Well duh, they can auction them off on ebay later. Joe McGuckin wrote:

They're just collecting all the big brains, putting them in big glass jars so nobody else can have them...

-joe

On 9/8/05 12:32 PM, "Steve Sobol" <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote:

...

Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:

...

That kind of goes hand-in-hand with Vint's Galactic Internet theme.

Uhhh... why does a dotcom need an Internet evangelist?

:-S

His name has never "hurt" a companies stock price. Remember MCI--Um, Worldcom. Remembering.. Um lost a ton of money... just remember. First time I have noticed Google do anything so blatant. Time to sell Google? Are they spending money on figure heads? Regards, Mark D. Bodley Managing Partner Cyrix Systems 800-722-0589 m@cyrixsys.com www.cyrixsys.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Christopher L. Morrow Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 4:59 PM To: Joe McGuckin Cc: Steve Sobol; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: OT - Vint Cerf joins Google On Thu, 8 Sep 2005, Joe McGuckin wrote:

They're just collecting all the big brains, putting them in big glass jars so nobody else can have them...

me thinks joe has been watching too many 'Futurama' re-runs on 'cartoon network'... :)

Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

On Sep 8, 2005, at 5:09 PM, Mark Bodley wrote:

...

His name has never "hurt" a companies stock price. Remember MCI--Um, Worldcom. Remembering.. Um lost a ton of money... just remember. First time I have noticed Google do anything so blatant. Time to sell Google? Are they spending money on figure heads?

Dr. Cerf is still well in possession of his enormous faculties and has an excellent grasp of both business and technical issues. He is an asset to any company he joins.

Figure Head? Possibly. But certainly not an empty one.

I'm not so sure he still up to it. His performance as ICANN chairman is not exactly stellar... -- Andre

On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 14:12:45 EDT, "Steven J. Sobol" said:

I'm sure there are a lot of ways Dr. Cerf could benefit the company. I guess I'm a little surprised that they hired him outright and just didn't give him a seat on the board of directors.

Why is that surprising? How much *actual* authority does the average C-level exec have in an organization? How much *actual* authority does the average member of the BoD have? In general, figureheads go on the BoD. To actually *do* something, you hire somebody competent, and give them a goal, authority, and resources, and stand back.

On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 12:32 -0700, Steve Sobol wrote:

Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:

...

That kind of goes hand-in-hand with Vint's Galactic Internet theme.

Uhhh... why does a dotcom need an Internet evangelist?

He meets the requirement of having a Phd. Google must have hired some regular grad/undergrad and they needed another Phd to keep their ratio up. :-) -Jim P.

On Thu, 08 Sep 2005 12:32:41 PDT, Steve Sobol said:

Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:

...

That kind of goes hand-in-hand with Vint's Galactic Internet theme.

Uhhh... why does a dotcom need an Internet evangelist?

So he can be an *INTERNET* evangelist, not a "one company's vision of the net" evangelist? ObNANOG: Anybody here who *didn't* have a monoculture-created meltdown with Nachi?

On Thu, 8 Sep 2005, Barry Shein wrote:

On September 8, 2005 at 12:32 sjsobol@JustThe.net (Steve Sobol) wrote:

...

Uhhh... why does a dotcom need an Internet evangelist?

To call for the assassination of certain other heads of companies? (no, don't bother, I know, ok?)

Others don't. May I suggest light reading on this topic: http://news.com.com/Court+docs+Ballmer+vowed+to+kill+Google/2100-1014_3-5846... of course this all comes because this poor company is itself being...: http://www.techworld.com/networking/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4359 and not only by China but it seems by Europe is "f***ing" its plans as well: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2142044/microsoft-sues-eu-software [sorry for being somewhat political again; flame away, just preferably in private or our distinguished mail list "admins" might get upset] -- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:

I was thinking yesterday that IPv6 evangelization is a good reason, specially when recalling that Google asked for a prefix some time ago (http://www.ipv6tf.org/news/newsroom.php?id=1001) and something is probably being baked there ?

So is the idea that Google adopts IPv6 and then, seeing that a large, well-trafficked(sp?) website is actually using the technology, lots of service providers and smaller sites follow suit? How widespread *is* IPv6 adoption, anyhow? -- Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Daniel Golding wrote:

Getting back on-topic - how can this be? I thought only service providers (with downstream customers) could get PI v6 space. Isn't this what policy proposal 2005-1 is about? Can someone (from ARIN?) explain the current policy?

