IP4 address conservation method

Fri Jun 7 06:35:57 UTC 2013

* Blake Hudson

> One thing not mentioned so far in this discussion is using PPPoE or some
> other tunnel/VPN technology for efficient IP utilization. The result
> could be zero wasted IP addresses without the need to resort to
> non-routable IP addresses in a customer's path (as the pdf suggested)
> and without some of the quirkyness or vendor lock-in of using ip
> unnumbered.
> 
> PPPoE (and other VPNs) have many of the same downsides as mentioned
> above though, they require routing cost and increase the complexity of
> the network. The question becomes which deployment has more cost: the
> simple, yet wasteful, design or the efficient, but complex, design.

<shameless plug alert>

Or, simply just use IPv6, and use a stateless translation service
located in the core network to provide IPv4 connectivity to the public
Internet services.

This allows for 100% efficient utilisation of whatever IPv4 addresses
you have left - nothing needs to go to waste due to router interfaces,
subnet power of 2 overhead, internal servers/services that have no
Internet-available services, etc...all without requiring you to do
anything special on the server/application stacks to support it (like
set up tunnel endpoints), add dual-stack complexity into your network,
or introduce any form of stateful translation or VPN service into your
network.

Here's some more resources:

http://fud.no/talks/20130321-V6_World_Congress-The_Case_for_IPv6_Only_Data_Centres.pdf

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-anderson-siit-dc-00

In case you're interested in more, Ivan Pepelnjak and I will host a
(free) webinar about the approach next week. Feel free to join!

http://www.ipspace.net/IPv6-Only_Data_Centers

BTW: I hear Cisco has implemented support for this approach in their
latest AS1K code, although I haven't confirmed this myself yet.

Tore