Subject: RE: Enforcing unreachability of site local addresses

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 13:24:29 -0800

Brian / Kurtis,

>>> Michel Py wrote:
>>> This is why I used the term "gambling" before. What you are
>>> lobbying for is to say that it is OK to give away PI and
>>> create the IPv6 swamp

>> Kurt Erik Lindqvist wrote:
>> yes.

> Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> I disagree. If our goal (as it should be) is a 10 billion
> node network (at least) then the risks in allowing even the
> beginning of a swamp are too great.

I could not agree more with Brian. Something between 1+ billion sites,
10+ billion nodes is the minimum target.

Kurtis, IPv6 is *not* IPv4 with more bits. If we wanted to do this, we
would have made it 64 bits, say "everything's the same except the
address is longer" and we would be done by now.

This WG used to be called "IPNG", for "Next Generation". This is what we
are talking about here, a new generation, not IPv4 on steroids.

Michel.

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From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 09:25:24 +0100

> address is longer" and we would be done by now.

Exactly!!! IPv6 is IPv4 with a longer address. Nothing more, nothing 
less. I have been arguing this for quite some time. So the problem is 
that IPv4 lacks three (or two depending on how you look at it) things

1) Address space shortage
2a) No scalable PI solution
2b) No scalable IDR solution

IPv6 addresses 1. We need to find a solution to 2a and 2b. Now, we can 
either patch IPv6 in one way or the other, or we can start with a clear 
plate and look at things to see what we can do. I would vote for the 
second option, otherwise we might as well go with IPv6 swamp, and see 
what happens.

I said it before and I will say it again, without a solution to 2a, no 
enterprises will go to IPv6, with no enterprises on IPv6 there are no 
revenues for the ISPs in IPv6, with no revenue from IPv6 the ISPs will 
not go to IPv6. Just because I can reach a webpage over IPv6 doesn't 
make the web-page more interesting. If it isn't more interesting I 
can't charge extra for it. Going to IPv6 will cost the ISPs. Sorry. It 
doesn't work out. We need to progress on multi6 if this is to take off. 
I am starting to lean towards the fact that progress in multi6 will 
require us to look at more drastic measures than patching what we have 
now.

> are talking about here, a new generation, not IPv4 on steroids.
Why do you think IPv6 on steroids will be any better?

- kurtis -

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 20:08:49 +0000

> doesn't work out. We need to progress on multi6 if this is to take off. 

Yes, but not for all networks.  I appreciate many people don't view the
academic research networks as commercial networks, but there is a large
potential IPv6 user base in that community for whom address stability has
been available through pre-CIDR allocations.  In the UK example, the 200
or so universities will go from 160 IPv4 (PI) prefixes to 1 single IPv6
(PA) prefix, but the provider being the non-commercial "independent" NREN 
makes the address space in effect PI (JANET has a /32 allocation).  Each
of the 25-30 European NRENs are likely to be in a similar position, so
you could see 25-30 SubTLA's replacing (well, living alongside :) around 
3,000 IPv4 prefixes.  Behind those 25-30 SubTLAs are maybe 30 million staff
and students at the universities.

Well, that's one view.  Many regional networks may seek to multihome.  Some
universities might seek SubTLA prefixes (many obtained pTLA space, and some
are LIR's for the benefit of IPv4 multihoming, but multihoming to universities
isn't common because they're tied in, for better or worse, richer or poorer,
to the NREN service).

I think multihoming is important in the shorter term for a number of classes
of networks, including some large enterprises.  IPv6 multihoming for home
networks is further off, and is the point at which you would be looking at
the "1 billion multihomers" scenario.  But for some (many?) users/networks,
multihoming isn't critical to adopt IPv6.

Tim

---

From: "Alan E. Beard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 18:06:32 -0500 (EST)

Tim, Kurt:

I will add some comments from the end-user-network perspective on behalf
of my client base.  Please see inline.

AEB

> > doesn't work out. We need to progress on multi6 if this is to take off.
Most end-user network managers I deal with require these characteristics
of their public network address allocations:

1) uniqueness (sometimes expressed as "autonomy")
2) portability
3) stability

In many cases, requirement two is driven by a desire to implement
multiple connections to the public networks via more than one service
provider (multihoming).

