Biggest mistake for IPv6: It's not backwards compatible, developers admit

[S.P.Zeidler]

Hi,

Thus wrote Fred Baker (fred at cisco.com):

> On Mar 30, 2009, at 11:47 PM, S.P.Zeidler wrote:
>
>> I don't see that following, at least not with a sane PI assignment  
>> policy.
>> PI space being available does not mean that there would be no more PA 
>> at all.
>
> See, on that you and I agree. There is a place for PI addressing. I  
> might even hazard a guess that it is similar to today's place for AS  
> numbers.
>
> Problem is, folks in that range are getting PI addressing now, and we're 
> still hearing statements like
>
> On Mar 30, 2009, at 9:48 AM, Udo Steinegger wrote:
>> But for the commercial non-ISP world, at least in old Europe, one of  
>> the bigger Problems is to get
>> the same level of provider independence in IPv6 (read: PI address  
>> space), that they are used to in the IPv4 world.

Traditionally, in the RIPE region (not counting historical PI from before
PA was invented), the way to get PI space in v4 is to get an AS first
(or mostly, to get an AS and the PI space to route with it as a bundle).

I would expect that the requirements to get IPv6 PI that gets nodded off
include that you are having or asking in the bundle for an AS, and you
don't get that unless you also show that you have a contract for more
than one upstream (the current proposal for IPv6 PI in the RIPE region
contains all these requirements, and also that either a LIR or the RIR is
getting a yearly fee that more or less makes sure that when the PI holder
goes belly-up, the address space can get collected).

>> As long as this is not properly addressed, then people are very  
>> reluctant to move towards IPv6 and stick with IPv4 until the last day.
>
> The alternatives are fine for "someone else", but ask anyone, and they  
> want their PI.
>
> And hence I raise my question. There are a number of alternatives on the 
> table today that give one both multihoming and ISP independence. Who has 
> given them five minutes though before rejecting them out of hand?

I hate to disappoint you, but, no. When the cost of PI is that you
are a BGP speaker even companies like my current employer who does have
people already who can handle BGP fine (if I may say so myself) look at the
effort involved compared to the gain, and just take several uplinks and a
distribution of favoured routes by script that can easily be flipped when
one uplink fails. Sessions terminating in such a case are annoying for us,
but not critical; in IPv6 we're ideal candidates for more of this kind of
multihoming. Just because there is PI does not mean the alternate
multihoming solutions won't get used. They are often lots cheaper.

It is not every baker shop who is going to ask for PI, starting with the
simple reason they never heard about it and don't bother enough to do that
ever. It's mostly only companies that offer service via the Internet as
their purpose of being that will bother.

If what you need is control over your routing, if there is no PI and the
need is pressing enough you'll just become an enterprise LIR (it's not
that expensive a yearly fee to be a deterrent). Where is the advantage
to the whole in forcing that?

regards,
	spz
-- 
spz at serpens.de (S.P.Zeidler)