Subject: Re: IP network address assignments/allocations information?

From: "J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 11:44:45 -0500

> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>

    > When you've been awakened in the middle of the night every night for a
    > week, because the NAT rules to deal with the fact that you have several
    > intercommunicating networks all of which think they're 10.0.0.0/8
    > ... Anyone out there who thinks NAT works well and is harmless is not
    > familiar

Perry, I'm curious about the technical aspects of the problems you're seeing,
in particular:

  Are the problems you are seeing due to i) the need for NAT boxes to grope
  around in packets, ii) the fact that hosts don't have permanent, globally
  visible internetwork-level 'names', or iii) something else (e.g. complex
  configuration management)?

The reason I ask is twofold.

First, there is an alternative technology being proposed for local addresses
in IPv4, RSIP, which should avoid i), but still leaves us with ii) and iii).
So, to the extent the problems you are seeing are ii) and iii) we're still
kind of stuck, even if RSIP happens. To the extent that the problem is really
i), though, RSIP might alleviate the situation.

Second, when examining the transition technologies for deployment of the
proposed new internetwork layer, I've been pondering the problem of an
non-upgraded host trying to talk to an upgraded host with an address which is
only expressible in the new internetwork layer. The proposed transition
technologies I've examined (i.e. NAT-PT, AIIH, and SIIT) *all* seem to have
(at least as far as the IPv4 world is concerned) characteristic ii) - in that
as far as non-upgraded hosts are concerned, upgraded hosts using those
schemes don't have a permanent 'name' at the internetwork layer.

So I'd really be curious to know a little more about the "forest-level"
nature of the problems you're seeing out there - I think it will be very
insightful in considering a number of potential forward directions.

	Noel

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 03 Dec 1999 11:59:42 -0500

>   configuration management)?

All of the above.

i) hits all the time in that one is forced to tell people that some
   new service or another isn't available because the various NATs and
   proxies don't support it. That's actually not such a big problem,
   though, in the sense that if you don't care about being able to use
   the net in new ways it doesn't hurt.

ii) and iii) (complex configuration management) are the real issues.

> in IPv4, RSIP, which should avoid i), but still leaves us with ii) and iii).

Having looked at things, RSIP appears to be as complicated as
deploying IPv6 with local NATs to connect to the v4 internet, since it
requires kernel hacks and border translators. v6 would have the
advantage that at least after some years of deploying the hellish
transitional technology the v6 bubbles would start to coalesce and
form a real internet again, i.e. the pain would eventually end.  RSIP
would institutionalize the horror forever. For my money, I'd prefer
v6.

BTW, I fully agree with those who contend that v6 does not solve the
route agregation problems we have in v4. However, people don't seem to
get that the raw address space size problem v6 solves is in and of
itself reason enough to move to v6 given the costs we're having trying
to keep v4 on life support.

Perry

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 03 Dec 1999 11:59:42 -0500

All of the above.

Perry

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 12:52:24 -0500

"Perry E. Metzger" wrote:

> route agregation problems we have in v4.

In itself, no; but getting people who have old non-aggregatable addresses to
transition to v6 will give them the chance to get aggregatable addresses, won't
it?

--
/==============================================================\
|John Stracke    | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp.      |"Time is money, and price is information."   |
[email-masked]|--Russ Nelson                                |
\==============================================================/

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 12:52:24 -0500

---

From: Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 16:03:20 -0500

> transition to v6 will give them the chance to get aggregatable addresses, won't

Perhaps. It then trades something else off. There are legitimate reasons
to NOT have aggregatable addresses. Some companies actually like
multihoming, as a way to keep their services operational in the face of
one network provider melting. Aggregation isn't the goal of customers,
reliability is. Having multiple connections to one ISP is not considered
sufficient, either.

We have adopted a world view where only ISPs are worthy of being
multi-homed, and everyone else must aggregate through a single ISP.

There's something Perry may be alluding to (or not). Many companies
create PRIVATE internetworking links among themselves for handling
sensitive data. These require unique addressing. IPv6 has, to date, not
been an option for this use. Two reasons: 1. The registries were not,
until recently, handing out IPv6 addresses, and 2. The registries are
using the same kinds of rules as for IPv4 in that addresses are handed
out to ISPs who then hand them to companies. The problem with this is
that if you never intended to route the addresses on the public net
anyway, you won't be seen as worthy by the ISPs, or the registries.

I have been thinking for a while that it'd be useful for IANA to set
aside a class A block for a new registry. This one would provide very
small blocks of addresses, for private inter-corporate use only, to
anyone willing to pay. This would provide a guarantee to users that the
addresses they get ARE unique, and will work. It's kind of like RFC 1918
addresses, but with a block set aside for private interconnects. Clearly
it's too late to do this with the blocks presently in RFC 1918, though.
Take this same idea, and replace that class A with a big prefix in IPv6
space and perhaps the folks doing private interconnects will help fund
the development of IPv6 equipment and updated applications.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Senie                                        [email-masked]
Amaranth Networks Inc.            http://www.amaranthnetworks.com

---

From: Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 16:03:20 -0500