Subject: Request to reopen LL18

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2003 16:07:54 -0700 (PDT)

On April 11, 2003 Issue LL18 was rejected because the issue never had text
submitted for it.  In the following post, it was noted that "At such time
as an issue comes to mind - we will take the submission and open it for
discussion." See:

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/zeroconf/2003-04/msg00029.html

On June 4, 2003 Stuart Cheshire posted a message suggesting that LL18 be
revisited:

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/zeroconf/2003-06/msg00007.html

However, since no formal request was made, LL18 was not reopened at that
time, and as a result, no WG consensus was reached as to whether to allow
the proposed change.

At this point, I'd like to make a formal request that LL18 be reopened.

The proposed change is as follows:

In Section 2.6 Change:

"If the destination address is a unicast address outside the 169.254/16
prefix, then the host SHOULD use an appropriate routable IPv4 source
address, if it has one. If the host does not have a routable source
address, then it MAY choose to ARP for the destination address and then
send its packet, with a Link-Local IPv4 source address and a routable
destination IPv4 address, directly to its destination on the same
physical link. The host MUST NOT send the packet to any router for
forwarding."

To:

"If the destination address is a unicast address outside the
169.254/16 prefix, then the host SHOULD use an appropriate routable
source address, if it has one. If the host has no appropriate
routable source address, then it MUST ARP for the destination address
and then send its packet, with a link-local source IP address and a
routable destination IP address, directly to the destination on the
same physical link. The host MUST NOT send the packet to any router for
forwarding.

In the case of a device with only a link-local
address, this requirement can be paraphrased as "ARP for everything".
In many network stacks, achieving this "ARP for everything" behaviour
may be as simple as having no primary IP router configured, having
the primary IP router address configured to 0.0.0.0, or having the
primary IP router address set to be the same as the host's own
link-local IP address."