Subject: Re: accusations of cluelessness

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 19:05:11 -0600 (MDT)

> Well, one fairly good indicator of a clueless person is when they insist that
> things have to be a certain way, but seem unwilling or unable to explain why.
> ...

That's all fine, except that it would be more accurate without the words
starting with "but..."  People who absolutely positively know they are
right never are.  Being certain you right is the second best defense
against being penetrated by clues.  (The best defense is being dead.)

> Perhaps the person being so accused should simply say "my customer insists
> on this.  I can't tell you who he is, and I can't amplify on his reasons for
> insisting on this."
>
> To which the reply should be "then your customer needs to represent his own
> needs here.  Because the solution your customer insists on causes problems, 
> and without actually having some insight into your customer's real
> requirements, we have no basis on which to try to build a compromise."

Once upon a time there was an ad hoc group that hashed out interoperable
network protocols based on consensus, but generally did not try to impose
its view of right or wrong.  The group was filled with sentiments along
the lines of "let the market decide."  The group had many academic ties,
but knew better than to try to require any tha participant disclose
anything secret.   This was partly because the incumbant official
standards condemned as completely wrong, unworkable, and heretical
everything the ad hoc group was doing, and it would have been silly for
the ad hoc group to dictate anything.  Then the group became powerful
and infected with delusions of grandeur, omnipotence, and provincialism.
Forever after, or until the next ad hoc group with incomplete pretensions,
it grew increasingly insane and like the older organizations it used to
decry for reasons other than turf wars.

In other words, what happened to the old IETF that would have said
"Site local addresses are utterly stupid and wrong; how large a
block did you say you wanted?"  Where are the old IETF vendors and
other outfits that if told "No, we will not let you have site local
addresses" would have said "Ok, give us a block and by the way, if
I were you, I'd filter routes and packets carrying those addresses."
Isn't that only a slighty bent picture of how the SAP addresses
used for IP on 802 networks came about?

What happened is that they all turned into a bunch of provincial amateur
lawyers, each utterly convinced of omniscience, and with no designing,
implementing, or debugging to do, since otherwise they'd be doing it
instead of spending time writing legalistic appeals and decisions.

This is all utterly silly.  If some outfit decides it must have site
local addresses for any notion of the phrase, it will get them.  The
most you can do is brand sight local anathema and reasonably expect
that pointy haired "IT" bosses will not use them until there is a real
need that overcomes the political risks of violating an oh fish all
fur shure standard.

Just for my own ignorance, how are you going to outlaw the use of
::ffff:10.0.0.0/104 in the bright new IPv6 world?  Why won't 
existing uses of site local addresses be grandfathered?

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 21:51:41 -0400

> block did you say you wanted?"  

It went away with the old Internet that was mostly an experiment and research
tool used by a relatively small, elite group with largely common interests,
and a fairly high overall clue level (as compared to today), to support a 
relatively small set of apps.

> If some outfit decides it must have site
> local addresses for any notion of the phrase, it will get them. 

well, if they expect apps to actually work with those things, they're 
seriously deluded.  and no amount of money will stop the tide.

> Why won't existing uses of site local addresses be grandfathered?

people can be deluded if they want to.  vendors can encourage those delusions,
and try to sell them products based on those delusions.   the question is 
only whether IETF should lend support to those delusions.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 00:00:50 -0400

--On Friday, 10 October, 2003 21:51 -0400 Keith Moore 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> In other words, what happened to the old IETF that would have
>> said "Site local addresses are utterly stupid and wrong; how
>> large a block did you say you wanted?"
>
> It went away with the old Internet that was mostly an
> experiment and research tool used by a relatively small, elite
> group with largely common interests, and a fairly high overall
> clue level (as compared to today), to support a  relatively
> small set of apps.

Keith, I don't understand what you are saying here.   As I read 
his note, Vernon isn't saying "make all the applications 
recognize a particular address range and do something special". 
He is saying "ok, we don't think this is useful, but, if it 
would help you to have an address range to do your own thing in 
your own way, addresses are just not that scarce".

