John Kristoff wrote:
Tony,
[ Posting this to the main ietf list as well as to you directly in case
you don't see it there. I realize this may be a controversial topic
that results in an endless thread of heated arguments, but I'll take
my chances since I'm curious to hear reasons for or against the draft. ]
I must have missed it the first time it came around last year, but I
just saw your draft. I didn't find much discussion on the -00 version
so I hope this is the best place to discuss it. Can you clarify some
things for me? You say this:
A number of organizations have expanded their autonomous private
networks to the point of exhausting the address space identified in
RFC 1918, in addition to the publicly routed space that has been
assigned to them.
Are there public pointers to discussion about the requirement for new
private IPv4 space? I'd be particularly interested in specific
organizations that are having this problem if they have been willing
to come forward publicly.
I was recruited to carry the message specifically because they do not want
public criticism of their business practices.
I'd also be interested to hear what about
policies for acquiring space from the registries has been unreasonable.
Is it cost, address usage justification, both or something else?
All of the above. The basic RIR argument is 'use private space for things
that are not explicitly public'. This sounds like a reasonable position
until the available private space becomes inadequate. Then if an
organization still needs space, a large block of public space comes with
hefty assumptions about cost recovery models that are not always valid.
Your first example mentions /21 netblocks being allocated to each of
5000 sites. Sounds like there is probably a lot going to waste,
They got there when they found they had a bunch of discontiguous /24s and
figured that cidr-izing them would be the best path forward.
but
I'm not that interested in criticizing the specific addressing plan of
the organization.
Maybe you are not, but every time the general topic has come up there has
been a small army chomping at the bit to tear into every last wasted address
as an example of why this is not necessary. Unfortunately they do not have
to deal with the operational and cost implications of squeezing every last
drop of blood out of the address pool.
I know how much of pain it is to try to maximally
utilize address space. I am curious if the scale of this addressing
scenario is unique to the draft's example or if it is happening at a
"number of organizations" as seems to be implied.
Well it was sent to the I-D editor several weeks ago, but I just left a
Cisco office last week where I was having all kinds of routing problems
because we are internally using 9.x (IBM) for an array of stuff because 1918
is just inadequate. This is not intended to say the practice is widespread,
but nat is so insidious that there is no way to know how often that practice
is occurring. It even shows up in organizations that understand the
consequences.
I guess one point of this is, if it's relatively uncommon except for
a small number of the very largest of organizations in the world, it
would seem to make more sense to exhaust all attempts at obtaining
public address space.
There is a fundamental policy clash. Much as the IETF doesn't like to hear
it there are people that really, really use private space for things they
never intend to have publicly routed. That is all well and good as long as
the protocol elite release sufficient address space for this use. We had it
well under control in IPv6 until they realized that someone might actually
use local addresses, and now the replacement ULA space is unable to be
published as it is dragging out in an interminable discuss state.
Especially since if the organization does move
to IPv6, or simply just goes away, it's allocated address space can be
more easily reclaimed and redeployed than private address space could
be.
It is long past time to get over any thoughts about reclaiming IPv4 space.
It will never happen. No organization is going to give up any they have
until we are well past the point where anyone cares about getting more.
IPv4 has reached the point of success/failure and is a dead end protocol.
The IETF just refuses to recognize the zombie for what it is and move on. I
tried to get Harald to make closing all IPv4 work his last act but so far he
has not taken up the opportunity.
Finally, I'm also wondering if there is anything political driving this
solution that has not yet been put into the draft. For example, I can
imagine some well funded, large organization not wanting to have their
name on a specific public /8. You don't have to say you, just wink
blink twice for yes, once for no. :-)
Joint authorship of the document is open to any organization willing to put
their name on it. Given the history of the jackals lying in wait though I
seriously doubt any will take the offer because their legal or public
affairs departments will step in. As far as motivations, I see a problem
that needs fixing and a way to solve it. If others have different
motivations they are free to do so.
There may be other ways to solve this like relaxing the criterion on use of
public space, but it really doesn't matter in the long run because IPv4 is
effectively finished. It is inadequate for serious large scale deployments
even now, and as the number of network attached appliances continues to
drive up the number of addresses in use per person the problem only becomes
more acute. The only reason to bother with a 1918bis is to give these large
networks sufficient time to move to IPv6 without doing the dumb thing we
have done here at internally Cisco and just hijack someone else's public /8.
Tony
John
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