IPv6 End User Fee

Sat Aug 4 19:41:05 UTC 2012

On Sat, Aug 04, 2012 at 10:31:02AM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:

> > IPv6 missed a great chance of doing away with all the
> > central waterfall trickle-down space distribution.
> > 
> 
> There was no need to fix what wasn't broken.

Let's say I want to plunk down a zero-administration 
node somewhere, as an end user. The most natural
approach is where addresses are derived from constraints,
and address collisions are identical to physical space
collisions. No two nodes can occupy the same space.
By the time you're beyond these 2^24 lat/long resolution
IPv6 is probably on its last legs anyway, and there's
way to do renumbering with more bits, at the very least.

> > Luckily, /64 looks like large enough to bypass that
> > by offering address space sufficiently large while
> > co-existable with legacy addressing and routing. 
> 
> Why on earth would you be messing around within /64? It should be easy enough to get a /48 (it certainly is now).

It's a lowest common denominator, at least as long the 
ISPs are playing by the rules. If end users conspire to use
a new addressing scheme bypassing the ISP infrastructure
as the crow flies, a freely modyfiable address field
within your ISP-assigned address space is the best label
you can hope for. 

> > I hope eventually somebody will start
> > tinkering with mesh radios which also have GPS 
> > onboard (as most smartphones and tablets do).
> > 24 + 24 + 16 bits are just enough to represent
> > a decent-resolution WGS84 position fix. Plus,
> > GPS gives you a pretty accurate clock.
> 
> That could be an interesting project. Limiting it to a /64 still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm actually glad it's a /64. MAC space is a lot more cramped,
and that information doesn't travel at all far. 