Dear hackers, I would like to raise the question on names and syntax regarding IPv4 vs IPv6 in xorpsh. As it stands today, many of the commands use a postfix of either 4 or 6 to denote which address-family they belong to. In the case of OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 it maps in nicely, since OSPFv2 only does IPv4 and OSPFv3 only does IPv6. OSPFv3 have the ability, thanks to a TLV based format, to support IPv4 as well. If that would be the case, what would be your way to proceed? Looking at IS-IS, for which development will hopefully begin soon, what syntax will be used for IS-IS as it can handle both IPv4 and IPv6? Will isis4 be used for commands regarding v4 and isis6 for v6?
Looking at IOS there's an address-family command for IS-IS and for ospf it's called 'router ospf' and 'ipv6 router ospf'. Now, IOS was invented in a time when IPv6 and thus OSPFv3 wasn't around. If we instead take a look at the two dominating router OSes that were designed recently enough for v6 to exist (XR and JUNOS) they both aptly name it 'ospf' and 'ospfv3'. The [46] notation fits in perfectly for the fea or plumbing parts but when used for ospf or some other protocol it tries to imply limits that's not really there. Abstracting away routing protocols is not something network administrators appreciates. Principle of least astonishment is pretty clear on this I believe. People used to XORP expect ospf[46] while everyone else coming from some platform not being XORP would expect (ospf[v3]). As XORPs user base is rather limited (btw, does anyone have any figures?), I think it's clear that ospf[v3] is the way to go, especially as it eases transition from other platforms. An easy transition path would be to add an alias for ospf4 to ospf and likewise for ospf6 to ospfv3, possibly adding a warning that ospf[46] is deprecated somewhere in the CLI. What's your take on this? Kind regards, Kristian. PS. I realized I dug real deep into the ospf[46] thing here while I really wanted to bring up the general question of separating routing protocols this way into address-families. It would apply to ISIS, OLSR or some other protocol as well... DS. -- Kristian Larsson KLL-RIPE Network Engineer / Internet Core Tele2 / SWIPnet [AS1257] +46 704 910401 [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Xorp-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/xorp-hackers
