Subject: Re: Draft: PI addressing derived from AS numbers

From: "J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 09:50:24 -0500

> From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>

    >> [4+16] would have the disadvantage that you'd be limited to a 32-bit
    >> locator, something that's already causing us grief.

    > 4 billion wide-area locators doesn't seem to be too bad in itself.

Sorry, I didn't follow what you meant by "wide-area locators". Did you mean
that (contrary to my express guidance immediately below) these 32 bits would
only hold the "high order" part of the location? Or did you mean that 32
bits of locator would be enough?

    >> (And don't even *think* about moving some of the "local" topology
    >> information into the IPv6 addresses, leaving only the "global" stuff
    >> in the IPv4 header. Long architectural rant about why you don't
    >> spread functionality across two namespaces left out, as an exercise
    >> to the reader.)

    > Ah, but pragmatic rant about how it's likely to happen anyway also
    > left out :-(

Well, at least you added a ":-(", which I take to mean that you realize it's
a bad idea - so if that's true, please don't take what follows as directed
at you.

One of my favourite quotations is from Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's
Almanac", and it goes:

	EXPERIENCE IS A DEAR MASTER, BUT FOOLS WILL LEARN AT NO OTHER.

So what exactly do you call someone who has the painful experience, and
*still* refuses to learn? Clearly, something even lower than a fool.

The IPv6 community got into the corner it's in now because it took the path
of least technical resistance: IPv6 looks a lot like IPv4 because we "know"
that IPv4 "works". Well, guess what, IPv4 *doesn't* work, and IPng needed to
look really different, and those of us who tried to tell the rest of the
IETF that didn't get very far - although I think we gave it a pretty good
try.

So if the IPv6 community again takes the path of least technical resistance,
having not learned the first time around that that's really not the answer,
G-d help you all.

	Noel

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 17:11:46 +0100

Yes, I think that if we were to pursue 4+16 it would exactly cause
us to have two namespaces containing different parts of the locator.
I did say :-(.  (Of course, it's exactly what we have today with NAT.)

   Brian