Tony,
I know I'm going to regret this since your post was so obviously
flamebait preaching to the choir, but as the saying goes, you bring
the flamethrower and I'll bring the marshmallows.
On Aug 3, 2005, at 5:28 AM, Tony Hain wrote:
The IETF has to take the position of broad vision here
and flatly state that undue conservation is detrimental.
Of course it is. And water is wet.
The obvious point of contention is the definition of "undue". Your
definition differs from others due to the fact that there are
different interpretations of possible future utilization trends. The
IETF's choice of a (relatively) small fixed number of bits guaranteed
that this would be a problem, but hey, we sure showed those silly OSI
fanatics and their obviously broken variable length addresses, didn't
we?
The RIR members are basically a greedy bunch.
No, no. The correct, IETF sanctioned term is "Evil Greedy Bastard".
Just checked the T-shirt I got back in '94 at the ALE meeting and
that's definitely what it says. Of course, I'm just one of the foxes
in the henhouse now so I guess I need a different T-shirt.
Even so there are continuing complaints about the /64 boundary and
demands
to relax that constraint because in historical deployment terms
that number
of bits per subnet is a waste.
Well, yes. There are those who feel 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
addresses is a bit much for any flat routed individual LAN, but those
arguments are so passe these days. Auto-configuration is indeed
nice, at least in those environments that don't mind having arbitrary
devices connect to the network and get valid IP addresses, but I
guess I just have a wee bit of concern with arbitrary fixed
boundaries since they worked so stunningly well in the past. Must be
a EGB flashback. I'm sure I'll get over it.
Never mind the issue that at some point in
the lifetime of IPv6 the IEEE will be forced to move from 48 to 64 bit
EUI's...
I suppose IPv6 will need to be revised so that the RFID addresses
will fit. Oh, wait...
Fundamentally the RIR members just don't like being told what to do.
I guess this is accurate. Perhaps, just maybe, the presumption that
the IETF is qualified and/or appropriate to tell the RIR members what
to do is where the dislike of being told what to do originates?
If left alone they will constrain network deployments to what has been
done in the past.
No. If left alone, I would imagine they will constrain network
deployments to what they believe will meet their business
requirements. At least the commercial ones. If a particular RIR
member believes what has been done in the past meets those
requirements, that is probably what they will do. If they believe
deploying IPv6 will meet their requirements, guess what will happen?
It is up to the IPv6 WG to set the bar to avoid the state
where people are forced to work around the restrictive policies of a
provider and/or LIR/RIR.
I would have thought it was the IPv6 WG's responsibility to
standardize protocols that would address the issues that resulted in
the restrictive policies. The issue of address space limitations was
sort-of addressed (in a sub-optimal way given this discussion). But
how about issues like transparent renumbering, multi-homing,
separation of the end point identifier from the routing locator, and/
or other issues around routing system scalability?
For example, people are going to be forced to work around the
restrictive policy that you have to renumber when you change
providers. I personally suspect they'll do that via NATv6. If
you're true to form, I'm sure you'll argue they'll do that by some
variant of geographical addressing. Since the EGBs you have such
disdain for would have to play nicely together to go with your scheme
and they don't have to do anything to support NATv6, I have a
sneaking suspicion which approach will be deployed for the folks
whose definition of the Internet is the World Wide Web and whose
interpretation of "end-to-end" is something you find on those
unmentionable web sites that, of course, they'd never go to (wink,
wink, nudge, nudge).
Looking at the existing RIR databases, the "restrictive
policies" (most of which were taken verbatim from the IETF holy
texts) you deride have already resulted in /19s being allocated to
single organizations (which, coincidentally, used to be the same
prefix length RIPE-NCC used to allocate to LIRs when they initially
requested space. IPv4 /19s, of course). And this is without
governments requesting the space they feel they'll need for their
national interests. Governments like, oh say, China, India,
Indonesia, etc. If a /20 can be justified and allocated to Telstra
or Telia, how much address space should (say) the People's Liberation
Army of China get?
Those who point to the phone
system as an example conveniently overlook the rolling evolution that
effectively reduces the window of applicability. While there may be
pockets
where things still work, in my experience equipment from 40 years
ago is not
compatible with the current network
My dad has a Stromberg-Carlson model 1212-A made in the 1930s. I
just spoke with him over it. Seems to be compatible. Not full
featured by today's standards, but it does appear to do the function
it was built for. But perhaps you mean something else.
Even the numbering has undergone periodic
change, so claiming we know enough to recognize allocation waste
centuries
before the person with a bright new idea is born is the highest
form of
arrogance.
Alternatively, claiming we know enough to assume profligate waste
will not cause the exact same arguments sometime within the
foreseeable future could simply reiterate Hegel's quote "Those who
cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
I would however agree with you on one thing: there is a lot of
arrogance here.
Rgds,
-drc
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