[ppml] Get you IPv6 Today, lets update the policy

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

> But not everyone is an ISP under those terms.  I'm certainly
> interested in deploying IPv6.  But my upstream is currently not
> so interested.  They will be eventually, and I do in fact have
> substantial influence, but that would be based greatly on my own
> tests of how well things work out (tunneled for starters, obviously).

So start out by using site-local IPv6 addresses and get some routable 
addresses from a tunnel broker site like the one at Hurricane Electric 
http://www.he.net/news/article2.html

Then when you get a local connection from your ISP you can simply 
renumber. And don't try to complain about the pain of renumbering because 
I won't accept that argument. In fact I *WANT* you to suffer that pain if 
there is any. That's how you will learn how easy (or hard) it is to 
renumber using IPv6. 

>What's not clear is whether the address space I might be able to get
>will be the permanent space.

You don't need permanent space. IPv6 is not IPv4 with more bits. 

>I'm really not interested in that level of "experimentation".  I'd
>rather be doing in in "learning mode" instead of "research mode".
>I want to make the commitment to move forward, and do what I can to
>make it happen.  But that won't happen for me with 6bone.

Any IPv6 connection to the IPv6 Internet will let you operate in learning 
mode. Whether it is a 6bone connection or a native local connection is 
irrelevant.

>The funny thing is, I've done some much work to squeeze as much as I can
>out of IPv4 space, that I don't see make 200 /48 assignments ... ever.
>And I certainly won't state otherwise.

200 households is not very much for an ISP to hook up. One single 
household connection takes up a /48. Remember that IPv6 is not just IPv4 
with more bits. Any site that will have two or more IPv6 devices is a 
network and therefore that site will use a /48. Forget the IPv4 practice 
of counting the number of devices on a subnet and rounding up to the 
nearest power of 2. That is obsolete with v6.

> The kind of services I focus on now don't justify it.  But I still need
> portable space.  The problem is there is still discontinuity in what
> much of IPv6 is supposed to be about (at least as I saw it) and what
> ARIN policy is.

Why do you need "portable" space. In fact, please define what "portable" 
space is because I don't understand. Assuming that you are using DNS, if 
you switch IPv6 providers just add your new providers addresses to your 
network and to your DNS. When you switch off the old provider then just 
remove their addresses an run only with the new ones. Don't try to tell me 
that this won't work because you don't know that because you haven't tried 
to do it yet. The only way that we know this doesn't work with v4 is 
because people *DID* try it and they learned through experience. If you 
want to learn v6 properly then you have to set up the experiences and then 
live through them. After a year you will be a grizzled veteran and will 
truly understand what v6 can and cannot do.

>I don't even need a /48 for all that I expect to be doing.  That's just 
huge.

Bah! A /48 is puny. I would use one of those for my aunt Mabel's house and 
another one for my granny's. Who cares if I'm wasting 99.78% of the 
addresses in each /48? It's simply not relevant because there are lots 
more /48's where those ones came from.

> What I do need down the road is portability and multi-homing.  I thought
> IPv6 would be enabling that.  If that's not so, then I have zero 
incentive
> to deploy IPv6.

There are some subtle nuances to the term "multihoming" that many people 
are not aware of. IPv6 has always supported multihoming in the sense that 
a device interface can have many addresses at the same time to communicate 
on the physical link, within the site, within the organizational boundary 
and with the world through one or more upstream network providers. But 
this is not done with BGP multihoming. To understand it better you really 
should try it out and experience it for yourself.

There just aren't enough IPv6 experts in existence to produce the kind of 
documentation and training tips that we are used to in the v4 world. At 
this point in time you need to grit your teeth, accept that you are a 
pioneer, and forge ahead no matter what the obstacles are. Since there are 
no complete maps of the territory, you need to keep your eyes open, 
explore the v6 possibilities and maybe you will become a future fount of 
wisdom on IPv6.

-- Michael Dillon