[my apologies for any duplicates] Dear Colleagues/Friends,
This note is to let you know that, starting next week, I am taking an extended leave of absence from Cisco and from the IETF. After eighteen very rewarding years of participation in the IETF, the last eleven of which have been spent helping to bring the new version of IP to the Internet, it seems like a good time to take a nice, long break from the world of email, airplanes, and protocol politics. I plan to spend at least a year pursuing other personal interests that have absolutely nothing to do with the Internet (mostly involving hiking boots and a camera). Beyond that, I have no specific plans at the moment, but my employer has generously granted me a leave of absence for now, so that if I find the PowerPoint withdrawal unbearable, they'll let me come back. I am gratified at how far we have come with IPv6. We have a set of specifications that have been widely implemented and well tested, and they continue to be refined and extended with the enthusiastic participation of many volunteers. There are high-quality implementations of the protocol available for almost all routers and host operating systems (including, at last, one for us discerning Macintosh users!). It is widely deployed in many research and education networks, and the first commercial IPv6 networks are up and running. And the address allocation procedures and policies are in place to ensure that all those new addresses we made can actually be used as intended! I am proud to have learned from, collaborated with, and befriended the many people who have participated -- and who will continue to participate, I hope -- in this grand project to ensure that all the benefits of the Internet become available to everyone -- not just the lucky ones who got the IPv4 addresses! There is still lots of work to be done, of course, but most of that is in the areas of applications, "middleware", network management, and cool new devices, which is to say, not my layer! :-) The remaining internet-layer work of the IPv6 Working Group will continue under the respected and experienced leadership of Bob Hinden and Margaret Wasserman. I am honored to have served on the IAB and to have had the privilege of getting to know and learn from the many smart and selfless IETFers who have served on that body. I am also grateful to the IAB for letting me escape without quite finishing out my term! Some bureaucratic details: My resignation from the IPv6 WG co-chair position and the IAB is effective at the end of next week, giving me time to try to clean up a few loose ends. After that, I will be unsubscribing from most mailing lists (ahhhh). Personal email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] should still reach me, sometimes. Steve -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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] --------------------------------------------------------------------
