Since there has been only one (positive) reaction so far, may I conclude that RIPE as a whole is supporting the IAB position? I am wondering how many people have read it and thought "If I don't oppose it is clear that I agree". So please if you are in favour or of RIPE supporting this, send me a personal mail message. I'll count them and report back to the list.
Daniel
Daniel, I don't think that I can either support or oppose the IAB position. I have been following the Big-Internet discussion for a few weeks now, and I still don't believe that I sufficiently understand all the issues to give a considered opinion. This applies both to "purely technical" issues, and "mainly operational/political" issues, and all issues in between. (I'm not even sure this is a one-dimensional space :-)). There does not even seem to be any consensus on Big-Internet on how urgently "a solution" is required. Although the need for a solution to the class-B shortage is widely recognized, there is a wide diversity of opinion about how much time interim solutions like CIDR would buy, and thus exactly how urgent the, a, next stage is. The IAB proposals produced a deluge of opinion and dissent on Big-Internet and Ietf over the last weekend. Discounting the bigotry :-), some hard issues emerged. For example, of the two urgent matters, address exhaustion and routing table explosion, there is nothing in the IAB proposal about routing table explosion (i.e. routing aggregation, etc), and Jon Crowcroft has pointed out that if certain accepted NSAP allocation schemes are assumed, then only 5 bytes of CLNS addressing are left. Some believe that adopting CLNP to get 5 addressing bytes rather than 4, and no solution to routing table explosion doesn't look like a good way forwards. This has lead onto a discussion of exactly what the IAB proposal actually means. One extreme is "CLNP standard exactly, together with accepted NSAP allocation", another extreme is "well take IP as a starting point and CLNP is a step forward. Where do we go from there", and, needless to say, all points in between. There have been various messages trying to clear up this confusion, and discussing the implication of various points in this spectrum of interpretation. The above is not deliberately my opinion, but an attempt to summarise my understanding of a very active list. The discussion archives of a little while ago contained 884474 bytes, and that is just for this month. Most of it must be the message storm over the IAB proposal. I must have missinterpreted something if not many things. Please refer back to Big-Internet for the actual discussion. I believe that it is extremely important and urgent that a short-term fix be put into place - presumably CIDR. I believe that it is also extremely important and urgent to decide on the next steps. It is urgent enough that we will probably have to choose a pragmatic "interim" next step that might fall short of a "theoretical best" (though some believe that the next change to the Internet will have to be the last). However, I believe that it is *not* yet clear that "adopting CLNP" - whatever that actually means, is the best choice. It might actually be completely irrelevant. I would hope that the undoubted discussion at next week's IETF will generate more light than heat. (After all, our Internet community prides itself in that doesn't it? That's why we are more successful than others, isn't it?). Only coming OUT of the IETF can we hope to make a decision on this. While it would be nice to be able to take a recommendation in, I don't believe we should. "If you can keep your head when all about are losing their's..." Kipling. Sorry for the long message. Denis. PS Wish I was going to the IETF - sounds like it will be very interesting. :-( Denis Russell email: Denis.Russell@Ncl.AC.UK Computing Service Tel: (+44) 91 222 8243 The University Fax: (+44) 91 222 8232 Claremont Road Telex: 53 65 4 UNINEW G Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU ENGLAND