Re: Last Call: <draft-housley-rfc2050bis-01.txt> (The Internet Numbers Registry System) to Informational RFC

[SM <[e-mail]>]

At 13:45 12-05-2013, Tom Vest wrote:
>I certainly did not intend to misrepresent your position. But given 
>the fact that the
>  "part of a message" that you reproduced was offered in response to 
> doubts that you yourself raised about the points covered therein 
> (esp. "operational need"), what is your position, exactly? As David 
> said, "to date" the communities have established policies that are 
> broadly informed by the practical implications of the finitude and 
> uniqueness constraints on address resource management. However, to 
> conclude based on past observations that such will always be true 
> would be tantamount to claiming that management of those 
> constraints is assured by the operation of (unspecified 
> self-executing, self-sustaining) principles. Based on your views as 
> expressed in/around draft-moonesamy-rfc2050-historic-00, it's 
> pretty clear that you don't see any durable, much less "timeless" 
> principles embodied therein -- but that only makes your position on 
> these matters all the more ambiguous.

I prefer to keep draft-housley-rfc2050bis-01 separate from other 
drafts to keep matters simple.  My position is that it is better to 
work towards consensus.

>Perhaps it would help if you would answer the following clarifying questions:
>
>1. Is it your position that some other force or principle(s) outside 
>of the general mechanisms/practices documented in RFC2050 (and 
>potentially, RFC2050-bis) guarantees that IETF-defined addressing 
>protocols will "just work" as designed, in perpetuity, and thus the 
>informational codification of matters related to the management of 
>finitude and uniqueness constraints is at best unnecessary, at worst 
>counterproductive? If so, what are those unnamed forces/principles, exactly?
>
>2. Is it your position that, if the traditional "communities 
>interested in IP addressing" one day elect to adopt policies that 
>make it impossible for IETF addressing protocols to fulfill even the 
>basic "just work" test, then from the "IETF view"  that should be 
>regarded as a perfectly appropriate and acceptable outcome?

I don't have an opinion about questions (1) or (2).

>Could you please clarify which passages about Internet address 
>architecture you are suggesting are sufficient to make the sections 
>about distribution and uniqueness constraints unnecessary?

The comment was in a reply to a comment from another person.  There 
wasn't any mention of "distribution and uniqueness constraints" in 
the quoted text.

Regards,
-sm