Dear all,
I'd like to get some progress on the node requirements draft. I have some outstanding
issues to address, which I will in the next few days. However, the high-order bit to
settle is about the requirements language.
The current draft can be found here:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipv6-node-requirements-01.txt
The design team decided to use the following terms, in concert with the keywords from
2026.
Unconditionally Mandatory
If a node claims compliance to this document, then it must support
the behavior specified within each conformance group listed of
type unconditionally mandatory.
Conditionally Mandatory
Conditionally mandatory groups include those which are mandatory
only if a particular condition is true, such as whether a specific
type of hardware is present, or whether another given group is
implemented. When a conditionally mandatory specification or
group is described, the condition will also be described. A given
RFC or portion thereof can sometimes appear in multiple
conformance groups, with different conditions.
Unconditionally Optional
Behavior that is neither unconditionally mandatory nor
conditionally mandatory is unconditionally optional for compliance
to this document.
The reason we felt this type of language was used becase:
1) It was felt that IPv6 nodes may be have very different
applicability, therefore some functionality are mandatory in
some circumstances, but not in all.
2) 2026 is not a mandatory reference, and in many cases, some
of the normative references in this draft do not use the 2026
language.
3) MUST, SHOULD, MAY, etc. do not cover cases where there is
dependency on other functions. For example, support for IPv6
over Ethernet is not a MAY, SHOULD or MUST. One can imagine
that in the case of a wired server running IPv6, IPv6 over
Ethernet would be a should, but in the case of a purely
wireless device IPv6 over Ethernet is useless.
If you have an opinion on this, please speak up.
thanks,
John
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List
IPng Home Page: http://playground.sun.com/ipng
FTP archive: ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng
Direct all administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
