Subject: Re: [iucg] Matthew's Idea for IPv4 addition or extension

From: JFC Morfin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:10:43 +0200

At 20:31 14/08/2011,   wrote:
>I know this is in response to an old email but I wanted to send this
>to you since you appear to be very well informed on the matter of the
>stat of the Internet.

I am not really "well informed". I only wish to have a common sense 
vision of the Internet as something of pragmatic use for the people's 
communications and relations. That leads me to approach the 
technology as a lead/intelligent user of Internet ressources and 
among these ressources of the IETF deliverables.

FYI:
- a lead user is someone who has the capacity to adapt his/her 
internet environment to his/her own needs.
- an intelligent user is someone what has the capacity to draught on 
the technological convergence to intelligently adapt his/her digital 
ecosystem environment to his/her own needs.

In the "intelligent" case; the term may be understood at three level:
- inter-ligare, i.e. to interlink (to be in good intelligence with)
- inter-legere, i.e. to actually read the network/technology and 
understand how it is built (to know like in CIA)
- inter-elegere, i.e. to chose in the smartest way what one has 
understood of the map/model of what is interlinked.

In this capacity I am not much interested in IPv6 as such, which 
something that concerns ISPs.

I am interested in IDv6, i.e. the capacity for the user to use 64 bit 
local addresses of global scope transparently (on the user side) with 
IPv4, IPv6 and different IPv6 and or IPv4 multi-ISP scenarii. I am 
not currently focusing on IDv6 because I need to experiment my use in 
a user side architecture I am trying to assemble. The interest I have 
is primarily in the DNS because it is independent from addresses. 
This is part of my work on the ML-DNS (i.e. a multilayered use of the 
DNS) where the IDv6 sub-adress can be passed as a domain name label.

My other lines of interest are with Fred Baker (Cisco) proposition 
RFC 6296 and Dino Farinacci's LISP proposition. I feel the 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-lisp-interworking-02 ID is the 
latest summary of the proposition and lists all the other on-going 
drafts. As far as I understand LISP is transparent to IPv6 too. There 
could be additional possibilities in using an independent numbering 
plan, but I understand ITU dropped the idea and the IETF made ICANN 
in charge of the whole thing for the time being (i.e. as long as the 
USA claim to have some control on the Internet, what they do not if 
you read the Internet as the International Network of the whole 
digital ecosystem).

My feeling from my previous international network renumbering (X.121 
in 1983/86) solutions like these are the best way to support 
transitions if they are to happen (I am not so sure) or parallel 
operations because they do not deny the larger numbering plan (IPv6), 
but make it sort of virtual. So you can use it, but you do not need 
to implement it before you are sure you have to.

>The way I see IPv6 is a lot of organizations are going to be
>scrambling in the end to avoid being part of an IPv6 black-hole, and
>IPv6 only customers (once IPv4 is exhausted) will be part of an IPv4
>black-hole to the parts of the Internet that haven't migrated.
>
>Basically, 2 Internets. So why isn't/wasn't anyone thinking to keep
>IPv4 compatibility when they created the IPv6 solution?!?

Same response as why did they make DNs ASCII only, why did they not 
support a presentation layer,  why did they suppressed the IETF 
"Internet users area", etc.

>I'm an engineer in the field and when I worked for a service provider
>they were just starting to adopt v6 last year, and now at my current
>company I have gotten an allocation from ARIN but no one in the
>organization wants to move on it since they don't see the need. (I
>know it's my job to make them see the need but that means lots of
>others will not be making the move anytime soon.)

The need is not for IPv6. The need is for what IPv6 may permit: 
billions of globally adressable sub-addresses. The same as the DNS 
however with or without the DNS and its evolution. The interest for 
your organization is to get the Internet support they need, including 
billions of globally addressable sub-adresses if they need it. Then 
to consider how to get that in the most secure, simple and stables manner.

Best.
jfc