[ih] Internet without entrenched factions?

[Brian E Carpenter]

> I preferred to count the number RFCs issued by the IPv6 group. I gave up when it was clear there were over 500.

The 506 non-obsoleted RFCs whose titles or WG of origin are specific to IPv6 are listed here:
https://github.com/becarpenter/book6/blob/main/20.%20Further%20Reading/RFC%20bibliography.md

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 13-May-26 23:37, John Day wrote:
> I am a bit confused by this message.
> 
> As you and I have discussed off-list IPv4 (and IPv6) are broken. There were two fundamental problems that needed to rectified in the early 90s:
> 1) that hosts are considered part of the network.  (This enables multihoming and is a step toward a simple solution to mobility, which you have declared MIPv6 basically dead.) As late as Dave Clark’s book a few years ago, he says hosts are not part of the network.
> 2) the loss of the Internet Layer which enables and simplifies boany number of issues including creating better security for free.
> 
> In our discussion, you said that the decision to go with IPv6 was largely based on what was easy for most to understand (longer addresses) and not tackle the two issues above. When it was clear that that was just marking time and the more important issues for the future of the Internet were the two above.
> 
> We have also discussed how every router on the planet does not follow the either IP specification. Why? As it was explained to me, because ‘if we didn’t do it, it wouldn’t work.’  Seemed like a good reason to me. Is your view on this, ‘out of sight, out of mind’?
> 
> For the list, the above was explained in more detail in much longer emails between Brian and I.
> 
> You are playing with statistics, Brian. Counting RFCs that have IPv6 in the title. A lot don’t. I preferred to count the number RFCs issued by the IPv6 group. I gave up when it was clear there were over 500. The fact that this whole discussion began with a proposal by some for an alternative to IPv6 is indicative of the problem.
> 
> If you remember, I agreed with you that these proposals should not be pursued because they were just patches and didn’t get to the fundamental issues. If any proposal doesn’t address the two points above, there is no need to pursue it. They will prove to be just different morasses than the one you are in.
> 
> Take care,
> John
> 
>> On May 12, 2026, at 23:12, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> John,
>>
>> What actually describes what the IETF is doing to IPv4 is
>> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6540.html
>>
>> I think most people have accepted the reality that v4 and v6
>> will coexist for many years to come. But many of us think that
>> if IPv4 ain't broke, we shouldn't fix it. I agree that a few
>> (literally) still believe that transition is the goal, rather
>> than coexistence.
>>
>> Somewhat objectively, over the last 10 years, 5 RFCs mention
>> only IPv4 in their title, 15 mention both IPv4 and IPv6, and
>> 109 mention only IPv6. Given that IPv4 has been stable for many
>> years, these numbers seem unsurprising.
>>
>> Regards/Ngā mihi
>>    Brian Carpenter
>>
>> On 13-May-26 09:55, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
>>> John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>> One of the issues that OSI had that the Internet didn't were very
>>>> entrenched factions that were going to have their way no matter
>>>> what.
>>> I'm shocked that you would say that.
>>> But I'd guess you've never tried to get a simple historical correction
>>> through the modern IETF.
>>>> The PTTs absolutely didn't want a Transport Layer or datagrams,
>>>> when they couldn't stop it (the US wanted nothing else) they did all
>>>> they could to restrict it and make it something to avoid.
>>> This exactly describes what IETF is doing to IPv4.
>>> They did actively try to kill it -- while it was carrying more than 80%
>>> of the world's Internet traffic!  There was a whole "sunset4" WG!
>>> I tried to get the IETF intarea wg to simply work on a draft that said
>>> that IPv4 is a valid protocol suite that the IETF will continue
>>> maintaining.  Half of the WG said "no way", the other half said "we're
>>> already doing it so there's no need to say so".  The result was that no
>>> draft was accepted, so no statement that IPv4 remains valid was ever
>>> adopted by the wg or by the IETF.  The factional campaign to kill IPv4
>>> continues.  The whole history is documented in these expired drafts:
>>>    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-sunset4-ipv6-ietf-01
>>>    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-schoen-intarea-ietf-maintaining-ipv4-01
>>> Meanwhile this IPv6 faction shoots down every other simple proposal that
>>> straightens out historical kinks in IPv4 that have already been fixed by
>>> most implementers -- but never written down in a spec.  This has been
>>> going on for years and years.  And the rest of IETF lets them get away
>>> with it.
>>> For example, the lowest address in each subnet was reserved back in 1983
>>> because the 4.2 BSD UNIX release used it as a broadcast address, before
>>> IP broadcast was standardized.  This was fixed in the 4.3 BSD release in
>>> 1986 to use the last address in the subnet (like everyone else).  But
>>> despite the issue and its resolution being documented in RFCs 1122,
>>> 1812, and 3021, the lowest-address restriction was never removed in a
>>> spec.  The lowest address has never since 1986 been used for broadcast,
>>> nor for anything else.  A mythology grew up about it that the .0 address
>>> somehow referred to "the whole subnet" and couldn't be used for a
>>> unicast host.  This wastes many millions of perfectly good addresses
>>> throughout the Internet, particularly in small subnets like a /29 (with
>>> only 6 usable addresses rather than 7).
>>> I and implementers wrote a draft that explained the history, proposed
>>> standardizing the .0 address as unicast, and demonstrated that it's
>>> upward compatible because distant hosts can't even tell the difference
>>> (by definition, they don't know where your subnet starts or ends).  The
>>> implementers have already straightened it all out and it's running in
>>> production -- OpenBSD since 2010, NetBSD since 2016, Windows since 2021,
>>> Linux since 2021, Fedora and Ubuntu since 2022, Android since 2022.
>>> Amazon has been using these addresses in production since 2021; ping
>>> 44.192.0.0 or access http://ec2-reachability.amazonaws.com/ to check it
>>> live.  But IETF still refuses to merely document that it works --
>>> because "it would reduce the pressure for Internet sites to move to
>>> IPv6"!!!  See the expired Internet-Draft at:
>>>    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-schoen-intarea-unicast-lowest-address-08
>>> It's possible that IETF had no entrenched factions "back in the day".
>>> But the very slow uptake of IPv6 has caused the people who designed IPv6
>>> to become such a faction.  And the IETF seems to have no working
>>> defenses against such factions.
>>> 	John
>>> 	
>>> PS: In a completely separate incident, there was the 5-year delay in
>>> standardizing DNS Security because one or more high-up people in the
>>> IETF decided that "no standard that requires the use of Jim Bidzos's
>>> monopoly crypto algorithm (RSA) is ever going to be approved on my
>>> watch".  Despite having a free DNSSEC license for the patent and for the
>>> RSA software, and the patent only having three years left to run at that
>>> time.  Sure, there are no "get our way no matter what" factions in IETF,
>>> and never have been!
>