Then, we have a 'requirement' document that pretend to explain why we need
'local' addresses. If you read it carefully, and as acknowledged by one of its main
author in Vienna, almost all of those requirements (if not all) would be fulfilled
by provider independent addresses. Actually, there is nothing in it that
explain why we need 'local range' addresses. The essence of those
requirements is in the need for stable addresses that are
independent from ISPs.
If this means non-globally routable provider independent addresses (e.g., <draft-hinden-ipv6-global-local-addr-02.txt> ), then I am in agreement that a solution doesn't have to be limited in scope (or range) like site-local addresses are.
If this means globally routable provider independent addresses. Then it is, of course, correct that this would solve many of the problems too. Unfortunately, there is a big problem why this isn't a practical choice we can make now. We don't have, IMHO, any idea how to make globally routable provider independent addresses work at scale in the Internet. There are a number of problem area.
We don't know how to route them at the scale of the current Internet. The current routing technology we have now would have to treat each provider independent prefix as a separate route. That would be one route per organization. That is way too many routes to be handled by anything close to current technology and products. It would be turning off aggregation.
If we had new routing technology that could handle globally routable provider independent addresses, then it would have to be deployed in most routers in the Internet before it would be useful. Probably all routers from the site boundary to the core of the Internet. Given that I suspect any solution in this area would not be an incremental changes to a routers implementation (i.e., not another BGP extension), perhaps even changes to the routers route lookup engines (in hardware in many cases) this would likely take a long time to accomplish. Also, a bit of a chicken and egg deployment problem that everyone working on IPv6 understands too well.
We don't have any structure in place to allocate and register these types of addresses. The registries might be able to do it, but as they are currently structured they are mostly focused on ISPs, not individual sites. This would require some major changes in their structure and perhaps funding models. Right now every site would have to be an LIR.
Assuming routing technology was available and all of the routers were modified to support the new routing technology, then there would have to be some incentive for the ISP to want to carry these type of routes. They are great for the customers, but it makes it easy for their customers to switch ISPs. We have seen how well the phone providers have embraced provider independent phone numbers. They only "agreed" to support them after governmental action. I suspect ISP might not be widely enthusiastic to deploy them.
So overall if we had all of these problems solved it would be great. Beside just the local address problems, it would deal with site multihoming, site mobility, change of ISP, and more. It's a great problem to work on as the benefits are many. But I don't think we will see solutions to these problem in the near or medium terms. I think the routing problem is a significant research topic that people have been working on for a long time.
Until solutions two these problems are available, I don't see this as a viable alternate to the current approaches.
Bob
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