Re: Pete Resnick's Discuss on draft-ietf-6man-stable-privacy-addresses-16: (with DISCUSS)

[Bob Hinden <[e-mail]>]

Hi Pete,

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> DISCUSS:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I'd like to hear mostly from the shepherd, who didn't actually answer the
> second part of the first question on the shepherd writeup: "Why is this
> the proper type of RFC?"

I am the document shepherd for this document.

> 
> This looks to me like an algorithm to generate stable, private, and
> mostly unique addresses. It looks like it does not affect
> interoperability at all if people choose a different method. It looks to
> me like you could have accomplished the same task in a number of
> different ways. This just seems like a nice method to use if someone
> wanted to use it. So it's not clear to me why this isn't just an
> Informational document explaining a nice way to generate stable, private,
> mostly unique addresses without lots of MUSTs and SHOULDs that are not
> really interoperability requirements.
> 

Several reasons why I think Proposed Standard is appropriate.

The properties for IPv6 interface-identifiers are defined in RFC4291, currently at Draft Standard.  This includes several types of interface-identifiers including EUI-64 based interface-identifiers.  Other types of interface-identifers, such as temporary addresses, SEND CGA, etc., are defined in other standards track RFCs.  This document is consistent with this.

The working group is also working on a recommendation to make Stable Privacy interface-identifiers the default, instead of EUI-64 based interface-identifiers.  The working group is also discussing if it wants to deprecate the EUI-64 based interface-identifiers.   See: 

   http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gont-6man-deprecate-eui64-based-addresses/

This is currently in an adoption call, please see the email on the [e-mail] list.  I think it would be confusing to prefer an Informational RFC over Standards track.

Hope this answers your question.

Thanks,
Bob