WG Action: Conclusion of IP Version 6 (ipv6)

Thu Sep 27 20:57:43 UTC 2007

What Fred said is right.

Indeed, we closed the working group because it had completed
its task. The base is done and its time to move on.

That being said, everyone's painfully aware that the Internet
isn't complete yet and there are significant challenges ahead.
IPv6 -- just like any other technology that we have (SIP, DHCP, ...)
doesn't work well in all situations, needs new features, has
bugs, etc. And there are many known issues in IPv6, from
technical to deployment barriers. For these reasons we already
have a set of focused groups (6man, v6ops, rrg/shim6, various
IPv6 over Foo WGs, ...) looking at specific problems. If there
is a need for more groups, we  can create new ones.

Jari

Fred Baker kirjoitti:
>
> You make this sound negative.
>
> The IETF has since I have been involved with it had a problem with
> standing working groups. Some of the "temporary" working groups have
> taken a huge long time; IPsec lived seven years before it published
> its first RFC, for example. But in course of time, the IETF says "that
> phase is over, we're starting a new phase". That's how I read this.
>
> We started discussions in 1992, IIRC, with IPNG, which looked at
> several options and decided on the one we now call IPv6. That set of
> documents is 25 documents in the range from RFC 1550 (1993) through
> 1955 (1996) plus documents regarding TUBA, CATNIP, PIP, NIMROD, and
> the original Deering and Hinden proposals that merged to form IPv6.
>
> That working group was called "IP Next Generation". It closed, and an
> "IPv6" Working Group was opened.
>
> The initial development of IPv6 took perhaps five years, starting from
> the Deering and Hinden proposals (internet drafts) and culminating
> with a batch of documents in winter 1998-1999, some of which were at
> Draft Standard (proven functional and interoperable). Those documents,
> centering around RFC 2460, have been and are IPv6, whatever your
> opinion of that may be. Like RFC 791, that is the basis. It hasn't
> been changing, and it's not likely to change. These include the basic
> IPv6 ICMP, OSPF, Neighbor Discovery, "how to run it on Ethernet etc",
> address format, and that sort of thing.
>
> Since then, the IPv6 WG and several satellite WG including multi6,
> shim6, and v6ops, has dealt with "topics" more than "protocols" -
> renumbering, privacy addressing, transition mechanisms, multihoming,
> and so on - 124 RFCs working through various issues, many of them
> operational in nature.
>
> As I read this statement, it is saying that the working group opened
> in, what was it, 1995 maybe, has largely done what it was intended to
> do. There is still work to do, which is why there is an IPv6
> Maintenance WG, IPv6 Operations, and a couple of others, but that is
> not to be confused with the definition work done in the mid-late
> 1990's or what has gone on the past eight years.
>
> To me, the idea that the previous phase is over and we're in a new
> phase is a positive statement, not a negative one.