Re: IPv6 Formal Anycast Addresses and Functional Anycast Addresses (Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-smith-6man-form-func-anycast-addresses-01.txt)

[Nick Hilliard <[e-mail]>]

Mark Smith wrote on 03/11/2019 11:46:
> I think there are advantages to having a formal IPv6 anycast address
> class and space. For example, similar to multicast addresses, it could
> be very useful to be able to look at an address and immediately know
> it is an anycast address.

Mark,

multicast addresses have different protocol characteristics to unicast / 
anycast, so it's not really valid to draw a comparison between the two.

Regarding your draft, an addressing schema is a supporting part of a 
protocol requirement, and if you create an addressing schema without a 
corresponding protocol different, you're putting the cart before the horse.

If you create an anycast protocol which has characteristics which are 
sufficiently different to unicast that it requires a separate addressing 
schema, then by all means it would be appropriate to create an 
addressing schema to fit in with this.  The determinant here would be 
that global unicast addresses would not be usable for this protocol. 
Until then, a separate address block is mostly a matter of aesthetics.

Nick