Re: ipv6nd-02.txt & autoconfig

[Albert Manfredi <[e-mail]>]

[e-mail] wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 10 May 96 12:42:18 PDT Albert Manfredi wrote:
> 
> > > And how many ESIs shall we all burn into our adapters, bridges and routers?
> >> How about 13? 42? 65536? 16777216?
> >
> > How about 256 would give you everything that lamented SEL byte would have
> > provided?
> 
> Bert, are you proposing using 256 48-bit values to get the same thing you can
> get with 256 8-bit values?  Doesn't seem a good use of address space to me
> (or am I missing something here?).

The logic goes something like this, unless I'm missing something.

1. We want a good scheme to allow IPv6 autoconfiguration with ATM.

2. Ethernet and FDDI use their MAC address as the unique ID field. And
they're happy with the 48 bits.

3. Does ATM have something similar to offer? Yes, the contiguous ESI
bytes. And also SEL, but then manufacturing a unique 48-bit ID out of
ESI + SEL gets messy.

4. So I proposed we require SEL to always have the same value when ATM
is used in IPv6.

5. But what about the fact that this ATM host would be throwing away 256
possible extra associations (a bonus for ATM hosts)?

6. Well, OK. The manufacturer of the ATM NIC has to presumably select a
unique 48-bit ID for that NIC. As long as he's done that much, he can
certainly give 10, 20, or even 256 IDs to that NIC, from that ESI space.
It's not so much more difficult, is it?

Bert
[e-mail]