Re: [v4tov6transition] Some opinions about establish a new WG

[Fred Baker <[e-mail]>]

Copying my AD. He's on the list, but I know I monitor more closely discussions I am copied on, and I suspect he does as well.

On Aug 27, 2010, at 6:51 AM, huang cancan wrote:

>     - Do the working group's activities overlap with those of another
>       working group?  If so, it may still be appropriate to create the
>       working group, but this question must be considered carefully by
>       the Area Directors as subdividing efforts often dilutes the
>       available technical expertise.
> //This question was also discussed in the side group. I only copy them here.
> 
> 1) V6ops has not implemented item 4 in its charter and that it is better to split the work into two WGs, to spread the workload.
> 
> " 4. Publish Informational or BCP RFCs that identify and analyze solutions for deploying IPv6 within common network environments, such as ISP Networks, Enterprise Networks, Unmanaged Networks (Home/Small Office), and Cellular Networks. "

You no doubt went to http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/v6ops/charter/ to find the charter. May I request that you select "documents" on that page or (equivalent) go to http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/v6ops/ and survey the RFCs output by the working group? It has gone to some lengths to do this.

> 2)I see the following text in v6ops charter:
> 
>> The main focus of the v6ops WG is to look at the immediate deployment issues; more advanced stages of deployment and transition are a lower priority.
> 
> I want to work on "more advanced stages of transition" that is out of scope for v6ops. Some operators would like to focus on operational issues related to the final phases of transition of v4 networks to v6, i.e. the protection of v4 applications that need to continue to be operational for all users while the networks are gradually transitioned from v4 to v6.

Let me put this in context.

When Kurtis and I took over the working group in 2004, there were quite a number of people that really wanted to talk about their favorite cool tool for helping people make the transition. There was discussion at the time of a separate working group for the purpose, and in any event v6ops was instructed to not build protocols and with respect to transition tool, to only generate requirements. That work eventually went to behave and softwire. You will hear me tell people with some regularity to take a draft to a different working group due to charter issues, and this will be the usual reason.

The continuation of IPv4 service during transition, what I call the "coexistence phase", is at this point very near term transition issue, and is the subject in part of 

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-v6ops-incremental-cgn
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-v6ops-incremental-cgn
  "An Incremental Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN) for IPv6 Transition", Sheng
  Jiang, Dayong Guo, Brian Carpenter, 18-Jun-10,
  <draft-ietf-v6ops-incremental-cgn-01.txt>

which will go into working group last call on 12 September. I would encourage the operators to read and comment on it. Frankly, the final phases of transition will not be about "keeping IPv4 alive" as much as "how best to turn it off".

In any event, it has been a while since we updated the charter; if the charter itself is at issue, we should discuss that. You are correct that the question is no longer, if it ever actually was actually, "how to deploy IPv6". The current phase is "coexistence" more than "deployment", and perhaps the charter needs to say that.