Subject: Re: Why is IPv6 a must?

From: "J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 00:46:41 -0500

> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>

    > People frequently propose "endpoint identifiers" and "routing
    > identifiers" be separated but no one has ever come up with a worked
    > proposal that was less flawed than the current mechanism.

I always find it incredibly funny when IPv6 proponents roll out this tired,
worthless canard - because the IPv6 protocol suite contains a very nicely
worked out mechanism which does *exactly* this!

It's called Mobile IPv6, and the "care-of address" in the basic IPv6 header
is exactly the "routing identifier", whilst the home address in the IPv6
routing header is the "endpoint identifier". (Don't be confused by the fact
that the two identifiers are from the same namespace - the functionality is
exactly that proposed in other schemes, although they vary the two namspaces
to better suit each to their particular function.)

Needless to say, the sight of IPv6 proponents ranting about how nobody has
ever come up with a fully specified way to do this, while the protocol they
are defending contains, apparently unbeknown to them, the perfect
counter-evidence to this sterile claim, is extremely educational as to the
general clue level.

What's especially amusing is that although I keep pointing this wonderfully
ironic and devastating counter-argument out, some IPv6 proponents keep
trotting out this same old lame, bogus point. Oh well, perhaps eventually
these simple points will sink in. In the meantime, perhaps the crack IPv6
"spin team" needs to update the "talking points" that people are working
from, and make sure that such obvious howlers don't continue to embarass them.

	Noel

PS: Additional irony can be obtained from the intense assertion that since a
perfectly finished worked mechanism is (supposedly) not in evidence, that the
idea is therefore a bad one which should be ignored. Too bad this standard
wasn't applied when IPv6 was picked, back in 1994 (or whenever it was - it's
been a long time) - we wouldn't be inflicted with it now.

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Nov 2001 10:54:09 -0500

"J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]> writes:
> routing header is the "endpoint identifier".

That doesn't actually fix the problem, Noel. If you don't have an
underlying functioning network with scalable routing even if all
systems were running on the mobile protocols it still wouldn't work.

People want to dual home their networks for redundancy and
reliability. This leads to an explosion in the size of the routing
tables. We unfortunately don't know a way to fix that. Even if you
renumbered the whole net ever 10 seconds through some miracle, you'd
still need routes to all those folks to be propagated through the
default free zone. That means if you have 100,000 networks with
multiple ingress paths, you still need that many routes. If you have a
million networks with multiple ingress paths, you need that many
routes. It doesn't matter if everyone uses the mobile addresses as
their "endpoint identifiers". 

> ironic and devastating counter-argument out,

It is ironic and devastating TO YOU. It isn't particularly interesting
to the rest of us.

--
Perry E. Metzger		[email-masked]
--
NetBSD Development, Support & CDs. http://www.wasabisystems.com/

---

From: Steve Deering <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 00:46:38 -0800

At 12:46 AM -0500 11/12/01, J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
>ever come up with a fully specified way to do [ID/locator separation],
>while the protocol they are defending contains, apparently unbeknown to
>them, the perfect counter-evidence to this sterile claim, is extremely
>educational as to the general clue level.

Noel,

Way back in June of 1992 on the big-internet mailing list, I pointed
out to you how the (then relatively new) proposed mechanism for doing
mobile IP indeed accomplished the task of separating identity from
location, when necessary, and that the reuse of IP addresses for
identifiers in that case was an important part of making it work.
You, on the other hand, insisted that the identifier be taken from
a different, flat space, which would then *not* be amenable to using
the same binding mechanism as mobile IP, and I'm *still* waiting to
hear your alternative mechanism.

>trotting out this same old lame, bogus point.

Ah no, the really amusing irony is hearing you now holding up as your
"devastating counter-argument" the one mechanism that, to us old-timers
who became IPv6 proponents, looked like it would actually work and scale
up (and which was specified concretely enough to make those judgements),
but which was previously dismissed by you because its "identifiers"
weren't pure enough.

Steve