Subject: WG Action REJECT [LL2] Explicit Additional Mechanism to disable v4 LL

From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:54:36 +0100 (CET)

Action: Reject

Dissenting views:
Robert Elz:
Once again, the aim is to advise hosts that actually want to know
whether or not they should bother using LL addresses, whether using
one is productive or not.   This should be all hosts (subject to
user override of course, just like everything else), as the host,
without configuration, can't possibly know whether using LL addresses
is going to be useful in the environment it finds itself or not.

Christian Huitema:
I agree with KRE's assessment. This is not a security issue, but a
usability issue. Suppose a network in which, for whatever reason, the
resident hosts have been configured not to interact with LL addresses.
In such a network, the visiting host which configures an LL address will
find out eventually that it cannot communicate with any other host.
Wouldn't it be better to have a way to learn that immediately?

Notes:
  The criteria for accepting issues is either that they answer IESG
  concerns or establish a new concern which has strong WG consensus
  support.  This issue satisfied neither criteria.

  The usability argument rests upon several assumptions regarding 
  how networks are administered, DHCP can refuse addresses but support
  a new feature and how users can be informed by their computers how
  to better interact with network management.  These are all areas 
  which might be interesting to explore, but are certainly not worked
  out and have significant problems.  

  Security issues were raised in the cited message, and were never 
  adequately answered:
  http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/zeroconf/2003-01/msg00473.html

  RFC 2563 has not been accepted by client vendors and has been 
  suggested for being moved to 'Historic' by the DHC WG.  It would
  be inappropriate to accept this issue's suggested text.

  Recommendation: If standardization of this mechanism is of sufficient
  interest, initiate an IETF standards track effort to pursue it.

  Recommendation: Further work could be done in the area of user
  signalling by DHCP, for example - defining a new DHC option for a 
  URL 'greeting.'  Stuart Cheshire initiated this promising work 3 or 
  so years ago.

Erik
ZEROCONF WG chair