OMB: IPv6 by June 2008

Wed Jul 6 22:18:24 UTC 2005

On 6 Jul 2005, at 11:41, Scott McGrath wrote:

> You do make some good points as IPv6 does not address routing 
> scalability
> or multi-homing which would indeed make a contribution to lower OPEX 
> and
> be easier to 'sell' to the financial people.
>
> As I read the spec it makes multi-homing more difficult since you are
> expected to receive space only from your SP there will be no 'portable
> assignments' as we know them today.  If my reading of the spec is
> incorrect someone please point me in the right direction.

The spec in this case is RIR policy, which seems designed to 
accommodate the last-known word from the IETF on the subject, which is 
a pure aggregation model such as you described.

The fact that the pure aggregation model is insufficient in the real 
network has been widely recognised in IETF-land, and this was the 
reason that the multi6 working group was chartered. The multi6 working 
group produced a series of recommendations which in turn has led to the 
shim6 working group being formed. The shim6 working group has its first 
meeting in Paris in August.

If all this sounds like a lot of talking without much action then, 
well, yes. The problem being solved is not trivial, though, and shim6 
is actually working towards something that could be implemented, rather 
than simply trying to throw ideas at the problem, so there is progress.

> IPv6's hex based nature is really a joy to work with IPv6 definitely 
> fails
> the human factors part of the equation.

The phrase "IPv6's hex based nature" very pithily sums up the problem 
that IPv6 was designed to solve.

With great hindsight it would have been nice if the multi6/shim6 design 
exercise had come *during* the IPv6 design exercise, rather than 
afterwards: we might have ended up with a protocol/addressing model 
that accommodated both the address size problem and also the DFZ state 
bloat issue. Oh well.

Joe