Its my understanding that large company (or large university) can become LIR too - they'd have to show that they have complex network infrastructure with multiple semi-independent departments and/or subsidiaries with main company's IT department serving as network provider for those units. However there is a difference between company becoming LIR and becoming member of ARIN and paying annual membership fee (based on network size) and company applying for single IPv6 assignment (as per 2005-1) and not having to pay membership fee then (only one-time fee for assignment) and not being able to participate at ARIN as a member. -- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Mr. James W. Laferriere wrote:

...

However there is a difference between company becoming LIR and becoming member of ARIN and paying annual membership fee (based on network size) and company applying for single IPv6 assignment (as per 2005-1) and not having to pay membership fee then (only one-time fee for assignment) and not being able to participate at ARIN as a member.

Tho from what I have read of 2005-1 this requires a AS .

Correct. We only want RIR assigned ip blocks to those who multihome, i.e. such blocks would be expected to be in global BGP routing table.

That requires a memebership unless there is some loophole around that I have not seen ?

No, ASN assignent does provide you with ARIN membership. You do pay annual maintaince fee to ARIN (fairly small at $100/year) though.

Can you site the section in 2005-1 that allows an entity to pay the onetime fee & not have to pay the yearly fee ?

With IPv4 end-user organization that qualifies for > /20 asks ARIN to have that assigned instead of asking its ISP. Such organization then pays one time fee listed in http://www.arin.net/billing/fee_schedule.html as "IPv4 Assignments, Initial Assignment Fee" which is as an example is $2,250 for /19 and /20. The organization would then pay annual database maintanance fee of $100/year (its a per organization fee, that does not change no matter how many ASNs or ip block are assigned to that organization in the future). For ip blocks allocated to ISPs by ARIN, the ISP pays $2250/year (for /20 and /19) and this fee depends on size of allocated ip space. I'm not yet entirely sure how that would be for IPv6 because direct assignent policies just don't exist in any real way for IPv6 (except special cases of micro-allocations), so basicly those who got IPv6 space from ARIN are all considered LIRs and pay annual fee for that block. It may stay in similar way or we may end up changing it to something like it is with IPv4 - I suppose this is something that is to be discussed as part of ARIN public policy development process. -- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net

[Perhaps this thread should migrate to Multi6?] On Sep 9, 2005, at 11:55 PM, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Daniel Golding wrote:

...

Getting back on-topic - how can this be? I thought only service providers (with downstream customers) could get PI v6 space. Isn't this what policy proposal 2005-1 is about? Can someone (from ARIN?) explain the current policy?

what if they didn't ask for a prefix but instead just hammered their providers for /48's? What's the difference to them anyway? (provided we are just talking about them lighting up www.google.com in v6 of course)

If they wanted to start offering more 'services' (ip services perhaps?) then they could say they were a 'provider' (All they need is a plan to support 200 customers to get a /32) and start the magic of /32-ness...

Suppose they not only have no plan but couldn't really put together a plan to support 200 customers? Does this mean Google, or any other content provider, is "unworthy" of globally routeable space? IPv6 is a nice idea, and as soon as people realize that ISPs are not the only organizations who have a need to multi-home - and I mean really multi-home, not stupid work-arounds - then it might actually start to happen. -- TTFN, patrick

Google == AS 15169 which has 100 prefixes announced in my BGP. I suspect they could qualify for IPv6 address space under any criteria. I know they could arrange to qualify, simply by buying an appropriate ISP. They've got the cash. However, there are two proposals to ARIN to allow direct "micro" assignments to end sites, these are supposed to be merged into one by the 16th of this month, so people interested should go over to the ARIN ppml and comment. One issue is to what extent IPv6 tunnels should count towards multi-homing. My personal feeling is that, having gotten 2002-3 through ARIN, this should pass eventually. Regards Marshall Eubanks On Sep 10, 2005, at 3:38 AM, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

...

[Perhaps this thread should migrate to Multi6?]

perhaps... then jason can argue this instead of me :)

...

On Sep 9, 2005, at 11:55 PM, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

...

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Daniel Golding wrote:

...

...

Getting back on-topic - how can this be? I thought only service providers (with downstream customers) could get PI v6 space. Isn't this what policy proposal 2005-1 is about? Can someone (from ARIN?) explain the current policy?

what if they didn't ask for a prefix but instead just hammered their providers for /48's? What's the difference to them anyway? (provided we are just talking about them lighting up www.google.com in v6 of course)

If they wanted to start offering more 'services' (ip services perhaps?) then they could say they were a 'provider' (All they need is a plan to support 200 customers to get a /32) and start the magic of /32-ness...

