Subject: RE: Mobility in Nodes Requirements

From: Tim Hartrick <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 15:22:56 -0800 (PST)

All,

> 
> This is pretty simple folks.  Just focus the title of the document and
> not make it general node requirements.  The general node reqs are in the
> RFCs for IPv6.  They do not need to be re-written.
> 
> This document started because the 3GPP vendors did not want to do all
> the musts in the RFCs.  Fine so lets just make this a 3GPP document
> which it was in the first place.
> 

In general, I agree with Jim here.  I have never seen the need for an
IPv6 node requirements specification.  The need for the IPv4 host requirements
document was in large part driven by the large number of ambiguities and
bugs in the original IPv4 RFCs.  The IETF has a complete process for
addressing ambiguities and bugs in RFCs (they are revised and obsoleted) so
the need for a IPv6 node requirements document is pretty questionable.  If
the other RFCs are correct a node requirements document for IPv6 should be
nothing but a list of current RFCs.  We already have lists of RFCs.  I am not
denigrating the effort that has gone into this document.  John and others have
clearly worked hard on the text and the consensus building but it seems to me
that this document and the debate about it are talking around the issue that
was the genesis of this effort.

This effort began as a way for the 3GPP crowd to strip out features of IPv6
that they didn't want to implement.  Some of the reasons for not wanting
to implement features were legitimate and some weren't.  For example, if
there are characteristics of 3GPP LINKs that make certain features of ND
unnecessary then that should be documented in an IPv6 over 3GPP specification 
but if the intent is to say that "3GPP nodes" are things that don't have much
storage and don't have much memory so we need to throw out pieces of ND to
make it fit then that is a different matter entirely because it is taking
a snap shot in time of what a constitutes a "3GPP node" and may well have
serious interoperability consequences for the "3GPP node" that one day grows
an 802.11b interface.

I doubt that this late arriving opinion will matter much but that is my
two cents on the issue.

Tim Hartrick
Mentat Inc.
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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 01:28:17 +0200 (EET)

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Tim Hartrick wrote:
> bugs in the original IPv4 RFCs.  [...]

I agree, at least to a degree: I believe the optimal category should be
BCP or Informational.  PS (as is currently in the charter) is also fine,
though I see little which would require this -- and in fact might give a
wrong picture of the nature of the memo.

But this is a discussion we probably have had many times -- too bad I just 
remember the outcome and justifications (well, one: IPv4 NodeReqs was PS 
for reasons given by Tim).

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings