Subject: more on IPv6 address space exhaustion

From: Greg Skinner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 14:53:29 -0700 (PDT)

Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:

> 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 )

I have heard on some local (SF bay area) technology news reports that
the Commission on Online Child Protection is looking at dividing the
IPv6 address space into regions that can be classified according to
their "safety" for child access.

Depending on how this allocation is done (if it's done), couldn't this
mean we will still need NAT?

--gregbo

---

From: "vinton g. cerf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 21:03:26 -0400

the commission is not responsible for the assignment of IP address space
is it???

vint

>mean we will still need NAT?

=================================================================
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!" 
INET 2001: Internet Global Summit 
5-8 June 2001 
Sweden International Fairs 
Stockholm, Sweden 
http://www.isoc.org/inet2001

---

From: Greg Skinner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 18:19:55 -0700 (PDT)

> the commission is not responsible for the assignment of IP address space

No, but if they convince the address registries that it is necessary,
and they implement it, I think we might still need NAT.

FYI, the last report I heard featured an interview with Don Telage of
NSI.  Apparently, the commission had considered doing this "zoning"
based on TLDs, but now they're looking at IPv6 address space.

--gregbo

---

From: "vinton g. cerf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 21:25:44 -0400

good god we have the lobbyists trying to engineer the Internet
now - everyone is an expert it seems. :-(

vint

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 18:16:46 -0700

>their "safety" for child access.

I wouldn't worry excessively about that. This is roughly comparable to the 
argument that there should be a DNS TLD ".kids" in which folks who have a 
non-porn web site can get a domain name. Best.com is now part of Verio, 
which is in turn becoming part of NTT. All of these are non-porn companies. 
Is that their most important aspect, one they are going to base their 
domain name one? nay, nay...

Addresses will be assigned by address registries to service providers, and 
in turn to subscribers to service providers. The commission presumably has 
some valid comment on what content should be accessible by children, but it 
has no idea whether or how that relates to the business structure of the 
Internet, and therefore to IPv6 addressing.

---

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 06:44:31 +0200

Greg Skinner writes:

> I have heard on some local (SF bay area) technology
> news reports that the Commission on Online Child
> Protection is looking at dividing the IPv6 address
> space into regions that can be classified according to

The ideas just get more and more stupid.

Are telephone numbers allocated based on whether or not the subscriber is
"child-safe"?  Think how useful it would be if they were.

Additionally, since community standards are wildly variable in this domain,
how would you allocate a "child-safe" zone suitable for everyone?  What
about organizations that want "Party-approved" zones or "non-Jewish" zones?

And even if this stupid idea were to come to fruition (alas! stupidity is
never a guarantee that something won't be actually implemented), the IPv6
address space would be exhausted in the blink of an eye.

It reminds me of current French efforts to prevent French surfers from
reaching certain forbidden information on Yahoo; funny that they don't seem
to be concerned about people calling forbidden numbers on the telephone.
The difference, of course, is that most French people know how the telephone
system works, but they've scarcely ever even seen a PC, and the Internet is
nothing more than a huge band of drug dealers, neo-Nazis, and pedophiles to
them (the current row concerns neo-Nazis).

---

From: "Matt Crawford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 08:24:47 -0500

> their "safety" for child access.

      THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT (COPA) COMMISSION 

      Commissioners: 

            Donald Telage, Network Solutions Inc. - Commission Chairman 
            Stephen Balkam, Internet Content Rating Association 
            John Bastian, Security Software Systems 
            Jerry Berman, Center for Democracy & Technology 
            Robert C. Cotner, Evesta.com 
            Arthur H. DeRosier, Jr., Rocky Mountain College 
            J. Robert Flores, National Law Center for Children and Families 
            Albert F. Ganier III, Education Networks of America 
            Michael E. Horowitz, Department of Justice 
            Donna Rice Hughes, Author, Kids Online/Founder, Protectkids.com 
            William M. Parker, Crosswalk.com 
            C. Lee Peeler, Federal Trade Commission 
            Gregory L. Rohde, Department of Commerce/NTIA 
            C. James Schmidt, San Jose State University 
            William L. Schrader, PSINet 
            Larry Shapiro, Disney's Go.com 
            Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo! Inc. 
            Karen Talbert, Nortel Networks 
            George Vradenburg III, America Online, Inc. 