Suppose they not only have no plan but couldn't really put together a plan to support 200 customers? Does this mean Google, or any other content provider, is "unworthy" of globally routeable space?

apparently that's the plan yes, or so say the current decision makers/policy-makers/'the-man'... take it up with them, in fact, everyone should be thinking this through as you are/have and thinking about the implications of the current policies related to v6 address allocations, subnetting 'standards' and even multi-homing.

...

IPv6 is a nice idea, and as soon as people realize that ISPs are not the only organizations who have a need to multi-home - and I mean really multi-home, not stupid work-arounds - then it might actually start to happen.

Agreed, so... hopefully others will start to participate in the process to change things for the 'better'. To make sure that the policies/procedures are more closely aligned with operational requirements/needs. It seems that lots of folks are of the belief that: 1) its not important to worry about this 'today' 2) the 'right decision' will get made and 'things will just work out' 3) 'certainly someone else will argue my point for me'

(or some combination of that grouping...) It looks to me, and I'm new at this so I may be wrong, that none of the above really is true :( The current train for ipv6 is on the tracks and headed your way whether you like it or not, and it's not headed your way to pick you up :(

The process/standards bodies need more operators to get involved so that standards we can deploy/live-with make it to fruitition.

Thanks for the tee :)

-Chris

On Sep 10, 2005, at 1:58 PM, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

most likely, but I was really saying: "Do they even NEED PI space?" (for this discussion, or rather the start of it, I don't think so...

I disagree. (Or, more precisely, I don't think _anyone_ needs v6 space right now 'cause it ain't really used. But assuming you want to use it, Google "needs" is, IMHO.) Care to explain why you think so? -- TTFN, patrick

<on topic of IPv6 end-user assignments and value of multihoming> At 6:23 AM -0400 9/10/05, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

However, there are two proposals to ARIN to allow direct "micro" assignments to end sites, these are supposed to be merged into one by the 16th of this month, so people interested should go over to the ARIN ppml and comment.

Marshall - good pointer... It is worth repeating that folks who hold an opinion on this matter either way should quickly get involved, whether that is via mailing-list or in person at the upcoming NANOG/ARIN meeting in LA. Thanks! /John

On Sep 10, 2005, at 10:17 AM, Joe Abley wrote:

...

[Perhaps this thread should migrate to Multi6?]

multi6 hasn't existed for some time. The "level-3 shim" approach to multi-homing that was the primary output of multi6 is being discussed in shim6.

Guess I'm behind. I'll have to subscribe to shim6.

...

Suppose they not only have no plan but couldn't really put together a plan to support 200 customers? Does this mean Google, or any other content provider, is "unworthy" of globally routeable space?

Yes, according to the current RIR policies. [So the determination of "unworthy" above has been made, in effect, by RIR members.]

And this is why v6 has failed and will continue to fail. The Internet is no longer an academic experiment. It is not run by the 'best technology'. It is run by the best business results. Content providers and other large business, without who's funds the Internet would fail, have a right not to be tied to a single provider. And while I admit I am not up-to-date on v6 multi-homing strategies, the ones I have seen are either evil, unworkable or ridiculous, and simply will not fly.

's not as though this line of thinking hasn't been followed many, many times before. The counter-argument goes like this:

1. There is more v6 space than there is v4 space, by virtue of the fact that the address is 96 bits wider.

2. Because there is vastly more v6 space than v4 space, if entitlement to PI space in v6 was opened up the chances are many more people would have v6 PI space than currently have v4 PI space.

This assumption has more holes in it than swiss cheese.

3. Every PI assignment/allocation takes up a routing slot in every router in the DFZ.

4. Given 2 and 3, there is potential for the amount of state in the DFZ to exceed the capabilities of the network to hold and process it (e.g. enormous RIBs, soaring processor requirements for dealing with updates, etc).

Ignoring the problems with #2, what is made of the idea that each AS might only have a single block, since blocks are so much larger? (And lots of other questions I'm sure you guys have already covered which are probably not on-topic for NANOG.)

It's possible that the number of PI assignments might not be that high, and the scaling properties in practice might not be so bad. However, you only get to find this out after you've opened the floodgates, and if it turns out that it doesn't scale, it's hard to push the water back into the reservoir.

The goal in shim6 is to find a mechanism which provides all the functional benefits of multi-homing without holding all the state in DFZ routers.

Perhaps the goal ... was chosen poorly?

There seems to be some ongoing perception that various protocol/ research organisations have no idea about the value of multi-homing for enterprises in the real network, and hence ignore it. While that might have once been the case (I certainly remember thinking so around 1997 whilst shouting on the ipng list), I don't believe it's the case today.

