Anybody can participate in the IETF (Was: Why is IPv6 broken?)

Tue Jul 12 23:57:04 UTC 2011

On Jul 11, 2011, at 7:19 PM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

> Again, this is only hard to understand (or accept) if you don't know
> how your routers work.
> * why do you think there is an ARP and ND table?
> * why do you think there are policers to protect the CPU from
> excessive ARP/ND punts or traffic?
> * do you even know the limit of your boxes' ARP / ND tables?  Do you
> realize that limit is a tiny fraction of one /64?
> * do you understand what happens when your ARP/ND policers are reached?
> * did you think about the impact on neighboring routers and protocol
> next-hops, not just servers?
> * did you every try to deploy a /16 on a flat LAN with a lot of hosts
> and see what happens?  Doesn't work too well.  A v6 /64 is 281
> trillion times bigger than a v4 /16.  There's no big leap of logic
> here as to why one rogue machine could break your LAN.

FYI, in case you're interested in these topics, the IETF working group ARMD was chartered to explore address resolution scale.  I'm one of the co-chairs.  It's in the Operations Area, and we'd love to have more operators involved - if you're willing to contribute, your input will help set the direction.  (If operators don't contribute, it will be just another vendor-led circle... well, you know the score.)

For details please see http://tools.ietf.org/wg/armd/charters.

Cheers,
-Benson