See any IP clue?

---

From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 07:55:09 -0700 (PDT)

% > the Commission on Online Child Protection is looking at dividing the
% > IPv6 address space into regions that can be classified according to
% > their "safety" for child access.
% 
% 
%       THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT (COPA) COMMISSION 
% 
%       Commissioners: 
% 
%             William L. Schrader, PSINet 
%             Larry Shapiro, Disney's Go.com 
%             Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo! Inc. 
% 
% See any IP clue?
% 

	Yup.  You don't?

--bill

---

From: "R. A. Hettinga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 10:52:33 -0400

> now - everyone is an expert it seems. :-(

Is that any surprize to anybody?

They have guns, they take your money, and they make you do things with
both. Same as it ever was.

That will probably change someday, reality, economic or otherwise, not
being entirely optional, and the very attempts to legislate physics
demonstrated by "kiddiespace" proposals like this one demonstrate just how
"real" the internet has become.

Fortunately "code" is more real than "Code", as it were.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [email-masked]>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

---

From: "R. A. Hettinga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 10:56:23 -0400

>             Donna Rice Hughes, Author, Kids Online/Founder, Protectkids.com

Ah. There we go.

"Taking a poll" again, it seems. Monkey business, indeed.

Cheers,
RAH

---

From: Andy Fletcher <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 18:35:54 +0100

As a non-US person I get very concerned about lobby groups attempting to 
influence address space assignments.  The only reason for IANA (and ICANN) 
to exist is to co-ordinate the address space, protocol numbering  and name 
space assignments for ENGINEERING purposes.

If US based lobby organisations have an impact on number or naming 
assignments then it is nothing less that an attempt to coerce the rest of 
the world into North-American ldeals, morals and prejudices.

IANA and ICANN only have power through the consent of the other users of 
the Internet.  If they play political games then they will very quickly 
lose credibility and other bodies may try to perform the same functions.

Consider the present situation with top level domains.  There is argument 
with the EU TLD. Officially ICANN has no position on the matter because as 
of March there was no formal application but it would appear that ICANN 
would oppose this citing the reason that the EU is not an ISO country. Who 
gives them the right to do this? - themselves. It also appears that the US 
Department of Commerce still controls the root servers, hardly an 
independent body.

If the EU Council of Ministers get annoyed enough with the situation there 
is no reason why they couldn't run their own root servers and issue a 
directive that all EU based organisations should add a line to the DNS 
cache.  Initially there would be chaos in this name space but eventually 
all the major ISPs around the world would add the .EU servers to their 
cache records.

This action would weaken overnight the control ICANN has on the name space 
especially when other registries realise that they no longer have to pay 
money to ICANN to maintain root servers (another bone of contention at the 
moment). Other TLDs will only come into being if they can get their records 
added into a good proportion of the name servers.

I am not sure if this would be a good thing to happen. It would certainly 
make the net an interesting place in which the sites you could find would 
depend on the DNS servers you used and you could get two different sites 
with the same name. On the other hand it would reduce the power of any 
single country to control the system.

I suppose ICANN will expel me from the At-Large membership now.

Andy

---

From: "vinton g. cerf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 17:49:17 -0400

andy,

ICANN won't expel someone for raising issues in a thoughtful way - your message
is certainly to the point of one complex area of discourse. There are several 
scenarios that would lead to a .eu - an obvious one being the adoption of .eu
on the 3166-1 list by the ISO committee that maintains 3166.