That is _absolutely_ the impression I get from speaking to v6 supporters today. The profess otherwise, but the solutions and technologies they suggest disprove their protestations. Guess I better get over to shim6 and see what I'm missing out on. -- TTFN, patrick

On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

...

Content providers and other large business, without who's funds the Internet would fail, have a right not to be tied to a single provider. And while I

The "shimming" model is a way to solve this by the endsystems knowing about multihoming, instead of the network. I personally think this is a better idea and scales much better. Let's have the network moving packets

cause each end node knows about the upstream network 'problems' so well? giving them full routes too are we? ( I don't want to fight this arguement here, I'm just making a rhetorical question, one I hope there will be a presentation this nanog to also argue over :) )

On Sep 11, 2005, at 12:32 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

...

Content providers and other large business, without who's funds the Internet would fail, have a right not to be tied to a single provider. And while I

Giving each entity who wants to multihome an AS of their own and own address block, doesn't scale. Think this in the way of each home in the world being multihomed, it just doesn't scale.

We disagree. And your hyperbole doesn't come close to proving your argument.

IPv6 solved the addressing problem, not the routing problem, in the current model. Let's try to fix the routing problem NOW instead of 5-10 years down the road.

Yes, let's. See you on shim6. -- TTFN, patrick

On Sep 11, 2005, at 10:26 AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

On 11-sep-2005, at 8:31, Patrick W.Gilmore wrote:

...

...

Giving each entity who wants to multihome an AS of their own and own address block, doesn't scale. Think this in the way of each home in the world being multihomed, it just doesn't scale.

...

We disagree. And your hyperbole doesn't come close to proving your argument.

Well then, why don't you do the following:

1. Give us a maximum number of multihomers.

Unknown. Somewhat less than the number of hosts on the Internet, somewhat more than one. My bet is closer to the latter than the former. In fact, I would think it's the same for v4. Do you disagree? And if so, why?

2. Tell us how a routing table of that size (assuming 1 route per AS) will scale based on reasonable extrapolations of today's technology.

Right, 'cause we all know tomorrow's problems need to be solved with today's technology. But let's try it anyway. As per RAS' post, reducing the growth of the table to equal the growth of ASNs would be a huge win. A problem which is, in fact, solvable with "today's technology". So, despite your completely silly and unreasonable constraints (kinda like "each home in the world being multihomed"), the problem is still solvable. Keeping small providers, hosters, enterprises, schools, etc., who do not want to be tied to a single provider from multihoming is a huge loss. I guess you could argue forcing people to single-home is not a bad thing. As one of the people who pay for transit, I tell you it is not. Period. And no, multiple IP addresses is not good enough. -- TTFN, patrick

On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 06:32:58AM +0200, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

Giving each entity who wants to multihome an AS of their own and own address block, doesn't scale. Think this in the way of each home in the world being multihomed, it just doesn't scale.

IPv6 solved the addressing problem, not the routing problem, in the current model. Let's try to fix the routing problem NOW instead of 5-10 years down the road.

To quote some stats from the latest weekly routing table report to hit nanog: BGP routing table entries examined: 169983 Total ASes present in the Internet Routing Table: 20445 Origin-only ASes present in the Internet Routing Table: 17787 Origin ASes announcing only one prefix: 8431 This says that although there are 170k prefixes on the Internet, there are only 20k entities who actually need to announce IP space. There is only one explanation for such a large difference (8.5x) between these two numbers, namely that people who are announcing IP space need multiple blocks in order to accomodate their needs. Yes there are some people who are doing things like announcing discontiguous blocks from the same ASN and relying on the network to get bits to the right spot, but the majority of these prefixes are due to IP rationing, which forces growth into multiple blocks. By eliminating this, the vast majority of users will only need to announce 1 prefix, ever. I don't know about you, but I'd be quite happy to get the number of prefixes down to ~ 20k and growing at the rate of new ASN allocations. :) Obviously nothing we currently have is going to scale to handle millions of users wanting to multihome their cable modem and their DSL at the network level, but at least the current system will keep scaling for quite a while. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)

On Sep 11, 2005, at 12:51 PM, David Conrad wrote:

On Sep 11, 2005, at 12:52 AM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

...

This says that although there are 170k prefixes on the Internet, there are only 20k entities who actually need to announce IP space. There is only one explanation for such a large difference (8.5x) between these two numbers, namely that people who are announcing IP space need multiple blocks in order to accomodate their needs.

This is an interesting assertion. I thought the majority of announced prefixes was due to folks punching holes in their registry allocated blocks in order to do traffic engineering of one form of another (multi-homing being a form of traffic engineering).

