On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 1:23 AM Joe Touch <touch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Apr 17, 2021, at 9:49 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> IPv6 isn't actually a 'protocol' as such.
It might be useful to provide your definition of a protocol...
> It is merely a data structure.
You have described the messages only, which alone has never been enough to define a protocol.
Usually that is the case. But IP is a rather peculiar exception. There is lots of stuff above and lots of stuff below and there is the routing layer out to the side. But what is there to the packet layer except the packet format and the rule that you take a packet from the input port, decrement a counter and pass it to the output port.
How far is it possible to move from that approach and still be doing packet data? You can change the selection of which packet is chosen to pass next or affect the pass/drop rules.
You can redefine the bits’ behaviors and meanings, but that would be defining a new protocol, at which point there’s little utility if any in keeping the bit patterns the same.
My point is simply this: what is it that cannot be done within the constraints of IPv6 would motivate a new protocol?
We keep having people coming along making these suggestions for IPv8, IPv10, etc. etc. and the inventors never once seem fit to ask what is so different about their proposal it can't be done in IPv6.
The whole point of the Internet is the narrow waist is really simple.
