RIPE NCC Executive Board election

Wed May 13 18:57:34 UTC 2020

On 5/13/2020 12:42 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> Hi Brielle,
> 
> http://bill.herrin.us/network/ipxl.html
> 
> Someone said much as you did way back in 2007. It bugged me, this
> defeatism that said there was no way IPv4 could have been
> incrementally updated to support more addresses, that a greenfield
> protocol was the only path forward. So I designed an upgrade factoring
> in the need for pre- and post-upgrade stacks and networks to
> interoperate over a period of years. It took all of 4 printed pages.
> 
> It's clear IPv6 is the path forward. It was clear in 2007. But don't
> for a second believe that's because IPv4 could not have been upgraded
> in place. That's a failure of imagination.

Interesting, thank you for the insight and some detailed breakdown.  I'm 
actually really glad someone with some more experience jumped in with 
some actual background in this effort.

One thing that cropped up in my mind from the late 90s and AFAIK still 
goes on today - isn't it pretty well documented that more then a small 
number of 'professional' firewalls have a habit of just outright 
discarding/rejecting/barfing on packets with options in them that they 
don't recognize?

IE: PMTU/ECN blackhole redux.

Of course since IPx1 requires some stack upgrades, so that point is moot 
really.

Sigh.  Back to the original thought that its just easier to go IPv6 then 
try to 'fix' whats already out there.

-- 
Brielle Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org    /     http://www.ahbl.org