BOF report: NSIIM

[Rob Austein <sra@hactrn.net>]

Next Steps In IP Mobility.  Short version: BOF was called to discuss:

- prioritization of "IP mobility topics"

- whether to charter two new WGs, MIP4 and MIP6, the first to talk
  about the base spec (including operational issues) for the MIPv4
  base spec, the other to discuss the MIPv6 base spec.  These would
  replace the current Mobile IP WG.  No intent to get into what MANET,
  AAA, etc are into.

They have lists of issues that they think are base spec issues for
each proposed WG.  I find myself strongly disagreeing with Jim Kempf,
who is also here: I'm not convinced that splitting into v4 specific
and v6 specific groups is a good idea given our current believes about
it being one dual-stack internet.  I assume that Jim will present his
own view.  To be fair, Jim did also later bring up MIPv4-MIPv6
interaction issues, so it's possible that I just haven't spent enough
time in MIP-hell to understand why this proposed split is the right
thing.

Apparently part of the problem here is that discussion of the base
MIPv6 spec has pretty much tied up the current WG for the last several
years.  Sense of the room seemed to be that this is a real problem,
question is how to deal with it.

Given how much of this is about dealing with a problem in an existing
WG that I don't follow, I'm not sure how much I can really add about
the advisability of what they're proposing here.

There was some confusion caused by a poorly worded statement that the
IRTF should not get into research on seriously different mobility
mechanisms; that was clarified to mean "this set of IETF WGs could use
some shorter term help from the IRTF", not an attempt to tell the IRTF
that it's not allowed to do its own thing.

Some question about other forms of mobility (eg, HIP, which is
currently sort of trying to position itself as a possible mobility
solution), should these WGs think about that stuff too?  Probably not,
but it'd be nice to stop saying that MIP is the only form of mobility,
even if it's mostly just an accidental side effect of a WG name that
was chosen a decade ago.

Some discussion of where the right boundary between, eg, this work's
problem space ends and AAA's begins.  Unsurprisingly, the INT ADs
appear to be on top of this problem, although some of the usual
suspects will probably try to stray off the reservation.