Subject: RE: reqs for local addressing OR requirements for SL replacement? [Re: Accept hain/templin draft as wg item?]

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 08:48:41 -0700

Pekka,

> Pekka Savola wrote:
> Do you mean that folks who hijacked the address space deployed
> NAT to be able to continue using their hijacked space inside
> their network but do one-to-one conversion at the border?

Yes. Today it is extremely common to see this with RFC1918 addresses in
the inside, but there still are a handful of networks that have hijacked
non-RFC1918 space that don't see why they should bother renumbering,
going by the rule if it ain't broke don't fix it.

There is a chicken-and-egg argument on the timing, which is "did people
use NAT to do this because NAT was available" or "was NAT developed for
that purpose" but in the end the result is there.

>>> On the other side, I fail to see the need to hijack a
>>> prefix for your running system.  IPv6 addresses are quite
>>> obtainable nowadays if you're an equivalent of LIR.

>> Doubly irrelevant to the discussion: first, you can't ask
>> every network to become a LIR; second, the need for public
>> addresses and local addresses is totally different, so
>> even if one enterprise has become a LIR to obtain public
>> addresses it does not remove the need for private ones.

> Sure, but there are also other ways to obtain addresses.

Really? Would you care naming one available today?

> So, what you're really saying that folks would hijack
> prefixes to be used internally (instead of trying to use
> them externally).  I wonder if that was the case of
> prefix hijacking by-and-then.

When I did hijack prefixes in the early 90's it was mostly a matter of
convenience for internal use.

> My (and others) goal is to show that the use of local
> addressing is not the right approach in many cases, and show
> some alternative means to achieve the same ends.

It does not work that way. First, network administrators for the most
part don't read this. Second, you have not been an enterprise network
administrator for any significant time so they're not going to listen to
you anyway. Third, the reasons enterprise network administrators make
decisions are for a significant part based on experience; in other words
the reason to use local addresses is either because some day one did not
use them and got shot, or because some day one did use then and it saved
one's butt so one keeps using them. What you have is untested theories
about network design, what they have is years of experience that built a
sense of what works and what does not.

> I do not see the need to repeat IPv4's mistakes in IPv6.

The mistake would be not to provide a local addressing solution and have
to do RFC1597 for IPv6 again.

Michel.

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