RE: Last Call: Textual Conventions for IPv6 Flow Label to Pro posed Standard

["Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <bwijnen@lucent.com>]

> > > The problem of READ-WRITE or READ-CREATE seems to be that the MIB object
> > > cannot exist before a connection has been established.  But then it
> > > already has a flow label (or none) associated to it.  It seems too late to
> > > change it on the fly.
> > > 
> > > So, being able to change flow labels of existing flows seems like 
> > > something you must be very, very careful about in any case.
> > > 
> > > Hope this clarifies my concern.
> > >  
> > Somewhat... but why don't you take a look at RFC3289 and RFC3318 and
> > tell me if you see anything wrong. (not that they may be speaking
> > of FlowID instead of FlowLabel... but they mean the same thing).
> > 
> > I think that both RFCs are OK. Bot allow for writable/creatable objects
> > and I think in the way they use it it is OK.
> > I can see that there mightbe other uses that are not OK, but that of
> > course needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis, which the
> > MIB developers and later MIB doctors all do (or so I assume).
> 
> These two RFC's seem to be OK (from what little I understand MIB's): they
> seem to define a way to specify which can be used to match the flow label
> (e.g. in a diffserv classifier).   Being able to create such is of course 
> OK.
> 
OK, good and thanks. I had expected so... but one never knows... even in
approved RFCs we do sometimes find issues/bugs.

> What I was very worried about is creating e.g. an IPV6-MIB which includes
> the list of ongoing sessions (compare to 'netstat -an' in a unix box) with
> their flow labels -- and having R/W access to *modify* those flow labels.
> 
> That would be *bad*. :-)
> 
Indeed. I trust the people active in the IPv6MIB Design Team quite well.
And we will review the documents no matter what.

> This should clarify the distinction I was looking for.
>  
It does. Thanks. Such concerns are actually with all TCs.
I don;t think I need to make special mention of it.

Thanks again for your good input.
Bert