While PI is not an absolute requirement, the present state of our
technology and standards (for v6 as well as v4) force us to PI as the only
implemented mechanism which satisfies the functional requirements
enumerated above.  If we can develop and write into the standards some
alternate mechanisms which are technically sound and will meet these
functional requirements, we can perhaps avoid the persistent and vocal
demands from the end-user community for PI; until that time, however, PI
will remain a key requirement from end-user network managers.

> and students at the universities.

For those end-user-network managers who are aware of the details of the
NREN allocations, this situation provokes pure, incandescent fury: the
academic entities are seen as having been granted special (and grossly
preferential) treatment, while the commercial (as distinguished from
service-provider) networks are subject to callous indifference and
excluded thereby from direct access to stable network address allocations.
We can't even claim "separate but equal" for this state of affairs, and
the universal principle of Brown V. Board of Education still holds, even
for networks. [For those not familiar with recent US history, send me mail
directly for a brief explanation of the above reference.  AEB]

> multihoming isn't critical to adopt IPv6.

Most of the end-user-network managers among my clients now multihome, and
will continue to require multihomed service in future.  In every case
where the user's network is multihomed, the multiple independent
connections are seen as crucial for maintenance of high availability of
the client's services to the public networks; and high availability is
considered an absolute requirement for survival of the business.  In some
cases there are regulatory requirements which can result in civil or
administrative sanctions (including, in the worst event, loss of operating
licenses) if the services should be found unavailable for significant
periods of time.  Yes, it is possible, at least in theory, for commercial
service providers to sustain the required level of availability, but most
of my clients have found, much to their distress, that the US ISPs are
almost uniformly incapable of doing so in practice.  In almost every case,
the administrative managers for these user networks are simply and flatly
unwilling to put their businesses at the mercy of a single ISP.

Based on conversations with my clients, I cannot find it within the scope
of my imagination (or, for that matter, of theirs) that these networks
will give up the mutilhoming requirement at any time within the
foreseeable future.

Now granted, many of the networks referred to above provide access to
financial services, so the uptime requirements may be slightly more
rigorous than average;  however, I cannot imagine that any business which
generates substantial portions of its revenue from systems which rely on
network access would fail to impose stringent availability requirements on
network service, particularly since these businesses go to quite
extraordinary lengths to ensure availability of the online systems
themselves.

Home networks may be another matter, but I would give my eyeteeth to get a
stable, portable (and, thereby, multihome-capable) IPv6 allocation for
_my_ home network, as that network also supports supports my office and
business-related systems. (And, before you ask, all the systems - but not
necessarily all the peripherals - in my network _are_ v6-capable.)  I
suspect that we will find increasing use of "home" networks for business
activity, and increasing demand for stability of network locator
information. Granted, DNS provides some stability in network locator
information, but it is still not sufficient to overcome the current ISP
practices of enforced address instability and service restrictions, and I
can see no incentive (short of PI) in the current proposals which augurs
a change in current ISP policy and pricing.  As it is, I pay quite
outrageous fees to secure for my office public-network access which is
sufficiently reliable and stable to sustain the business, and I _still_
can't multihome.  Based on experience with my client base, I cannot agree
with the postulate that many networks will not find lack of multihome
support a barrier to implementation of v6.

The current speculation about "what the users _really_ need" (as
distinguished from what they _say_ they need) smacks to me of "all
networks are equal, but some are more equal than others" (with apologies
to _Animal Farm_).   It seems to me that we have some technical problems
to resolve here, and user education (or arbitrary restrictions on what
services are available to some classes of users) will not resolve the
extant issues, not even temporarily.  These issues will continue to raise
their ugly heads (or nether ends, and a I don't know how to distinguish
one from the other at this point) until we engineer solutions to the
technical problems - we can't "educate" or regulate these problems out of
existence.

That's my $.02 worth.

Alan E. Beard

-- 
Alan E. Beard <[email-masked]>
AEBeard Consulting; 4109 Chelsa Ln; Lakeland FL 33809
863.815.2529

---

From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 17:15:52 +0100

> 1) uniqueness (sometimes expressed as "autonomy")

Wait. This is interesting. From what people here was saying before - I 
drew the conclusion that end-users wanted non-uniqueness aka 
site-locals to hide their topology. You are saying something else?

> 2) portability

I can see that.

> 3) stability

Do you mean as a derivate of portability or for some other reason?

> multiple connections to the public networks via more than one service

So by portability you mean the ability to have a prefix announcement 
accepted by multiple providers.

> While PI is not an absolute requirement, the present state of our

The above properties of a prefix is not the same as PI, as well as PI 
properties are not the same as above. For both IPv4 and IPv6.

