Re: [v6ops] PI [ULA draft revision #2 Regarding isolated networks]

[Owen DeLong <[e-mail]>]

On May 30, 2014, at 16:44 , Fred Baker (fred) <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> On May 30, 2014, at 5:57 AM, t.petch <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> So, Brian is spot on, and just as the IETF did little about IPv4
>> addresses running out until the event loomed large, so I expect history
>> to repeat itself with the growth of PI in IPv6.
> 
> Which is something we have pointed out for quite some time, and tried to advocate the use of PA prefixes for, but had issues with people saying “why, when PI space is $50/prefix?”

Advocating PA is not solving the problem, it's building in limitations on the end-user instead of solving the problem.

> Now, there are multiple problems with PA prefixes, not the least of which is that 8+8/ILNP/whatever has not been adopted, so PA basically moves complexity to the edge network without giving it a way to deal with it.

It's more than that. It also creates an unpleasant kind of fate sharing between end-site and ISP as well as some vendor-lockin problems. Bottom line, for many end-sites, PA is an acceptable tradeoff, but it is desirable to none. PI is universally better for the end-site, but requires an as yet unspecified solution to the scalability of the routing table.

People aren't just adopting PI because it's cheap. They're adopting PI because it is better suited to their needs than PA.

While PA is not nearly as damaging as NAT, it's just as anachronistic at this point and we really should be trying to find a solution that allows us to move on.

Owen