Steven M. Bellovin wrote: [..]
IPv6 isn't what I wanted it to be. During the IPng directorate, several of us (including me and at least one of the chairs) pushed very hard for id/locator split. We lost. That was 1994; it's over and done with. But it took 13 years from then to a (mostly) complete set of specs and universal implementation, at least in all systems shipping today. [..]
The good thing about the current state of IPv6 is though that applications have the following: - 128bits source address - 128bits destination address and in many cases they are now also AF independent due to getaddrinfo(), though there will always be some dependent code in their unfortunately. Why is the above good? Well, the application doesn't further really care about how the packets are sent from source to destination. As such those bits are now identifiers already. The OS can change them and do whatever it wants with them, eg it could change them to something which is available only on the link, tell the other end to do the same when it receives them to make them identical when sent from the source application. This should provide for a pretty good outcome in a couple of years where next the second biggest "problem" of the current Internet will be solved (the first being 32bits not being enough to address all hosts): too many DFZ routes. That will require a id/locator split, or IMHO better mentioned using those 128bits as both ID's and locators. It will need a signaling protocol for mentioning when something is an ID and when something is a locator and how to get back to an ID, but that magic should not be too hard to do and can be done both in the endhost and in middle boxes. As such, IPv6 has already solved the currently biggest problem: there is enough address space. Applications are mostly ready for this and so are Operating Systems. Now the web should follow, and while the IPv6 DFZ grows (it is still <900 routes) we will have enough time to create the ID/LOC system that ISP operators and Enterprise operators will accept. Especially that 'acceptance' is a big problem it seems and that is mosly a political issue, not a technical one. Btw, ram@iab.org if you want to join in on those discussions. Greets, Jeroen