On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:57:12 -0400 Christopher Morrow <christopher.mor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Jared Mauch <ja...@puck.nether.net> wrote: > > Operationally the vendors may be violating some RFC, so lets publish what is > > relevant and working today so we can all move on? We can deal with > > any additional updates and items with "how IPv6" works elsewhere or in a > > new document so we can move /127 on p2p links along? > > I like this as well.. if other link types would like special handling > can't they also gin up some rfc-text and refer to the work done here > as a stepping stone to their answer? > If they did, I think they'd be missing the idea of implementing layer 3 to layer 2 address resolution within ICMPv6, instead of following the IPv4 model of having parallel and separate address resolution protocol like ARP. (Maybe ARP would have been implemented in ICMP if they hadn't decided to make it a more general purpose protocol that could suit Ethernet address resolution for multiple layer 3 protocols, such as Chaosnet, IPv4 and Xerox PUP) The idea in IPv6 is to try as much as possible to avoid treating link types specially, so that for new link types, new layer 3 to layer 2 protocols don't have to be developed. The only link layer capabilities Neighbor Discovery Address Resolution requires is unicast and multicast. If they can be provided, or emulated, such as in the cast of multicast over point-to-point links, then there isn't any need to create new protocols and additional complexity (because complex = more things that can break). It is simpler, when you can, to treat everything the same. Regards, Mark. -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPv6 working group mailing list ipv6@ietf.org Administrative Requests: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6 --------------------------------------------------------------------
