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Re: Versions




Frank Kastenholz says:
>  > The version bits were asked for during the meeting on the basis that
>  > IP's version number has allowed us a nice transition facility. I'm
>  > unsure as to whether the version bits are valuable or not. I'd
>  > personally like to hear some discussion of this.
> 
> if you don't have a version field someplace then you may find
> yourself in a position where you need one and don't have it and
> therefore are up the proverbial tributary without obvious means of
> propulsion.
> 
> if you have a version field and it turns out that you don't need it,
> then you just carry around a couple of extra bits. and if we are
> smart, later on we may figure out how to reclaim those bits...

I'm unsure we really need them, however -- allocating a new header
type may turn out to be better for the implementations and would also
satisfy versioning, and as I've noted, most of the changes we
anticipate would be in evolution of the security transformations and
key management algorithms through time, which the current (minimalist)
header will support without any trouble. If we do go for reserving
bits for a version, I recommend that we declare them Must Be Zero so
that if it proves unneeded we can reclaim them later.

I really encourage as much discussion of this as possible, btw -- its
important that we have strong consensus either way.

Perry


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