[ppml] 2005-1 status

[Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com]

> On one side, if we do allow PI addressing to get out of hand, current
> routing technology cannot scale to support it, and, the internet will
> be incapable of maintaining a routing infrastructure. 

That's an exaggeration. You are assuming that ARIN will
give out PI addresses randomly. Since policy is not yet
cast in stone, this is not yet a valid assumption. People
have suggested that such PI allocations be made out of
a DESIGNATED BLOCK so that tools can distinguish PI addresses
from normal IPv6 address blocks.

If ARIN were to further ensure that these PI allocations
could be aggregated by city or LATA then the scaling
impact can be mitigated by aggregation of many small routes
into one larger prefix for each city or LATA. Network
operators will then only need to keep detail for PI users
in the same city or LATA.


Note that this is very much like geo-topological addressing
on a regional (single RIR) scale. And we can do it today by
making the appropriate ARIN policy.

> A non-functional
> internet or one in which some significant portion of addresses are
> unreachable or unstable does not serve the end user or provider
> constituencies.  This is the extreme of one side of this issue, and,
> the source of most of the anti-PI statements.

ARIN has never guaranteed the routability of address prefixes.

--Michael Dillon