I'd love to stamp out all of the wrong-headedness and stupidity 
in the world, but I would not expect to succeed and have largely 
given up trying except for isolated local cases.  Efforts 
through the centuries to make and enforce laws against stupidity 
and  stupid behavior have not been very successful.   I'm not as 
convinced as you are that, to use Vernon's description, "Site 
local addresses are utterly stupid and wrong", but, even if I 
were, I'd be having some trouble convincing myself that taking 
the relevant address range out of the allocation pool and 
leaving it out would be seriously harmful to the network and to 
interoperability.

     john

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 00:29:52 -0400

> your own way, addresses are just not that scarce".

scarcity isn't the problem.  just because something is plentiful
doesn't mean you want to pollute the water supply with it.  and no,
it's not okay to say "you can pollute your own water supply if you
want to", because that stuff flows downstream to everybody else.

> and  stupid behavior have not been very successful.  

nobody is proposing we make or enforce laws against stupidity.
what is being proposed is that we take a practice that is now widely
acknowledged to be stupid, or at least harmful, and say "oops,
sorry, this turns out to have been a bad idea.  please don't do this"

maybe we can't outlaw stupidity, but that doesn't mean we have to
encourage it, or even be silent about it.

> I'm not as 

well, so would I, and as I understand it, that's just what is being
proposed.

I don't have any problem with IETF/IANA saying "the addresses formerly 
allocated to site-local will never be re-assigned".  I do have 
a problem with IETF giving any support to the notion that it's
reasonable to use site-local addresses.

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 08:43:53 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>

> reasonable to use site-local addresses.

In the real world among adults and outside the delusions of those
who think standards committees are Powerful and In Charge, having
the IETF/IANA say "the addresses formerly allocated to site-local
will never be re-assigned" is indistinguishable from having the
IETF/IANA say "here are some site-local addresses; have fun."

The talk about the evils of site local addresses (and NAT) and the errors
of those who want them may be accurate (I'm inclined to agree), but it
is also functionally indistinguishable from the talk about IPv8 and the
foolisness of those someone likes to call "legacy internet engineers."

Neither side is doing anything to help get IPv6 deployed, but just
the opposite.  Partisans on either side who wanted to see IPv6 in use
by the end of the century would conceded the point just to get on to
something worth doing....well, unless they don't have any designs to
complete, protocols to implement, code to debug, applications to teach
about IPv6, IPv6 networks to get running, or anything else worth doing.

Don't the IESG and IAB have anything better to do than hearing appeals,
counter-appeals, and counter-counter-appeals from people with nothing
better to do than prove their analytic and political powers by arguing
this issue?  Letting the IESG and IAB spend time on this issue is as
bad as letting them decide between IPv8 and IPv16.

Instead of playing childish lawyer games, why not write successors to
RFC 1627 and RFC 1597 or an equivalents to RFC 3027 and let the market
decide?  The market will decide no matter what the IETF says or many
zillion times it says it.

I suppose the next pressing network standards issue the IETF and this
mailing list will consider is the wrongheaded evilness of phrases like
"IP network bandwidth" and whether to use "band-size" or "frequespan"
after "bandwidth" is declared anathema. (See
http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2003-October/date.html )

P.S. I meant my question about ::FFFF:10.0.0.0/104 seriously.  Are
  those IPv6 site local addresses that are already available and
  impossible to retract or even deprecate?  If so, how can anyone
  justify arguing (not to mention appealing) this issue?

---

From: Leif Johansson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 19:02:31 +0200

Vernon Schryver wrote:
|>From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
|

<snip>

| is also functionally indistinguishable from the talk about IPv8 and the
| foolisness of those someone likes to call "legacy internet engineers."

That is a bit below the belt isn't it? It's one thing to step up to
the mike and claim to channel Keith Moore but to be accused of beeing
functionally equivalent to a troll is a different kettle of fish
altogether.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 14:21:59 -0400

> IETF/IANA say "here are some site-local addresses; have fun."

some people can't read.  I'm not sure what we can do about that.
things that we write can only benefit people who are capable of
reading.  fortunately, some people can read, so writing can have
a useful effect.