> enumerated above.  If we can develop and write into the standards some

(Someone could say NAT and SL but I am glad you didn't) Agreed.

> directly for a brief explanation of the above reference.  AEB]

I am not familiar with the above, but I generally tend to agree that 
NREN and other networks are far different. For good and bad.

> connections are seen as crucial for maintenance of high availability of

I find this funny. A number of studies have shown that if this is what 
you are after, multihoming and BGP is the wrong way to go - but never 
mind.

> unwilling to put their businesses at the mercy of a single ISP.

This worries me but is more a topic of Nanog, or my planned 
presentation at the Barcelona RIPE rather than IPng.

> will give up the mutilhoming requirement at any time within the

Hmm. So if someone where to write up a draft on how to do resilient 
routing, with different alternatives and pros and cons, could you take 
this to your customers? Randy, is this something to add to the 
Barcelona topics? I think I have some slides to start this off....(now 
all we need is a logo and we have a project)

> _my_ home network, as that network also supports supports my office and

Notice that this comes at a price. You and me are willing to pay for 
this, but how many are?

> activity, and increasing demand for stability of network locator

Sure, but are you willing to pay for it?

> support a barrier to implementation of v6.

I agree. Your client base seems to be exactly the target group. 
However, they also seems to be willing to pay for the service, as 
otherwise they will suffer financial loss that is higher than a days 
salary (if you can't log in from your home network).

> to _Animal Farm_).   It seems to me that we have some technical 

Agreed.

- kurtis -

---

From: "Alan E. Beard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 20:59:21 -0500 (EST)

Kurtis:

Thanks for your thoughtful response.  I'll reply to your queries inline.

AEB

> site-locals to hide their topology. You are saying something else?
Please note the keyword "public" in the statement above.  This applies (in
the cases of most of my clients) to address spaces which are advertised to
the public networks (AKA The Internet).

Now, in answer to your implied question about addressing for private
(internal) networks:

Given the choice, most (in fact, nearly all) of my clients would prefer to
run their internal networks on registered, unique, globally routable
address space; this greatly simplifies the task of providing access to
resources on the public network, and of providing access from the public
networks to resouces which the external customers of the business desire
to use, usually with the result of generating revenue for the business.
Furthermore, the use of unique, globally routable address space vastly
simplifies the task of establishing connections to networks operated by
business partners (eg, vendors and larger customers), whether via the
public network or over private links.  However, my clients are wholly
unwilling to run even the slightest risk of a forced renumbering on their
internal networks. Full stop.  No exceptions, and no equivocations.

If unique and stable globally routable space is not available for use in
their internal networks, my clients see non-unique, globally non-routable
space, coupled with NAT, as a feasible (but not desirable) alternative: at
least they have a reasonable expectation that such addressing will be
stable, and that a forced renumbering is unlikely.  For IPv6, the site
local space meets the requirement for internal networks of address
stability. That the SL (or, for IPv4, PNN) space is globally non-routable
mitigates somewhat the inconvenience of maintaining NAT: if you use
application-level gateways in addition to NAT, the ACLs can be less
complex (although not less carefully crafted) than otherwise.  With such
an implementation, it becomes relatively straightforward to obscure the
details of internal network structure (at least from the standpoint of the
public networks) since neither the prefix nor the internal structure is
advertised beyond the local environment.  And yes, these clients do
realise that the above steps are not alone sufficient to forestall
intrusion or other malicious acts.

> Do you mean as a derivate of portability or for some other reason?
No.  The stability requirement is quite independent of portability.  My
clients desire to avoid renumbering at any cost short of summary hanging;
where it is not posiible to avoid renumbering, they wish to renumber as
few systems as possible, and they would much rather change a static
translation mapping than reconfigure a host. Where these clients are
forced into renumbering (say, when they have to change ISPs as a result of
poor service), they are vastly dissatisfied and profoundly resentful. For
public network address spaces, portability is an aid in achieving
stability, but hosts will have stable numbering even if the public network
addressing is neither portable or stable.  I think that the prevailing
opinion in this WG has been that the situation described above (at least,
the worst-case configuration) is not desirable.

> accepted by multiple providers.
No, although that is one element.  The specific meaning attached to
"portable" by most of my clients is this: "when I discontinue service with
any ISP (actually, Internet Access Provider, as most of my clients
maintain the services - that is, hosts and applications, including DNS and
SMTP - inhouse), the addressing of my hosts as seen from the public
networks remains with me.  Furthermore, I can advertise the (usually
native) addresses of my hosts via any combination of access providers
willing to carry the traffic and provide transit routing."

