I-D Action:draft-azinger-scalable-addressing-00.txt

[David Conrad]

Tony,

On Sep 25, 2010, at 10:28 PM, Tony Li wrote:
>> From my perspective, attempting to "insist on aggregation" (that is, discouraging enterprise PI) implies attempting to define a particular relationship between networks operators. Haven't we been here before?
> Yes, we have.  However, I'm still unsure as to what recommendation you are making for how we proceed.

As I believe others have pointed out, there now exist forums in which address allocation policy is intensively discussed.  Those forums have already voted with their feet against exactly what this draft recommends. I guess I don't see what value this draft is going to bring if it progresses to BCP -- have the RIRs given the slightest indication they will revise their policies to match the recommendation?  In the past, I believe all of the RIRs have indicated they will do what their members tell them to do.  Is the theory that this draft (as a BCP) will convince the RIR members to reverse their decision? 

As to my recommendation on how to proceed, I believe we need to deal with reality as it is.  Reality is that enterprises prefer PI to PA for sound business reasons. One approach forward appropriate for the IETF would be to identify and attempt to address those business reasons within the current architectural constraints (RFC 5887 is one step in that direction). Another way forward for the IETF would be to revise the architecture (see RRG, LISP, ILNP, etc). Another way forward for the IETF (or somebody) to identify where the actual pressures are in routing system growth (TE?, PI?, multi-homing?, spurious deaggregation?) and try to address those specific pressures (See GROW).

But you know all this.

Pragmatically speaking, I guess I believe the right answer would be to refer the authors to the RIR public policy mechanisms (and trust me when I say you have no idea how ironic me making this statement is). As I learned in the post-2050 IRE days, the IETF isn't the best venue to try to discuss address policy.

> Yes, we are in the same place that we were before, unsurprisingly.  Thus, we need to apply the same band-aids.


Are you expecting a different result? (see Albert Einstein's quote).  It isn't a band-aid.  It is King Canute waving his hands at the tide.

I (as I believe you too) have heard well known router vendors get up in public venues and state there is no immediate routing scalability problem and that they can handle FIBs of 10,000,000 entries today (who am I to dispute these assertions?).  According to the projections in the draft, this means today's technology can support routing table loads projected in (call it) 2027. 17 years. Remember what things were like in 1993?  From my perspective, there appears to be a disconnect here.

Don't get me wrong, as you may be aware, I think routing scalability is a significant issue that needs to be addressed. I just don't see how having the IETF attempt to dictate allocation policy (e.g., "In addition Internet Registries should severely limit or eliminate the amount of PI assignments in order to help facilitate the decrease in routing table growth.") is going to be effective.

Regards,
-drc