[lacnog] Fwd: Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-6man-rfc2460bis-08.txt> (Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification) to Internet Standard

[Fernando Gont]

Estimados,

No es muy frecuente escuchar a alguien con las agallas para llamar las
cosas por su nombre, y la punteria como para dar en el clavo.

Una buena lectura, para que alguno se de una idea cuanto cuestan hacer
las cosas desde la región, cuando no se tien atrás ningun "aparato".

Saludos codiales,
Fernando




-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-6man-rfc2460bis-08.txt> (Internet
Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification) to Internet Standard
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2017 20:06:35 +0100
From: Enno Rey <erey en ernw.de>
To: draft-ietf-6man-rfc2460bis en tools.ietf.org, ietf en ietf.org,
6man-chairs en ietf.org
CC: fgont en si6networks.com, otroan en employees.org

Hi,

On Sat, Feb 04, 2017 at 09:32:37AM +0100, Fernando Gont wrote:


> Everyone has agreed (including the authors of RFC2460) that EH insertion
> has never been allowed.
> [...]
> > Permitting header insertion in the sense of specifying how header
> > insertion could possibly work is of course outside the scope of
> > advancing RFC2460.
> 
> Explicitly allowing EH insertion would most likely be out of scope, too:
> It completely changes a very basic aspect of IPv6.
> 
> FWIW, I think that publishing a spec with what some have considered to
> be ambiguous text (subsequently leading to 600+ messages on the very
> group that specifies the protocol) would be a lousy job on our side.
> Either explicitly ban extension header insertion, or explicitly allow it.
> 

The first talk I gave about IPv6 was in 1999 (with an experimental IPv6
stack of Windows NT and being connected to the 6Bone). I don't remember
much of it but I'm pretty sure I explained that the desire to restore
the pre-middlebox, pre-NAT end-to-end character of the Internet was one
of the main design drivers of IPv6 (hint: you may also look at the
"Acknowledgments" section of RFC 2460).
Quite a few IPv6 books of the time (we still have them in the library,
feel free to reach out for examples) explicitly mentioned end-to-end as
a major property of IPv6 and many guys giving IPv6 talks & trainings
since 15+ years now have it on their introductory slides. Furthermore
several adjustments of the main IPv6 header (e.g. removing the checksum)
and barring fragmentation performed by intermediate points clearly
indicate the message: "in general we don't want devices to mangle with
packets in transit".
So, from my personal perspective, it's painfully obvious that there was
never any intent to allow the modification of IPv6 packets in transit
(besides very specific exceptions which were clearly described), and
this has been an undisputed principle of IPv6 for a long time.

So one may be tempted to ask: why do we have this discussion at all?
Well I think the answer is quite simple: as so often in life, it's about
agendas and politics. Before I comment on this in a bit more detail, let
me add two disclaimers:

Disclaimer (1): in the following rant on how certain things are
happening at the IETF I can only speak for IPv6-related stuff.
Disclaimer (2): addressing such a rant in direct to an IETF mailing list
means I will tap on the feet of many people. Feel free to personally let
me know your strong opinion or just ignore me/stare into another
direction from now on when we meet. There's only a small chance this
will happen at an IETF meeting anyway, for reasons laid out below.
Let's look at how the actual discussion (and subsequent specification)
work is done at the IETF, similar to other voluntary organizations: on
mailing lists and in (f2f) meetings. As we all know, these meetings take
place three times a year, each on a different continent (yes, I'm aware
of remote participation, but let's be honest: at the end of the day how
much impact on specification did this have this in past, in particular
in heavily old boys' clubs dominated WGs like 6man?).

Further fact is: if you look at the lists of participants of the
meetings, the vast majority of it is vendor personnel. This is not
surprising when reflecting on the incentives different parties may have
to send people to IETF meetings. How would, say, an enterprise person
argue in front of her boss to attend the 51st (!) IETF meeting since the
publication of RFC 2460 (especially considerung the ongoing [non-]state
of deployment in large parts of that space. it's up to the reader to
connect that state with the things I describe here...)?

But it's not like vendor people don't have to justify these nice trips
to their bosses. Of course they have to. Here's two prevalent strategies:
- "we have that new feature. let's try to push it into an RFC, as this
strengthens our market position (in general and for selling the specific
thing)"
- "you know, there's this future thing called IPv6. I'm in one of the
working groups where we come up with lots of creative ideas how to even
make it better. my name is on one of the draft documents so I'll have to
be there, at the next meeting (and we, as a vendor, demonstrated our
contribution also)".

For quite some of the stakeholders (namely both the vendor in question
and the respective participant[s]) these are not only legitimate but
fully understandable. It's just: does this drive things in the right
direction of the greater good & community? Me seems we have a classic
tragedy of the commons here...

I'm in the very privileged position that my employer would (and did so
several times in the past) actually pay for week-long trips to nice
cities and expensive hotels (and release me from other tasks
contributing to short-term productivity, let alone revenue) three times
per year. Still I do know many people *very* unhappy with the current
state of IPv6 specs - and scratching their heads in light of the present
discussion - who are not.
We/you guys don't have to care about the esteem of IPv6 community (at
least the part I myself can speak for) and you might even feel obliged
to ignore it ("we know better what's good for them").
But we should at least be honest as for the obvious agenda quite some
vendor guys are pushing as for EH insertion (I don't have to mention SR,
do I?) and you Ole, as a 6man chair, have probably noticed that there's
not much support for the idea from anybody outside Cisco space (yes, I'm
aware of the poll. but I followed the mailing list discussions as well).

There you have it. I don't even think that this was anything new for
most of you. Still at times it helps to name the obvious.
If any socio anthropologist wanted to find a textbook example for "how
voluntary bodies claiming to be open for anyone get compromised over
time by vested interests" the EH insertion thing would be one.

best

Enno

For the protocol: given the fundamental role of RFC 2460 I, too, think
that an implementor must be able to get a clear answer to the question
"is EH insertion allowed or not?" during its lecture, without going
through 600+ e-mails in an archive (just to find out that "even the
experts didn't agree on that, at the time"). So I support Fernando's
request of > Either explicitly ban extension header insertion, or
explicitly allow it.




-- 
Enno Rey

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