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

[Paul Timmins]

Mark Smith wrote:
> Your "currently" doesn't seem to include IPv6's preferred and valid
> address lifetime methods, used to phase addressing in and out over
> time, and ULAs to create stable internal addressing independent of
> their current global addressing.
>
> This is one problem that some operators need to work on -
> they sprout off about how IPv6 should work and what the IETF has done
> wrong with it, yet don't seem to know how it actually does work.
>
> And just in case somebody accuses me of living in a fantasy land,
> phasing address spaces in and out and ULAs aren't perfect, but
> then neither is NAT and PI. It's about picking the compromises you're
> willing to make. I've personally made enough with NAT, so I want to see
> it die.
>   
Mechanisms of which I'm very aware, however there are 3 problems:

1) When we switch over the network of a customer, they often require a 
flag day due to how the losing carrier processes orders (usually porting 
out all the voice on a circuit is a signal to cut off the internet as 
well on an integrated T1 circuit. Changing this is sometimes possible 
with a large 'change fee' from the losing carrier who no longer has any 
incentive to play nice, or often is simply impossible (due to the TRRO, 
as soon as you cut off our voice circuits, we can't legally leave it in 
place for internet in many places, so we fit unavoidably into column B 
on that one.)

2) We generally don't control the customer's routers, so any change we 
make must be coordinated with them, the more complex, the more reasons 
the customer will say 'oh, let's just table this, we have bigger items 
on our plate and who knows what this will break and where the addresses 
are hardcoded'.

3) Unless the customer is ubiquitously running DHCPv6, changing things 
like their active directory servers and other things is very, very risky 
for their network stability. To say nothing of things like medical 
diagnostic equipment and other weird and esoteric devices on customer 
networks we come across all the time which undoubtedly have hardcoded 
addresses in them for one reason or another, for reasons good or bad.

Most of our customers can barely hack running one set of valid 
addresses, having ULA and public will be confusing as hell for them.

--Paul