Routing-Bits

I just finished watching the IPv6 Class on Demand Videos from Internetwork Expert, and I could not help but laugh regarding the debate that went down on September 2007 at the Afrinic 7 IPv6 Routing Workshop.

Let me first say that the combined IQ of the 40 delegates and 4 trainers was easily a 6 digit figure (excluding me), and obviously the Geek-Factor was off the charts.

By the second day of intense seminars, one thing about IPv6 became clear, there were still a lot of politics surrounding the finer details about the protocol design, best practises and the way forward. The seminars were mainly done by 2 guys, one from America, lets call him Pinky and the other from Brazil, lets call him Brain. (Unfortunately I can’t mention the names, and no pun intended!)

Anyhow, someone asked a question, directed at Pinky, leading the seminar at the time, something about IPv6 deployment within enterprise networks, that was still new and partially in development at the time. Pinky proceeded to answer the question as to what he felt was correct. Brain responded with somewhat of an opposite answer to what Pinky said. A flaming debate quickly came about between the two trainers; both trying to state their reasons by quoting and referencing various trusted resources. It was like watching ping-pong going on for easily 5 minutes.

It was then that Pinky said the following ” Line so-and-so from RFC 4057 states the following, …” He actually quoted word for word part of a RFC document. I was indeed impressed that there are individuals on this planet that could actually quote lines from an RFC document to their defence. Can’t go wrong with that!

To which Brain responded the following: ” YES,  . . .  I know, I wrote the RFC, your interpretation is wrong. Let me explain … bla bla bla”. End of debate. Thanks for coming.