Re: A 3rd try at a proposal for draft-ietf-6man-rfc4291bis-07

[Fred Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Mar 6, 2017, at 7:18 PM, Lorenzo Colitti <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I can't help fill in the [...] because I personally don't see what you can do with a /113 that you can't do with a /64 (other than conserve addresses, which has always been a non-goal), but there seem to be several participants who do see a problem. What I'm saying is that if we want to change the standard, the people who see a problem with it should articulate that problem in a way that it's possible to find a solution using informed and documented engineering trade-offs rather than opinions.

</hat>

As you know, I'm not in favor of a standard IID or prefix length. If a given algorithm, SLAAC, requires it, so be it where it is in use (not that this this is a statement of probability, it's a statement of network addressing policy). Of a network chooses to do something different in the absence of that limitation, I understand the Internet Architecture to give it that latitude and the authority to impose an address allocation mechanism and policy.

That said, ...

The argument I have heard for serial lines is that, with high probability, if there are more than 2^1 addresses on a link, selecting a random address for one's peer has a high confidence of selecting an address the peer isn't using, resulting in an ICMP error instead of a response. That, assuming I understand it, is the fundamental argument behind /127. Reduced to simpler terms - if the environment makes assumptions, the addressing should make the same assumptions. 

RFCs in context:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3627
3627 Use of /127 Prefix Length Between Routers Considered Harmful. P.
     Savola. September 2003. (Format: TXT=12436 bytes) (Obsoleted by
     RFC6547) (Status: HISTORIC) (DOI: 10.17487/RFC3627)

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6164
6164 Using 127-Bit IPv6 Prefixes on Inter-Router Links. M. Kohno, B.
     Nitzan, R. Bush, Y. Matsuzaki, L. Colitti, T. Narten. April 2011.
     (Format: TXT=16057 bytes) (Updated by RFC6547) (Status: PROPOSED
     STANDARD) (DOI: 10.17487/RFC6164)

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6547
6547 RFC 3627 to Historic Status. W. George. February 2012. (Format:
     TXT=4917 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC3627) (Updates RFC6164) (Status:
     INFORMATIONAL) (DOI: 10.17487/RFC6547)