IPv6 news

Sat Oct 15 19:58:39 UTC 2005

Daniel,

>> The alternative is a multihoming scheme that does not require a
>> prefix per site.  But that doesn't match the stated requirement of
>> 'conventional', 'proven', 'working' [sic], 'feature-complete'.
>
> Those weren't the "stated requirements" on an alternative multihoming
> scheme,, but only the attributes of conventional BGP multihoming.
> Please don't lay words into my mouth I didn't say.

Those are exactly the words that you used in your message.  I quote:

 >> While watching shim6 we carry
 >> on hoping that we'll get IPv6 multihoming going in the conventional,
 >> proven, working, feature-complete way we're used to... until IETF
 >> perhaps at one point in time realize that they are designing a  
solution
 >> which misses the stated requirements of many folks actually  
operating
 >> networks -

>> The operational community needs to reach consensus on what its
>> priorities are.  We fought the CIDR wars to keep the routing
>> subsystem working and the operational community were the primary
>> backers of that.  To not support scalable multihoming is to reverse
>> that position entirely.
>
> CIDR didn't have the big disadvantages to operators (at least non that
> I can identify, not having personally lived thru the CIDR migration).

No.  It had big disadvantages to the end users.  We asked them to  
suck it up in the name of having a scalable Internet.  Now that we  
are proposing a technology to continue to help the providers scale,  
but that has disadvantages to the providers, we're seeing that the  
providers are not willing to sacrifice.  Extremely disappointing.

> Operators DO support scalable multihoming, but it has to deliver what
> they want/need. HOW this can be achieved is the task of the IETF and
> the REAL challenge. shim6 is only "the easy way out".

The IETF is responsible for providing real world engineering  
solutions to continue the growth of the Internet.  When presented  
with the fundamentally conflicting requirements of supporting the  
Internet and fulfilling one faction's requests, they have chosen in  
favor of the Internet.  If you'd like to suggest that they discover  
fundamentally new technology so that one can have their cake and eat  
it too, that's a fine thing, but that is the province of the IRTF.   
Engineering is the art of making tradeoffs, and that's what the IETF  
has done.  I think that the provider community should examine the  
tradeoffs that have been made in much greater detail before  
condemning the result.  The provider community has been well served  
by the IETF over the years and shim6 deserves at least a full and  
reasoned hearing before you throw the baby out with the bath-water.

Tony