Subject: IMPORTANT: DHCPv6 Work in this Working Group Issue (fwd)

From: "Ralph E. Droms" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 14:47:59 -0500 (EST)

message sent to [email-masked] by [email-masked] follows.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear DHCPv6 WG,

Charlie Perkins and I have put a lot of work into DHCPv6 and so has
Ralph Droms, and Thomas Narten.  Ralph and I have asked for input from
you many times.  This last flurry of mail on the final discussions is
important as we want to put this stage of DHCPv6 to bed and get to
Proposed Standard.  Also up until about March 98 at least some of the WG
was working on this and before Chicago Aug 98 we had good input at the
IETF meetings or the spec would not have been ready for Last Call. But
since July and when we received the last minute last call comments in
October 98 WG input has been void.

We are having the discussions now to resolve the WG Last Call input we
received and will be updating the specifications soon.

Current specs are:

   draft-ietf-dhc-dhcpv6-13.txt (dhcpv6 protocol spec)
   draft-ietf-dhc-v6exts-10.txt (dhcpv6 extensions for dhcpv6)

I am very concerned about the lack of responses on this mail list and
from this working group, because the mechanism for completion of
discussion on the list by Ralph is that silence is not a valid response
as consensus for the DHC WG.  This is the chairs perogative and though
different than any other WG I work on, we support this method. 

But there is nothing else I can think of to do to stimulate this WG to
work on this last part DHCPv6 to reach PS. I know at least 6 persons who 
came up to me at the IETF and said "I thought we were done and moving to 
Proposed Standard based on the drafts from July 1998".  But we are not and 
need your support.  The issues which are not major protocol issues with
our design are being discussed and have been presented to the list.

But I must assume either the list is burned out, not interested, too
busy working on dhcpv4 or other things, or whatever.

What we told Ralph and our Internet Area Directors (Thomas and Jeff) is 
we will have to be proactive to go outside of this list and get review of 
these updates in the new specs to get this work completed.  I am going to 
start that process today and enlist the support of the IETF to get this 
next spec reviewed.  To leave all this review to Ralph and Thomas is simply 
not fair and also not the IETF way.  I know you have done work on this spec
and we appreciate it greatly to get us to where we are today. But we are
now on the home stretch and DHCPv6 is important to the deployment of
IPv6.  One example is that it is a valuable transition mechanism/tool
for the interoperation of IPv4 and IPv6, and there are other deployment
reasons for real customers that will need DHCPv6.

Also as many of you know I have been around IPv6 since its inception and
wear both an architect and implementors hat for this next generation
protocol.  The folkway/more/attitude or whatever you want to call it for
IPv6 implementation to begin is normally that a spec move to Proposed
Standard.  We have some implementations underway (mine included) but to
get this specification implemented we need to wrap up a DHCPv6 WG last
call and then an IETF/IESG last call.

So as I begin to ask for help in the IETF community please do not take
this as a slam against the WG or anyone else, we cannot continue with
the silence on this mailing list.

If you would like to respond to Charlie and I privately that is OK, but I 
highly suggest and encourage you to respond to Ralph too.  When I told
Ralph at Orlando about some of your comments he told me "they" need to
state those comments to me.  One comment was even the DHCPv4 WG mail
list could be more active and part of the problem is that the DHC WG is
one of the oldest WGs in the IETF.  But Ralph needs to hear that
directly.

Sincerely,
/jim