(IPng 4984) Re: Last Call: IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture to Proposed Standard

Quick answer:

  > bound at zk3.dec.com writes:
  > Daniel,
  > 
  > Have you or someone from RIPE participated on the IPng mailing list?
  > 
  > Have you or someone from RIPE participated in the IPng WG meetings at
  > the last three IETF meetings?

Yes we have.  I personally have not been in Memphis, hoever none of us was
able to be at the interim meeting.  To my knowledge the draft under
discussion was written less than two IETFs ago.  I personally was not
able to be at all IPnG meetings at the last few IETFs because of
conflicts with other things.  I have however voiced my concerns about
this particular issue to Miek O'Dell while the discussion was going on.

But all that is besides the point really.

  > The reason I ask is because we have done technical analysis on this and
  > have had much discussion.  

I have seen some of this discussion.  I am afraid I have seen no
documented discussion revealing the reasoning behind fixing the TLA
length and fixing it at 13 bits.  Frankly I have been surprised by the
sudden speed of the provider based addressing standardisation. 

What I have voiced are concerns based on our experience with setting up
and operating address space registries as well as providing coordination
services to ISPs.  My main point is that fixing the TLA length and
fixing it at 13 bits has such far-reaching consequences that it needs to
be supported by a solid technical argument which I cannot find in the
drafts nor in any other source available to me.  I think the
draft should at least point to a solid reference supporting this. 
I expect a lot of entropy down the road if this is not supported well.

  > I think discussing the reason for going with a 13bit TLA needs to be
  > brought out more and doing and checking that is prudent.  But the
  > architecture and reasoning has had many technical discussions.  I would
  > like to understand as a WG member if you or RIPE did not agree with the
  > results (which I would think we would have heard before now) or if you
  > or RIPE have not been part of these open public discussions.  It could
  > be we need to point to the mail archives and the GSE reasoning paper done 
  > by Thomas Narten, Lixia Zhang, et al from whence this essential proposal
  > came from based on a WG meeting in Mountain View about a year ago?
  > I am trying to understand if this is an educational effort on our part
  > as a WG group?

It is both educational and principal.  Major design decisions should be
somewhat transparent to a wider audience.  Standardising TLA length in
fact puts significant constraints on operations, business models and
address space allocation policies just to name a few issues.  This needs
to be justified somewhat more than just saying "it is standardised like
this".  The reasons have to be accessible more widely than just the IPnG
WG.  Note that I am not at issue with the underlying architecture.  It
is about fixing the boundary and fixing it at a particular value.  If
there is a solid technical reason for it, then document it.  Documenting
it will make the standard a stronger document and will prevent a lot of
discussion about the repercussions.  If there is no solid technical
reason to do so then then do not fix these values.  If a (proposed)
standard does not document this reasoning or at least points to it, it
is seriously flawed. This is not a definition of a type field in some
application protocol header. It is much more critical.

Does that answer your question?

Daniel