Subject: [v4v6interim] Interim meeting outcome

From: Mark Townsley <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:45:55 +0200

I am very happy with the outcome of this meeting.  We had a lot of
participants, a lot of interaction, and in the end a crystallization of
the problem space and progress on the solution space. While some open
issues remain, I believe we achieved our goals for the meeting. Thanks
to everyone for this.

As has been noted, there are two broad categories of solution spaces.

The first has two aspects: Overloading IPv4 addresses in the face of
address exhaustion (NATs, Fractional Addressing), and Tunneling (presumably
over IPv6). The second broad category of solution space has essentially four 
iterations of translation topologies, each focusing the problem space down from 
the less tractable goal of bidirectional translation between all of IPv4 and all 
of IPv6. Presented like this, I saw wide support for solving these problems, and
solutions on the table for solving each (with great potential for common 
components as well). I am much happier with this kind of strong support (either 
for *or* against) vs. the more split opinion I was seeing walking into the meeting.

When considering when to use translation between IPv4 and IPv6, I learned that
it is critical to include the capability of applications, the OS, and the 
network in the analysis. When the network is mis-matched end-to-end, tunneling 
options can come into play. When the applications or OS are mismatched 
end-to-end, translation options come into play. While we have identified some 
overlap at the edges of these two problems spaces such that tunnels or 
translators could apply, we should be able to articulate the tradeoffs between 
the two in due course.

After this meeting, I firmly believe that the IETF is ready to embark on
this work, and that at least the participants in the meeting are headed
in the same general direction. My recommendation to the IAB and IESG
will be to charter the work in this area right away, and to the
community to get to work on hammering out the solutions.

Thanks again for a productive two days, see you again in Minneapolis.

- Mark

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