Re: [info@arin.net: [arin-announce] ARIN Board Advises Internet Community on Migration to IPv6]

[Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com>]

On May 21, 2007, at 11:40 AM, bill fumerola wrote:
> that angry mob you see in the distance is the arin-ppml mailing  
> list heading over to v6ops to discuss ULA-central.

Maybe you could fill me in on why it is an "angry" mob? v6ops has not  
been asked to be involved in the discussion, and has not prevented it  
from happening. v6ops didn't define the ULA - ipng did. To my  
knowledge, the operational community has not even seen fit to post  
their proposal where v6ops can see it, notwithstanding the fact that  
I have invited them to do so and to use v6ops@ to discuss it. Why  
would they be angry with us?

If you're suggesting that at the coming IETF it might be worthwhile  
to entertain the proposal, given an internet draft I would be willing  
to see that happen.


Speaking strictly for myself, I would ask a few questions. One is why  
one wants to have central allocation of a local address. Not that I  
am opposed to having it (RFC 4193 clearly sets aside part of the  
address space for such), but I would like to understand the argument.  
Related is how a centrally-managed unique global address differs from  
a centrally-managed unique local address; they both look centrally- 
managed and unique to me. If the argument is that BGP will not  
advertise and will not accept a peer's advertisement of a ULA, that  
is true if and only if the appropriate filters are in place, so the  
locality of the address seems pretty similar. One still needs to have  
correct filters. The third is why this needs to be a managed space  
per se. If the desire is for a space that can be used within an ISP  
network and is guaranteed to not overlap that of any routing peer,  
placing the 32 bit AS number into the upper bits of the "Global ID"  
gives each provider a /40 to play with, with no effort on the IANA's  
part. Why not just do so?