v6 & DSL / Cable modems [was: Private use of non-RFC1918 IP space (IPv6-MW)]

Thu Feb 5 00:38:44 UTC 2009

Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>
> And before anyone says "there are 281474976710656 /48s!", just 
> remember your history.  I was not there when v4 was spec'ed out, but I 
> bet when someone said "four-point-two BILLION addresses", someone else 
> said "no $@#%'ing way we will EVER use THAT many...."
Let's face it - the current v6 assignment rules are to solve a 1990s set 
of problems.  A /64 isn't needed now that we have DHCP(v6).   Setting 
the idea in people's heads that a /64 IS going to be their own 
statically is insane and will blow out provider's own routing tables 
more than is rational. (Think of the processing overhead of all the 
DSL/Cable customers going up and down).  This is going to be far more of 
an issue and drive network design than a minor blow out in the v6 
routing table.

As Neil Finn of Split Enz fame once wrote:

History never repeats,
I tell myself before I go to sleep.

Followed on the same album by a song called "My Mistake".

MMC
(Who's trying to implement v6 native for DSL customers but finds that the world doesn't
have useable solutions yet for DSL CPE, BRAS, IPv6 allocation etc and doesn't look like it will for a while).

-- 
Matthew Moyle-Croft - Internode/Agile - Networks
Level 4, 150 Grenfell Street, Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: mmc at internode.com.au  Web: http://www.on.net
Direct: +61-8-8228-2909		    Mobile: +61-419-900-366
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