Subject: Re: Section 4.2.1 - draft-ietf-ipv6-node-requirements-00.txt

From: "Adam Machalek" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 10:48:49 -0500

Pekka wrote:
>You apparently consider SHOULD as almost a MUST.

>I support SHOULD in this case; it's meant for manually configured
>nodes, really.  I certainly want to be able to manually configure my
>systems _if I want to_.

>You've convincing reasons why you don't want to implement that -- always
>use autoconfiguration.  (I suspect you're dealing with small devices
>which cannot really be "configured" anyway).  It's okay.

You are correct, as I interpret things, SHOULD implys you better have a
good reason not to do something, and be able to back it up.   I typically
interrpret shoulds as almost a must is because sooner or later we'll get an
RFP based on this type of document, and anything marked MUST and SHOULD
gets marked as MUST in the RFP.  Happens all the time.

MAY on the otherhand is vendor specific, if you want to do it, or your
customers desire it, go right ahead.  It doesn't stop manually configured
nodes the ability to manually configure.

Adam Machalek

--------------------------------------------------------------------
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: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 13:44:50 +0300

Hi Adam,

> In section 4.2.1 on RFC2461, you repeat that Router Discovery is
> Unconditionally manatory twice.

Thanks, got it.
 
> Also, I'd like to understand why the ability to disable Router Discovery is
> marked as a SHOULD instead of a MAY.  I don't recall anything in 2461 that
> calls this out.
>
> With the way I do things, making this a SHOULD in this type of document
> pretty much means I'm going to have to add and document yet another
> configuration toggle, one that I personally don't see any value to (at
> least for the type of equipment we are producing).  Making this a MAY
> allows those vendors who see this as a requirment to go ahead and implement
> this, while giving other vendors who see no such requirement the option to
> leave it out.

Thinking about this, I tend to agree with you.  I think router discovery
is mandatory, and nowhere does 2461 talk about disabling it.

John