Subject: Re: Deployment vs the IPv6 community's ambivalence towards large providers

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 14:35:51 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>

> >    - claim much better QoS mechanisms
>
> IPv6 doesn't. IPv6 offers *exactly* the same QOS mechanisms as IPv4,
> namely IP Integrated Services and IP Differentiated Services. (There
> is also the flow label field in IPv6, but there are as yet no detailed
> specs of how it will be used and no false claims either).

No false claims about IPv6 QoS?  Absolutely none at all?  No recent
statements in this mailing list (or maybe it was end-to-end) that IPv6
QoS will be better than IPv4 Qos?  No exaggerations in the trade press?
Do you read the same trade rags and IETF lists I do?

Counte the current applications of IP QoS in use by paying users.  For
that matter, count the successful large scale experiments.  Recall what
we have all have been saying for the last decade.  Add what the trade
press has been saying, based on their honest (mis)understanding of progress
in the IETF, vendors and on the Internet.  Are you sure complaints about
false advertising would be easy to deflect?

I hope and believe IP QoS will eventually be real and that the ATM stuff
(including QoS) were empty promises for the IETF standard reasons, but as
of today, the ATM guys have the high moral ground.

> >       standards committee doubling of the IPv6 address from 64 to
> >       128 bits, 
> 
> This was very specifically to enable an adequate (64 bit) locator
> component and an adequate (64 bit) identifier component in the address.
> And this was based on experience with several datagram network architectures
> of the past. The only realistic alternative was variable length addresses.
> But since we settled this in 1994, it seems somewhat beside the point.

Yes, that's the spin I recall on the doubling of the IPng address.  It
wasn't an entirely dishonest gloss, but that's true of everything almost
every committee does.  I agree that the quick double-to-128-and-push-it-
out-the-door-before-the-closed-questions-get-reopened was the least bad
choice.  I'm thankful that the base that was doubled wasn't only 64 and
that it wasn't more than doubled.

I don't think having a naked emperor is bad, provided his nudism doesn't
force us to delude ourselves.  However, political correctness and
historical revisionism in the IETF is getting awfully thick.

To put it all another way, do you think IPv6 is on the schedule that was
advertised 5-8 years ago, and if not, how much has it slipped?
My recollection is that the advocates said "by 2000," the realists said
"by 2003", and the rest of us said "by 2010 or 2015 at the earliest".

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 17:22:25 -0500

Vern,

> Do you read the same trade rags and IETF lists I do?

When I see myths propagated in the IETF, I try to correct them unless
someone else gets there first. For the trade rags it is really not
worth the bother. I was referring to RFCs, which is our output.

...
> every committee does.  

I was there. I was one of the members of the IPng directorate pushing to
copy the locator/identifier split, which is lacking in IPv4 and was
present in other datagram address formats of the same vintage. Please
don't tell me it was spin or a dishonest gloss. It was a design decision, and
one I stand by with no hesitation.

...
> advertised 5-8 years ago, and if not, how much has it slipped?

Dead on schedule. I've always said it would take 15 years. 

   Brian