Anybody can participate in the IETF (Was: Why is IPv6 broken?)

[owen at delong.com (Owen DeLong)]

On Jul 11, 2011, at 12:57 PM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell at ufp.org> wrote:
>> The IETF does not want operators in many steps of the process.  If
>> you try to bring up operational concerns in early protocol development
>> for example you'll often get a "we'll look at that later" response,
>> which in many cases is right.  Sometimes you just have to play with
>> something before you worry about the operational details.  It also
> 
> I really don't understand why that is right / good.  People get
> personally invested in their project / spec, and not only that, vendor
> people get their company's time and money invested in
> proof-of-concept.  The longer something goes on with what may be
> serious design flaws, the harder it is to get them fixed, simply
> because of momentum.
> 
> Wouldn't it be nice if we could change the way that next-header works
> in IPv6 now?  Or get rid of SLAAC and erase the RFCs recommending /80
> and /64 from history?
> 

No... I like SLAAC and find it useful in a number of places. What's wrong
with /64? Yes, we need better DOS protection in switches and routers
to accommodate some of the realities of those decisions, but, that's not
to say that SLAAC or /64s are bad. They're fine ideas with proper
protections.

I'm not sure about the /80 reference as I haven't encountered that
recommendation outside of some perverse ideas about point-to-point
links.

Owen