Can you point at the data which backs up your assertion (I'm not disputing it, just a curious)?

How about the CIDR report? Notice that even with maximal aggregation per AS, the average AS still announces multiple blocks. It's really not that hard to see if you spend some time perusing the full table. -- TTFN, patrick

On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 06:32:58AM +0200, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

...

Giving each entity who wants to multihome an AS of their own and own address block, doesn't scale. Think this in the way of each home in the world being multihomed, it just doesn't scale.

To quote some stats from the latest weekly routing table report to hit nanog:

BGP routing table entries examined: 169983 Total ASes present in the Internet Routing Table: 20445 Origin-only ASes present in the Internet Routing Table: 17787 Origin ASes announcing only one prefix: 8431

This says that although there are 170k prefixes on the Internet, there are only 20k entities who actually need to announce IP space. There is only one explanation for such a large difference (8.5x) between these two numbers, namely that people who are announcing IP space need multiple blocks in order to accomodate their needs.

Actually, you've missed two crucial lines from the report: Prefixes after maximum aggregation: 97203 Unique aggregates announced to Internet: 82000 That implies that 73k (170k - 97k) worth of announcements are related to traffic engineering tricks, multihoming, poor education or simply 'because'. ( A decade on and there are still books/routers/courses/people which don't grok CIDR ) A further 15k (97k - 82k) worth of announcements seem to be duplicates; multiple paths being naturally seen or intentionally announced. Of the 82k worth of possibly unique prefixes, 8k worth of those are from ASes announcing solely one route. The remaining 74k prefixes are announced by 9k ASes; 8 each.

the majority of these prefixes are due to IP rationing, which forces growth into multiple blocks.

An interesting question to ask, before you point at IP rationing being the main cause, is how many entities that have received IP allocations also have ASes? In other words, these ASes having 8+ prefixes each may in some cases be a single ISP announcing the routes of 5 seperate customer entities. A further question to ask would be, considering that issuing IPs is the RIR's business, why haven't the RIRs noticed a tendency for certain entities to keep coming back for more IP space, and thus why haven't the RIRs been putting aside aggregatable IP space for these entities or been notifying their membership on the possible need for a change in addressing policies to avoid such problems ? Certainly, I'll agree that IP rationing (via RIR policies) is responsible for a certain, hopefully small, percentage of non-aggregatable prefixes. But I don't think that IP rationing is responsible for the majority of such prefixes. -- Bruce Campbell Then again, I may be biased ;)

Waitaminute - isn't the whole *purpose* of layer 3 that the network makes these routing decisions?

If there are N routers in an ISP, I would expect the ISP to connect to X endsystems, where 10N < X < 1000N. How does knowing about X endsystems scale better than knowing about N intermediate systems?

Am I missing something here?

I think there's some misunderstanding. Nothing has to know about X endsystems. Nor did anything have to know about N routers before. In the shim6 approach, a host only needs to know about its correspondent hosts. From a scalability perspective, this is unchanged from previously, only the constants are bigger. Tony

On 10-Sep-2005, at 21:42, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

On Sep 10, 2005, at 10:17 AM, Joe Abley wrote:

...

Yes, according to the current RIR policies. [So the determination of "unworthy" above has been made, in effect, by RIR members.]

And this is why v6 has failed and will continue to fail.

It'll only continue to fail (for this reason) as long as the various RIR memberships don't vote for change. [...]

...

2. Because there is vastly more v6 space than v4 space, if entitlement to PI space in v6 was opened up the chances are many more people would have v6 PI space than currently have v4 PI space.

This assumption has more holes in it than swiss cheese.

It doesn't need to a foregone conclusion; it just needs to have significantly non-zero probability, since if it turns out to be true then we're all screwed. Right now there are lots of multi-homed organisations who use NAT, and whose "PI" address space deployed internally comes from RFC1918. If you imagine all those enterprises using a globally-unique, PI v6 block instead, then perhaps the thinking behind the speculation in (2) above becomes clearer. [ObCheese: most of the 450 or so kinds of cheese made in Switzerland don't have holes.]

Ignoring the problems with #2, what is made of the idea that each AS might only have a single block, since blocks are so much larger? (And lots of other questions I'm sure you guys have already covered which are probably not on-topic for NANOG.)

This is an RIR policy issue, not an IETF protocol issue. If the members of RIRs all pushed for the idea that "I have a globally- unique ASN" is also appropriate justification for a /32 allocation, then I would imagine that the policy might change.

...

