Subject: RE: SUMMARY: RE: Limiting the Use of Site-Local

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 11:26:03 -0800

> Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> [Limiting the Use of Site-Local]
> I have offered to write a document that explains my
> thoughts on the above issues

I don't see how this could reach consensus. It appears to me that way
too many people here have forgot The Golden Rule of a successful
product, which is to keep the customer happy. IPv6 is a product, it its
success is a lot more tied to what customers (read: network
administrators) think than to what people that develop stacks think,
whether you like it or not.

There is ample evidence to support the fact that the customer (the
network administrator) wants, if not site-local, at least something that
provides what site-local does; and that they will continue using them
the way they see fit regardless of the fact that the IETF could try to
restrict their use or not. Keep the customer happy.

When a dog is happy, it wags its tail. Trying to wag the dog instead is
not going to work with network administrators that have been doing it
for 30 years, and that actually do know a lot about doing it.

Michel.

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From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 15:18:46 -0500

At 02:26 PM 11/3/02, Michel Py wrote:
>I don't see how this could reach consensus.

Not all documents that people write do reach consensus.  Some do,
and are published.  Some explain a viewpoint and are useful as
a means of clear communication, even if they never become RFCs.

>restrict their use or not. Keep the customer happy.

However, there are significant questions about what site-local
provides, and little enough commercial deployment of IPv6 that
it is hard to say, at this point, what will prevail.

I agree that customers use IPv4 RFC 1918 addresses and NAT, but
I don't think that we have a full understand of _why_ these
things are used -- what the actual motivators are, not a laundry
list of everything they might be useful for...  Site-locals
bear a surface resemblance to RFC 1918 addresses behind NAT, but
they actually don't work the same way.  For example, site locals
do not really shield the site from the need to renumber the
global prefixes, the way a NAT does.  Also, there are no ALGs
defined to allow applications to work properly across site
boundaries in IPv6.  Maybe we'll end-up defining IPv6 NAT and
ALGs based on customer demand, but I hope not.

Ideally, we'd like to construct the IPv6 protocol, the IPv6 address
allocations policies, etc. to promote a flatter and more end-to-end
architecture in the IPv6 Internet.  Maybe we'll fail, but I'm not
ready to give up trying.

Margaret

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 13:59:32 -0500

> restrict their use or not. Keep the customer happy.

It would be good if this WG could come to some sort of
understanding/consensus of what it is that the "customer" wants per
the above "something that provides what site-local does".

Understanding this might well allow us to:

- scope SL usage to acheive that goal (but not other things that are
  more complicated and less crtical), or

- refute the argument that SL actually achieves this, or

- provide a better solution that meets the actual needs without
  necessarily even using SLs.

Do you have some specifics you can cite here?

Thomas

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From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 19:53:34 +0100

> whether you like it or not.

The difference is that there is no business at stake if this product 
don't fly. We can change it anyway.

- kurtis -