Subject: Re: Vote for subnet mask relay agent sub-option

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 17:38:23 -0500

Consensus means nobody disagrees, not that a majority agrees.   So
calling for a vote is inappropriate, and if you get a majority voting
in favour of including your subnet mask suboption in the relay agent
information option draft, this will not mean that you have a working
group consensus to proceed with the draft.

To describe what is going on as a dispute seems unnecessary - it
implies dischord where none exists.  I do not think that the subnet
mask suboption is necessarily a bad idea.  I think it belongs in a
draft because it implies a rather impressive expansion of what a DHCP
server does.  I think that two paragraphs describing in minimal detail
how a relay agent should specify this option is not sufficient - the
behaviour of the server also needs to be described.

In particular, what you have now doesn't discuss:

    - Whether this suboption can be used when a relay agent is
      configured to relay to more than one DHCP server
    - If more than one server is configured, how these servers will
      do address allocation in such a way that they do not step on
      each other's allocation pools
    - What happens when a router that's configured to support a
      particular subnet disappears, along with the subnet it supported
    - Discussion as to how network administrators should configure
      routers that support this option so as to avoid configuration
      errors such as two routers serving two physical networks that
      choose the same subnet
    - Justification for why this option is a better choice than just
      configuring the DHCP server with information about the subnet
    - Suggestions or recommendations for what configuration parameters
      should be available on a DHCP server so that it can
      appropriately serve one of these ad-hoc subnets

My reason for suggesting that this be in a seperate draft is that we
have waited a long time for the Relay Agent Information Option draft
to move to proposed standard.  It seems to me that the subnet mask
draft is not trivial, and needs to be discussed further.   Holding
back the RAIO draft because we need to flesh out the subnet mask
suboption strikes me as a bad move.   Rushing the subnet mask
suboption and not fleshing out its description likewise seems like a
bad move.

In my mind, this leaves only one choice, which is the one I suggested:
split the subnet mask option out into its own draft.  If I have
appeared to be contentious in expressing this point of view, I
apologize.

			       _MelloN_