Subject: Re: Last Call: <draft-gont-intarea-obsolete-eid-option-01.txt> (Obsoleting the Endpoint Identifier (EID) Option) to Proposed Standard

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 09:58:29 -0400 (EDT)

> From: "Eggert, Lars" <[email-masked]>

    >> The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to
    >> consider the following document:
    >> - 'Obsoleting the Endpoint Identifier (EID) Option'
    >>  <draft-gont-intarea-obsolete-eid-option-01.txt> as Proposed Standard

    > Have the original authors [sic - JNC] been contacted? 

Alas, the author of the ID which defines this option, Charlie Lynn, is no
longer with us:

  http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2004-June/004195.html

I can probably give as good a judgement on it as anyone, though.

Looking at the ID defining the option:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/nimrod/eidoption.txt

(dunno why the obsoletion ID doesn't give a URL for it), the obsoletion ID is
slightly inaccurate: it wasn't just "meant to be used with the Nimrod routing
architecture", but rather the endpoint name format supported by that option
is totally general, allowing any endpoint name format to be used.

(In fact, one large faction of the Namespace Research Group wanted to use a
format for endpoint names which would have made use of the 'variable length'
capability of this option, but I digress..)

I don't see any particular reason to not obsolete this option, though; no
recent proposal uses a separate header option for endpoint identification in
IPv6. Recent work on adding endpoint names has either i) used part of the
IPv6 address as an EID (e.g. ILNP), or interpreted the existing IPvN address
as an EID (e.g. LISP).

And, in any event, if we decide we need it, we can always bring it back
(according to the obsoletion ID, it's merely to be marked "obsolete",
not re-assigned).

	Noel

---

From: Fernando Gont <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:39:51 +0200

> I can probably give as good a judgement on it as anyone, though.

FWIW, being unaware of this, I tried to contact Charles Lynn a couple of
years ago when I was going through each of the then-currently-specified
IPv6 options. I seem to recall checking with Noel regarding whether EID
had ever been deployed (but my memory may certainly fail).

> (dunno why the obsoletion ID doesn't give a URL for it),

Yep, it should. -- for some reason the I-D is referencing only
<http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/nimrod/> but not the specific I-D that
specified the option. -- I will add a specific reference in the next rev
of the I-D - thanks!

> the obsoletion ID is

Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how to tweak the text
to improve this.

Thanks!

Best regards,
-- 
Fernando Gont
e-mail: [email-masked] || [email-masked]
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