Subject: Protocol Action: IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture to Draft Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 16:41:17 -0500

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture' <draft-ietf-ipngwg-addr-arch-v3-11.txt> as a Draft
Standard.  This document is the product of the IP Version 6 Working
Group Working Group.  The IESG contact persons are Thomas Narten and
Erik Nordmark.

Technical Summary
 
This specification defines the addressing architecture of the IP
Version 6 protocol (RFC 2460). The document includes the IPv6
addressing model, text representations of IPv6 addresses, definition
of IPv6 unicast addresses, anycast addresses, and multicast addresses,
and an IPv6 node's required addresses.

Working Group Summary
 
The WG originally asked to advance this document to Draft standard in
1998, but the IESG pushed back on advancement pending more
implementation experience on some aspects of multicast scoping and on
concerns over the readiness of advancing the companion "Aggregatable
Global Unicast Address Format" document with which it had been paired.

Since that time, additional interoperability has been demonstrated,
and the document is being advanced independent of the other document.
There has been (and continues to be) continued support in the WG for
advancement of this document. A new IETF Last Call was held in
December, 2000.

Comments and IESG discussion resulting from the 2nd Last Call resulted
in a number of document changes. Those changes included:

  - removing the Format Prefix (to clarify that implementations should
      not build in knowledge about any prefixes except ones that are
      explicitly listed in the specification),

  - making it clear that all address space was to be treated as global
      unicast, except in those specific cases where other definitions
      already existed,

  - making it clear that reference to RFC 2374 (An Aggregatable Global
      Unicast Address Format) was an example, as address assignment
      policy is under the domain of the RIRs

A full list of changes can be found in the changes section of the
document. The document was then Last Called again, and no comments
were raised at that time.
 
Protocol Quality
 
This document has been reviewed for the IESG by Thomas Narten.