Re: [v6ops] A good example of why we need to careful about ULAs

[Owen DeLong <[e-mail]>]

On May 30, 2013, at 2:23 PM, Mark Smith <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Lorenzo Colitti <[e-mail]>
>> To: Mark Smith <[e-mail]> 
>> Cc: "[e-mail] WG" <[e-mail]>; "[e-mail]" <[e-mail]> 
>> Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013 7:07 PM
>> Subject: Re: [v6ops] A good example of why we need to careful about ULAs
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Mark Smith <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> In the early news, not really a new problem.
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The part where an RFC asserts says that we can generate globally unique addresses with no global coordination is a new problem. Yes, in theory it works, but in practice it doesn't, because everyone ends up using fd00:: - because that's the way it worked in IPv4, and ULA is just RFC1918 all over again, right?
>> 
> 
> I don't agree with trying to create a registry for the non-centrally assigned ULAs (because I think those people probably think they now own that prefix), however here is quite a list to show that a lot of people from a variety of organisations get that ULAs aren't set to fd00::/8
> 
> http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/list/
> 

Not exactly.. It's a list of people that thought the newest pez dispenser on the internet might be fun to play with for a little while. Some of them may actually be using the ULAs as described in the list. Most probably aren't.

I think I even appear in that list once or twice. I guarantee you I'm not using any ULAs at this time.

>> If as an operational group we publish guidance to operators that doesn't work in the real world (like the pref64 case above), it will be embarrassing for us and wasteful of operators' time. We should strive to do better than that.
>> 
>> 
> 
> Ok. So then a follow up question is how to provide perhaps more tutorial oriented information? RFCs, quite reasonably, provide enough information to justify what is proposed, and usually one use case, but not all of them. That may not be enough information for more of a novice fully understand the problem that is being solved, the variety of opportunities to use it, and the pros and cons of the use of what is proposed in those scenarios. I haven't thought v6ops was just a place to document what has been done, but rather to document any topics related to operations, including advice and more information on how things invented here and in other IPv6 working groups could be used.

RFCs which document standards follow the format you describe. Informational RFCs, OTOH, can be more tutorial in nature and I don't really see much value in this one if it is not.

Owen