Re: [spring] Spirit and Letter of the Law (was: Question about SRv6 Insert function)

[Fernando Gont <[e-mail]>]

On 5/9/19 16:05, Ole Troan wrote:
> Fernando,
> 
>>> The IETF is not writing de jure standards.
>>> In fact reality is quite different, and the Internet evolves the way it does somewhat independently of what documents the IETF produces.
>>> In fact I know of no networking products (or deployments) that follow the intent and spirit of RFC8200. I challenge to point me to one! ;-)
>>
>> How did we elevate IPv6 to Internet Standard, then?  On the shepherd
>> write up for rfc2460bis, you argued essentially the opposite to what
>> you're arguing now:
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-6man-rfc2460bis/shepherdwriteup/
> 
> I have not changed my position with regards to header insertion.

You seem to argue that following the spec closely doesn't matter,
because nobody does. I which case I wonder how we got to elevate IPv6 to
internet standard.



> I'm arguing that you should argue technical merit on actual proposals.
> Instead of trying to make RFC documents apply as laws and slap people over the head with those...

I think this is a misrepresentation of what's going on.

The only thing that I am asking is that the corresponding procedure is
followed, as opposed to circumvented. If IPv6 should allow header
insertion, and there is a very good rationale for that, so be it. But
the procedure should be to have such discussion, for folks to elaborate
why they dont't do encap/decap instead, and, if there is a good
rationale, update the IPv6 spec as appropriate. *Then*, and only then,
publish documents that assume you can fiddle with packets in the network.

What we have now is folks ignoring RFC8200, and violating its
requirements at will -- something that I don't think is the right way to
go, and certainly is not fair with all the folks that put energy in the
discussions that led to RFC8200.

The above procedure is what mere mortals like myself have followed in
6man to produce protocol improvements. -- unfortunately, at times we
have not been that lucky, and did get slapped with RFCs or "IPv6 has not
been designed to support that".. no matter the technical merits.

Thanks,
-- 
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
e-mail: [e-mail]
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