> (Someone could say NAT and SL but I am glad you didn't) Agreed.
Well, NAT and SL will work (even if administratively proscribed), although
at undesirably high administrative cost, if no better solution is
available. However, my clients won't be content with NAT and SL, even if
they see it as the least distasteful option open to them.

> NREN and other networks are far different. For good and bad.
I agree that NREN networks differ from other networks, but it does not
follow that other networks should thereby be forced to discriminatory
treatment while NREN networks obtain top-quality service.  (BTW, Brown v.
Board is a 1950s US Supreme Court ruling which held that, in the provision
of services - in this case, public education - separate facilities or
service models for different groups are inherently unequal.  Furthermore,
the Court held that, in this context, unequal == discriminatory.  This is
considered a landmark ruling in the area of civil rights law.)

> you are after, multihoming and BGP is the wrong way to go - but never
Your comment may be true, but my clients are nonetheless unwilling to risk
the possibility of an extended network outage on a single ISP (while not
frequent, these events are far from unprecedented) rendering their online
customer-support environment unavailable for several hours, much less for
a day.  Shorter outages (on the order of minutes in the single digits) are
tolerated, provided that such outages are infrequent.

> presentation at the Barcelona RIPE rather than IPng.
This should worry all of us if we are determined to require PA as the
default allocation model for IPv6.  And I will suggest that this is
properly a topic for the IPv6 working group: have a look at the charter.

> all we need is a logo and we have a project)
Yes.  However, I must caution you that resilient routing alone will not
resolve the objections of most of my clients to IPv6 as presently managed;
it merely removes one item from the washing bill.

> Sure, but are you willing to pay for it?
Yup. But willingness to pay is moot if the service can't be had due to
administrative fiat. (This comment is in the business-network context.)

> salary (if you can't log in from your home network).
I suggest further that these issues extend far beyond my client base; in
fact, to most businesses that rely in whole or in part on online systems
(those accessible from the public networks) for all or a substantial part
of their revenue.  The number of such busineses is growing, and I would
prefer that it continue to do so.  Under the current IPv6 allocation
practices, most of my clients can't get PI space, even if they were
willing to pay unlimited fees, since most of the groups are not
multi-national is scope. (In many cases, these businesses hold state or
national charters which explicitly forbid interoperation with foreign
businesses of the same type.  Please note that foreign transactions are
not prohibited, but sharing of operational facilities - including networks
- _is_ expressly forbidden. At a minimum, a Chinese wall - i.e. firewalls
and separate routing domains - is required to satisfy the audit
requirements.)

> > to _Animal Farm_).   It seems to me that we have some technical

I hope the above has clarified (or at least disambiguated) some of my
statements in the original note.

Regards,

AEB

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 13:26:58 +0000

> considered a landmark ruling in the area of civil rights law.)

Alan,

I note a second reference to this...

You seem to have an "issue" with publicly funded research/education
networks, which I don't quite understand.  There are advantages and
disadvantages with being attached to an NREN.  There are quite strict
AUPs that (should) prevent such networks being used for commercial
purposes (which would be unfair competition with commercial providers).

My original point was that there is a large (but very much minority) user
and system base in the educational networks, where aggregation and (site
or enterprise) multihoming is very rare (one of the disadvantages :)
Perhaps universities in the future will be more keen to be multi-homed,
but enterprise level multihoming is rare in this context.

Universities are not forced to use NREN infrastructure, although it would
not generally make financial or technical sense to go elsewhere.

Tim

---

From: "Alan E. Beard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 12:28:56 -0500 (EST)

Tim:

Please don't misunderstand my intent here:  I don't have a problem with
the NREN networks, or with the top-quality treatment afforded them in the
matter of address allocations.  These networks clearly deserve, and should
have, the best available quality of service in matters related to address
allocations.

Additionally, the views expressed in my note don't originate with me;
rather, my note contained a precis of the views expressed to me (sometimes
in language of markedly purple and blue character) by some of my clients.
The objections cited are not to the treatment afforded to the NREN
networks, but to the decidedly discriminatory treatment afforded to
end-user commercial (as distinguished from service-provider) networks.

I offer my profound and abject apologies to the NREN networks; I deeply
regret any imputation of dog-in-the-manger attitude which might have
arisen from any reading of my statement; such was certainly not my intent.

