Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-6man-rfc2460bis-08.txt> (Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification) to Internet Standard

[Fernando Gont <[e-mail]>]

On 02/09/2017 07:36 AM, [e-mail] wrote:
> Fernando,
> 
> Pete asked me to summarize the objections to option 1 - banning header insertion explicitly.
> I responded with the set of objections I've heard for all options, as I couldn't see a straightforward way of only summarising for option 1.
> 
> I don't understand your message.
> Do you disagree with the summary itself? Are there arguments missing?
> Or is your grief that the I have distilled the arguments wrongly or put them in a bad light?
> 
> Or are you just rehashing your position on the issue?

I think that some points are not as clear as they should be:

1) The current state of affairs with respect to IPv6 EH insertion is
that insertion is forbidden. It has always been clear to everyone.

2) However, some folks came up with proposals to insert EH, on the basis
that "RFC2460 does not explicitly ban EH insertion". If there's people
arguing that, we clearly need to make this clear in the spec.

3) There was a consensus call, yes. When the call was made on the
mailing-list, the vast majority of supporters of "let's keep the
ambiguity" were folks from the same company as "2)". I have no idea if
this changes (or not) "consensus"... but this is clearly an important
datapoint.

4) Given "1)" and "2)" above, it should be evident that the spec needs
to be crystal-clear on this topic.

5) Arguing in favor of keeping ambiguity in a spec that has generated
600+ messages in the very group that standardizes the protocol pretty
much reads like "Let's publish a lousy spec!". And I think that would be
very bad. We're talking about something that is at the core of the
protocol, essentially "Is IPv6 an end-to-end protocol?". I would expect
rfc2460bis to answer such a very basic question, and I'm curious how we
could move a spec to (full) Standard without answering such a basic
question.


There's no grief at all. If anything, just a concern that some of these
items might not be clear enough, and, in particular that without the
datapoint in "3)", folks might get a misleading interpretation of the
discussions that happened in th wg. "3" could be read pretty much like
"all folks from the same company that has a proposal to insert EHs what
insertion of EHs to be allowed".

Thanks,
-- 
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
e-mail: [e-mail]
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