Re: Mutli6 meeting in Vienna

[Tim Chown <tjc@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 01:10:04PM +0200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> 
> Well, pretty much every operating system image shipped today includes
> RFC 2460 support. So I suspect the installed (but not enabled) base
> is in fact huge. At least in a large corporate network, routers and
> hosts are *not* upgraded in a coordinated way. So 'upgrade already'
> won't fly. We need incremental deployment; that has always been the
> guiding principle for IPv6 coexistence.

Agreed.

My view is that there should be three thrusts to multi6 at present, 
which may be a bit more contentious.

1.  We pursue Christian's suggestion for bite by bite implementation of
    multi-addressing in SOHO-class and small networks with one or two
    routers connecting to two ISPs.   That means ingress filtering
    avoidance, etc, adding new tricks where needed (e.g. new ICMP message)
    and resuing existing tools from our toolbox where possible.  These
    may become usable within 1-2 years.

2.  We allocate suitably large enterprises /32 prefixes (as per Craig's
    suggestion), for some definition of "suitably large", out of some
    new /16 prefix.  There would only be a few thousand of these for the
    next 2-3 years, most likely.

3.  We pursue the longer-term goal of identifier-locator separation for
    multihoming (and other benefits).  This probably wouldn't lead to
    deployment for at least 2-3 years, maybe more.

With #1 we can multihome for the majority of multihomers - the home
networks, SME's and networks where multi-address methods can work and
do not (usually) need policy management (of the type Craig mentions).

With #2 we create a small swamp, but one we can fence off.  It helps remove
the perceived barrier for deployment in large enterprises or corporations.

With #3 we plan for the future, with incremental deployment of two-space
solutions being the goal.  It might include HIP as a motivator, or maybe
something like Iljitsch's recent proposal.  

I suspect #1 and #3 would not be too contentous, #2 might be :)
I'd like to see some discussion of #1 and #3 in Vienna, where probably
#1 is more "piecemeal" and #3 more "architectural".

Tim