Re: wireless geolocation

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Jun 6, 2017, at 12:48 PM, Warren Kumari <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Because we use a *large* amount of address space - we (currently) give
> everyone a public IP address, we have multiple SSIDs / networks, etc.
> ISPs would be quite unlikely to be willing to give us a big enough
> block, we (often) also have multiple providers, etc. We would also
> need to renumber all of our infrastructure, redo DNS, etc.

Please understand when I say this that I am not proposing an unfunded mandate on the backs of volunteers here, but (a) it doesn't seem to me that we need to continue providing everyone with a routable IPv4 address, and (b) if renumbering is that hard, maybe that's worth thinking about, because renumbering is not generally all that hard, and we have developed a lot of technology in the IETF to _make_ it not hard.

E.g., if everything is numbered using IPv6, and the reason it needs numbered is so that it can be managed, wouldn't a ULA prefix for numbering managed devices solve that problem?   Or are we still managing them using stone knives and IPv4?

> We currently publish geo-location info in
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-google-self-published-geofeeds-02 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-google-self-published-geofeeds-02>
> format -- noc.ietf.org/geo/google.csv <http://noc.ietf.org/geo/google.csv>. This gets updated (assuming I /
> we don't forget :-)) before each meeting, and should be imported by
> google in advance of the meeting...

Apparently that's not solving the problem, though.   Google maps always seems to redirect me to the previous country, every IETF.   I think this is more of an operational problem than not having a routable IPv4 address would be—I don't assume when I'm traveling that I will have a routable IPv4 address.

> But, much of the issue is location being tied to the MAC address of
> the APs, not just the source IP. There are lots of geo providers, and
> they all need to be updated, etc.

Can't APs have their user-facing MAC addresses changed/randomized?   Again, I realize that that potentially another unfunded mandate, but I'm just asking whether this is something that can be done, not saying you should do it.