IPv4 Residual Deployment via IPv6 - A Stateless Solution (4rd)
draft-ietf-softwire-4rd-10

I'm adding this comment in response to some of the comments raised by Adrian and concurred with by several other ADs.   If it had been my personal choice, I would have proposed either publishing this document as Informational, or through the ISE.   However, the working group consensus was to publish this document as an Experimental document.   I would need a strong reason to push back on the working group consensus, and the best I could come up with is that it would somehow look better.   The allocation of an RFC number would not change, and the document would still get published.   So I see no point in going down that path.

As to the experimental status of the document, and "protecting the internet" from it, on the one hand the experimental status of the document does legitimately lead us to want to ask that question, but on the other hand I think the answer to that question is that there is no risk to the internet from this specification.   Like any A+P solution, it will be expensive to deploy, and will not be deployed broadly across the Internet in a way that requires end-to-end interoperation.

So the goal when considering interoperability and harm to the internet with this document should be "what harm will come if a host that is reachable over this technology attempts to connect to some arbitrary host on the internet that may or may not be using this technology (or some other A+P technology)."   The working group considered this technology at length and identified no such issues other than those currently documented, to which Adrian and the others have not raised specific objections.   This technology was a candidate for being chosen as the working group's proposed solution to the lightweight CGN problem.   It wasn't selected, but would have been a viable candidate.

Consequently, I conclude that no actionable point has been raised here.   I think it is unreasonable to ask the authors or the working group to attempt to come up with some pro forma list of issues from which the Internet need be protected when there are currently no such known issues, and when there is no stated reason to think that such issues exist or need to be addressed.

Were I to advise a working group on how to approach such a decision in the future, I would advise them not to follow the path that the working group followed in this case.   However, that is water under the bridge.   I therefore consider this particular issue to be closed.