shim6 (was Re: IPv6 news)

Sat Oct 15 06:03:57 UTC 2005

On Oct 14, 2005, at 1:48 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
> david.conrad at nominum.com (David Conrad) writes:
> (shouldn't that be drc at iana.org now?)

Not quite yet... :-)

> if all you've got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

I guess the question was what is the problem IPng was supposed to solve?

> had ietf killed AAAA back when there were
> effectively zero ipv6 hosts on the 'net, and paid the apparently- 
> high A6
> complexity penalty, we'd be talking about something else by now.

Yeah, like why didn't the Internet work anymore.  A6 was simply a  
broken idea.  It might have limped along in a vastly simplified form,  
but it would have changed how the DNS works in some really  
fundamental ways and I doubt those ways would ever have been acceptable.

> as it
> is, the shim6 complexity penalty is even higher, and i don't think  
> we'll
> ever get to stop talking about this problem.

It is unfortunate that simplicity, both in terms of operations as  
well as protocol definition, appears to be secondary to meeting  
everybody's pet requirements.  But perhaps that is only appearance.

Rgds,
-drc