[141826] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: The stupidity of trying to "fix" DHCPv6
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Iljitsch van Beijnum)
Sun Jun 12 07:02:48 2011
From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>
In-Reply-To: <F5519FAA-AE22-4047-B3DA-A4E3C26B0F09@delong.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2011 13:01:39 +0200
To: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On 11 jun 2011, at 17:05, Owen DeLong wrote:
>> Your doctor doesn't just give you the medicine you ask for either.
> You are not talking about a doctor/patient scenario here where the =
doctor is an expert and the people asking for this have no
> medical training. Here, we are talking about requirements coming from =
network engineers that are every bit as skilled as you
> are in the field and every bit as capable of making informed decisions =
about the correct solution for their environment.
It's true that the patient also knows some stuff here.
There's a lot of bitching here on the NANOG list about how operators get =
no respect at the IETF. But that's a two-way street. There's also tons =
of people in operations who have no appreciation to what the IETF brings =
to the table.
Operators tend to see issues in isolation, or at the very least only see =
the connections that are relevant to their environment. The IETF has to =
take into consideration all possible environments. Sometimes things that =
seem a clear win in a constrained environment could be a disaster if =
they were used all over the internet.
You know what they say: a doctor who treats himself has a fool for a =
patient.
> Yes, I'm well familiar with your level of arrogance.
Yes, I know I stick out like a sore thumb in these humble parts.
>> BTW, I first went to the IETF 10 years ago and didn't encounter such =
an attitude (although many others I didn't like).
> Good for you. Did you try proposing anything that was contrary to the =
current religion at the time or did you join
> the ivory tower biggots in supporting solutions that work better in =
theory than in operational reality and embrace
> their bold new failure to address major concerns (such as scalable =
routing) while focusing on irrelevant minutiae
> such as 8+8 vs. GSE?
Judge for yourself:
http://www.muada.com/drafts/draft-van-beijnum-multi6-isp-int-aggr-01.txt
Let me wrap up this discussion with the following:
IPv6 address configuration is a house of cards. Touch it and it all =
comes crashing down. DHCPv6 has a number of significant flaws, and the =
interaction between DHCPv6 and router advertisements only barely makes =
sense. All of this makes it seem like a good idea to tweak stuff to make =
it better, but in reality that's a mistake: it just means more =
opportunities for things to fail. What we need is to rethink the host =
configuration problem from the ground up, starting at the host and what =
it should do when it sees its interface come up.
One model that seems attractive here is the on the iPhone uses, where =
you can modify the IP configuration on a per-wifi network basis. If we =
can apply this kind of logic to wired networks, too, then suddenly we're =
no longer limited to having one monolithic set of client side behavior =
that must always be followed, but we can be much more flexible.=
