Re: draft-ietf-v6ops-6to4-to-historic (yet again)

[james woodyatt <[e-mail]>]

On Jul 25, 2011, at 10:30 AM, Ronald Bonica wrote:
> 
> Please post your views on this course of action by August 8, 2011.

I remain convinced that this document is unnecessary and publishing it would be silly, at best, and at worst, the simultaneous publication of 6to4-to-historic alongside 6to4-advisory, which implicitly contradict one another-- the latter says that 6to4 has an indefinite future and here's how to keep everything operational in its presence on the Internet; the former says 6to4 has no future, and it should not be used by anyone for any purpose-- may turn out to be an embarrassment for IETF.  IESG should feel very nervous about claiming there is consensus to publish this draft.  It does not appear to me like there is a rough consensus for it.

That said, I won't complain too loudly if this draft is published.  It would give me cover to ask my employers for 6to4 capability to be removed from forthcoming products that I mainly work to support.  I don't like taking features away from users when there isn't a suitable upgrade path for them, but the truth is that fielding problems from the field resulting from 6to4 failure can be pretty tiresome, and I would welcome the cover from IETF to be able to say, "Oh, you're still using 6to4?  You should turn that off.  It's deprecated by IETF now, and accordingly, we no longer support it.  Get native IPv6 service."

In other words, whether IESG means to convey this message or not, publishing 6to4-to-historic alongside the existing 6to4-advisory-- without any clear phase-out plan-- will pretty clearly imply to people like me that the official phase-out plan is to remove 6to4 from the Internet, starting as soon as vendors and operators are independently able to do so.  "Start the engines of destruction."


--
james woodyatt <[e-mail]>
member of technical staff, core os networking