IPv6 "bloat" history

Thu Mar 31 12:10:09 UTC 2022

On 3/31/22 7:44 AM, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> [heavy sigh]
> 
> All of these things were well understood circa 1992-93.
> 
> That's why the original Neighbor Discovery was entirely link state.
> 
> ND link state announcements handled the hidden terminal problem.

Also, it almost goes without saying that the original ND tried to
handle the near-far problem.  For example, where I'm talking to a far
away AP streaming to the TV in front of me.

At my home, I've had to wire the TV.  Streaming to the AP, then the
AP sending the same traffic over the same wireless band to the TV
caused lots of drops and jitter.

The near-far problem can be detected and solved.  That's the reason
for the Metric field.

Furthermore, one of the messages in this thread mentioned trying to
backport v6 features to v4.

We've already been down that road.  IPsec and MobileIP were developed
for v6.  After quitting the v6 project(s), I'd backported both of
them to v4.  Like v6, then they were assigned to others who ruined them.
Committee-itis at its worst.