> foolisness of those someone likes to call "legacy internet engineers."

some people lack the background to understand technical arguments.
I'm not sure what we can do about that either.  fortunately, some people
do have such a background, and those people do have some influence.
it might not be as much as we'd like, but it's not zero.

> the opposite.  

further deployment of IPv6 with site-local might be worse than not deploying
it.  ultimately the goal isn't to get IPv6 deployed; it's to get a usable
Internet deployed and make sure it works well.  saying that we should just
go ahead and deploy IPv6 without bothering to make sure that everything works
is what got us into this mess.

> this issue? 

absolutely they do.  but I'm not the one trying to waste their time on a 
senseless appeal.

> zillion times it says it.

the market has demonstrated that it's not capable of making technically
sound decisions.  letting the market decide is no substitute for good
design.  do we let the market decide whether a plane will crash or a bridge
will stay up?
 
>   justify arguing (not to mention appealing) this issue?

of course they're not going to be reallocated for other purposes.  but
it makes perfect sense to say "don't use these; they will cause various
kinds of problems and will cause various kinds of failures"

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 12:37:38 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Leif Johansson <[email-masked]>

> functionally equivalent to a troll is a different kettle of fish

At this point, what other purpose is there in repeating the discussion
in this list or by the appeal to the IESG?  Unless the IETF repudiates
BCP 5, aren't we stuck site local addresses forever?  Even if the IETF
did move RFC 1918 to "Historic" and publish a new BCP saying that the
evils of site locals are unnecessary in an IPv6 Internet, wouldn't we
still be stuck with site local addresses forever?

Why doesn't the advice given the IPv8 inventor apply in this case?
Why isn't the next step writing RFCs proving the evils or virues
of site local addresses instead of yet another series of ever more
irrelevant polemics for and against?

The statements about bogus queries of the DNS roots from RFC 1918
addresses or for PTR RRs for RFC 1918 addresses are examples of
irrelevant arguments.  How would deprecating or outlawing IPv6 site
local addresses affect that problem now or ever?  Why will the network
operators who leak such noise change anything if the IETF says they
shouldn't use IPv6 site local addresses?  There are things that could be
done that would control that DNS noise problem, but those actions do
not include rehashing the evils and virtues of IPv6 site locals here.

15 years ago a defining difference between the IETF and the ISO was
that the IETF cared about what happens in practice and the ISO cared
about what happens in theory.  As far as I can tell, the IPv6 site
local discussion on both sides is only about moot theories.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 12:18:21 -0700

> local discussion on both sides is only about moot theories.

Without getting into the other points of this argument, let me suggest 
that Vernon is correct on this point, and in as much as we think 
site-locals are bad we must provide a better alternative.  In order to 
do that we must address the underlying needs for site-locals.  Many have 
written at length on this subject, but it all seems to boil down to this:

    We need a way for sites to be internally stable even when their
    relationship to the world around them changes for whatever reason.

This goes to the heart of identity and service location.  In as much as 
we can address this problem we would do much to nullify the arguments 
for site-locals.  IMHO this is where the IETF, IRTF, and other bodies 
should put our efforts.

Eliot

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:21:17 -0400

> As far as I can tell, the IPv6 site

That's because you aren't trying to write apps that operate across addressing
realm boundaries, and you're apparently not willing to listen to those who
are.  OTOH, you're quite willing to make abusive statements about things that
you don't  understand.

I used to live in a building that had dumbwaiters and garbage chutes.  Both 
were found to be dangerous.  So they told people to stop using them.  They
didn't try to outlaw them or to make them go away or pretend that they never
existed. And occasionally someone did try to use them.  Fortunately, merely
discouraging their use was sufficient to eliminate most of the danger.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:47:26 -0400

> > and in as much as we think 
> > site-locals are bad we must provide a better alternative.

this kind of thinking is a dead end.   we must not accept all of the
proposed uses of site-locals without question, because some of those
uses are the very source of the problem.

