Re: [v6ops] Lion/Snow Leaopard side-by-side on an IPv6 enabled ADSL2+ home line..

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On Aug 5, 2011, at 4:10 AM, Philip Homburg wrote:

> In your letter dated Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:01:19 -0700 you wrote:
>> On Aug 4, 2011, at 7:26 PM, Dale W. Carder wrote:
>>> 
>>> That could end up causing a lot of headache.
>> 
>> How?  Please be specific.
>> 
>> The behavior we have now is proven to alleviate the killer throw-your-Macbook-
>> at-the-wall migraine headaches that a lot of our paying customers have been co
>> mplaining about quite publicly, and I'm not going to get very far inside Apple
>> toward undoing what we've done without more technical detail.
> 
> So what it boils down to is that Apple came up with their own HE
> implementation without telling anybody or asking for feedback. And now that
> they have shipped it, it has to be defended as being the best solution. Sad,
> but that's usually how it works.

Don't defend HE as being the best solution either.    HE is of pretty narrow applicability, really.    The document doesn't overstate its applicability, and the algorithm described in the document is not bad for web browsers, which is why I have no objection to it.   (and I'm happy to see IETF work in this area)   But the algorithm isn't going to work well for apps in general.

Also, my understanding is that Apple doesn't force programmers to use the clever API.     Programmers can still (and sometimes should) use simpler APIs and do their own style of path selection that better fits the needs of their specific application.

Also, don't assume that the v6ops group is in a good position to pass sole judgment on these algorithms.  

And as someone else pointed out, Apple has a small share of the installed base.   If this ends up creating a problem, Apple's customers, and Apple, will notice, and both will have incentive to fix it.  Meanwhile the impact on the rest of the net will be negligible. 

Architecturally speaking, putting a global preference policy based on address type into every host is a very dubious idea.  It cannot work well in general.

Keith