Re: [mpls] AD review of draft-ietf-mpls-ipv6-only-gap

["Adrian Farrel" <[e-mail]>]

Hello,

Thanks for the work and I am advancing the I-D.

> > I am sceptical about section 3.5. Earlier in the document you have
> > mentioned the fact that RFC 4990 explains how to use existing MIB
> > modules with IPv6 addresses, but you don't mention that RFC here.
> > Conversely, you do mention an individual I-D that does not (yet?)
> > have working group support to fix a problem that it is not clear is
> > the problem that needs to be fixed in a way that seems to me to be
> > wrong.
> 
> RFC 4990 is MPLS-TP specific.

Well now, that comes as a surprise to someone who wrote part of the document and edited the final version :-)

RFC 4990 is most assuredly not about MPLS-TP. There is no mention of MPLS-TP in the document. 
It is quite true that if you were using the GMPLS MIB modules (that build on the MPLS-TE MIB modules) to manage an MPLS-TP network what you have written in the new revision would be perfectly true.
But RFC 4990 also explains the use of IPv6 in the MPLS-TE and GMPLS MIB modules. Section 8 is pretty specific about that and provides a mechanism to handle IPv6 extended tunnel IDs (it's a hack, Jim, but it might just work!).
That makes me somewhat sceptical about the size of the gap you have identified.
(I'm also not convinced that obsoleting an in-use TC will be a sound way to make backward-compatible changes if they turn out to be necessary.)

And now, of course, I start to worry about the level of review applied to section 3.5 of this document. The consequence is not good: if this section carries a bad analysis of the gaps then it is likely to be ignored; if one section of this document is open to be ignored, what of the other sections?

Cheers,
Adrian