Re: Stewart Bryant's No Objection on draft-ietf-6man-ug-06: (with COMMENT)

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Stewart,

On 18/12/2013 01:50, Stewart Bryant wrote:
...
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> COMMENT:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I have no objection to the publication of this draft.
> 
> Maybe it is just me, but it seems very strange to publish a Standards
> Track document, the substance of which seems to be to tell the reader
> that their *may* be a special meaning to two bits but they cannot  know
> for certain that this is the case. I understand that for procedural
> reasons the RFC needs to be published as ST, but perhaps the definitive
> statements should be in the normative text and the informational text
> should be an appendix.

Hmm... I think what we are telling the reader is that she must never rely
on those two bits having a special meaning, although there is pervasive
folklore that they *are* special.

> I found the document very confusing to read, but given the expertise of
> the authors, shepherd, AD and reviewers, I conclude that the text
> correct, and the IPv6 address architecture is complex. Hopefully it is
> not yet too complex for those that need to deploy and configure IPv6.

I suppose the day might come for a major revision of RFC 4291, and of
all the IPv6-over-foo documents, but until then we are stuck with
a pretty complex situation I'm afraid.

   Brian