RE: IPv6 for Scott Morris

From: Brad Spencer (bradsp@outworks.net)
Date: Tue Jun 22 2004 - 14:19:58 GMT-3


I agree with Michael Moore when he stated that the source of all IPng evil
could be traced to the Bush and Laden family oil conglomerate.

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Aaron T. Woland
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 11:58 AM
To: Scott Morris; Howard C. Berkowitz; ccielab@groupstudy.com;
security@groupstudy.com
Subject: RE: IPv6 for Scott Morris

"Scott (who believes IPv6 is Evil and was most likely designed by Saddam
Hussein and/or Adolf Hitler)"
 
AMEN! :)

        -----Original Message-----
        From: Scott Morris [mailto:swm@emanon.com]
        Sent: Mon 6/21/2004 10:29 PM
        To: 'Howard C. Berkowitz'; ccielab@groupstudy.com;
security@groupstudy.com
        Cc:
        Subject: RE: IPv6 for Scott Morris
        
        

        So, then it's true... It was designed to give "Lack of Subnetting
for
        Dummies" a run for its money! I just don't get why people can't
handle NAT
        and subnetting in the v4 space, which is nice enough to work in
decimal
        renditions, and yet they think it is a great idea to give buttloads
of
        addresses to people, but do it in a hexadecimal format... Which is,
of
        course, MUCH simpler to deal with.
        
        Oh yeah, and don't forget that :: thing too! This will bring IP to
the
        masses? Come on.
        
        Mathematically, it's all workable, and I don't have a problem with
the
        technical end... I just believe it was designed for a set of bad
reasons,
        and bad philosophy doesn't make good policy.
        
        Ah well, enough rant for me. :)
        
        Scott (who believes IPv6 is Evil and was most likely designed by
Saddam
        Hussein and/or Adolf Hitler)
        
        -----Original Message-----
        From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf
Of
        Howard C. Berkowitz
        Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 9:10 PM
        To: ccielab@groupstudy.com; security@groupstudy.com
        Subject: IPv6 for Scott Morris
        
        At 8:29 PM -0400 6/21/04, Scott Morris wrote:
>
>
>Let's move on to other important things like why IPv6 should be
dropped
>from the face of the Earth and never be used on a CCIE exam, let
alone
>a real network
        
        Let me say that I support the use of IPv6, and indeed take some of
the
        blame; I was in the plenary meeting at the Toronto IETF that made
the final
        decision on IPng (among the several candidates). That being said, I
see a
        great many proposals for using IPv6 to be made for very bad reasons.
There
        are also some unsolved problems with IPv6 implementation, especially
in
        multihoming, but also in architectural indecisiveness in separating
-- or
        not separating -- the functions of locator and identifier.
        
        There are still a lot of people that believe the reason for going to
the
        128-bit address space was to have enough room to give a static
address to
        every insect. Expanding the static address space, in fact, was one
of the
        non-goals of IPv6 design.
        
        IPv6 consciously, deliberately wastes space in the address field.
        This was done, in large part, to avoid the gyrations one goes
through in
        figuring out how much of a prefix can be summarized. Much of the
        IPv6 address space is as-yet unallocated, but such things as the
unicast
        public address space is designed to be principally fixed-field. The
format
        ID bits at the start of the address give the format of the rest, but
in a
        way far more flexible than the four bits used in IPv4 classful
addressing.
        
        Why have fixed-length TLAs and NLAs (and yes, there are nuances of
splitting
        the NLA)? The simple answer is to make it simple to change
providers.
        People are generally aware of there being two mechanisms to get the
        low-order part of a station's addres: stateful DHCPv6 and stateless
        autoconfiguration. In stateless autoconfiguration, end stations
learn the
        high-order part of their address from the local router.
        
        What is more of a mystery is how the _routers_ learn the high-order
address.
        While they can, of course, be statically configured, the
        IPv6 suite includes a Router Renumbering Protocol by which a router
can
        dynamically learn the TLA/NLA. Typically, SLAs will be partially
manually
        configured (much like OSPF or ISIS areas).
        
        In an ideal scenario, let's say you change ISPs, and you are using
        provider-assigned address space that is supposed to change. In IPv4,
this
        can be quite painful, depending on how well you have prepared your
hosts --
        but there are really no good and general mechanisms to renumber your
routers
        and figure out your new external prefix.
        Believe me, I tried -- I wrote
        http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2072.txt , the "IPv4 Router
Renumbering
        Guide".
        
        But in the IPv6 world, your external router activates a connection
to an ISP
        router, and the enterprise router plaintively asks, in IPv6 Router
        Renumbering Protocol, "who am I?" The provider router, assuming it
speaks
        this protocol, will respond, securely, with the new high-order bits
of the
        address (basically TLA and NLA for enterprises). Your external edge
routers
        now propagate this new prefix into hierarchically lower routers,
which pick
        up SLA bits as the information propagates downward. Eventually,
everything
        above the end station identifier is floating around edge LANs in
Router
        Advertisement packets (ICMPv6).
        
        An end station can then concatenate this prefix to its MAC address
or other
        locally significant identifier, and, BANG -- it's addressed.
        Good practice would have it register the address with Dynamic DNS.
        
        Meanwhile, if you have hosts that don't need direct external
connectivity,
        they are happily going along in the site-local space (i.e., IPv6's
        equivalent to RFC 1918). It may be that the only things that really
need to
        get new prefixes are the outside addresses of your firewalls and
external
        router.
        
        Depending on the specific design, you may indeed be able to avoid
overloaded
        NAT and go one-to-one with provider addresses. This isn't such a
strain on
        your provider if they can just aggregate the SLA and below in their
customer
        edge routers, so they only need to advertise TLA and NLA, or, in
large
        providers, TLA alone, to the rest of the world.
        
        Do note that we are still experimenting with how to grow the
Internet. While
        the CIDR assumption has been provider-based aggregation, IPv6
architecture
        consciously allows for assigning TLA's and/or NLA's to geographical
exchange
        points, thus allowing for geographical as well as provider-based
        aggregation.
        
        There are other reasons for IPv6, but I wanted to touch on some of
the ones
        I find are least well understood.
        
        



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