Another v6 question

Fri Jan 28 01:03:54 UTC 2011

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Jared Mauch <jared at puck.nether.net> wrote:
> On Jan 26, 2011, at 8:33 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> I expect that in ~3 years, we will see dual-stack and /64's handed out in conjunction with an IPv4 address as "common".
> The ipv6 zealots talking about anything but a /64 for >end-site are talking about a "business class" service.

No... they are not.. the /56 assignments are for all types of end
sites, whether business or not.   What makes a service "business
class"  or not has nothing directly to do with the number of IP
addresses used.

The only reason more IP addresses available was associated with higher
classes of service in IPv4, and different end sites had different
sizes of assignments, was because  IP addresses were so scarce,  and
costly.

Business class connections provide data rates suitable for larger
networks, or generally come with SLAs; committed data rates, or
assurances of reliability. The IP addressing needed for hosts is
independent of the class of service.

Under IPv6; it should be possible to upgrade service levels, or add
networks, with no renumbering, or extra work required by the ISP to
allocate more subnets.

The /48 end-site assignments help future proof the LAN and  help avoid
the need to ever renumber to add subnets or to add discontinuous ones
(aside from changing ISPs).

>  Even with my static IPs at home, I have no need for
>more than a single /64 to be used in my wildest dreams.
>I could live with ~256 ips for the future.  I consider my
>tech density "above-average".

98% of home users  could probably live with _one_  IP address behind a
NAT router;  heck,  most of them are doing just that with IPv4.

Heck... most could probably live with  8 TCP port numbers and  8 UDP
port numbers.    What a waste of bits to give residential users
16-bit port numbers.

Transition to IPv6 is not about what users can "live with"  using
current technology.

The  /48  end site assignments is supposed to provide opportunity for
new technologies to be developed and provide useful innovations.

Your wildest dreams are pretty limited,  if you can't think of any way
  the additional subnets can be useful.

Security and logical division are a few ideas.
You might not care to do that now...  but in 20 years,  when you have
100000  smart chip / IP-based home automation enabled devices on your
LAN.

Subnetting starts to look more attractive; especially if common
routers get the ability to do it automatically, and implement some
passive  isolation-based security mechanisms.

> - Jared
-JH