Re: Tunneling and Transition Drafts

[Alain Durand <alain@tycool.net>]

On Apr 5, 2005, at 4:34 PM, Fred Baker wrote:
> In taking over the working group, Kurt and I basically were presented 
> with the following scenario:
>  - this group is for operational questions (not protocols)
>  - this group seeks to conform to RFC 1958 (we are not here to bless 
> very lame solution that comes along)
>  - transition mechanisms are generally out of scope.
>
> As I understand it, v6tc (which was intended to take over all the 
> tunneling stuff, which is to say a large proposition of the transition 
> stuff) is dead in the water. The expectation was that all the 
> tunneling/transition stuff would move there, but the BOF was a 
> non-event. There isn't likely to be a v6tc WG. (Dear AD: if you 
> disagree, this would be a good time to say so).

Is TC going to be chartered or not, I do not know yet, we are still 
talking about that.
That said, as Pekka mentioned, TC was never meant to pick up all the 
left-overs
from the NGtrans days that were not adopted by v6Ops, it was meant to 
be a very
focused wg.

I'll send later the minutes of the meeting, but what I got (and all the 
people I talk to after
shared the same feeling) is that:
- We are very late in the game, folks have started to deploy their own 
ad-hoc solutions,
  if we do anything, time to market will be critical
- What is being deployed is either not documented or not standardized 
(i.e. not been through
  community review)
- The focus on latency was to try to get a common solution that will 
fit the wired and wireless case,
   it seems that this may not be the best approach.


> Which brings me to my question. I am being asked by various proponents 
> of various things what the working group wants to do with their 
> approach. I need to know what the game plan for this working group is: 
> let a thousand flowers bloom (they can all ask for informational 
> status from the RFC Editor and the probability that the transition 
> will happen in an orderly fashion rapidly approaches zero), or I need 
> a consensus statement from the working group that every single 
> approach on the table will be set aside and the working group will 
> actively work on providing a single solution that meets all those 
> needs that the IETF can look at and say "yes, that will accomplish an 
> orderly transition in a timely fashion and 
> *I*will*support*that*in*favor*of*all*others".

let's get into the time machine...

Spring 1999. Grenoble IPng & NGtrans interim meeting.
Topic: we have too many transition mechanisms, can we converge on one 
and only one?

Summer 2002. Yokohama IETF.
Topic: too many transition mechanisms, shut down NGtrans and focus on 
scenarios in v6ops

Spring 2005. now.
Topic: too many transition mechanisms, can we converge on one and only 
one?

See a pattern here?

	- Alain.