Re: R41 in draft-ietf-v6ops-cpe-simple-security-07

[james woodyatt <jhw@apple.com>]

On Jul 29, 2009, at 14:57, Mark Baugher wrote:
> [...] Also, the motivation for removing R41 should not be based on  
> whether it will help or hurt the chances of getting the document  
> published. If the group can clearly articulate why this technology  
> is needed and why the IETF is the organization to provide it, then  
> I'd say we have an obligation to bring it to the IESG. I'm sorry I  
> missed the meeting and wonder if some positive motivation has been  
> given for R41 rather than problems with other protocols, IGD and  
> IPsec, or issues with the IPR policies of another SDO.

To quote the draft: "No consensus has yet emerged in the Internet  
engineering community as to which proposal is most appropriate for  
residential IPv6 usage scenarios."

So, we don't recommend any particular protocol, because we don't have  
any that we really like, but it makes the somewhat dodgy  
recommendation that *something* indeterminate be there.  Then it goes  
on to make the very queer insistence that this protocol should meet  
IETF requirements for normative references in standards documents--  
despite the fact that this draft is not standards track, and IETF  
doesn't have a consensus around any particular currently running  
protocol with a specification that meets those requirements.

In shorter terms: We don't know what you should so, but whatever  
protocol you end up picking, it should have an open specification.

That's kinda strange, isn't it?

It seems to me that if we don't want to remove R41 from the draft,  
then we should have a better answer to the question of what protocol  
to use than we currently do.  I don't think we will have one any time  
soon, so that's why I proposed removing R41 and making no  
recommendation beyond allowing administrators to manually configure  
the filtering behavior for local policy.


--
james woodyatt <jhw@apple.com>
member of technical staff, communications engineering