Re: [RRG] Consensus? End-user networks need their own portable address space

["William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us>]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 9:35 AM, Scott Brim <swb@employees.org> wrote:
> On 6/19/08 10:44 PM, William Herrin allegedly wrote:
>>
>> The requirement is that end users (meaning folks who operate servers
>> in this case) be able to  change service providers:
>>
>> 1. Without a major overall effort, and
>> 2. Without requiring any changes outside of the end user's
>> administrative control.
>
> I don't believe the second one.  First there's simple lower layer
> connectivity -- of course you need permission from a NSP if you want to
> receive traffic.  Second there's routing.  I see no way for packets to me to
> traverse an intermediate provider without at least some node under that
> provider's control being configured differently.

Scott,

Allow me to clarify: the actions of an entity from which you purchase
service are under your administrative control for the purposes of
establishing criteria #2. You're paying them to do as you require.
Arguably this continues upstream following the cash though as a
practical matter you lose control more than a couple orgs away.

Entities which purchase service from you are not under your
administrative control. Entities with whom you have no fiduciary
relationship whatsoever are not under your administrative control.

With that clarified definition of "without requiring any changes
outside of the end user's
administrative control," do you have any further objections to this
requirement? Would you like to rewrite the statement so that its more
clear that one's vendors fall within one's administrative control?


BTW, my counter proof to Tony's claim only addressed single-homed
cases where PI is a necessary consequence of the requirements. Nearly
all multi-vendor multi-homed cases require PI to function to an
appropriate standard as well.


Brian: This argument you see now is a fine example of why it's
appropriate to escalate "PI for servers" to architectural requirement
status. More than a few very smart engineers want NAT to have solved
the need for PI but operational experience in the decade plus since
NAT's invention very clearly show us that it has only solved the need
for PI in a limited set of scenarios.

Movement on the PI requirement since NAT's full deployment has been
largely retrograde: changing the IP address of a high-volume mail
server has become astonishingly hard because of all the spam
filtering, as is corralling the 500 customers all of whom have
forgotten the Godaddy passwords they need to update the A records for
their hosted web service since they do that with Godaddy now instead
of hosting their DNS with you.

We're well past the point where "PI for servers" should be considered
an architectural requirement until proven otherwise.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

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