Here's a suggestion, which I think fits with the logic of Thomas Narten's comment too:
The sin6_flowinfo field is a 32-bit field intended to contain flow-related information. The exact way this field is mapped into a packet is not currently specified. I don't think we should hold up the spec for this; as Thomas says, more reflection is needed. It doesn't make much sense to close this until we have consensus on the flow label draft. Bria Jack McCann wrote: > > Brian, > > >> There was one change from rfc2553bis-07 to rfc2553bis-08. In response > >> to a comment from the IESG, the description of the sin6_flowinfo field > >> was changed from: > >> > >> The sin6_flowinfo field is a 32-bit field that contains two pieces of > >> information: the traffic class and the flow label. The contents and > >> interpretation of this member is specified in [1]. > >> > >> to: > >> > >> The sin6_flowinfo field is a 32-bit field intended to contain > >> flow-related information. The exact use of this field is not > >> currently specified. > >> > >> This in essence matches the IEEE spec, which is silent on the > >> subject of sin6_flowinfo. > > > >I understand the problem with the old language, but the new language > >is a bit disturbing too. RFC 2474 and RFC 3168 do specify 8 of these > >bits, and 4 of them are inoperative in the API (the version number bits). > > First let me say I'm open to suggestions for better wording. > > While RFC 2474 and RFC 3168 specify bits in the IPv4 and IPv6 headers, > they do not specify anything about the use of sin6_flowinfo to affect > or retrieve those bits. The same problem exists with the original > reference to RFC 2460, which specifies the format of the IPv6 header, > but does not specify anything about sin6_flowinfo. > > Even if we assume the sin6_flowinfo field is formatted in the same > way as the first 4 bytes of the IPv6 header (i.e. version, class, > and flow), we still have not specified how the sin6_flowinfo field > is used. > > So we have two choices: hold rfc2553bis while we define the use > of the sin6_flowinfo field, or defer that definition to another > spec as we did with sin6_scope_id (rfc2553bis-08 reflects the > latter choice). > > - Jack -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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] --------------------------------------------------------------------
