Subject: RE: I-D ACTION:draft-narten-ipv6-iana-considerations-00.txt

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 08:58:54 -0700

Thomas,

> Thomas Narten wrote:
> The intent of the "documentation prefix" is not for
> describing new protocols. Presumably, documents defining
> new protocols can give examples as they see fit (in IDs),
> and if the ID gets published as an RFC, any addresses
> needed would presumably be allocated (or something). Not
> something we need to worry about here.

I will point out that there is a fine line between hijacking a prefix
for development/documentation purposes and hijacking it on the 6bone or
even on a production network, and we have seen in the past that this
line could be crossed. The point I was trying to make is that the
documentation prefix would be a prime candidate for the bogon list, and
if it's big enough it would also be what new protocol developers would
use in the initial phase, and possibly avoid some hijacking.

That being said and as I mentioned before something slightly bigger than
a /32 would be ok, but I would rather have a /24 as Marc mentioned.

Michel.

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 17:00:27 -0400

On the size of the prefix to allocate for documentation.

In IPv4, the following is reserved per RFC 3330.

>    192.0.2.0/24 - This block is assigned as "TEST-NET" for use in
>    documentation and example code.  It is often used in conjunction with
>    domain names example.com or example.net in vendor and protocol
>    documentation.  Addresses within this block should not appear on the
>    public Internet.

This is far less than is needed (strictly speaking) to document usages
that require shorter prefixes. But I'm not aware of this being a
problem in practice.

I think what we want here is a workable balance between no addresses
for documentation at all and allocating too much space in order to
document all possibilities.

"Michel Py" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Then a /32 is not enough, IMHO. A /32 is the size currently allocated to
> LIRs; imagine a sample BGP config that involves three LIRs, you would
> need at least three /32s. A /30 would be what I consider the bare
> minimum in this case.

But can't the same then be said for a 192.0.2.0/24 not being long
enough in IPv4?

Thomas