Paul Ferguson writes...
At 12:27 AM 06/10/97 -0500, Phil Howard wrote:
Suppose that IP space were not a problem. When IPv6 comes up all around, it certainly won't be then. You can have and waste all the IP space you could imagine, since we'll be numbering every atom in the known universe.
I continue to hear this used as a 'compelling reason' to urge IPv6 migration, when in reality it appears to be nothing more than people trying to do an 'end around' the address allocation policies by thinking that once v6 is deployed, the allocation policies will dissappear.
I wasn't trying to compel IPv6 with this. Instead, I was trying to show that the problem is really not one of IP space.
Simply because one increases the available amount of address space does not in any way imply that allocation policies will change significantly. If they did, and the number of routes increased significantly, we would have much larger problems in the global routing system than we would with people whining about not being able to obtain large enough address allocations.
Right. But people see it as such a problem because the routing policies are IP space derived. When people are told they need a /19 to be routable, then they begin to go backwards on solving the IP space problem and resume wasting it (but hiding the waste to look like its used). When the need to justify space usage occurred, along with it came some ideas on actually how to do that. And I see that working. We were projected to run totally out of space by now, and since we have not, I assume it did work pretty well. But the real problem is routing policies that are encouraging people to go back to wasting space. By using the network size as the criteria for doing route filtering, the smaller guys get screwed and they see their solution as inflating their network. This practice needs to be stopped or a better solution needs to come out of it. Suppose TCP/IP had been designed from the beginning with 64-bits of flat address space divided 32/32. We would not have the space crunch at all AND there would be no space "handle" for routing policies to lean on to screw the little guys. Tell me what the big boys with small routers would do in this case today? Even the biggest router has no chance with a billion routes. Or would we have been forced to come up with a new and better replacement for BGP(4) by now that does dynamic intelligent aggregation or something? -- Phil Howard KA9WGN +-------------------------------------------------------+ Linux Consultant | Linux installation, configuration, administration, | Milepost Services | monitoring, maintenance, and diagnostic services. | phil at milepost.com +-------------------------------------------------------+