Subject: Bitstring labels, the rationale

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 01:02:52 +0000 (GMT)

I'm obviously missing something here, so perhaps someone could
enlighten me with an appropriate reference.  I'm sure that this must
have been discussed previously on ipng when bitstring labels were
first invented, but my searches of the archives aren't turning up the
goods.

Could someone please explain briefly why the nybble-based reverse
lookup wasn't considered adequate and/or provide a reference into the
ipng archives ?

Thanks,
Ian.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List
IPng Home Page:                      http://playground.sun.com/ipng
FTP archive:                      ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng
Direct all administrative requests to [email-masked]
--------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 19:30:05 -0800 (PST)

% 
% I'm obviously missing something here, so perhaps someone could
% enlighten me with an appropriate reference.  I'm sure that this must
% have been discussed previously on ipng when bitstring labels were
% first invented, but my searches of the archives aren't turning up the
% goods.
% 
% Could someone please explain briefly why the nybble-based reverse
% lookup wasn't considered adequate and/or provide a reference into the
% ipng archives ?
% 
% Thanks,
% Ian.

First off, I don't think this was initally held in the IPng wg.
As a DNS activity, this was bounced around in precursor WGs to the
existant DNSEXT mismash. There was some expectation that IPv6
could/ought to be able to be CIDRised and there was no desire to
extend the abomination that is RFC 2317.  Two proposals were floated
after the Memphis IETF and the selected proposal became RFC 2673.
In some sense, its OBE based on the IPv6 addressing conventions that
have evolved after RFC 2673 was released.  Still, we have a very 
powerful tool... but I'm not sure it has a practical use anymore.

-- 
--bill