It's possible that the number of PI assignments might not be that high, and the scaling properties in practice might not be so bad. However, you only get to find this out after you've opened the floodgates, and if it turns out that it doesn't scale, it's hard to push the water back into the reservoir.

The goal in shim6 is to find a mechanism which provides all the functional benefits of multi-homing without holding all the state in DFZ routers.

Perhaps the goal ... was chosen poorly?

Perhaps. This will surely become clear with the benefit of hindsight :-) Joe

In message <BF4A6FA7.127A24%jordi.palet@consulintel.es>, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ w rites:

I don't think is failing ... On the other way around: looking at the adoption perspectives and compared with other technologies, transition stages, and so on, is going much faster than expected ...

About 4 years ago, I predicted that v6 would be very significant 8-10 years from then. I think we're right on track. As someone else noted, Windows Vista will have v6 enabled by default. There's also a version-independent network API. As a consequence, most applications written for Vista will be v6-capable. Vista will ship next year; 4-5 years after that, most desktops will be running it, and hence will support v6, including the applications. We're also seeing planning for conversion (i.e., the U.S. Defense Department) and deployment in some parts of the world. An obvious corollary to this is that ISPs should be planning their v6 offerings now, too. This means routers, databases, operation support systems, CPE for cable and DSL ISPs, etc. Those that don't are likely to find themselves bypassed. --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

At 10:17 AM 9/10/2005, Joe Abley wrote:

On 10-Sep-2005, at 09:18, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

...

[Perhaps this thread should migrate to Multi6?]

multi6 hasn't existed for some time. The "level-3 shim" approach to multi-homing that was the primary output of multi6 is being discussed in shim6.

...

Suppose they not only have no plan but couldn't really put together a plan to support 200 customers? Does this mean Google, or any other content provider, is "unworthy" of globally routeable space?

Yes, according to the current RIR policies. [So the determination of "unworthy" above has been made, in effect, by RIR members.]

...

IPv6 is a nice idea, and as soon as people realize that ISPs are not the only organizations who have a need to multi-home - and I mean really multi-home, not stupid work-arounds - then it might actually start to happen.

It's not as though this line of thinking hasn't been followed many, many times before. The counter-argument goes like this:

1. There is more v6 space than there is v4 space, by virtue of the fact that the address is 96 bits wider.

Could the IPv6 proponents get their stories straight? On the one hand, the talk is of 128 bit address space, then on the other hand the talk is of security-by-obscurity by handing out /48's to everyone and having networks really sparsely populated. So given the address space is so massive that 1/2 of the bits are effectively a local subaddress, perhaps the talk should be of doubling the number of bits, not quadrupling. Yes, I understand you can slice and dice however desired, but it sure seems like the proponents play fast and loose with the numbers when making their arguments, and it's tiresome.

2. Because there is vastly more v6 space than v4 space, if entitlement to PI space in v6 was opened up the chances are many more people would have v6 PI space than currently have v4 PI space.

The rules today have not resulted in and overly huge number of multihomers. The IPv6 crowd evangelists on the one hand insist there's no need for NAT, while on the other hand provided no solution to multihoming, and what's been evolving in the various "fixes" for that are less palatable than running a multiport NAT box. The choice is simple: live with NAT or provide portable address space. The marketplace is not likely, IMO, to accept shim6. End systems should not be making decisions on where packets go beyond the local network segment. This has been tried before. It was called Token Ring Source Route Bridging. It was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now to have end stations deal with routing. SRB came into being to save the network elements from the burden of keeping track of the functioning of the network. Then Ethernet switches came along, spanning tree, and so forth.

3. Every PI assignment/allocation takes up a routing slot in every router in the DFZ.

That's true today. Router memory complement has increased over time. So what? Cost of processing power and memory are a tiny fraction of what they were when the routing table was in the 20,000 prefix range.

4. Given 2 and 3, there is potential for the amount of state in the DFZ to exceed the capabilities of the network to hold and process it (e.g. enormous RIBs, soaring processor requirements for dealing with updates, etc).

Processors in current routers are well below the fastest on the market. There's plenty of horsepower headroom. There's plenty of opportunity to expand the amount of memory.

It's possible that the number of PI assignments might not be that high, and the scaling properties in practice might not be so bad. However, you only get to find this out after you've opened the floodgates, and if it turns out that it doesn't scale, it's hard to push the water back into the reservoir.

What floodgates? Are we flooded today? The rules today for getting portable space are NOT all that difficult to meet.

The goal in shim6 is to find a mechanism which provides all the functional benefits of multi-homing without holding all the state in DFZ routers.

