Subject: Re: [v6ops] Another look at 6to4 (and other IPv6 transition issues)

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:33:37 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Ronald Bonica <[email-masked]>

    > RFC 2026's very terse definition of HISTORIC. According to RFC 2026,
    > "A specification that has been superseded by a more recent
    > specification or is for any other reason considered to be obsolete
    > is assigned to the Historic level." That's the entire definition.
    > Anything more is read into it.
    > ...
    > A more likely interpretation is as follows:
    > "the IETF is not likely to invest effort in the technology in the
    > 	future"
    > "the IETF does not encourage (or discourage) new deployments of this
    > 	technology.

But in giving other interpretations, are you thereby not comitting the
exact error you call out above: "Anything more is read into it."?

To me, "Historic" has always (including pre-2026) meant just what the
orginal meaning of the word is (caveat - see below) - something that is
now likely only of interest to people who are looking into the history of
networking. (The dictionary definition is "Based on or concerned with
events in history".) I think "obsolete" is probably the best one-word
description (and note that 'obsolete' != 'obsolescent').

(Caveat: technically, it probably should have been 'historical', not
"historic" - "historic" actually means 'in the past, but very noteworthy',
e.g.  'CYCLADES was a historic networking design', so not every historical
protocol is historic.)

	Noel

---

From: Ronald Bonica <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:20:57 -0400

Noel,

Given that each of us reads something different into the definition of HISTORIC, is there any hope that this thread will ever converge?

                                                                  Ron

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Noel Chiappa [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 11:34 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: Another look at 6to4 (and other IPv6 transition issues)
>

---

From: Erik Kline <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:26:26 +0900

> Given that each of us reads something different into the definition of HISTORIC, is there any hope that this thread will ever converge?

I don't see any "progress".

We may just have to blacklist any resolvers that have 6to4 clients
behind them and leave it at that.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:42:25 +1200

> behind them and leave it at that.

Why? How would that help anybody?

What would help is following the steps in the -advisory document.

(Discussing how many angels can dance on the head of an RFC certainly
won't help either. Could we all stop now please?)

   Brian

---

From: Philip Homburg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:28:12 +0200

In your letter dated Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:26:26 +0900 you wrote:
>> Given that each of us reads something different into the definition of HISTO
>RIC, is there any hope that this thread will ever converge?
>

I don't think there is any need to be overly dramatic about it.

I firmly belive that 6to4 should be moved to historic. But at the same time,
I was looking for a poorly performing IPv6 connection to test happy eyeballs
and didn't find it. 6to4 can just work.

So a less aggressive approach might be in order.

(If you look at the numbers, there are fewer and fewer 6to4 connections to
dual-stack sites because modern operating system releases will prefer IPv4
over 6to4. Of the users who didn't upgrade, there is about 20% with a
completely broken 6to4 setup. What remains is slightly higher latency due to
non-optimal placement of relays)