RE: Confirmation to advance: draft-ietf-6man-ipv6only-flag-05

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

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019, Ole Troan wrote:

> At the 6man meeting at IETF 104 in Prague there was support to close the working group last call and advance
> draft-ietf-6man-ipv6only-flag-05 to the IESG.
>
> This call is to confirm that decision on the mailing list.
>
> Please give objections and comments to this decision to the mailing list, by 2019-05-13.

I've not changed my mind on this. The flag seems unnecessary, and if anything, can cause confusion and problems. It seems to have been motivated by people wanting to see what it would be like to get all IPv4 users off the network, at an IETF meeting, and then people have been trying to make the case that it would be generically useful.

There are other ways of sunsetting IPv4 if a network wants to, exactly the same as any number of older network protocols have been obsoleted, never needing any new explicit flag for the purpose. And I would way prefer for equipment vendors themselves, such as smartphone vendors, to create their own heuristics, if they feel that IPv4 is so wasteful of battery power. The onus should be on them, IMO, not on the IETF, and certainly not on other users of the network who might not know or pay attention to that flag.

The KISS principle holds. Only add complications if it's essential.

Bert