Re: [v6ops] Please review the No IPv4 draft

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Apr 16, 2014, at 12:46 PM, Nick Hilliard <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Process exists to serve the ietf, not the other way around.  Several people
> in both v6ops and homenet have expressed serious concern about the choice
> to use dhcpv6 and ra instead of dhcpv4.  If you want to invoke process to
> close the discussion on this topic, then that's your prerogative, but given
> the previous lack of discussion about it, I would view this as a very poor
> idea.

That's fine.   The working group is amenable to useful discussion, as far as I know.   What concerns me is that a lot of objections have been raised that are simply opinions, and that are addressed in the current document.   And motivations have been stated that do not match my personal experience of the state of the art in host configuration stacks.

So I raise process not because I think process should trump technical contribution, but because process is the only way to deal with disputes over matters of opinion.   There's no way everyone can win on a matter of opinion, and while there's clearly some support for a DHCPv4 solution, there's substantially more support for a DHCPv6/RA solution.   That's also why I asked people who object whether they had objections which were of the form "this won't actually work because FOO."   Nobody provided any values of FOO with respect to the current proposal.

You may get the impression that I feel strongly about this proposal and think it's a good idea.   I do support the work, and I think the choice that's been made is a good one, but I really don't feel strongly about it—I'd be just as happy if the conclusion of the process was "just filter IPv4 at the access points if you want it to go away," and I'd like to see more discussion on that topic.   But what I really do feel strongly about is that discussions should be productive, and that's why you see me participating in this discussion in the way that I have been doing.