Re: [mif] Comments about default route and draft-ietf-mif-dhcpv6-route-option-02

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Aug 2, 2011, at 11:30 AM, Marc Blanchet wrote:
I don't agree with your assessment of waste of memory and bandwidth.
This usage of bandwidth is completly noise compared to a single http request on the wire.

Calling this a bandwidth issue is kind of a misnomer.   This is really an issue of space in the DHCPv6 packet.   It's a UDP packet, of limited size, and it's not completely unreasonable to want to save 9 bytes in it.

Having said that, I find this argument unconvincing, for the simple reason that when you count the additional overhead of sending two options, you've already lost four of those nine bytes.

The other argument is about lifetimes.   But DHCP already has lifetimes; if this is unclear in the draft, perhaps the draft needs to be made more clear.   I haven't read it with this question in mind (indeed, I haven't read it in over a year) so I can at least imagine that this is a valid criticism, but if it is an accurate criticism, it is valid not only for the default route, but for all other routes as well, and so it needs to be addressed in the current draft.