Subject: Re: one more IESG question about RFC 2553bis or 2292bis

From: Jack McCann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 14:44:31 -0400 (EDT)

Thomas Narten wrote:

>As Jack has completed his updates to RFC 2553, I've put it back on the
>IESG for consideration for publication. That prompted the following
>comment from Bill Fenner.

Yes, I mentioned this in my response to the last round of iesg
comments on 2553bis:

 c. The use of sin6_flowinfo is rather underspecified.  Of the 32
    bits, which ones contain the traffic class and which ones contain 
    the flow label?  What's in the other 4 bits?  Can I use it to set
    the traffic class and/or flow label for outbound packets (e.g.
    on a connect(), sendto() or sendmsg()?  What is behavior of
    this field on accept/recvfrom/recvmsg?  What is behavior with TCP?
    What is interaction with IPV6_TCLASS option from rfc2292bis?

I checked the Austin spec, it does not describe the contents of
the sin6_flowinfo field, other than this comment beside the field
definition:

    uint32_t  sin6_flowinfo  IPv6 traffic class and flow information

JINMEI Tatuya wrote:

>Thus, I think the best way is
>
>- to remove the paragraph of 2553bis in question, and
>- (if necessary) to clarify the detailed usage of sin6_flowinfo is not
>  defined in 2553bis because the protocol specification of flow labels
>  is still unclear.

I agree with the latter statement, I suggest we treat it as
we did the sin6_scope_id field.  Change this paragraph:

    The sin6_flowinfo field is a 32-bit field that contains two pieces of
    information: the traffic class and the flow label.  The contents and
    interpretation of this member is specified in [1].

to this:

    The sin6_flowinfo field is a 32-bit field intended to contain
    flow-related information.  The exact use of this field is not
    currently specified.

- Jack

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