Subject: WG Action - 1 week to discuss [LL22] Delete inappropriate advice to network operators

From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 15:19:33 +0200 (CEST)

Please discuss the following item.  Discussion should conclude by Apr
18, 2003.  Please post your comments to the WG mailing list
[email-masked].

Description of Issue  Delete inappropriate advice to network operators
Submitter Name  Robert Elz    
Submitter Email Address  [email-masked]
Date first submitted  8 Feb 2003    
Reference       
Comment Type ['T'echnical | 'E'ditorial]  T & E    
Priority ['S' Must fix | '1' Should fix | '2' May fix ]  1    
Section
Rationale/Explanation of issue: 

The draft attempts to give advice to network operators as to how they
should build their networks. That is out of scope, unjustified, and
unnecessary. 

Lengthy description of problem: 

The text in section 1.2 explains ...

"This protocol is intended for small ad-hoc networks..."

and then goes on to justify that, and give an estimate of what
is "small" (or can be regarded as that for the purposes of the
draft). That's all fine.

Unfortunately, instead of explaining how to avoid using the
protocol when the network happens to not be small, the draft
instead says

"This does not mean that a host should attempt to count the
number of other hosts on the link and refuse to operate if it finds
there are more than 1300."

which is fine in itself, and then continues

"It does mean that network operators with
more than 1300 hosts on a single link may want to consider dividing
that single link into two or more subnets."

which is entirely inappropriate for this document. 

Requested Change:
Delete the last sentence of section 1.2, and substitute:

It does mean that network operators with more than 1300 hosts
on a single link may want to ensure that most of the hosts on the link
are not assigned link-local addresses.