And Now for Something Completely Different (was Re: IPv6 news)

Mon Oct 17 21:23:47 UTC 2005

At 04:51 PM 10/17/2005, Tony Li wrote:

>Fred,
>
>>If we are able to reduce the routing table size by an order of
>>magnitude, I don't see that we have a requirement to fundamentally
>>change the routing technology to support it. We may *want* to (and
>>yes, I would like to, for various reasons), but that is a different
>>assertion.
>
>
>There is a fundamental difference between a one-time reduction in the
>table and a fundamental dissipation of the forces that cause it to
>bloat in the first place.  Simply reducing the table as a one-off
>only buys you linearly more time.  Eliminating the drivers for bloat
>buys you technology generations.
>
>If we're going to put the world thru the pain of change, it seems
>that we should do our best to ensure that it never, ever has to
>happen again.

But wasn't that the rationale for originally putting the kitchen sink 
into IPv6, rather than fixing the address length issue? I think we 
missed a lot of opportunities. Extended addressing may well have been 
possible to integrate in the mid 1990's ahead of much of the massive 
Internet expansion. Too late.

We're 10 years on, and talking about whether there will need to be 
more than one massive pain of migration, because the kitchen sink 
didn't take into account multihoming. Now we're talking about a 
solution that appear to be an even worse Rube Goldberg than token 
ring source-route bridging. Moore will likely have to continue to 
produce the solution. 