Re: Ancient history (was Accurate history was [Re: "professional" in an IETF context])

[Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>]

On 03.11.21 09:14, Masataka Ohta wrote:
> Scott O. Bradner wrote:
>
>> see https://www.sobco.com/ipng/big_ten/big_ten_packet_format.txt > 
>> for one of the final proposals
>
> It says:
>
>    This document attempts to borrow the best from all of the existing
>    IPng proposals (CATNIP, SIPP, TUBA).
>
> which is, as all the real engineers know, the surest way to
> lose, though politicians think it the best compromise.
>
> It should also be noted that SIPP is already a union
> of SIP and PIP, though Paul Francis, who proposed PIP,
> was, in the face of SIPP, saying "PIP is dead".
>
> So, SIPP was developed highly politically, though its
> address is still 64bit long.
>
While *perhaps* SIPP shared some principles with Pip I don't think that 
either the addressing or routing architecture was one of them.  My 
recollection was that the 128 bit address came to be because of concerns 
that we'd end up having to do All Of This *again* if there were a 
shortage.  Nobody wanted that, and so we ended up with 128 bits.  That 
wasn't the only reason: the idea of doing away with ARP and permitting 
some amount of auto-configuration based on the MAC address had its 
appeal.  You can say that IPv6 was the result of committee thinking, and 
I would probably agree, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be.  
After all, politics begin in a room with more than one person.

You can *somewhat* follow the development of Pip in particular at the 
24th through 27th IETF meetings.  I say, “somewhat” because even by the 
24th IETF, Paul had evolved his ideas (the sign of a good engineer).  I 
just can't find good earlier references.

Eliot