On Thu, 6 Jan 100, Darren Reed wrote:
> For what it's worth, I think releasing 4.0 *without* IPv6 support
> is a mistake. Why ? Because in < 12 months FreeBSD 5.0 will be
> released *with* IPv6 support (I'd count IPv6 as being a big enough
> change to signify a major release number change). If that doesn't
> happen, then FreeBSD is chasing the wrong goals, IMHO.
I agree entirely -- releasing without IPv6 and IPsec would be a great
mistake. At least in the research community, I know of a lot of people
relying on FreeBSD 4.0 to be the answer to their problem of locating an
open source freely licensable next generation networking platform. Both
at TIS and on CAIRN, the DARPA test network, the assumption is that we
will jump to FreeBSD 4.0 for experimental networking work as soon as it is
released--people are sick of patching Kame on top of FreeBSD, and want it
integrated so that they can concentrate on their own experiments (i.e.,
multicast work, new routing protocols, ad hoc networks, queueing
techniques, wireless network technologies, extremely high bandwidth, etc).
I can tell you right not that announcing that we don't have decent (i.e.,
largely complete) out of the box support for IPsec and IPv6 would result
in serious disillusionment :-).
And as out-there as the research stuff may seem, it's not bad to have on
our platform. I'd really hate to see CAIRN switch to Linux as it's
backbone router platform :-). CAIRN is a primary testbed spot for a
number of new networking technologies that presumably will be quite
popular in the near future--by having FreeBSD be the platform of choice
for CAIRN, we guarantee those technologies will be available for FreeBSD,
helping to maintain our technological lead. The big question at December
IETF at the FreeBSD dinner was "When will IPv6 and IPsec be in the
tree--we need them".
And I think there's a difference between holding up the release
indefinitely, and saying "we're waiting on IPv6 and IPsec, and will
release once it is ready" -- it's not a plethora of features, rather, two
very specific features from a stable source base (Kame) that is well
tested, and with developers clearly interested in a timely and successful
integration.
Robert N M Watson
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.watson.org/~robert/
PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37 ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1
TIS Labs at Network Associates, Safeport Network Services
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