>     relationship to the world around them changes for whatever reason.

see draft-moore-ipv6-prefix-substitution-aa-00.txt for one attempt to solve
this particular problem within a site.  though I don't think it's sufficient 
to solve it only "within" a site.

Keith

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 13:54:47 -0600 (MDT)

> are.  

I am working on an application that works accross addressing realm
bondaries.  It involves a global network of thousands clients and
servers on the public Internet talking to each other through NAT boxes,
firewalls, and all sorts of other nasty stuff to the tune of more than
51 million operations the day before yesterday.  There is IPv6 support
in the code that seems to work in the sense of IPv6-only systems
talking to IPv4-only systems indirectly through servers that do both
IPv6 and IPv4.

That nasty stuff causes all kinds of real world trouble as opposed to
academic ivory tower empty talk and chest thumping.  I and others
waste plenty of time every week trying to get people running clients
and servers for that application to fix their NAT boxes and firewalls.
A common firewall error regularly causes Mega-packet/day/site wastes
of bandwidth.

>    OTOH, you're quite willing to make abusive statements about things that 
> you don't  understand.

I understand all to well what's going on here.

> discouraging their use was sufficient to eliminate most of the danger.

So why are you only repeating what you've said many times before instead
of writing an RFC that will repudiate and replace BCP 5?

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 16:11:07 -0400

> > That's because you aren't trying to write apps that operate across
> > addressing realm boundaries, and you're apparently not willing to listen
> > to those who are.  
> 
> bondaries. 
[...] 
> That nasty stuff causes all kinds of real world trouble 

just a couple of messages ago you were claiming that the discussion was about
moot theories and now you're claiming that it causes real world trouble.
which is it?

> of writing an RFC that will repudiate and replace BCP 5?

the reason I repeat these things once in awhile is because a significant
fraction of people still don't get it, and they're hindering progress.

the reason I don't try to repudiate BCP 5 is that it's clear that for IPv4
we're out of addresses, and you can't really solve the problem in IPv4 
any other way except to move to another address space.

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:17:32 -0600 (MDT)

> moot theories and now you're claiming that it causes real world trouble.

It's not a moot theory that NAT/site local addressing causes real world
problems.  The academic (in the bad sense of the word), ISO style moot
theorizing is the repeated haranguing about the evils of NAT and site
local addresses and the implication that the IETF could issue an edict
and prevent their use in (or near) an IPv6 Internet.

> fraction of people still don't get it, and they're hindering progress.

Here progress is measured only by published RFCs.  Repetitions of your
inflammatory litanies of the evils of NAT and site local addresses
prevent progress.  Every replay resets things to the start of the
"we gotta have them; no we don't; you're ignorant and wrong; no you
are; you're so clueless that you use Windows; no you are and your
mother too" groove.  I doubt there is anything that can be done about
NAT and site locals, but one thing is clear.  Your repetitions prevent
progress as much as the manipulations of the IETF's bureaucratic
machinery by your moot debate opponents....no, "debate" is wrong.
When I was an academic debator, the judges allowed only a fixed number
of fairly short opportunities to speak.

You claim that you do the IETF a service by replaying your old position
statements because people are ignorant, stupid, illiterate, and didn't
understand before.  Do you really think that makes sense?

> any other way except to move to another address space. 

Let's assume that's true.  Where is your I-D for a BCP against site
local addresses for IPv6?

I dislike NAT and site local addresses in theory and practice.  I'm
not volunteering to work on an anti-site-local BCP because I have no
hope that it could affect the real world, and because I don't have a
good enough alternative for site local addresses.  That application
of mine and every other real world application will have to deal with
NAT and site local addresses forever.  Life Sucks, but I've not found
an alternative I prefer.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 17:46:40 -0400

> any other way except to move to another address space. 

