Subject: RE: (ipv6mh) the Rebel Alliance meetings in Atlanta (long)

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 22:40:54 -0800

There are two forms of multi-homing that can happen quite quickly.
 
The obvious first is multi-homing a site to both native IPv6 and "6to4". Assuming that you have at least one global IPv4 for the site, multi-homing to 6to4 does not involve any extra payment for connectivity and does improve communication performance when exchanging data with 6to4 destinations.
 
The second one is multi-homing to both a fixed connection and a wireless connection. For example, I could connect my home network to a cable modem service and to a local wireless community such as "Seattle wireless." Again, not much extra payment involved; the wireless stuff is likely to be handled by a couple of motivated teen-agers...
 
-- Christian Huitema
 
________________________________

From:	 Kurt Erik Lindqvist [mailto:[email-masked]]	
Sent:	 Fri 12/6/2002 8:23 AM	
To:	 Iljitsch van Beijnum	
Cc:	 ipv6mh; [email-masked]	
Subject:	 Re: (ipv6mh) the Rebel Alliance meetings in Atlanta (long) 	

>> Well, what I meant was that the day an ISP run out of their PI blocks 
>> they will just continue down the address block, just as ISPs today are 
>> announcing more specifics than their RIR allocation and complaining 
>> that these are not accepted. I don't see why we think people would 
>> behave differently just because this is IPv6.... 
> 
> We think that because they do. At the moment, at least. Also, we want 
> them to, as current IPv4 routing practices aren't exactly great. On the 
> one hand it is good that people want to keep the IPv6 routing table 
> clean, on the other hand we don't want to be so restrictive it doesn't 
> work. Remember that most people have a good reason to pollute the IPv4 
> routing table. Just not allowing this without offering alternatives 
> isn't good enough. 

Well, let me restate what I said in Atlanta: 

1) We have no idea how popular multihoming is in reality. If it turns 
out my DLS subscriber charges me $50 a month for a single homed 
connection and $500 a month for multihoming this might not be as 
popular as we think. One thing I think we must realize is that a) IPv6 
will be more expensive that IPv4, b) multihoming will not be for free. 

2) We don't understand what effects the "better starting point" with 
aggregation will have on the routing table. 

What I suggest will give us experience with the above and then we have 
some facts to discuss around. Today we only have wet dreams. 

> 
> Disagree. People who multihome care about their connectivity more than 
> others. For PI, 90% isn't enough. 99% isn't even enough. On the other 
> hand, for shooting holes in PA, having a 90% backup is probably good 
> enough, but I'd rather have 99% or even 100%, especially if I have to 
> eat the cost and annoyance of renumbering when changing my primary ISP. 

Uhm so you support my proposal then? Makeing it a requirement to accept 
the longer prefixes would help - right? 

> 
>> Still, I agree that if 
>> we can come up with a common solution that would be better. My 
>> proposal 
>> is to accept /48 for the time being and not scale back until there is 
>> a 
>> new solution. 
> 
> I could live with that if we can get consensus among operators. Without 
> those /48s in the routing table this is still too risky as it doesn't 
> protect you against an entire ISP going down. 

I don't think the operators are a problem here. Finding enough 
operators to actually connect the customers are a problem, not the 
prefix length. 

> Also, if we end up with a multi-address solution, it could very well be 
> that all PA will be tied to interconnect locations. For instance, I 
> live 
> between two of the largest exchange points in the world: the LINX and 
> the AMS-IX. If I were a single homed multi-address capable network I 
> would want addresses that are always routed over the LINX and also 
> addresses that are always routed over the AMS-IX, so I can do traffic 
> engineering. 

Having been one of the largest operators connected to both AMS-IX and 
Linx, I would not want this. But most people probably agree. I would 
have asked for the traffic flowing over the private peerings. 

>> What is it that we think we gain with these specific blocks, be it for 
>> site-locals or multihoming? The number of routes are not going to be 
>> less. 
> 
> This way you can easily identify these routes with a prefix filter. I'm 
> not saying that's always absolutely necessary, but as long as we have 
> the choice, why not create this option? 

But if we introduce prefix filters we lost the entire idea of creating 
these in the first place. 

> 
> BTW, I'm writing an article about if/when IPv6 will be adopted for a 
> Dutch magazine. I'm still looking for good quotes from IPv6-skeptics.  
> :-) 
> 

I am not necessary an IPv6 sceptic. I just don't think it will give us 
peace in the middle-east. Contact me offline if you want to talk more. 
MY GSM number is in my RIPE object. 

- kurtis -