That multihoming was not properly addressed as a core goal to solve in IPv6 is one of the failings in the whole effort. The shim6 approach is, IMO, not going to fly. A multiported NAT box for $179 or less (present product in the marketplace) provides a simple solution without the end stations being involved. Sure, it uses NAT.

There seems to be some ongoing perception that various protocol/ research organisations have no idea about the value of multi-homing for enterprises in the real network, and hence ignore it. While that might have once been the case (I certainly remember thinking so around 1997 whilst shouting on the ipng list), I don't believe it's the case today.

Sadly, because folks wouldn't listen then, IPv6 lacks a useful multihoming solution beyond what we have in IPv4. Gluing on band-aids is not going to solve it. Relying on Moore's Law to continue to make routing equipment keep up is going to be a necessity.

The real problem is that there is no simple answer that doesn't have potentially nasty consequences.

Correct. And so we will see multiport NAT boxes for the forseeable future for smaller sites, and PI space for larger ones.

The last figure that I remember, very impressive, was in April 2004, when the estimated number of hosts using 6to4 on Windows hosts was calculated as 100.000.000 (extrapolated from measurements). This is not including hosts with have native support or use other transition mechanism such as configured tunnels, ISATAP, 6over4, or Teredo (behind NAT). We notice in our web servers (which are dual stack), incredible amounts of IPv6 traffic, increasing month by month. Other applications which already use IPv6 are SMTP, SSH, News, BitTorrent and Microsoft Peer Name Resolution Protocol. Do you want to guess what will happen with Vista, which comes with IPv6 enabled by default ? Regards, Jordi

De: "Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@JustThe.net> Responder a: <owner-nanog@merit.edu> Fecha: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 14:16:09 -0400 (EDT) Para: <nanog@nanog.org> Asunto: Re: OT - Vint Cerf joins Google

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:

...

I was thinking yesterday that IPv6 evangelization is a good reason, specially when recalling that Google asked for a prefix some time ago (http://www.ipv6tf.org/news/newsroom.php?id=1001) and something is probably being baked there ?

So is the idea that Google adopts IPv6 and then, seeing that a large, well-trafficked(sp?) website is actually using the technology, lots of service providers and smaller sites follow suit?

How widespread *is* IPv6 adoption, anyhow?

-- Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

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I recall last month in our web servers was something like 8% with IPv6 (average), but in my opinion most of the IPv6 traffic is peer-to-peer so not easy to measure at web servers (or "servers" in general). Regards, Jordi

De: "Christopher L. Morrow" <christopher.morrow@mci.com> Responder a: <christopher.morrow@mci.com> Fecha: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 04:47:07 +0000 (GMT) Para: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <jordi.palet@consulintel.es> CC: <nanog@nanog.org> Asunto: Re: OT - Vint Cerf joins Google

On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:

...

The last figure that I remember, very impressive, was in April 2004, when the estimated number of hosts using 6to4 on Windows hosts was calculated as 100.000.000 (extrapolated from measurements). This is not including hosts

that seems really, really high...

...

We notice in our web servers (which are dual stack), incredible amounts of IPv6 traffic, increasing month by month.

'incredible' meaning what % of total traffic? (total page views or hits or whatever your metric is...) Looking at mirrors.secsup.org which is v6 enabled I see:

87361 12-access_log 82 12-access-v6_log 87443 total

so, for yesterday only 82 v6 connects (some of which were actually me... so they don't really count) out of 87.5k... that's .1% ? that's not too 'incredible' but perhaps I'm in a bad sample place. (oh, this is ftp/http not counting rsync)

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8% seems high to me as well

not by much more than O(10^1) :-). those who see full stats at ixes, v4/6 isps, etc will tell you that actual v6 traffic is miniscule. randy

On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 06:28:22PM +0700, Randy Bush wrote:

those who see full stats at ixes, v4/6 isps, etc will tell you that actual v6 traffic is miniscule.

Not contesting the quantification, but what typical IXP switches can do stats based on ethertype? Given that most relevant IPv6 players especially in Europe and ASPAC do run dual stack and IPv4 and IPv6 over the same interface, I fail to see how you can see the IPv6 traffic levels. I can remember Equinix refusing to allow IPv6 on the normal switch port because they want to see IPv6 traffic levels and need extra port for that. Which hinders IPv6 deployment even more... extra ports do cost real extra money for most folks. Perhaps this policy has changed nowadays (I hope). Best regards, Daniel -- CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: dr@cluenet.de -- dr@IRCnet -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0

On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 05:58:15PM +0300, Joe Abley wrote:

There are a few exchanges who isolate v6 and v4 traffic on separate VLANs. Stats based on VLAN are a little easier to come by.

