Subject: WG consensus action - 1 week to discuss [LL27] LL-only hosts are out of scope for this specification

From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 17:59:26 +0100

Please discuss this issue in the next week.  Our goal is to achieve
WG consensus.  Please try to stay on-topic during the discussion.

See also http://www.spybeam.org/ll27.html

Discussion of this item will conclude on Feb 24.

Erik
ZEROCONF WG chair

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Description of Issue  LL-only hosts are out of scope for this 
specification
Submitter Name  Keith Moore
Submitter Email Address  [email-masked]
Date first submitted  12 Feb 03
Reference
Comment Type ['T'echnical | 'E'ditorial]  T
Priority ['S' Must fix | '1' Should fix | '2' May fix ]  S
Section
Rationale/Explanation of issue:
Lengthy description of problem:
The Internet Engineering Task Force develops specifications which, when
followed, should permit interoperation of conforming implementations on
the Internet. With very few exceptions, IETF has considered the
behavior of private networks (i.e. networks that are entirely
controlled by a single party) as outside of its scope.

(Use of the Internet Protocol on purely isolated, ad hoc networks would
also be out-of-scope and of little interest to IETF -- except that
some interchange between hosts using link-local addresses and hosts
using routable addresses is unavoidable, and that absent careful
consideration of the effects of such interchange, introduction of
link-local addressing to IPv4 would be expected to adversely affect the
ability of hosts and applications to interoperate over the Internet.)

Inherent in the entire concept of "INTERnet", and the "Internet
Protocol" is the ability to communicate _between_ networks. Devices
which don't support that ability should not claim conformance to IP or
compatibility with the Internet, and IETF should not be blessing
specifications that encourage the creation of a class of devices (and
applications) that inherently cannot interoperate with the Internet. 
Requested Change: ##. Hosts which implement only link-local addressing

Inherent in the entire concept of "Internet" is the ability to
communicate between (not just within) networks, and the Internet
Protocol was designed specifically to facilitate communication between
hosts on potentially dissimilar, and perhaps distant, networks. Hosts
which are inherently incapable of communicating with hosts on other IP
networks cannot meaningfully be said to implement the Internet Protocol,
or to support Internet connectivity, even if they use similar packet
formats.

Hosts which are incapable of being configured to use routable addresses,
or are incapable of being configured to route packets with nonlocal
destinations to a router, or which are incapable of exchanging traffic
with hosts on other IP networks, are therefore outside of the scope of
this specification. While hosts with such limitations may still be
useful in specific contexts, it is not appropriate for such hosts to
claim conformance with this specification, or with the Internet
Protocol, or compatibility with the Internet.

In order to clearly distinguish hosts that implement link-local
addressing but are incapable of communicating with the Internet, from
hosts that are capable of communicating with the Internet, vendors of
the former kind of hosts are strongly urged to choose another name for
the former capability.

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From: "John C. Welch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 23:34:48 -0500

> ability of hosts and applications to interoperate over the Internet.)

Reject. TCP/IP is a networking protocol. It is not the IETF's place to tell
anyone that they have to be able to connect to some arbitrary network level
to be able to call it TCP/IP.

john

-- 
John C. Welch
Consultant III
Administrative Computing
(617) 253 - 1368 work
(508) 579 - 7380 cell
bynkii2          AIM

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From: Scott Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: 22 Feb 2003 09:59:40 -0500

Erik Guttman <[email-masked]> writes:

> Description of Issue:  LL-only hosts are out of scope for this specification

> or to support Internet connectivity, even if they use similar packet

Categorically reject any such language.  

Products that use technologies specified in this and other Standards
Track documents, but which have no need to communicate beyond the
local link, have been and will continue to be built.  To ignore them,
or worse to declare them somehow beyond the pale, is to do a
disservice to the user community and would do nothing other than
foster chaos.

Local usage on networks not connected to the global Internet is
explicitly cited in the Zeroconf charter; this item is not so much an
objection to the proposed address autoconfiguration protocol as to the
concept of local networks, which is a broader question already dealt
with when the working group was chartered.  I respectfully suggest
that as such this issue is out of order.

-- 
Scott Lawrence