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Re: Last Call: <draft-bonica-special-purpose-03.txt> (Special-Purpose Address Registries) to Best Current Practice

2012-12-03 17:25:40

On 04/12/2012, at 9:30 AM, Ronald Bonica <rbonica(_at_)juniper(_dot_)net> wrote:

Geoff, Randy,

Having reflected on your comments, I think that the two of you may be 
approaching the same problem from two directions. I will try my best to 
articulate the problem. When we agree that we have a common understanding of 
the problem, we can decide whether to fix draft-bonica or abandon it.

Geoff points out that each of the entries mentioned in draft-bonica can be 
characterized as one of the following:

- a special purpose address assignment
- a address reservation

All compliant IP implementations must respect special purpose address 
assignments. As Randy puts it, special purpose address assignments should be 
baked into IP stacks. 

However, the same is not true of address reservations. While operators may 
afford special treatment to packets that are sourced from or destined to 
reserved addresses, these treatments should not be baked into IP 
implementations. They should be configurable.

Currently, there is nothing in draft-bonica that distinguishes between 
special purpose address assignments and address reservations. If we were to 
continue with this draft, we would have to add a field that makes this 
distinction. Having added that field, we should also make clear that that 
field, and only that field, determines whether an address should be baked 
into IP stacks?

Randy, Geoff, have I restated the problem accurately?



I'd use the opposite terminology. e.g.:

  - I regard 0.0.0.0/8 as a "reservation", and should be baked into IP stacks

  - I regard 192.88.99.0/24 as a "special purpose assignment" and is 
configurable by IP stacks.

In IPv4 my understanding of the current set of "reservations" are:

  0.0.0.0/8
  127.0.0.0/8
  169.254.0.0/16
  224.0.0.0/4
  240.0.0.0/4

All others I would see as being special purpose assignments, given that they do 
not require special baked-in treatment by IP stacks.

My personal preference would be to: 

--  record all special purpose assignments in a special purpose assignment 
registry, such as 
http://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-ipv4-special-registry/iana-ipv4-special-registry.xml
 for Ipv4


-- record all reservations in the address protocol registry, such as 
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xml for 
Ipv4


regards,

   Geoff