IANA gave out 61/8 in April 97. 69/8 was August 2002. Except for 3 /8s given to
RIPE, there's NOTHING all the way to 126/8.  56 /8s at a burn rate of 2 /8s per
year gives us some 28 more years.  There's also a big chunk up around 173-190/8
for another few years worth...

There's also reason to suspect that for at least 10-15 years, we've reached
somewhat of a plateau in address consumption - the dot-bomb bubble bursting
released a lot of address space allocated to since-departed end users, and the
relatively flat performance by both Microsoft and PC manufacturers indicates
that in the US/Europe area and most of the more advanced parts of the Pacific
Rim, the majority of people who want to be online already are.  There's high
percentage growth in South America/ Africa/Asia, but quite frankly, there's
some major infrastructure issues those areas have to deal with first.

On the other hand, a /28 and a /16 both flap just as hard....

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 17:56:00 -0400

as much as I feel compelled to respond to personal attacks, I don't think it's
relevant to the IETF discussion list any more.  so I'll respond in private.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 18:10:00 -0400

Tell you what.  If you can convince the RIRs that it's feasible to relax the
allocation criteria for IPv4 blocks, and you can convince the ISPs to make
address blocks available to their customers at reasonable prices, I'll happily
co-author one or more drafts that explain:

- why in hindsight RFC 1918 was a bad idea 
- why new sites should use global addresses rather than private addresses
- why sites currently using private addresses should consider migrating 
  to global addresses
- techniques for minimizing the pain of renumbering in IPv4, and
- alternate techniques for providing a similar degree of security to 
  that obtained with private addresses

(I say "co-author" because this is a LOT of ground to cover.  Even if I could
write it all myself, I doubt that I could defend it all against the various 
attacks it would draw from many quarters.)

But last I knew, there were several technical hurdles associated with doing
this - a perceived scarcity of addresses, route flapping, widespread use of
IP addresses in various kinds of configuration files (making renumbering more
difficult), and widespread "conventional wisdom" (supported by marketing BS)
that NATs and private addresses are a Good Thing.  

Keith

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 01:22:34 +0200

On zaterdag, okt 11, 2003, at 23:46 Europe/Amsterdam, 
[email-masked] wrote:

>> it's clear that for IPv4 we're out of addresses

> for another few years worth...

Have a look at Geoff Huston's latest work in this area: 
http://www.potaroo.net/papers.html

> released a lot of address space allocated to since-departed end users,

I don't buy this.

> and the
> Rim, the majority of people who want to be online already are.

Maybe there is something to this, but there is also a significant 
possibility that there isn't. There is still a large move from dial-up 
to "always on" types of access (cable, DSL) going on. It's likely the 
same will happen for mobile: today you dial in and use an address for a 
few minutes, in the future you're going to occupy an address 24/7 with 
your IP-enabled cell phone.

It looks like the growth in address usage is linear. Since there are 
significant factors driving this growth down (use of private addressing 
with or without NAT, addressless virtual servers, denser packing of 
subnets) the actual need for addresses must still be going up pretty 
fast.

But at some point the subnets are as dense as they're going to get, and 
everything that can be virtualized or NATed is. At this point life is 
going to become much more interesting.

I guess it all depends on how you look at it: either the glass is half 
empty (still 1.5 billion addresses still free) or it's 97% full (31 
bits down, one to go).

Iljitsch van Beijnum

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 17:39:02 -0600 (MDT)

> relevant to the IETF discussion list any more.  so I'll respond in private.

If I'd known you were going to switch from public+"courtesy copy" to
private lectures on how much I don't know and what am not doing, I
would have put your address back into my mail defenses.  As it is,
I'm almost but not quite moved to publish the private epistle that
arrived before I got my defenses repaired.

Your closing words in that private message are a motto you might consider
acting on.   In case you've forgotten, they were "Get over it."

What kind of pathology would lead someone to reason that private
flames would be more welcome or effective than public flames? 
Am I supposed to be more readily convince in private that I'm
ignorant and foolish?

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 01:04:29 -0400

> flames would be more welcome or effective than public flames? 

you deserved what you got in private email.  the list didn't.