Re: Happy St Nicholas Day: Re-Launching the IPv6 ULA registry

[Nico Schottelius <[e-mail]>]

Good evening Lorenzo,

Lorenzo Colitti <[e-mail]> writes:

> Nico,
>
> This seems a bit misguided for several reasons.
>
> First, registries are supposed to be authoritative databases, but the RFC
> specifies that ULA addresses are generated pseudo-randomly. Therefore, if a
> pseudo-randomly allocated address conflicts with something in the registry,
> the registry should be deemed incorrect.

In this regard I somewhat disagree: From my point of view no ULA
registry will ever be fully authoritative, because the networks are not
intended to be used on the Internet.

Indeed, we are even considering to intentionally allow double
registration. The motivation behind this is that due to its
non-authoritative state any ULA database can only have indicative
character. As such a registration (from my point of view says):

   "Hey, I am using xx/48. It would be great if you don't intentionally
   start using it."

> Another problem is: the prefixes in the registry have to be unique because
> that's what ULAs are. But I bet there are duplicates right now. For
> example, I'm pretty sure more than one network in the world is using
> fd00::/48 right now.

fd00::/48 is actually an example entry created during the Hackathon,
which led us to implement the random generation instead as the primary
option instead of focussing on submission of existing prefixes.

> In fact, I just configured it on my network, so if
> there was no duplicate before, there is one now. :-)

With that argument even GUA is not GUA - I can also configure 2600::/32
or even 2001:db8::/32 in my network, it does not make me "own" 2600::/32
nor remove the documentation character from 2001:db8::/32.

> Lots of other problems, of course, such as: what happens if someone else
> launches a similar registry? And so on.

If someone else launches a similar registry, we are open for (automatic)
exchanges. As a matter of fact: if anyone else is interested in, I would
recommend to use our source code so it will be an easier basis to
exchanges data later.

Best regards,

Nico

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