vint

At 06:35 PM 8/12/2000 +0100, Andy Fletcher wrote:
>As a non-US person I get very concerned about lobby groups attempting to influence address space assignments.  The only reason for IANA (and ICANN) to exist is to co-ordinate the address space, protocol numbering  and name space assignments for ENGINEERING purposes.
>
>If US based lobby organisations have an impact on number or naming assignments then it is nothing less that an attempt to coerce the rest of the world into North-American ldeals, morals and prejudices.
>
>IANA and ICANN only have power through the consent of the other users of the Internet.  If they play political games then they will very quickly lose credibility and other bodies may try to perform the same functions.
>
>Consider the present situation with top level domains.  There is argument with the EU TLD. Officially ICANN has no position on the matter because as of March there was no formal application but it would appear that ICANN would oppose this citing the reason that the EU is not an ISO country. Who gives them the right to do this? - themselves. It also appears that the US Department of Commerce still controls the root servers, hardly an independent body.
>
>If the EU Council of Ministers get annoyed enough with the situation there is no reason why they couldn't run their own root servers and issue a directive that all EU based organisations should add a line to the DNS cache.  Initially there would be chaos in this name space but eventually all the major ISPs around the world would add the .EU servers to their cache records.
>
>This action would weaken overnight the control ICANN has on the name space especially when other registries realise that they no longer have to pay money to ICANN to maintain root servers (another bone of contention at the moment). Other TLDs will only come into being if they can get their records added into a good proportion of the name servers.
>
>I am not sure if this would be a good thing to happen. It would certainly make the net an interesting place in which the sites you could find would depend on the DNS servers you used and you could get two different sites with the same name. On the other hand it would reduce the power of any single country to control the system.
>

---

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 01:39:54 +0200

> As a non-US person I get very concerned about lobby
> groups attempting to influence address space assignments.

Why?  The U.S. knows which moral standards are best for you, after all.

> If US based lobby organisations have an impact on
> number or naming assignments then it is nothing less
> that an attempt to coerce the rest of the world into
> North-American ldeals, morals and prejudices.

So what else is new?

> IANA and ICANN only have power through the consent
> of the other users of the Internet.

The "other users of the Internet" are a small minority outside the U.S.

> If they play political games then they will very
> quickly lose credibility and other bodies may try
> to perform the same functions.

How well would the Internet run with the U.S. chunk cut out of the picture?

> Consider the present situation with top level domains.

The TLD issue is a joke.

I have a solution for that, too (surprised?):  Set up a maximum of 676 TLDs
with names like .xaa, .xab, .xac, etc., and hash the second-level names to
one of the TLDs.  Result: domain names are spread over nearly 700 TLDs,
instead of just two or three, and since any second-level name always hashes
to the same TLD, it is no longer necessary to specify the TLD explicitly.
The TLD has no real purpose from a logical standpoint, so why not just
eliminate it?  It would be a lot easier to type just "disney" (which would
hash to disney.xdy) and "ibm" (which would hash to ibm.xim), than disney.com
and ibm.com.

> There is argument with the EU TLD.

Europeans spend most of their time arguing, which is why they are
continually steamrollered by the U.S., which is busy implementing instead.

> It also appears that the US Department of Commerce
> still controls the root servers, hardly an independent body.

Maybe, but at least it keeps the servers stable.  I shudder to think what
the Internet would be like if Italy were managing one server and Switzerland
another and Greece still another.  Half the Internet would be inaccessible
half the time.

> If the EU Council of Ministers get annoyed enough with
> the situation there is no reason why they couldn't run
> their own root servers and issue a directive that all
> EU based organisations should add a line to the DNS
> cache.

There's no reason why Europe as a whole cannot become the leading economic
superpower in the world, what with 600 million skilled workers--but it never
seems to happen.  They all spend too much time arguing to ever act
coherently as a group.  And so the U.S. does it for them.  At least someone
is doing it.

> Initially there would be chaos in this name space ...

Initially meaning 50-70 years.  Meanwhile the U.S. would be settled in six
months, and would squash the European initiative entirely decades before it
stabilized.

> ... but eventually all the major ISPs around the world
> would add the .EU servers to their cache records.

Why?  Almost all the sites they want to access are in the U.S.  Europe is a
land of Net consumers, not Net producers.

> This action would weaken overnight the control ICANN
> has on the name space ...

