RE: The state of IPv6 multihoming development

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

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Tony Li wrote:

> p.s. In the past I have certainly been an opponent to IPv6.
> However, my position has changed somewhat.  I can see the
> pressure to go down the IPv6 path and I would like to see
> some good come out of the exercise.  If v6 turns out to be
> simply v4 with a bigger address space but it still collapses
> due to the poor routing architecture, then we will have
> failed miserably.  So I am pushing for scalability for the
> routing layer and hoping that we don't make the same mistakes
> again.  -- t

On the other hand, it can also be argued that we have failed miserably if
we don't end up with demand for this network because it cannot address
baseline requirements for business.  That's the path we head down with
multi-PA.

Noel asked if I could suggest any other mechanisms.  So far, all of the
multi-homing solutions I can think of that are implementable with current
code do not address the requirements that enterprises have:

* simple to implement and operate for the enterprise
* network infrastructure visibility into alternative paths such that
  policy decisions may be made on paths by the infrastructure, not the
  host
* unique, host-aware end-to-end addresses so poorly-written applications
  (in use in IPv4 today) will work

Given that, the only solutions I can think of require changes to code,
whether router or host, network or transport or application layer.  This
code change will require time.  This time delays adoption and makes IPv6
continue to stagnate.

I believe we need to come up with something now, with the current amount
of energy behind IPv6, in order to bring these large enterprises on board.
Otherwise, we will continue to build a great experimental network with
little business value to anyone except the academic community.

/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      ..:||||||:..:||||||:..