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Re: ESP revisions straw poll
David P. Kemp writes:
> I don't have any illusions that there is a Platonic Ideal IPSEC Standard
> that we mortals can glimpse but dimly - auth-only ESP may be Good, Bad,
> both, or neither.
>
> I just think it's silly to write a separate < 1 page RFC to specify
> something that:
>
> 1) has semantic and performance properties that are useful to some,
> 2) is short and easy to describe in the base ESP specification,
> 3) has zero impact on developers' compliance with the standard, and
> 4) will be implemented if there's market demand and won't be otherwise,
> *regardless* of where it is documented.
What you are doing here is having the argument over.
My point was that we've had the argument, and that of course there are
points on both sides -- naturally good points given that most of the
people in the discussion are intelligent -- but a decision was made
already and there isn't evidence that consensus has shifted so much or
that the arguments have changed so much that the decision should be
re-thought. This is not to say we in the IETF carve our decisions in
stone, but we *do* have to finally make them every once in a while.
Even if in this case by some stretch the consensus changed, in general
it is a bad idea to discuss things forever. Engineering is often a
tradeoff between time and perfection. We have operated at a very slow
pace for many years now in IPSec -- we are getting close to "shoot the
engineers and ship" time. After a while, you have to make a decision
on outstanding issues and accept it. We made one already.
Perry
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