Re: Reopening RFC6874?

[Bob Hinden <[e-mail]>]

Brian,

> On Jun 16, 2021, at 4:58 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It is probably necessary to re-open RFC6874 "Representing IPv6 Zone Identifiers in Address Literals and Uniform Resource Identifiers."
> 
> Here's the problem. Web browsers do not correctly support Link Local literal addresses, because they cannot parse the zone identifier (aka the interface identifier).
> 
> There are of course no "average user" use cases for this, but there are several technical use cases. Rather than trying to summarise them, I refer you to the Firefox bug thread about this, which has been open for 10 years:
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=700999
> Officially it's status is WONTFIX, but every year or two discussion restarts.
> 
> There's also an issue at WHATWG: https://github.com/whatwg/url/issues/392
> 
> My conclusion from the latest round of discussion of those two threads is that if we don't update RFC6874, nothing will change. So I propose that we do update RFC6874. As far as I can tell, the main issue is as follows:
> 
> The security considerations say:
> 
>>   An HTTP client, proxy, or other intermediary MUST remove any ZoneID
>>   attached to an outgoing URI, as it has only local significance at the
>>   sending host.
> 
> There is also non-normative text saying:
> 
>>   However,
>>   URIs including a ZoneID have no meaning outside the originating node.
>>   It would therefore be highly desirable for a browser to remove the
>>   ZoneID from a URI before including that URI in an HTTP request.
> 
> As I understand it, those requirements are considered unreasonable and
> too hard to code by browser implementors. Also, there is a use case
> that Andrew Cardy can describe better than me where the deletion of the
> Zone ID breaks a higher-level protocol. (CUPS printing; Michael Sweet
> raised the issue on this list 8 years ago.)
> 
> Would the WG be interested in taking up this work? I think most of it
> would consist of using the "delete" key on RFC6874.

I can’t speak for the w.g., but as one of the co-authors, I suggest that you pull together a “bis” draft that replaces RFC6874.   That’s the only way to tell the level of interest / opposition.  Shouldn’t be very hard (easy for me to say).

Bob