[Int-area] Probably ignorant question about <http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-briscoe-intarea-ipv4-id-reuse-00.txt>

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

I was going to ask a question about
draft-briscoe-intarea-ipv4-id-reuse-00.txt in the meeting today, but
we didn't have time.  This is probably a know-nothing question, so
feel free to point and laugh.

Over in DNS-land, we twist ourselves into funny shapes not to change
things because we always feel that we simply don't know what people
might be doing with things that were once legal.  There are plenty of
things we'd like to get rid of, and things we'd like to require, but
in all cases we can't because we don't know what people have relied
on.  Effectively, in the DNS, once something is defined we have to
live with it more or less forever, no matter how much better we know
we could make it.

As someone said in the meeting, the bit being proposed to reuse is in
fact set now.  So how do you know that changing the rules about that
bit won't break anything?  (This is not a rhetorical question.  This
topic isn't really my comfy place in the stack, and I don't know.)  I
guess this is partly addressed in section 6, but that's just facing
the middlebox case, I think.
          
Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]