Re: Last Call: draft-atlas-icmp-unnumbered (Extending ICMP for Interface and Next-hop Identification) to Proposed Standard

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

Noel,

> There was a presentation at the _2nd_ IETF (in Aberdeen, Maryland)
> to add similar functionality (although in a less comprehensive form) to ICMP.
> The development of 'traceroute' removed the immediate pressure, and so it
> never happened. Oh well, better late than never... :-)
>   

This is an interesting piece of historic information! I didn't know 
about it.

(And this puts into a curious light the fact that we had to redo part of 
the last call process for this draft because an IPR declaration showed 
up :-)

I guess extensions like this were in the cards from the beginning, but 
the real issue was whether people needed them badly enough to implement 
or standardize something. Personally, I could use the information when I 
debug networks. By the way, even this draft and its key component, the 
ICMP extensibility mechanism, have a long IETF history. This particular 
draft dates back to 2006, RFC 4884 dates back to 2005, and the original 
reason for the extensibility, RFC 4950, dates back to February 1999... 
and we're still trying to complete the work before everyone involved has 
retired ;-)

IETF 2 - IETF 76 though must a record of sorts. Were you perhaps working 
on something in IETF 1 that we still haven't succeeded in completing?

Jari