Subject: Re: Summary of Issues for draft-ietf-zeroconf-ipv4-linklocal-04.txt

From: Stuart Cheshire <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 16:06:48 -0800

>Please, no mention of specific products, it is unnecessary, possibly
>incomplete, and what's more, a few years from now, most likely meaningless.

I agree with you in principle, but I think we have to compromise to get 
this published. We agree that TTL=255 is the right long-term goal, but we 
also have to accept that strictly enforcing this today would be a problem 
for any product that wants to be Windows-compatible. I think we owe it to 
implementers to give them that information up-front, instead of making 
them discover it by painful trial-and-error.

I think we should publish this draft as a Proposed Standard now, and when 
it moves to Draft Standard in a couple of years we should certainly 
consider re-wording in the light of the prevailing conditions at that 
time. I hope that by then Windows will be using TTL=255, and it will be 
sufficient to merely mention in the Appendix that older versions did not.

Stuart Cheshire <[email-masked]>
 * Wizard Without Portfolio, Apple Computer
 * Chairman, IETF ZEROCONF
 * www.stuartcheshire.org

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:42:04 +0700

Date:        Mon, 12 Nov 2001 16:06:48 -0800
    From:        Stuart Cheshire <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | I agree with you in principle, but I think we have to compromise to get 
  | this published.

I'm not exactly sure what we have to compromise about?

  | We agree that TTL=255 is the right long-term goal, but we 
  | also have to accept that strictly enforcing this today would be a problem 
  | for any product that wants to be Windows-compatible.

Sure.

  | I think we owe it to 
  | implementers to give them that information up-front, instead of making 
  | them discover it by painful trial-and-error.

Fine, but you don't have to say "Windows" (let alone specific versions)
in order to do that.   If I were do do an xxxBSD version now, which sets
the TTL to 1 n packets it sends, and distribute that, would you add another
note about that specific case?    All that needs to be said is that there
are implementations which don't use 255, and that for now, enforcing the
255 will cause interoperability problems.

kre