IPv6 foot-dragging

Fri May 13 02:02:40 UTC 2011

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:39 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia at gmail.com> wrote:
> A very important distinction. The _immediate_  hit to the DFZ might be
> the same as obtaining PI V6 space,
> but the _long term_ hit to the DFZ might be much greater;

The real issue is that there are many /48 announcements today which
should be either:
1) not in the DFZ at all, but are because of
  a) accidental pollution/leaks
  b) intentional de-aggregation, which is very often inappropriate
2) should instead be PI allocations to organizations, not delegated PA space

This will only get worse unless we task the RIRs with doing the only
real job they have left in a post-v6-transition world: working to
enable connectivity without unnecessary DFZ bloat.  There is no longer
a need for RIRs to say "no" to allocation requests on the basis that
we will run out of (IPv6) addresses.  The sole reason for technical
barriers in the application/request process at all is to keep the DFZ
in-check.  Yet, our community still refuses to explicitly alter RIR
policy such that controlling DFZ growth is an explicit component of
the RIRs' mission.

We can very easily choose to have one of two scenarios:
1) The bad situation with IPv4, where half the DFZ is accidental leaks
or poorly-designed networks that are essentially on auto-pilot; yet
small businesses and ISPs are not able to acquire PI space for use in
BGP and must use PA blocks from their transit providers
2) An opposite situation, where the DFZ does not contain any
de-aggregates, but contains many PI routes from organizations who have
their PI space announced by their ISP for the purpose of avoiding
re-numbering, not for multi-homing using their own BGP
routers/ASN/etc.

Getting to either one of these two extremes is very easy.  Right now,
we are heading for #1.  If all technical barriers for acquiring IPv6
PI were removed, we would probably have #2.  How do we find a medium
between them, where there aren't ASNs originating 1000+ unnecessary
de-aggregates out of their own carelessness and ineptitude, but also,
there isn't a /32 (or /48) announced for every mom & pop ISP who
themselves do not participate in BGP, or every corporate branch office
who do not want to renumber when they change ISPs?

This is how RIRs are failing us.  Except that the RIRs really can't
fail us, because they do what the members direct them to do through
policy.  If we don't task them to help the community do a better job
at managing the IPv6 DFZ now, we may never be able to go back and fix
it.  The genie is out of the bottle with IPv4; but realistically, IPv6
is young enough that we have plenty of wiggle-room in terms of
allocation policy, typical inter-domain route filters, and so on.

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