Yeah, a few. Dying quickly. The most relevant IXPs or the IPv6 world aren't, they run real dual-AFI in a single VLAN. So I'd say that most of the IPv6 traffic bypasses any IXP stats, either because the IXP runs dual-AFI in single VLAN, or that IPv6 traffic is being tunneled via proto 41 or GRE. Best regards, Daniel -- CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: dr@cluenet.de -- dr@IRCnet -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 05:06:36 +0000 (GMT) "Christopher L. Morrow" <christopher.morrow@mci.com> wrote:

On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:

...

I recall last month in our web servers was something like 8% with IPv6 (average), but in my opinion most of the IPv6 traffic is peer-to-peer so not

8% seems high to me as well, I don't think I've ever seen my v6 traffic over 1% honestly :( Why do you think it's mostly P2P traffic? Are there P2P applications that prefer v6 over v4? or only work on v6? If a host has v6 capabilities, in my experience, it'll use them atleast as often as v4 when given the chance.

These estimates seem way high and need support. Here is a counter-example. Netflow on Internet 2 for last week http://netflow.internet2.edu/weekly/20050829/ has 6.299 Gigabytes being sent by IPv6, out of a total 383.2 Terabytes, or 0.0016% This is backbone traffic, and would not catch intra-Campus traffic, nor would it catch tunnel or VPN traffic, but it is suggestive. By contrast, (IPv4) UDP is 12 % of the data sent, and (IPv4 ASM) Multicast is 1.76%, so IPv6 trafic is just about 10^-3 of the Multicast (before any fan-out). According to the graph http://netflow.internet2.edu/weekly/longit/perc-protocols41-octets.png the most I2 IPv6 traffic was in 2002, when it was almost 0.6% of the total. It is hard for me to imagine that the situation for commerical US traffic is much different. There may be similar statistics for Geant - I would be interested to see them. Regards Marshall Eubanks

I think the last v6 traffic study I saw still said +90% of the v6 traffic was still ping/traceroute :(

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:59:00 +0200 Simon Leinen <simon@limmat.switch.ch> wrote:

[CC'ing Stanislav Shalunov, who does the Internet2 weekly reports.]

Marshall Eubanks writes, in response to Jordi's "8% IPv6" anecdote:

...

These estimates seem way high and need support. Here is a counter-example.

Simon is correct. The numbers I quoted were for protocol 41 traffic, and presumably more IPv6 is "hidden in plain sight" on the Internet 2 backbone. Sorry for the confusion. Regards Marshall

While I'm also skeptical about the representativeness of Jordi's estimates, this is a bad counterexample (see below about why):

...

Netflow on Internet 2 for last week

...

http://netflow.internet2.edu/weekly/20050829/

...

has 6.299 Gigabytes being sent by IPv6, out of a total 383.2 Terabytes, or 0.0016% This is backbone traffic, and would not catch intra-Campus traffic, nor would it catch tunnel or VPN traffic, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^

Wrong. What you see here is ONLY tunnel traffic, because the number is for IPv6-in-IPv4 (IP protocol 41) traffic.

Netflow for IPv6 isn't widely used yet. Our own equipment doesn't support it, and I don't think the Junipers used in Abilene do, either (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

...

but it is suggestive.

Yes, but it's also irrelevant, because Abilene has native IPv6, so there is little incentive for sending IPv6 tunneled in IPv4.

...

According to the graph http://netflow.internet2.edu/weekly/longit/perc-protocols41-octets.png the most I2 IPv6 traffic was in 2002, when it was almost 0.6% of the total.

I would assume that that was before IPv6 went native on Abilene.

...

It is hard for me to imagine that the situation for commerical US traffic is much different.

I'm sure there's less

...

There may be similar statistics for Geant - I would be interested to see them.

I'll look up the GEANT numbers in a minute, stay tuned. -- Simon.

...

8% seems high to me as well, I don't think I've ever seen my v6 traffic over 1% honestly :(

These estimates seem way high and need support. Here is a counter-example.

Netflow on Internet 2 for last week

http://netflow.internet2.edu/weekly/20050829/

has 6.299 Gigabytes being sent by IPv6, out of a total 383.2 Terabytes, or 0.0016%

Not that I have any knowledge or expectations one way or another, but I think there is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparision going on here. The Internet2 graphs all appear to be packets/octets whereas the other estimates were for hits to a web site, which is probably more comparible to flow counts than packet counts. I quickly looked and didn't see any flow charts in I2's Netflow site, but I'd be interested to see what percentage of I2's flow's are v6. Eric :)