IANAL, but, I'm suspecting that the restraint of trade specter would be raised by the router vendors if you start incorporating demands that they not implement features their customers (these same tier 1s) would be asking for. Of course, the IETF doesn't have any real power to prevent router vendors from implementing features like this or require them to prevent such things. RFCs in the end, are already treated as general suggestions by many vendors rather than any sort of forceful rule. So, yes, you seem to somewhat understand our fear, but, you also seem to, IMHO, overestimate the potential success of any theoretical solution to the problem. As I see it, the only effective way to prevent the issue is to change the general allocation policy to meet all needs and recognize that globally unique space is globally unique space from a technology perspective. From a social engineering perspective, any such distinctions are purely artificial, and, will be recognized as such and removed by market economics. (Or, to put it in terms IETF may better understand: In the long run, such limitations will be viewed as damage and simply routed around.) Owen --On Thursday, November 25, 2004 6:39 PM -0600 Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote:
Thus spake "Daniel Senie" <dts@senie.com>
At 07:11 PM 11/24/2004, Owen DeLong wrote:
Yes, they do. However, today, with RFC-1918, we can at least give them a good technology reason why not. With ULA, we have no such defense... There's simply no reason a unique prefix can't be routed.
So with unique address blocks, blocks that should not appear in the GLOBAL routing table, companies could use those prefixes for private peering all over the place. This sounds like a great idea for companies cooperating in commerce operations. Of course all that private traffic might traverse a network that bypasses the ISPs and NSPs, or perhaps runs over private virtual circuits (MPLS, Frame, ATM or whatever the popular choice is for such circuits that month).
While from a network operator's perspective, this might be a disaster, it's an enabler for corporate networks, and there's no reason to discourage it.
I don't see much argument against the idea of ULAs iff they actually remained local.
If you are a network provider, then filter the entire prefix block and any longer prefixes announced. Please, though, stay out of the way of private interconnectors who've been asking for years to have unique space so they can reliably talk with one another.
If I understand the fear of Owen, Leo, and others, presumably if a couple tier 1s decided (intentionally or not) to route ULAs, then other ISPs would be forced by market conditions (i.e their customers) to route them as well... For instance, what would happen if Google were only reachable by ULAs?
I think the WG would welcome any input that would help prevent this from happening. One thought would be to require router vendors to make it so each ULA prefix to be allowed over BGP must be configured individually instead of a single flag to allow all of them.
S
Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin
-- If it wasn't crypto-signed, it probably didn't come from me.