Re: IID length text [was Re: Review of draft-ietf-6man-rfc4291bis-06]

Brian,

what's the specific rationale for this change? Is it a bug in 4291 which
you're proposing that we resolve in 4291 bis? If so, what is the bug?

The "interface identifiers are 64 bits" long text in RFC 4291 goes back all
the way to 1998 and the text below would be a major change to text that has
likely been baked into implementations for almost two decades years. I
don't see why we would change that now.

BTW: if the reason for the text is a perceived contradiction between the
fact that "IIDs are 64 bits" and "IPv6 addresses are aggregatable on all
bit lengths" - I don't see a contradiction. In general, IPv6 addresses are
aggregatable on all bit lengths. But global unicast addresses (other than
::/3) have a 64-bit IID, so links in that space are assigned 64-bit prefix
lengths. These two properties can coexist even in global unicast space. For
example, you could load-balance traffic to a given global unicast /64 by
announcing it to the backbone as two /65s. The "addresses are aggregatable
on all bit lengths" text means that the /65 are valid prefixes that can be
routed by routers.

Cheers,
Lorenzo

On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 4:49 AM, Brian E Carpenter <
brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com> wrote:

> NEW
>    IPv6 routing is based on prefixes of any valid length up to 128
> [BCP198].
>    For example, [RFC6164] standardises 127 bit  prefixes on point-to-point
>    links. However, consistent use of Stateless Address Autoconfiguration
>    (SLAAC)[RFC4862] requires that all interfaces on a link use the same
> length
>    of Interface ID. In practice, this means that to guarantee
> interoperability
>    of SLAAC, a fixed length of Interface ID is necessary. For all currently
>    allocated unicast addresses, except those that start with the binary
>    value 000, that length is 64 bits. Note that this value is an arbitrary
>    choice and might be changed for some future allocation of unicast
> address
>    space. Background on the 64 bit boundary in IPv6 addresses can be found
>    in [RFC7421].
>
> Regards
>    Brian
>
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