RE: 6man w.g. last call for <draft-ietf-6man-default-iids-11.txt>

["Manfredi, Albert E" <[e-mail]>]

From: ipv6 [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Lorenzo Colitti

> Let me restate it again: the draft says "hosts SHOULD use RFC7217 when
> they would otherwise have configured a stable IID". By my reading,
> that is equivalent to saying "hosts SHOULD use RFC7217 all the time",
> because currently hosts MUST configure stable IIDs all the time.

That's not stated in this draft, though. This draft only applies to hosts which must use stable addresses. It doesn't talk about anything else. As a matter of fact, the use of stable addresses has already been de-emphasized in this draft, by this text:

   Furthermore, some popular IPv6 implementations have already deviated
   from the traditional stable IID generation scheme to mitigate the
   aforementioned security and privacy implications [Microsoft].

   As a result of the aforementioned issues, this document changes the
   default IID generation scheme for SLAAC to that specified in
   [RFC7217], and recommends against embedding link-layer addresses in
   IPv6 Interface Identifiers, such that the aforementioned issues are
   mitigated.  That is, this document simply replaces the default
   algorithm that must be employed when generating stable IPv6 IIDs.

So this tangential discussion, a "side bar" wrt this draft, should be left at that, as far as I'm concerned.

> I already proposed a solution: say that generating a stable IID is
> OPTIONAL.

That point should be made, if anywhere at all, in RFC 2460-bis. Not here. Why not here? Because those who read this draft couldn't care less. They are reading this draft only because they know they want stable addresses. That introductory paragraph says as much as needs to be said, I think, about this side bar discussion.

Bert