Subject: Sequentially assigned IP addresses--why not?

From: "Corzine, Gordie" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 13:33:43 -0400

Seriously,

As was pointed out recently, IPV6 will croak much sooner than it needs to
for the simple reason that we structure routing intelligence into the
address assignment.

Wouldn't it be better by far, to assign new addresses from 000...1, and map
to routing information however we may code it?  The memory and processor
steps required would be trivial compared to the agony of running out of
space again.

I'm sure this was argued before.  But, it seems to me that the wrong
direction has been taken.

Gordie Corzine
Compaq Global Services
(but not speaking for Compaq)

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 16:23:12 -0400

> steps required would be trivial compared to the agony of running out of

Congrats, you just re-invented ARP. ;)

-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 15:30:47 -0500

> for the simple reason that we structure routing intelligence into the

This is some sort of urban legend. If a routeable prefix was given to
every human, using a predicted world population of 11 billion, we would
consume about 0.004% of the total IPv6 address space.

(The actual calculation is 11*10^9/2^48 since there are 48
bits in an IPv6 routing prefix. Or
11,000,000,000 / 281,474,976,710,656 = 0.000039 )

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Brian E Carpenter 
Program Director, Internet Standards & Technology, IBM 
On assignment for IBM at http://www.iCAIR.org 
Board Chairman, Internet Society http://www.isoc.org
Non-IBM email: [email-masked]

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From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 02:38:39 +0200

Brian Carpenter writes:

> This is some sort of urban legend. If a routeable
> prefix was given to every human, using a predicted
> world population of 11 billion, we would

Surely you recall the quotation attributed to Thomas J. Watson: "The world
will never need more than five computers."

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 22:40:14 -0400

> for the simple reason that we structure routing intelligence into the

don't believe everything you read on the IETF list.

> to routing information however we may code it? 

who is going to maintain the mapping database?

(warning: if you say any of: network soutions, iCANN, IANA, the us 
government, or the ITU, I'll have to hurt you)

once we have the mapping database, to what are we going to map?

(let's see, we're going to need a compact representation of points
in the network topology such that most routers on the network can
decide how to route a packet to its address in the absence of much 
external information...I suggest a vector of bits which represent 
a tree structure, each level of branching using a variable number of 
bits (depending on the number of branches at this level) which indicate 
which branch to take.  for high-speed routing efficiency the bits 
need to be at a fixed offset in the packet, which generally requires
them to be fixed-length fields.  naturally we need fields that
are 'big enough' for some expansion.  with some care in management,
128 bits should do fine for awhile....)

Keith

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 09:35:02 -0500

> will never need more than five computers."

Indeed, although he probably never said it. That's why we didn't pick
64 bits for the IPv6 address.

   Brian

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From: "Salavat R. Magazov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 20:20:43 +0100

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked]>
To: "Corzine, Gordie" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2000 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: Sequentially assigned IP addresses--why not?

> bits in an IPv6 routing prefix. Or

Does this mean that every router will have to handle 2^48 routing table
entries and that this vast amount of information must be sent over the
internet on every routing table update?
Salavat

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 15:41:41 -0500

> internet on every routing table update?

No, of course not. The routes will aggregate exactly like CIDR routes.
In principle at least, we hope to see a default free routing table
of only about 2^13 or 2^14 entries, less than today.

   Brian

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From: "Matt Crawford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 17:32:07 -0500

> internet on every routing table update?

In a word, no.

In two words, Hell no!

See RFC 2374.