Subject: Re: Consensus on what? RE: CONSENSUS CALL: Deprecating Site-Local Addressing

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 06:45:34 -0500

Hi Michel,

Sorry for the delay in responding.  Bob is in Beijing without good
mail access, and I have been out of the office the past couple of
days for personal reasons.

At 02:21 PM 4/1/2003 -0800, Michel Py wrote:
>What is this consensus about? I was hoping that the mailing list would
>be asked to express their opinions _after_ a text to deprecate
>site-local addressing had been submitted to the working group. In the
>current situation, this consensus if there is one would be good only to
>accept text as a working document. This document that still has to be
>seen then should go to WG last call.

The current call is to confirm the consensus of the room in SF that
site-local addresses should be deprecated.  Once the WG has consensus
on a general plan of attack (deprecate site-local addresses, keep
them for specific uses, etc.), we will update the documents (addressing
architecture, scoped addressing architecture, etc.) to reflect that
general direction.  Yes, we will need to get group consensus on the
documents when they are ready.

In SF, we also had general agreement (although no direct consensus
call was made) to write a document that explained why site-locals
were deprecated and how to achieve the benefits of site-locals
(numbering for disconnected sites, access control, etc.) through
different means that did not have the problems of site-local
addressing.

>Where is the doc to deprecate site-local addressing?

It will be written if there is IETF WG consensus to do the
deprecation.  I am not actually certain if site-locals will be
officially deprecated in the separate document that I mentioned
above, or through an update to the addressing architecture
(since that would be on the standards track), but I'm also not
sure that it matters, as both would be necessary.

Margaret

--------------------------------------------------------------------
IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List
IPng Home Page:                      http://playground.sun.com/ipng
FTP archive:                      ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng
Direct all administrative requests to [email-masked]
--------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 08:01:27 -0800

Brian,

> Brian E Carpenter wrote: 
> I didn't mean we should pull the current draft, which
> is already in the RFC queue. Obviously, if we get
> consensus on the principle, there is then follow up
> to respect the process. I didn't think that my words
> implied otherwise; I just want to take one step at a
> time.

Well I found your post confusing to say the least. Besides, there is
history. Less than 5 months ago you proposed to do it about the same
site-local issue:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian E Carpenter
> Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 4:53 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Proposal for site-local clean-up
> Unfortunately it's too late to catch the addressing
> architecture document unless we recall it from the
> RFC Editor and cycle it through the IESG again. But
> I propose that we do exactly that

Also, four days ago you indicated that you were hoping that the question
of what would replace site-locals would not be raised before consensus
was achieved:

>> Tim Chown wrote:
>> So, as Michel asked, what's the solution for
>> intermittently connected  sites in the absence of
>> site locals?

> Brian E Carpenter wrote: 
> Well, I'd hoped to avoid that question until we had
> mailing list consensus on deprecating SLs.

One in the other, I had reasons to be concerned, don't you think?

Michel.

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 08:08:10 -0800

Margaret,

>> Michel Py wrote:

> Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> [Large snip]
> It will be written if there is IETF WG consensus to
> do the deprecation. I am not actually certain if
> site-locals will be officially deprecated in the
> separate document that I mentioned above, or through
> an update to the addressing architecture (since that
> would be on the standards track), but I'm also not

Works for me.

On a side note, I just re-read addrarch 3.11 and I found no text about
how a WG deprecates a prefix. As far as I'm concerned, it could mean
that all WG members are supposed to telnet to all IPv6 routers in the
world and deprecate the prefix there. We need better than this.

Thanks
Michel.

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:02:33 -0800

Dave / Brian,

> Dave Thaler wrote:
> Can someone quickly give a proposal or two for (b)
> before the consensus call deadline?

It needs polishing, but FWIW:
http://arneill-py.sacramento.ca.us/ipv6mh/draft-py-ipv6-gusl-00.txt
(not submitted to the WG)

Also read:
draft-hinden-ipv6-global-site-local-00.txt

> Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> - bits derived from GPS location at an arbitrary point
    inside the site
> - bits derived from the date & time at the instant you
    want a prefix
> - bits derived from an IEEE address of an arbitrary
    device inside the site
> - pseudo-random bits of some kind
> - bits supplied from a central allocator of some kind

Note that these methods are not mutually exclusive; for what I remember
of the discussions about the topic it appears that no single one would
cover the needs so the end result is likely a combination of some of the
ones you just enumerated.

Michel.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 11:15:57 -0800

I was another who gave comments at the mike, but abstained
from the voting at IETF56.

The concern I stated at the mike was the need for supporting
intermittently-connected sites, but this case is complicated
when multiple sites overlap/merge, e.g., when multiple ad-hoc
networks bump into one another. This is an area that seems to
have potential solutions in the GUSL, GUPI, etc. proposals.
But, the current proposals all seem to have limitations.

On the one hand, I don't see the sense in taking an option
off the table until a clear solution to the above mentioned
problem space (among others) becomes apparent. On the other
hand, I'm not seeing strong evidence that any such clear
solution will needs-be depend on the existence of site-locals.

So, my reasons for abstaining from the ballot still apply
until I've seen more compelling evidence than is currently
evident from the discussions.

Fred Templin