RE: The state of IPv6 multihoming development

["J. Noel Chiappa" <jnc@ginger.lcs.mit.edu>]

    > From: "Tony Hain" <alh-ietf@tndh.net>

    >> naming them "provider-dependent" and "provider-independent"
    >> addresses, thereby completely obscuring the underlying technical
    >> issues, and making it seem like it's purely a policy issue .. If
    >> you want technically accurate terminology .. call them
    >> "connectivity-dependent" and "connectivity-independent".

    > There was no attempt to make this a political argument, in fact it
    > is more accurate than connectivity-*. The current policy says
    > customers get their prefix from their provider so that it
    > aggregates, therefore it is provider-dependent. End sites are
    > looking for a mechanism that allows them to decouple their prefix
    > from any specific provider, therefore it is provider-independent.

Look, there are network designs which allow connectivity-dependent
addressing schemes which are *not* provider-dependent.

E.g. if a (large enough) bunch of customers band together and create an
exchange, which buys service from multiple ISP's, and which is given an
address which is visible over the same scope as those ISP's, and the
customers are addressed as part of that exchange, you meet the policy goal
(being able to change providers) *without* so-called "PI" addresses. But the
addresses are still connectivity-based.

So there's one really good reason to discard this bogus "provider-dependent"
and "provider-independent" terminology - because there are cases in which it
*doesn't* align with the underlying technical issue.


Perhaps if people understood the underlying technical issues better this
discussion would be more fruitful. Using terminology which *accurately*
conveys the underlying fundamental technical limitations, rather than their
policy goals, is a good place to start.

	Noel