Re: [Pppext] proposed TRILL IS-IS System ID text

[Vernon Schryver <[e-mail]>]

> From: William Allen Simpson <[e-mail]>

> Apparently, you've never operated an ISP, nor read the NANOG list.
>
> Nor remember the problems with PPP multi-media bridges, as many companies
> reused the same MAC for different media.

> (Ahem) You seem to have forgotten the reasons for IETF existence, and the
> fun times we had with ISO, DECnet, CLNP, etc.  (I have the T-shirt.)

> Speaking authoritatively on this matter, PPP was intended to be zero
> configuration from the beginning!

That sort of comment was inappropriate in the 1990s and is still
inappropriate.  Mr. Simpson's efforts to educate us in the histories
of the IETF, PPP, the PPPEXT working group, SLIP, ISO and ITU conflicts
and so forth are irrelevant.  They're also unnecessary if the rest of
us who could speak just as authoritatively on PPP have not slipped into
senile dementia.  They useless if we have.



> > But my off-the-cuff guess is that they'll have objections, and more
> > objections probably aren't helpful in getting to consensus.
> >
> We don't have consensus now.

That is certainly not clear and I think it is wrong.  We have one person
objecting to the thrust of the TRILL draft and trying to use the eventual
RFC to fix a potential or possible IS-IS configuration, installation,
or implementation error.  Consensus is not unanimity.  More precisely,
we do not have consensus for significantly changing the TRILL draft to
fix IS-IS.


I can't seem to get excited about TRILL, but I am convinced that fixing
any lack of IS-IS auto-configuration or uniqueness of IS-IS identifiers
is outside the scope of the PPPEXT working group and of this draft.
It's not PPP that breaks if IS-IS's promise, premise, or demand for
uniqueness is broken but IS-IS.  Perhaps the TRILL document "call out"
the issue, as Mr. Carlson said, but no more:

> > It's the same problem, and it's not something that I think we ought to
> > be addressing.  We can certainly call it out, though.


Vernon Schryver    [e-mail]