Subject: Re: (multi6) requirements draft comments

From: [email-masked] (Sean Doran)
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 18:04:33 +0100 (CET)

Randy Bush writes:

| > Shame we don't have a PI solution that we actually know how to deploy
| > and route at large scale.
|
| like democracy, it sucks, but less than any other way we actually have.

Well, my answer would be: we DO have a solution that we actually
know how to deploy and route at large scale, BUT we do not know how
to keep the routing dynamic in the presence of aggregation breakdown,
EXCEPT for one technique: renumbering when connectivity changes.

That is, in the presence of topology-change-driven renumbering,
the current routing mechanisms are "good enough".   Since we
do not have such renumbering in IPv4 or in IPv6 yet, we have 
the PTOMAINE working-group.

So, to some extent, Brian is right: PI implies the choice
of non-optimal abstraction/aggregation boundaries, as opposed
to PA, which generally are aligned with the connectivity graph.   
More particularly, PI addresses explicitly do not follow
the connectivity graph, and do not fit into a new abstraction
boundary as the PI-addressed things change (network) location.

PI and PA are absolutely _awful_ terms that should be uninvented in
favour of something that admits the truth that the optimal choice
of numbers is driven by MATH and not by economics, and would
clear up confusion among the various competing aggregation root
and number-assignment proposals.

Unfortunately, I am in one of those moods where all my creative
acronyms that would replace "PI" are impolite. :-)  [cf. my first paragraph]

	Sean.

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 10:57:53 -0800

> the PTOMAINE working-group.

Deploying the router and host mechansims which would implement topology
based renumbering is hard enough, but replacing all the applications
with ones that ignore those changes is a fantasy which would have to
happen before the infrastructure based renumbering could even begin.
Fold in the fact that even if you got those to things done, the topology
shift renumbering would create a DNS update spike that would take out
all name services, and one wonders why the approach is still getting any
attention.

Tony