Subject: IPv6 w.g. Last Call on "IPv6 Host to Router Load Sharing"

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 11:23:04 -0800

This is a IPv6 working group last call for comments on advancing the 
following document as an Proposed Standard:

	Title		: IPv6 Host to Router Load Sharing
	Author(s)	: B. Hinden
	Filename	: draft-ietf-ipv6-host-load-sharing-00.txt
	Pages		: 4
	Date		: 10-Jan-02

Please send substantive comments to the ipng mailing list, and minor
editorial comments to the author.  This last call period will end two
weeks from today on January 28, 2002.

Bob Hinden / Steve Deering

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From: Francis Dupont <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 15:01:41 +0100

There was a long and not very clear discussion about the level of
requirement for this proposal...
The current spec (RFC 2461 6.3.6 end of 1)) says:

        An implementation may choose to always return the same router or
        cycle through the router list in a round-robin fashion as long
        as it always returns a reachable or a probably reachable router
        when one is available.

i.e. there are two proposed solutions with a small may (I interpret
this as an implementation hint). The new proposal is:

        An implementation SHOULD pick routers from the default router
        list in random order while making sure it always returns a
        reachable or a probably reachable router when one is available.

I have two concerns about this:
 - the random order is not defined (this is a formal concern because
   the intention is clear)
 - we moved from an implementation hint to a SHOULD, this will make
   old implementations not conformant and in some situations there
   can be far better solutions. So I prefer to get a MAY (enough to
   get this proposal implemented in the future by everybody without
   harm) and an explicit reference to the default router preference
   draft (first because I am in favor of this from the beginning,
   i.e. since many years, second because this is the best reply to
   the "special case" argument (not so special case because 100% of
   the IPv6 networks I used have several routers with a better one)).

Regards

[email-masked]