[ppml] Provider Independence???

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

> Provider independence is a BIG IMPORTANT factor to a lot of 
organizations
> in the community.

What on earth is provider independence?

Does it mean that a company wants to be their
own network provider? Probably not because then
they would have to haul fiber (or lightwaves) to
every business partner. Of course, a few companies
actually will go this far because there are lots 
of IRUs and lightpaths available, especially in
metro areas. But that's not the core meaning.

Seems to me that it means that a company wants
their network addressing to be independent of the
provider from whom they are buying Internet connectivity
so that they can switch providers without incurring
internal cost penalties that arise from reconfiguring
a network.

If that is what we are talking about, then we have
a company who is in one physical location and they
want addresses that identify that same physical location
regardless of which network operator provides the
last mile connection. This sounds very geographical
to me. If ARIN had allocated a block of IPv6
addresses to be used only for locations in Sacramento
then Ford could switch providers at will as long as
those providers maintain a connection to a local 
Sacramento peering point.

These would be provider independent (PI) addresses
that stay with Ford Sacramento forever. In New York
we will never see this PI block in the routing tables
because it will be part of the Western USA aggregate.
In Denver, we won't see it either because it will be
part of the Northern California regional aggregate.
In Los Angeles, it will only be visible in the network
that won the bid for connecting all the Ford dealerships
in California. That's because they want to route it
internally on their fiber route that goes to SF via
Sacramento rather than the main undersea fiber route
that was lit two years ago in 2009.

Doesn't this scenario make some kind of sense?
Isn't it worth pursuing this class of solution to
make sure that there are LOTS of PI address blocks
available in v6?

--Michael Dillon

P.S. Apologies to Ford for singling them out but 
I really do think I have a better idea here.