Re: [Int-area] Review of draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-05

On 8/20/10 4:00 PM, Fred Baker wrote:
> 
> On Aug 20, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Eric Gray wrote:
> 
>> Following the CIDR model for IPv6 seems to allow for as many as (on
>> the order of) 7-10 times as many possibly usable address allocation
>> sizes.
> 
> Well, yes, saying that "you can pick any length you like" gives the
> address allocation authorities, at least in theory, 64 orders of
> magnitude.
> 
> There is a line of reasoning, which I subscribe to, that all of those
> options really aren't needed, and that there are human factors
> reasons to prefer prefix lengths on nibble (hex digit) boundaries.
> Not that allocations like 192.0.2.20/30 are impossible to grok -
> they're not - but if we have the opportunity to simplify things, why
> not?
> 
> One comment that comes to mind is a recent conversation with my son.
> He works for a company that makes radio-controlled model airplanes,
> the kind that have a 66 foot wingspan and shoot missiles. The planes
> are full of computers, and no they don't ask the DNS root to
> translate names. If you're in one of those computers and need to talk
> with another one, you need to know its IP address. So he is used to
> being in computer A and logging into computer B as 192.0.2.17 or
> whatever.
> 
> He and I spoke a few weeks about, and he asked "Dad, when you guys
> were designing IPv6, did you think at all about how LONG those
> addresses were?"
> 
> ta-dum!
> 
> Now ask yourself about being in my daughter's network (women enter
> her home as the girl-next-door and leave beautiful), telling her that
> she can use anything she likes in 2001:0db8:2775:1234/62, and having
> her notice that the address of something or another is
> 2001:0db8:2775:1235... In IPv4, I said "deal with it, you have to be
> somewhat technical". In IPv6, I would like to not have to go there.
> It's not her expertise, and she doesn't ask me to cut/color her hair
> either.
> 
> So, yes, I tend to think that the common rabble should deal with
> addresses that break on nibble boundaries.

As I observed not so long ago at a v6ops wg meeting. having your your
foo object (in the case described a point to point link) aligned on
octet or nibble boundaries makes them way easier to read. have a few
thousands 126 or 127 prefixes in a row and it kind of looks like fruit
salad.

Just because the robots don't have trouble with it doesn't mean the
humans  shouldn't be accommodated.

> That has nothing to do with RIRs or service providers, mind you; they
> are often "somewhat technical". Within their networks I expect them
> to do what makes sense to them, and I regard myself more as their
> student than their teacher... 
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