Subject: Re: IPv6: Past mistakes repeated?

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 13:14:23 -0400

In message <[email-masked]>, Bill Manning writes:
>
>Sigh,
>	Please -NOT- the PIARA again. There is near zero value in the
>number/address 

Right.  That's why, following the publication of RFC 1631, everyone gave up on 
NATs as a bad idea, and no one is selling them.  We all have all the addresses 
we want, so why bother translating?

		--Steve Bellovin

---

From: Greg Skinner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 13:36:30 -0700 (PDT)

"David R. Conrad" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Ah, nostalgia.  It's so nice to revisit old "discussions"...

There was a similar discussion here about five years ago where some people
proposed market models for address allocation and routing.  Unfortunately,
it's not in the archives.  If anyone has this discussion archived, could
they please point me to it?  Thanks.

--gregbo

---

From: "J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 14:21:44 -0400

> From: Greg Skinner <[email-masked]>

    >> I think it was on CIDRD, actually, no?

    > I don't think so.

Well, it turns out that Paul Resnick's draft (which did come out as an I-D,
draft-ietf-cidrd-mktbased-alloc-00.txt) was discussed at some length on CIDRD
in February, 1996. But it sounds like the PIARA discussion was more extensive.

	Noel

---

From: [email-masked] (Kai Henningsen)
Date: 10 May 2000 01:10:00 +0200

[email-masked] (Anthony Atkielski)  wrote on 24.04.00 in <[email-masked]>:

> That is mostly because the telco(s) tried to impose a fixed address length
> on a scheme that really should have remained variable.  Telephone numbers
> overseas are truly variable.  When you dial 011+3, the remaining digits can
> be anywhere from one to a thousand.  The local end just stores them all

Actually, no, it can't. I think the original limit was something like 12  
digits, and it's something like 20 now, especially with ISDN.

That's what ITU says, anyway, and what all the makers of telephone  
hardware use.

And enough places have switched to better than 12 digits so - guess what -  
all the telcos are still doing their best to keep numbers down to 12  
digits. Mine's 11 currently (49-251-xxxxxx). North America uses 11 (1-xxx- 
xxx-xxxx). Workplace - a newer assignment - theoretically has 12 (49-251- 
xxxxxx-x) but actually uses up to 14 (49-251-xxxxxx-xxx), because we need  
more than the 20 different numbers we'd otherwise get.

Oh, more than those 12 do get used. For example, if I want to dial a North  
American number with provider selection ...

010xx-001-xxx-xxx-xxxx

... and that doesn't count a possible 0 to escape the local PBX. Which  
makes it 19 digits. Dangerously close to the limit.

I do know a PBX that crashes when you send it numbers longer than 20  
digits. From a major PBX producer.

> But if you use a truly variable scheme, you don't have to assign anything at
> all.

No such scheme seems to exist. At least not in wide use.

> Say Company X wants some addresses, and it is in an area where all addresses
> start with 9482.  You just add some digits, tell them what they are, and
> they can add as many addresses as they want behind those digits.  All you
> have to care about is that 94825xxxxx gets routed to Company X.  The rest of
> the address allocation is their business.  They might have just two digits
> on the end, or they might have forty.

Except they cannot actually *use* forty. See above.

> With fixed-length addresses, you're in trouble as soon as you make an
> assignment.

And all addresses in actual practical use are either fixed length, or  
variable but limited length (which actually gives you less room than the  
same limit with fixed length).

>You might assign 94820000 through 94829999 to Company X.  The
> problem is that, if Company X needs only 200 addresses, you've wasted 9800
> addresses, and you can't give them to anyone else.  Conversely, if Company X
> ever needs more than 10000 addresses, you have to completely reallocate
> everything, or fragment their address range.  Either way, you lose.

And that's exactly how the phone system works.

MfG Kai

---

From: "Jim Stephenson-Dunn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 10:33:07 -0700

It was Paul, I wanted to know where I got my IETF sunglasses,trench coat and
neuralizer from and wheather I could nominate parking in advance. (Form an
ordely queue behind paul and myself, and no pushing please)

If this "just" happens to help a certain Mr. C to retire in peace and quiet
and run the internet (Via IPv6) from his Montana log cabin, who am I to
disagree. I still want first dibs on the parking, especially in San
Francisco ;->

Jim

Jim Dunn

Senior Network Engineer
San Francisco NOC

-----Original Message-----
From: vinton g. cerf [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 2:58 AM
To: Paul Robinson; Tripp Lilley
Cc: Keith Moore; Greg Skinner; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: IPv6: Past mistakes repeated?

ooops, sorry, I guess it was Paul that uncovered my retirement scheme.

v

At 10:10 AM 5/8/2000 +0100, Paul Robinson wrote:

>No! We don't want to fix the holes! We want to keep a record of them
>without telling the admins, and when they misbehave, not only can we pop
>their kneecaps, set fire to their house, release information to their
>families they wouldn't want to be released, but also as a grand finale,
>we can take control of the machine and do what we wanted anyway.
>Eventually, we as the IETF would have complete control of every machine
>connected to the Internet, thereby giving us control of the entire
>planet, which in turn would allow us to park wherever we wanted and
>*not*get*a*ticket*!!!!!! :-)
>
>--
>Paul Robinson - Developer/Sys Admin @ Akitanet http://www.akitanet.co.uk
>------------------------------------------------------------------------

=================================================================
I moved to a new MCI WorldCom facility on Nov 11, 1999

MCI WorldCom
22001 Loudoun County Parkway
Building F2, Room 4115, ATTN: Vint Cerf
Ashburn, VA 20147
Telephone (703) 886-1690
FAX (703) 886-0047

"INTERNET IS FOR EVERYONE!"
See you at INET2000, Yokohama, Japan July 18-21, 2000
http://www.isoc.org/inet2000

---

From: "BookIII, Robert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 14:33:42 -0400

Vinton retiring to a cabin in Montana? (......this is ominous......vaguely
horrifying visions based on the "War Games" come flitting by......) Will you
be leaving us any WOPRs in IPv6? :-)

		-----Original Message-----
		From:	vinton g. cerf [mailto:[email-masked]]
		Sent:	Wednesday, May 10, 2000 5:56 AM
		To:	[email-masked]; 'Paul Robinson'; 'Tripp Lilley'
		Cc:	'Keith Moore'; 'Greg Skinner'; [email-masked]
		Subject:	RE: IPv6: Past mistakes repeated?

		>*not*get*a*ticket*!!!!!! :-)

		Dang! Jim's gone and uncovered my nefarious retirement plan.
Now I'll
		have to think of something else :-(

		Jim, you left out the "Nyah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" part...

		vint

		p.s. apologies to IETF list for cluttering with this. It
just slipped out.

		MCI WorldCom

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 13:57:37 -0500

Robert,

Thanks for the War Games references.
It actually made me lol and salvage an otherwise awful day.

Cheers!

----------------------------------
Randall Gale
Information Security
Predictive Systems
vox: 781-751-9629
fax: 781-329-9343
mailto:[email-masked]
http://www.predictive.com
----------------------------------