Subject: Re: [RRG] GSE?

From: Robin Whittle <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:05:52 +1000

Hi Tony,

I admire your optimism about completely re-engineering IPv6 and its
application API:

> I wasn't directly involved, but my read was that it was politics.
> Because it modified v6, it was unacceptable to those that felt
> that v6 was perfect.
>
> We seem to be over that now...
  ------------------------------

but I don't think it would be prudent for the RRG to proceed on the
basis that your optimism is justified.

I think a GSE-like proposal would involve you getting the IPv6
proponents (all of them great optimists with high ideals, in my
view) to forget about IPv6 as we know it and refocus their optimism
on IPv6bis instead, being prepared to rip-up and retry (a printed
circuit layout term) the thing they have been saying was ready for
mass adoption for the last 12 years.

Maybe you can do that, but I think it would be wrong to leave the
IPv4 Internet without a solution when some are available
(map-encap).  I think you would be putting immense pressure on
yourselves by making IPv6bis the only escape path while the rest of
the world pays more and more in $$$, inflexibility and perhaps
instability while you perfect IPv6bis.

> I'm not in a hurry to do anything.  There's no need.  I'd much rather Get It
> Right.  Whatever we do here is forever.

Or like IPv6: perhaps never.

Ideological purity has its attractions, but that doesn't mean it
results in a system with a sufficiently attractive transition
arrangement to get the vast majority of end-users on board.

The IPv4 to IPv6 transition arrangements were never good enough and
now they are officially recognised by the IETF to be in tatters.  Do
you disagree?

NAT-PT has been buried and the replacements - NAT64 and DNS64 -
are at a very early stage of development:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-v6ops-nat64-pb-statement-req-00
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bagnulo-behave-nat64-00

There was an interesting looking debate (I didn't understand it
properly) on PPML recently about deficiencies with IPv6 DNS, in
particular whether it would have been better to have a separate IPv6
resolver. Leo Bicknell and Dean Anderson:

  http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-ppml/2008-June/010895.html
  http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-ppml/2008-June/010898.html
  http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-ppml/2008-June/010899.html
  http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-ppml/2008-June/010900.html
  etc.

You seem to be saying that IPv6 needs to be rebuilt to be something
quite different.  I am saying: Maybe, but you need to do it quickly
and design much better transition arrangements into it.  However, I
think that doing it quickly is at odds with doing it Right.

I wouldn't want to join your expeditionary force to prepare a new
planet with the timetable set by the old planet burning.  I suggest
we put out the fires here and take our time preparing the new planet.

  - Robin

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