IPv6 - real vs theoretical problems

Fri Jan 7 00:01:33 UTC 2011

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Deepak Jain <deepak at ai.net> wrote:
> As far as I can tell, this "crippling" of the address space is completely reversible, it's a reasonable step forward and the only "operational" loss is you can't do all the address jumping and obfuscation people like to talk about... which I'm not sure is a loss.

I largely agree with you, but my knowledge is similar to yours, and
does not extend to dealing with low-end CPE, dormitory LANs, hot
spots, or mobile networks.  I am by no means an authority in those
areas and I remain open to the possibility that there may be some
operational advantages to the IPv6 addressing concept for those users.
 The problem is there are very serious operational disadvantages for
you and I, but the standard tells us to do it anyway.  I would like
the hot spot or mobile guys to be able to choose /64 if they want to.
I need to choose otherwise, and customers expecting /64 as the
"standard" are going to be disappointed until the standard allows for
different choices.

I don't have an opinion on whether the address space is truly
"crippled."  If I did, I'm not sure it would be useful.  Classful
addressing ran out of gas in IPv4, so IPv6 has a huge number of bits
to hopefully avoid a repeat of that.  Okay, I can buy into that.
There are some major networks who aren't, though, and I think they
made a very conscious choice.  We won't know if it's a necessary
choice for a long time.

I will choose to devote my arguing-on-the-mailing-list time to topics
I think are more useful to discuss.  I do not think you will change
very many minds about IPv6 numbering schemes.  I hope I will change
some minds about the current safety of public /64 LANs and get more
folks talking to their vendors about it, which should give us some
kind of solution sooner, rather than later.  Choose your battles.

-- 
Jeff S Wheeler <jsw at inconcepts.biz>
Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts