[mdlug] OT: the great IPv6 debate

[Jay Nugent]

Greetings,

On Tue, 20 Apr 2010, Dean Durant wrote:

> Hello, I've just finished reading Dan Bernstein's comments on what he
> calls the IPv6 mess. I think his points are valid.

   Be carefull not to drink the refreshments at that KoolAid stand...

 
> However, someone out there (IETF, IANA, ICANN, I don't know) obviously
> controls those Class E "reserved for future use" addresses. My idea is
> that while it was smart to reserve them, it's not smart to never use
> them. If now is not the time to use them, when will be? Is this an old
> idea, or not workable ?

   IANA released a couple more Class-A (or /8) blocks just a couple weeks
ago and a couple more this week.  One of them the 1.0.0.0/8 space which
will go to YouTube.  TONS of garbage in that space as every damn hotel
WiFi hotspot uses 1.2.3.4 to sign-on or off their networks.  It also has
tons of spam traffic and other garbage.  Merit is helping YouTube measure
and plan for how to filter the trash when they put this address space to
use.

   My point is, there are still a number of MUCH larger blocks than all
the tiny Class-E blocks still un-assigned.  IANA is delving them out on a
NEED basis -- the IANA policy has always been you need to PROVE you will
use the space efficiently before you can get any assigned.

   And just an FYI -- a /8 has a street value of about $500,000 per year
nowadays!

 
> So I say, whoever controls those addresses should say, OK, we'll give
> you one, or two, or ten, but, by law (pass the law if needed), you must
> use them to route back and forth between IPv4 and IPv6. Give financial
> incentives if necessary.

   Laws?  In what country?  No country 'owns' the address space.  
International organizations control the Internet, not the U.S.


 
> Only give them to the highest level providers. They then can turn around
> and charge a small premium (perhaps) for access to IPv6 in this fashion.
> People can still route directly from IPv6 to IPv6 on their own, but
> Bernstein has pointed out why this will never happen: there is no
> existing IPv6 infrastructure.
> 
> http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html 
> 
> Bernstein points out that IPv6 was not designed to be an extension to
> IPv4. My idea provides that extension, if my idea makes sense. I'm not
> saying give out all of the class E addresses, but however many as makes
> sense. Maybe just a total of what, 512? 1024? How many in all are there?

   Exactly, IPv6 is NOT an extension - was never meant to be.  V6 does a
lot more than just provide addresses.  IPv6 is not just about more
addresses, V6 has automatic neighbor discovery, some automatic
configuration facilities, and various security features all built into it.
     

   There are over 318,000 "networks" announced on the Internet (big I) as
of last weeks reports.  Each of these announces numerous blocks of IP
address space (see "the CIDR report").  In those reports you will note
that only 2/3rds of the IPv4 space is actually being USED.  The rest is
either ASSIGNED but UNANNOUNCED, or is not yet assigned to anyone.  If
companies/networks would clean up what they do use, a ton more addresses
*could* be recovered.  But it's agreed that the work would better be spent
to migrate to IPv6 instead, rather than re-number then a few years later
have to migrate to V6 anyway.  Might as well just do it once.

 
> However, I am not a networking professional. Just a curious bystander.
> But, if the U.S. Congress has stated that IPv4 exhaustion is a national
> security issue, and China *is* building an IPv6 infrastructure, maybe
> "natting forever" is not going to work.

   IPv6 crossed the 5% line just recently.  That is, about 5% of the
Internet now supports IPv6 interconnection.  HE.net (Hurricane Electric)  
and many others have been running IPv6 backbones for the past few years.  
ComCrap is now offering IPv6 to their customers (www.comcast6.net).  And
off the shelf consumer products as well as MicroSloth, Linux, BSD, Apple
have all had IPv6 compatability in them for some time.

   The slowness of deploying IPv6 has been a "need" issue.  People have to
have a need before they are willing to make a change.  Not just end users,
but the ISP's and NSP's as well have to feel the 'need'.  Predictions are
we will run out of IPv4 in about 2 years (at the current growth curve).  
When we hit that wall the 'need' will be high enough and the change will
wash over us like a tsunami!!!

   Two tidbits:

   1) China recently boofed the pooch and fat-fingered some BGP route
announcements and were sinking some 18,000 network routes into China that
didn't belong to them.  One of these was DELL.COM's address space.  That
outage took close to 3 days to clean up!  China did a similar blunder a
few months ago.  No... limited V4 is NOT a national security issue, but
not filtering one's BGP4 route announcements is!

   2) If every IPv6 address were an M&M, they would fill Lake Erie SEVEN
times over and still have a lot left over.  IPv4 barely half fills Lake
St.Clair.  IPv4 is only 32 bits long while IPv6 is 128 bits.  This is a
HUGE increase in size alone.


   As far as NAT goes, IPv6 was *NOT* designed to support NAT as there was
no need.  You either run a clean box or you don't in V6.  Hiding behind
NAT with some false sense of security has proven bad bad bad.  When ISP's
can hand me a /48 without blinking - I have far enough IP addresses to
assign to every single belonging in my house let alone every PC, printer,
phone, and toaster!!  No, there is NO need for that cluster-F known as NAT
to survive beyond IPv4, thank you very much :-/


      --- Jay Nugent

Train how you will Operate, and you will Operate how you were Trained.
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