Thank you for raising this matter, and for offering an opportunity to
correct any mistaken impression which might have arisen from my note.

Regards,

AEB

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 18:23:33 +0000

Hi Alan,

Hopefully in IPv6 the address allocation policies can be more equitable
for all.   A large university or a small commercial enterprise can both 
get a /48.  No need to fill out bundles of paperwork to get more than a /28
for your IPv4 leased line... :)  (The paperwork comes when you want your
second /48, but that should be a while off!)   At the ISP level, it seems
SubTLA allocation policies are quite open at the moment (more so than a
year ago), and this is reflected in the recent (relative) explosion in
SubTLA allocations made.   Or do you still perceive soemthing different
happening?

[As an aside, there are many colleges in the UK with a /28 and NAT, but
 that's another story...]

Cheers,
Tim

---

From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 20:30:42 +0100

(Randy removed from CC as I only had him in CC for the comments on the 
RIPE meeting)

> the public networks (AKA The Internet).

[snip]

> internal networks. Full stop.  No exceptions, and no equivocations.

I still like what I read.

> stability. That the SL (or, for IPv4, PNN) space is globally 

Well, SLs are more or less RFC1918 all over. (at least in my view)

> translation mapping than reconfigure a host. Where these clients are

I would still claim that his is a side effect of portable address space.

> tolerated, provided that such outages are infrequent.

Well, there are a number of ways to minimize such effects as well. And 
there are a number of ways you could engineer around this with other 
methods than Globally Routable PI space.

Regards,

- kurtis -

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 11:32:55 +0200 (EET)

Hello,

I'll take one particular issue, and Cc: to multi6 as I believe it is a 
very important thing to consider.
 
On Fri, 14 Feb 2003, Alan E. Beard wrote:
> > [Kurtis:]

This is a very problematic approach IMO.

Need more resiliency?  Network outages unacceptable?

The right place to fix this is the network service provider, period.  
Nothing else seems like a scalable approach.

Consider a case when many companies _phone_ services would have been
changed to VoIP.  IP would be a critical service.  Do the enterprises
protect against failures by getting more ISP's?  Unscalable.  No, the
ISP's _must_ get better.  Pick one well when choosing them.

When ISP's have SLA's, a lot of customers for which continued service is
of utmost importance, the networks *will* work.  There is just no other
choice.  If the mobile phone of CTO, CEO or whatever rings after (1)5
minutes of network outage, things _will_ happen.

It just seems the mentality in some networks is that network outages are 
ok, networks don't have to be designed with multiple connections, etc.etc.

That must change if we want to build a mission-critical IP infrastructure.  
Instead of making every site try to deal with the problems themselves.

This is my view as ISP and an end-user.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

---

From: Lars Erik Gullerud <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Feb 2003 16:06:08 +0100

> Nothing else seems like a scalable approach.

In a perfect world I'm sure I'd agree with you. In real life however,
the fact of the matter is that customers want multihoming, and it
doesn't matter to the customers if that is a problematic approach that
doesn't scale for the SPs. Doesn't even matter if it's technically the
best solution for THEM, customers are not known for picking the best
solutions, nor listening to their providers suggestions for better ones,
half the time. And, the simple fact of the market economy is that what
the customers want, the providers are going to sell.

Making the IP backbones more resilient costs money. You get that money
from your customers. You get the customers by selling them what they are
asking for. What they are asking for is multihoming. If they can't
multihome with IPv6, well, then they won't use IPv6 until they can. If
the customers don't want to use IPv6, the providers won't spend the
money to support it.

...and this is yet another rehash of a discussion that has already been
had so many times by so many people that I'm sure we can just copy &
paste from here on out.

The fact of the matter is, whether it's the best approach or not, we
need a solution for customers to multihome. So let's bring our attention
back to that, shall we?

/leg

---

From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 16:19:36 +0100

>>>> Most of the end-user-network managers among my clients now 
>>>> multihome,
>>>> and

This highlights another issue with the solution to the multi6 problem - 
convergence time. We need a solution that also improves this, besides 
scales in the DFZ.

- kurtis -

---

From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 16:35:15 +0100

> the customers want, the providers are going to sell.

....which explains a lot of bad stuff being deployed, but that is 
another WG..:=)

> the customers don't want to use IPv6, the providers won't spend the

Agreed!!!

Agreed.

I have a suggestion....:)

- kurtis -