quietly....

Wed Feb 2 11:39:14 UTC 2011

On Feb 2, 2011, at 12:16 AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> On 2 feb 2011, at 4:51, Dave Israel wrote:
> 
>> They were features dreamed up by academics, theoreticians, and purists, and opposed by operators.
> 
> Contrary to popular belief, the IETF listens to operators and wants them to participate. Few do. For instance, I don't seem to remember your name from any IETF mailinglists. (I could be mistaken, though.)
> 
> There is a fundamental difference between designing something and using something. Both inform the other. But letting users with no design experience create something is a short road to failure. (Letting designers run stuff isn't much better.)
> 
> I always like to say the internet is an infinite universe. In an infinite universe, everything that's possible exist. Same in the internet. Think of some way to do something, however ill-informed, and someone is doing it that way.
> 
> Example: if you give administrators the option of putting a router address in a DHCP option, they will do so and some fraction of the time, this will be the wrong address and things don't work. If you let routers announce their presence, then it's virtually impossible that something goes wrong because routers know who they are. A clear win. Of course it does mean that people <gasp> have to learn something new when adopting IPv6.

I would point to 6to4 and the RAs coming from Windows Laptops that think they are routers because someone clicked on an ICS checkbox as a counter example that letting things that think they are routers announce their presence is, in fact, proof that it is not only possible that something goes wrong, but, commonplace.

So, your clear win has proven to be a rather large lose in a number of environments.

Owen