Alex,

Thank you for providing this opportunity to settle the scope of the
draft which, yes, started these two big threads, the addcon draft. 

Our draft does not take a position on the requirements of RFC4291, does
not try to enforce a choice on addressing plans. The draft acknowledges
that in practice, people chose various prefix lengths so the draft
simply points out things to consider if one chooses /64, longer or
shorter than 64 bits long prefix. Pekka stated very nicely the spirit in
which we developed the addcon draft: "I use /126 on point-to-point links
but I am aware of the implications". The addcon draft does just that,
leaves it to the reader to make a choice, the draft simply points out
what things should be considered when a choice is made. This is a
practical, realistic perspective.

I hope this clarifies where the draft stands. That being said, it is
clear from the various heated threads on the prefix length or the IID
length that this topic deserves discussion and consensus. This is
independent however of the practical approach of the draft in dealing
with the current recommendations/considerations and thus helping folks
making informed choices (whether in line with RFC4291 or not)  in terms
of developing addressing plans.

Thanks again Alex!

Best regards,
Ciprian

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Alexandru Petrescu
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 12:44 PM
To: TJ
Cc: ipv6@ietf.org
Subject: Re: the IPv6 Ethernet lost bits - fffe

TJ wrote:
> Funny, I interpreted Tim's statement to be another example of 
> "Something that will break if we change this" ... :)
> 
> 
> This discussion goes back aways ...
>       January 1995 --> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1752#section-9
>       August 2002 -->
http://osdir.com/ml/ietf.ipv6/2002-08/msg00190.html
> (great comments therein!)
>       July 2008 -->
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6man-reserved-iids-01  (things 
> you may step on beyond 64b)
> 
> We could also have a discussion on the inherit value in fixed length 
> things ... like the IPv6 header itself (vs IPv4's variable length
header) ...
> 
> 
> My question would be - 
>       Are we seeking to understand why a fixed 64b boundary was
created in 
> the first place?
>               ... or ...
>       Are we trying to modify the standard to change this?

WEll I think there's a draft that led to this discussion but I don't
think that draft tries to achieve this 64bit boundary extension.  I'm
not sure what's the position of the draft with respect to this
discussion.

>               (And if so - are we ready to actually face the world
with that 
> statement, and to "operationalize" this?)

I'm more like wait and see what happens and if it goes the direction I
like I'm ready to jump on it.

Alex

> 
> 
> (Obviously, my opinion on this matter (some might say bias) is clear 
> ... but for what I believe are good, technical reasons :) ) /TJ
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf 
>> Of Dunn, Jeffrey H.
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 11:34 AM
>> To: Tim Chown; ipv6@ietf.org
>> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Subject: RE: the IPv6 Ethernet lost bits - fffe
>>
>> Tim,
>>
>> That sounds more like a call to update the spec than to ignore the 
>> additional functionality available with variable length prefixes.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Jeffrey Dunn
>> Info Systems Eng., Lead
>> MITRE Corporation.
>> (301) 448-6965 (mobile)
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf 
>> Of Tim Chown
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 10:48 AM
>> To: ipv6@ietf.org
>> Subject: Re: the IPv6 Ethernet lost bits - fffe
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 04:36:57PM +0200, Jeroen Massar wrote:
>>> Alexandru Petrescu wrote:
>>>> For what it's worth,
>>>>
>>>> Whenever statelessly auto-configuring an IPv6 address on Ethernet
>> the
>>>> 10th and 11th bytes are always 'fffe', hardcoded.  These are lost
>> bits.
>>> The world has more devices than Ethernet. The Ethernet MAC -> EUI-64

>>> trick (thus your lost fffe bits) is just a trick. Take firewire for 
>>> example which uses full EUI-64.
>> Well, Vista uses 'random' host addresses, 64-bit ones.   If the spec
>> had been different way back when, these could equally have been 32 or
>> 48 bits instead.   But it wasn't.
>>
>> --
>> Tim
>>
>>
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