicts with existing practice and section 4 of
> draft-ietf-dhc-dhcpv6-rfc868-servers-00.txt, which was the subject of
> a WG last call from June 6 to June 20.  It does no harm to continue
> the existing practice, although operational use of the existing offset
> option could be improved by providing options for when to change the
> offset and to what to change it.  What is the benefit of deprecating
> what is in use?
My sense is that you are correct that there is not yet consensus for the
existing text.  Perhaps now is a good time to try and come to consensus,
and I would ask the chairs for their assistance.

I have two concerns:

    * First, the existing mechanism is broken and cannot handle DST
      transitions nor can it easily integrate with such general purpose
      platforms as Microsoft Windows, UNIX, and some Java stacks.  This
      is the reason Paul and I wrote the draft in the first place. 
    * Second, once one arrives at the first conclusion as a matter of
      best practice - and I do believe there is consensus on that point,
      if one has developed a better alternative, that is the alternative
      that should be recommended, and not a menu of approaches.  A menu
      has the nasty habit of only working sometimes in the best of
      circumstances, and having bad interactions in the worst.  I am of
      course well aware that there will be a long slow transition in
      some cases from the existing option.

And so I believe deprecation of the time offset option is appropriate. 
Shane has graciously offered some alternative wording to make the text a
bit less confusing.  I am happy to see further improvements if you
believe we could better convey the above points.

Eliot

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