IPv6 mistakes, was: Re: Looking for an IPv6 naysayer...

Fri Feb 11 03:46:04 UTC 2011

On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:43:50 -0500, Matthew Kaufman <matthew at matthew.at>  
wrote:
> There is no one universal "global routing table". They probably appear  
> in someone's routing table, somewhere... just not yours.

Using public address space for private networking is a gross misuse of the  
resource.  Go to any registry and ask for address space for your private  
networking that you do not intend to announce to the internet.  They will  
laugh at you, and point you to RFC1918. (and likely flag you as someone to  
whom address space should never be assigned.)  The only reason legacy  
holders get away with such crap is because there's no clear contract  
governing their assignment.

> How many days do you think a single /8 lasts at current assignment rates?

APNIC says the last 2 /8's they were assigned (triggering the dead-man  
clause) would last ~6mo.  With responsible use, 22 /8's would last several  
years. (3-5 best guess.  Of course, there could be a land-rush and all of  
it disappear next week -- see also: responsible use)

> How would ARIN/ICANN go about reclaiming addresses that someone believes  
> they are using but that you don't think are in use?

First off, someone will have to do a lot more than 5 minutes of poking  
router-servers to see just how sparsely used ("announced") the space  
really is.  That includes digging through BGP histories to see if it's  
ever been announced.  Then research who should be in control of the space  
(announced or not.)  Then send out nasty sounding letters informing  
whomever that X address space has not been announced to the public  
internet in Y years; on Z date, the space will reenter the IANA/ICANN free  
pool for reassignment. (cue lawyers :-))  They'd also be highly motivated  
to return unused space if they were being billing for it.

As the powers that be have drug their feet for over a decade already, I  
really doubt they'll even take 5 minutes to look at *a single* route  
server.

As for this "not fixing the problem", IPv4 is going to be a problem for  
MANY years to come.  IPv6 deployment is glacially slow.  IPv4 being "out  
of space" is getting news attention now, but will fade from the spotlight  
shortly.  The people who have space will continue to have it and generally  
not notice the lack of availablity.  The likes of Facebook, etc., have  
jumped on IPv6 because they have a reason to... they have volumes of IPv6  
connected eyeballs.  Yet the likes of Amazon and Akamai, aren't supporting  
IPv6 (and have no published plans to.)  Almost all of the major ISPs in  
the country still don't fully support IPv6 -- the few that do embrace v6  
make it a pain in the ass to get it setup.  I don't support IPv6 (since  
elink killed their experiment); I can get everywhere I care to go, and  
everyone who cares to get to me does.  I, like many/most others, will fix  
that problem when it *is* a problem.

(For the record... TWTC: not supported, Speakeasy: not supported, VZB: not  
recommended for an existing connection (if you want it to stay working))

--Ricky