Re: Next steps for rfc6874bis

[Philip Homburg <[e-mail]>]

>10 years? 20 years? This address format is out in the wild for years
>now. Lets look at an example: changing the IP address formats defined
>in RFC 6991 (published 2013, updating RFC 6021 published 2010) would
>likely be a non-backwards compatible change and thus all YANG modules
>importing from RFC 6991 may need updates and then these updates need
>to be implemented and finally shipped and deployed.

I assume we start with an RFC that says that IPv6 address parsers SHOULD
accept '-' in addition to '%'.

I don't see how that would invalidate YANG modules.

Next step, in some years, to to change the canonical IPv6 address
representation to use '-'.

Obviously, that would trigger the need to update YANG modules, but old ones
will continue to work.

At some point we can make '%' to be something the MAY be supported. But I
assume that will only happen after we have mostly switched to the new
character.

Is this annoying maintainance work, yes. But being stuck forever with the
wrong character is also not something the wider internet community is going
to appreciate.