I think I should commend Greg on fighting so hard to put a point 
across, against all odds :-)

The opposition is trying to make a political issue of a mechanical 
thing.  My view is that Greg's proposal has merit not as a long-term 
solution (black hole detection seems a better approach, and Greg has 
made it clear that he would prefer that approach) but as a route around 
the evident dilution of expertise brought about by the Internet 
explosion.

At the risk of overstepping a mark, I'd like to point out that the very 
issue Greg is keen to work around, others are trying desperately to 
overlook: too many administrators are not as comfortable with IP as the 
experts on this forum would wish them to be.  My feelings are that this 
situation will get worse before, if ever, it will start improving.

In this context Greg suggestion would be, at the very least, a measure 
of the problem: it would permit, minimally, logging and analysing the 
occurrence and frequency of such divergence from the norm.  I do 
appreciate that the NetBSD network developers may have their hands full 
tracking the standards, and that this type of divergence may have to 
remain in the realm of the experimental, but shouting Greg down seems 
to me to be counterproductive.

It would be good, in my opinion, at the very least to meet Greg half 
way.  If I recall the discussion correctly, Greg found it difficult to 
diagnose the problem because the corruption did not cross the boundary 
to the destination host; merely making it possible to detect the 
problem _before_ discarding the broken data (I must confess that I paid 
more attention to the tone of the discussion than the subject matter 
itself) would be useful.  From there to breaking the IP rules may be a 
short, slippery downhill, but I think the first step may be a positive 
one.

++L