As Bob mentioned, we have set aside a chunk of time in the Minneapolis
agenda to discuss the various proposals for what to do with the IPv6
Flow Label field. This was a hot topic here on the list just before
the San Diego IETF, and then we ended up with an agenda that was too
full to allow in-depth face-to-face discussion, so we said we would
defer it to the proposed interim meeting, which never happened.
Therefore, we have made time next week for this topic.
At the moment, we have one scheduled presentation on Flow Label issues,
by Winston Seah (draft-shen-ipv6-flow-trans-00.txt), and we would like
to offer the opportunity for others who were arguing for alternative
semantics for the Flow Label field to summarize their proposals. If
I recall correctly, the debate came to down to basically three
different choices for Flow Label semantics:
(1) a non-mutable value that, when concatenated with the source
address, can be used by routers to identify flows. (This was
the original design, described in pre-RFC2460 versions of
the IPv6 spec.)
(2) a mutable value that can be or will be modified hop-by-hop,
like an ATM virtual circuit identifier or an MPLS label.
(3) a hybrid of (1) and (2) in which, say, one bit of the Flow
Label field indicates whether or not the rest of the field
is mutable.
It would be best if we had one presenter for each of those choices
(assuming my list of the different choices is right), with 10 minutes
provided for each speaker to make their case. I.e., if, for example,
five people all volunteer to make the case for choice (2), we will
ask them to choose one presenter among themselves to summarize all
the arguments. The goal is to quickly lay out all the issues, and
then allow some time for interactive discussion and trying to see if
any sort of consensus might emerge. (Of course, any results will be
written up in the minutes and subject to further discussion/ratification
here on the list and in Last Calls, etc.)
So, if anyone would like to make a summary presentation of a Flow Label
proposal, please send a message to Bob and me (you may also cc it to
the list if you wish, or not), saying in a sentence or two what your
specific proposal is. If there are multiple people proposing the same
thing, we'll ask that set of people to coordinate on a single presentation.
OK?
Steve
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