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Re: draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-02.txt
Hi Kurtis,
On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 19:36:02 +0200
Kurt Erik Lindqvist <kurtis@kurtis.pp.se> wrote:
>
> On 25 jul 2006, at 12.16, Mark Smith wrote:
>
> > Hi Kurtis,
> >
<snip>
>
> There are two problems here. 1) I am pretty convinced that the IETF
> shouldn't be running address-policy for the ISPs. Especially since
> there are also complexity here that I am not sure we understand (i.e
> RIR -> LIR charging schemes).
I agree with that. RFC3177 seems to be a IESG/IAB recommendation /
Informational RFC. If ISPs / RIRs etc. don't follow the recommendation,
then it's probably useful for the IETF to point out the technical pros
and cons of their decision.
> 2) I am not advocating 5 subnets, nor
> am I in favour of 2^16. I am sure there is a middle ground and that
> we shouldn't carve it in stone.
>
My thoughs are to aim for simplicity and operational convenience.
Giving everybody a /48 would make running IPv6 simple and operationally
convenient for nearly every end-site to be or currently in existance.
> > Along those lines, I'm curious what you (and other people who seem to
> > be against /48s for end sites) think of the "excessive" 46 bits of
> > address space that ethernet uses, when the reality is that no more
> > than
> > 12 bits of address space would probably have been plenty for the
> > even the biggest LAN segments (I've seen one sadly) ? Bare in mind
> > that
> > that addressing size decision was made around 1980, when even LAN
> > segments with 4000 devices would have been inconceivable, so even 12
> > bit addressing at the time would have seemed beyond "excessive".
>
> I could probably say a lot about the MAC addresses but this is the
> wrong SDO.
>
Fair enough. I was really only trying to prompt thinking about what
simplicity and operational advantages have been gained from using
"excess" address space in ethernet, when that amount of address space
certainly wasn't necessary around 1980, and, based on the address
management tasks people are performing with IPv4 successfully enough
today, wouldn't be necessary now either. Operational and functional
convenience was prioritised over necessity when the ethernet address
size decision was made, and has paid many dividends.
Regards,
Mark.