Subject: Re: Limiting the Use of Site-Local

From: Tim Hartrick <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 19:09:55 -0800 (PST)

Keith,

> 
> > and providing the great
> > IPv6 applications which their customers want but that break in the presence
> > of site-local addresses.  
> 
> this part makes no sense.   applications that don't work under such 
> conditions don't get deployed very far - and people never get to use them.
> 

No, you just missed the point.  Compelling applications that don't work
with site-local addresses will render the use of site-local addresses extinct.  
Customers that pay money will guarantee that, as long as there are no other
reasons to be using site-local addresses (address scarcity, renumbering not
working etc.).  I am willing to believe that such applications will exist and
that the other issues which would drive the NAT'ification of IPv6 can be
overcome.  But I am not willing to bet the farm on it and have to reinvent
IPv6 RFC 1918 after the fact and police up all the mess that has been created
in the interim by system administrators that allocated chunks of global address
space that they didn't own.  We need to have a viable alternative to site-
local addresses rather than hanging our hat on puritanical proscriptions which
are going to be ignored unless the problems are solved (renumbering, address
scarcity, etc.).  No such alternative has been proposed and achieved consensus.

Tim Hartrick
Mentat Inc.
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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 23:57:35 -0500

> with site-local addresses will render the use of site-local addresses extinct.  

no, *you* just missed the point.  those apps never have a chance to prove 
their worth if the network is hostile to them.

>  I am willing to believe that such applications will exist and
> space that they didn't own.  

And *I'm* not willing to bet the farm by having SLs widely used based on 
vague claims and no evidence that they're actually useful and won't cause harm.
Perhaps they're actually useful for something, but I know from firsthand
experience that they cause harm and that the problems aren't easily solved.

> We need to have a viable alternative to site-local addresses rather than 
> hanging our hat on puritanical proscriptions which are going to be ignored 
> unless the problems are solved (renumbering, address scarcity, etc.).  

I'm fully in agreement that we have to solve these problems.
(though I don't think "address scarcity" is a good description 
of the problem I think you're describing - I had very little trouble 
getting /48 of stable,global IPv6 space for my home network using 6to4)

> No such alternative has been proposed and achieved consensus.

well, we don't have consensus on SL being a solution to anything either,
except address allocation for isolated networks; nor do we have a consensus
that SL is worth the cost imposed for applications.

so we have several recognized problems with no consensus on any solutions.

and something tells me we're not going to be able to solve the problems 
until we face reality about the limitaitons of not only SLs but also about
of our current ideas about address allocation and renumbering.

so if the problem is that people don't want to abandon SLs because we
haven't found any other solutions to those problems yet (even when SLs
don't actually solve some of those problems either), maybe it would 
help to get conesnsus that those other problems exist?

Keith