That's what worries me.

> I am not sure if this would be a good thing to happen.

It would not be a good thing.  Can you use the same electrical plug in any
receptable in Europe yet?  Hmm.  The same currency?  OK.  How about the same
language?  I give up.

> It would certainly make the net an interesting place
> in which the sites you could find would depend on the
> DNS servers you used and you could get two different sites
> with the same name.

I have trouble with that already.  And it would be great for censorship.

> On the other hand it would reduce the power of any

Yes ... instead, twenty different countries would be controlling the system,
and you would get whatever managed to pass through all of their filters
still working--that is to say, nothing at all.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 09:26:30 -0500

> Internet, and therefore to IPv6 addressing.

Indeed. Or to put it another way, since this "solution" simply doesn't work,
and is in fact meaningless technically, it won't happen.

  Brian

---

From: Greg Skinner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 08:49:37 -0700 (PDT)

> domain name one? nay, nay...

You are assuming that they will not acquire another domain name in one
of these protected zones (e.g. best.kids).  I don't think the idea is
all that farfetched, particularly if they can find some business
reason to do so.  If branding some of their content (or customers'
content) under .kids makes business sense, they'll do it.

> Internet, and therefore to IPv6 addressing.

Leaving aside my opinions on how technically sound the idea is, there
is certainly precedent for restricting certain types of domain name or
IP address space.  Members of the commission are certainly aware of
this.  If they can get enough support for their proposals, and enough
of the Internet community goes along with them, they can pull it off,
in my opinion.

--gregbo

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 11:36:27 -0500

Greg Skinner wrote:
...
> of the Internet community goes along with them, they can pull it off,

Sorry, this makes no sense at all. There is no way to "restrict"
certain types of domain name that has any meaningful effect, given the
absence of international jurisdiction, and IP addresses
relate to network topology not to content, so they can't be used
in this way, whatever misapprehensions some of the commission members may
be under.

  Brian

---

From: John Day <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 13:51:20 -0400

>in this way, whatever misapprehensions some of the commission members may

I think anyone who understands why an address is not a name 
understands why this is a bad idea.  However, the people who are 
making these noises do not have this understanding.  This is 
political and imposing technology on it is difficult.  While this may 
resemble legislating that pi = 22/7, it is going to be much more 
difficult to explain that it is.

While I agree that this is really dumb, I think we need to take it 
very seriously and not just brush it off.  Those who are in a 
position to have influence (and you know who you are) should move 
quickly to nip this in the bud.  The longer it takes to do so, the 
longer (and more effort) it will take to kill it off.   It will 
assume a life of its own and more and more people will have to be 
convinced that it can't be done. And the more time it is going to 
take to kill it off.  If there is some local organization in CA that 
is pushing this, it could be dealt with fairly easily.  But if 
someone gets journalists or legislators behind it, it is going to be 
much harder.

I *thought* this had been killed off over a year ago, when it came up 
on this list.  But apparently not.

Take care,
John

---

From: James Corning <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 13:11:44 -0800

> someone gets journalists or legislators behind it, it is going to be

Needless to say, it is usually the politicians who dictate what gets done,
and the engineers who get stuck figuring out how to do it.  If enough
support gathers behind the idea of allocating IPv6 space based on the
content of whoever is at the other end of that address, who will get left
determining what content is okay and what isn't?

Furthermore, if you have one address and multiple virtual sites at that
address (in terms of web hosting), does the ISP then have to dictate that
only "kid-friendly" virtual sites can reside on that IP, and that all others
must go on an "adult-friendly" IP?  And assuming that those two IP addresses
(the kid-friendly, and the adult-friendly) aren't on the same subnet (isn't
that the whole point behind this dumb idea), routing tables are going to
become infinitely more complicated.

I have enough work to do as it is - I'm not going to play big brother for
customers who want a damn website.

-jamie

-- 
James H. Corning      Network Administrator
[email-masked]      Wombat Internet, Inc.

"Pray to God, but keep rowing to the shore."
                  -- Russian Proverb