Subject: Re: Change the subject! RE: [IAOC] Re: IPv4 Outage Planned for IETF71 Plenary

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:22:39 -0800

Why is it a useful exercise for me to try again an operating system I first used a quarter century ago?

I know operating system religious wars are fun but this is not an opportunity to make converts. Hard as you may find it to believe it is possible to have used a large number of os and onsider unix one of the worst. Nor is success in itself proof of excellence as sql demonstrates. 

At this point I have 10 ip addressable devices in the house, I cannot shift the printers or the vonage adapter to ipv4. Nor have I any intention of upgrading the four boxes running xp, they will run as is till they fail and be replaced.

One approach to deploying IPv6 is to try to persuade PHB to be more reasonable. Another is to accept that PHB is already far more reasonable that the vast vast majority of the billion odd internet users in the world and that rather than trying to persuade people to be reasonable one at a time we work out a deployment strategy that is likely to be acceptable to them.

No question it is a lot more fun doin enginering without deadlines or user requirements. But that is not the real world we have to work in.

Sent from my GoodLink Wireless Handheld (www.good.com)

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Greg Skinner [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent:	Sunday, December 30, 2007 01:44 PM Pacific Standard Time
To:	Hallam-Baker, Phillip
Cc:	IETF Discussion
Subject:	Re: Change the subject! RE: [IAOC] Re: IPv4 Outage Planned for	IETF71 Plenary

Hallam-Baker, Phillip <[email-masked]> wrote:

> It is a question of ambition. At sixteen I was interested in mastering
> the computer at its most fundamental level. I wrote arcade games in
> 6502 and Z80 assembler.

> Today the idea of booting linux on a laptop would not make my top ten,
> hundred or thousand list of must do before I die experiences. In other
> words I have a life.

Actually, for someone with some Linux or Unix sysadmin experience, it
is not that difficult with Linux live distros.  Insert the CD- or
DVD-ROM with the distro in the CD/DVD drive and reboot. (It may be
necessary to tell the BIOS to boot from the CD/DVD drive; check the
laptop manufacturer's manual for the proper instructions.) Linux
should come up right away.  I used Ubuntu 6.06 and both IPv4 and IPv6
were enabled when the system came up.  Since I didn't have native IPv6
connectivity, I needed to build a tunnel.  The Linux+IPv6-HOWTO
documentation (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO) was very
helpful.  I was able to confirm that I was using IPv6 by visiting
www.ripe.net at its IPv6 address and verifying my IPv6 address on
their page.

If you have little or no Linux or Unix sysadmin experience, I'd advise
going through the process before the meeting.  No changes will be made
to your hard disk (unless you make them).  If you get stuck, you can
always reboot and start over from scratch.

> [snip]

> Nor do I see any point in any test predicated on the expectation
> that large numbers of people will ever learn about IPv6
> administration.

> I know what micrcode is, I have even written some.  I know the role
> of microcode in VLSI design. If I was teaching a comp sci course I
> would want the students to know all about microcode. That does not 
> mean that I want or need the microcode for my cpu before I program it.

> I don't know what lesson will be drawn here. The one I believe
> should be drawn is that we need to ask what the problem we are really
> trying to solve is.

Unfortunately, using a live Linux distro won't help people who need
what they normally use that isn't available on the distro CD (or can
be downloaded).  However, it can be a useful exercise just for getting
people to use IPv6 who might not otherwise.

--gregbo
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---

From: Greg Skinner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:36:17 +0000

I think you're reading more into my comments than was intended.  I'm
only speaking to the issue of how people who might be interested in
running IPv6 on Linux during the experiment, but are concerned the
process may be complicated or risky to their setups, may do so.  It
may not work on all hardware; there is some information at the Linux
on Laptops site (http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/) regarding known
working configurations.

FWIW, I reread Russ Housley's comments on the outage, and understand
it to be an experiment that is voluntary (but encouraged).  Perhaps
this needs to be stated differently (e.g. "IPv6 experiment planned for
IETF71 Plenary").

--gregbo

---

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:36:30 -0500

> this needs to be stated differently (e.g. "IPv6 experiment planned for

I think the real issue here is the difference between what was
originally stated (I think first by Marshall Rose in the Open Book) as
the difference between the ISO, promulgating OSI, and the IETF,
promulgating TCP/IP --- which was that ISO was populated primarily by
professional standard organization "goers", where as the IETF was
populated primarily by engineers, or "doers".

To the extent that you have developers who are actually helping to
write code and develop reference implementations for the protocol
specifications that one is helping to write, it is probably much more
likely that that population is willing to hack their laptop to run
IPv6 --- even if they have a locked-down laptop issued by the IT
department (which very few engineers I know are willing to
countenance, and will generally tend to work around one way or
another), they can probably use VMware to run a sandbox environment
which they *can* use to experiment.  Note that this has *nothing* to
do with whether the engineer uses Linux or Windows or NetBSD or MacOS
as their primary laptop OS.

On the other hand, if you have professional standards body attendees,
who are perhaps technical enough to talk about a standard, but not
enough to actually implement it, and whose primary expertise is in
politics and the policies and procedures of each particular standards
organization (so they know how to pack a working group or national
body with representatives that will vote they want) --- they will tend
to view their Windows laptop as a production environment as a sealed
box, not to be touched, and only useful for e-mail, powerpoint, and
microsoft word, it is much less likely they will be willing (or even
able) to participate in such an experiment.

Over the years, I suspect the ratio of goers vs. doers has been
increasing; but I hope there are enough doers still attending the IETF
to justify the "Engineering" in the title of the organization.

   	       		     	    	  - Ted

---

From: Joe Baptista <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:43:28 -0500

>populated primarily by engineers, or "doers".

Well said.  Sounds like somewhere in all this the doers and goers forgot 
to communicate.  They very thing they were all intent on promoting 
through all this doing and going was communications ... and somehow the 
very thing all these doers and goers were trying to promote, 
communications, was the very thing being buried by all this doing and going.

regards
joe baptista

-- 
Joe Baptista                                www.publicroot.org
PublicRoot Consortium
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