RE: WG next steps

[smd@ab.use.net (Sean Doran)]

Tony Li writes:

| I must disagree with my esteemed colleague.  The routing research
| group would be the appropriate place for this, and there is no
| visible progress there.

With respect, both parts of the second sentence above are wrong.

The IRTF RRG has deliberately avoided trying to "fix" IPv6 routing,
because that was being undertaken as IETF *engineering* work, and
because we have been aiming for a new routing system that is independent
of layer 3 frame type (i.e., not just for v4 or for v6 or for a v4/v6
dual-protocol network).  

If the IETF cannot engineer a solution to IPv6 multihoming, then
certainly, IPv6 routing *research* could be done as a subgroup
within the RRG, just as is research on micromobility.   We have
not yet reached that point.

I think that there is no consensus yet that the IETF should abandon
the engineering effort; I see no reason to believe that declaring
the problem research rather than engineering does anything other
than substitute organization name rather leaving the same people
and the problem in place; and I personally would not like to drive
the effort into the IRTF RRG until there is a much more obvious I*
consensus that that is where it belongs (or that it would make a difference).

Most importantly, the RG work will in general be much more about
architecture and generality, rather than the design of specific
protocols and practices, which should be done within the IETF.
IPv6 is a suite of extant protocols and practices, and the
discussions on requirements (such as they have happened) have
not yet gone beyond approaches faling into roughly three categories:

	-- changes to/extensions of existing protocols & practices
	-- new couplings of different protocols/practices defined elsewhere
	-- entirely or effectively new protocols/practices
	   of which there are roughly two subcategories:
		-- those which are based on known behaviours
		   or subject to ready analysis or implementation experience
		-- those which are not

The very last set has been touched on in different ways by Ran Atkinson
and Eliot Lear, and now by you.

I'm sure my various co-chairs and I would be amenable to helping
deal with that set of solutions, however there is NO clear consensus
that that set of solutions contains the only workable one(s).

	Sean.