Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 10:17:31 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson <robert@cyrus.watson.org> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: dg@root.com, Jun-ichiro itojun Itoh <itojun@itojun.org>, obrien@NUXI.com, Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IPv6 in -current Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981102100920.15227E-100000@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <23723.910007450@time.cdrom.com>
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On Mon, 2 Nov 1998, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > Yeah, if I had my druthers (and what the hell are "druthers" anyway, > and who here has ever had any that they knew of? Why is English such > a peculiar language? And why... Erm, excuse me, I guess that's not > really important right now), I'd want to see the IPv6 bits integrated > with the following provisos: English is a truly bizarre language. I'll dig up my OED this evening and let you know :-P. > 1. If you make the world with NOIPV6, the tools are built in the > traditional fashion without any support for IPv6 at all. This > would let the solution-in-a-box folks continue to compile binaries > with the smallest possible footprint, assuming that some of them > will have no need for IPv6. Actually, I think a far more exciting option at some point in the process would be NOIPV4, as that would imply that our network code was pretty modular. :) The other cool thing would be to see NAT capable of IPv4/IPv6 translation so that we could market FreeBSD as an easy solution the the v6 enclave problem. Yet another case where BSD networking is the best choice (or something). > 2. If a binary (like ping) has been compiled with both v4/v6 support > and you simply want to turn its IPv6 behavior off for some reason, > it should check a well-known environment variable from its main() > to switch the relevant code in and out. Purists might even > argue that IPv6 should be turned off by default and only enabled > through such an environment variable (or compiler flag) rather than > the other way around. I guess I don't care either way so long as > IPv6 eventually, at the suitable time, becomes a desirable out-of-box > default for FreeBSD. I suppose a useful one might actually be an environmental variable that specifies what the 'default' IP version is for interpretting hostnames that have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. That is, if my /etc/hosts (or eventually DNS) returns both an IPv4 for my.friendly.host and an IPv6 address, which should get priority for use in programs (such as ping). >From the point of view of IP addresses, ping should be able to distinguish just fine which one you need. > I also agree that I don't think we can fence-sit on this one too much > longer, as much as I also *hate* the idea of alienating some other > group of hard-working IPv6 people. Not all decisions are either easy > or avoidable. Heh. Good thing you core people are in the hot seat, not me. :) Robert N Watson Carnegie Mellon University http://www.cmu.edu/ TIS Labs at Network Associates, Inc. http://www.tis.com/ SafePort Network Services http://www.safeport.com/ robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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