Re: The state of IPv6 multihoming development

["Craig A. Huegen" <chuegen@cisco.com>]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> > Are you saying the IPv6 routing table should only contain PA routes (this
> > is current 6bone policy)? I don't think this is a sustainable position in
> > the long run. And if we are going to do PI, doing it in a way that at
> > least potentially supports aggregation would be good.
>
> So for now, yes the BGP4+ table should only contain PA routes, until we
> have a better solution to aggregation than that.

I have to disagree here.  Adoption of IPv6 in enterprises REQUIRES
multihoming.  It's not a "nice-to-have".  Without it, IPv6 in enterprises
is limited to the labs.  If this means we have to accept some type of PI
addressing in the near-term, then so be it, with the condition that those
using it are given time frame <x> to migrate to the Ultimate Multihoming
Solution in the future.

As for the original multi-PA multihoming solution, it doesn't fly in an
enterprise.  The selection of source and destination addresses by the
originating host keeps enterprises from managing bandwidth on circuits,
because the routing infrastructure has no idea of possible alternate paths
for the packet.  BGP isn't perfect either, but it's much better than how
many bits a particular address has in common with another.  Managing n+1
prefixes per subnet where n is number of providers serving a site is a
nightmare.  The list of problems goes on...

If the goal was to design a theoretical protocol without end-user
operational considerations that can keep DFZ routing tables under 16k
prefixes, then we're doing a good job at designing multi-homing.  If the
goal is to gain adoption by and reliability for the end users of the IPv6
internet, we're failing.

/cah

---
Craig A. Huegen, Chief Network Architect      C i s c o  S y s t e m s
IT Transport, Network Technology & Design           ||        ||
Cisco Systems, Inc., 400 East Tasman Drive          ||        ||
San Jose, CA  95134, (408) 526-8104                ||||      ||||
email: chuegen@cisco.com       CCIE #2100      ..:||||||:..:||||||:..