Re: [v6ops] Operational Consensus on deployment

[Tore Anderson <[e-mail]>]

* Fred Baker (fred)

> I’m copying Tore, because I think
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-anderson-siit-dc might very well be
> that “practical translation solution” for at least some environments.
> For an enclosed environment such as a data center, it enables the
> implementation of an IPv6-only environment, maintains IPv4 access to
> it, and maintains geolocation capabilities across that translation.
> At the point where the business requirement for IPv4 accessibility
> falls off, the translator simply becomes a vestigial capability, as
> opposed to requiring a dramatic and costly change. That seems pretty
> attractive. I’d invite discussion on that and on the draft (which is
> long expired, but Tore could resurrect it as
> draft-anderson-v6ops-siit-dc if he wanted to). If it now has a
> consensus behind it, publish as an RFC.

Eerily good timing... I just started working on this again today, as it
happens. What I'm looking at now is two drafts, the one that's already
there for a single-translation network-only implementation, plus another
one describing an extension very similar to 464XLAT that would allow
NAT-incompatible and/or IPv4-only applications to be used in an
otherwise IPv6-only data centre.

However one of the things I was unsure about when I initially submitted
the draft was which WG was the most appropriate (sunset4 or v6ops).
Following the off-list discussion you, Marc, and I had back in November
2013, I thought the conclusion was sunset4. But now I see you saying
v6ops, so, uhm, now I'm no more certain than I initially was...

I'm in two minds about it, myself. The draft doesn't really describe
IPv6 operations per se, it deals more with the minimal backwards
compatibility glue necessary to provide service to IPv4 only users.
Score 1 for sunset4. On the other hand, an operator that wants to do
IPv6 today absolutely must have some form of IPv4 compatibility glue for
his offering to be commercially viable, thus, 1-1.

Tore