[38] in SIPB IPv6
Re: IPv6 coordination
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Noah Meyerhans)
Fri Aug 2 17:05:52 2002
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 17:05:44 -0400
From: Noah Meyerhans <noahm@lcs.mit.edu>
To: Ken Raeburn <raeburn@MIT.EDU>
Cc: sipbv6@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <tx1znw671y9.fsf@mit.edu>
> > After seeing some of the other pTLA allocations on the 6bone mailing
> > list I'd say that this is no trouble for us, regardless of JIS'
> > involvent. As it is, I consider the server I mentioned above to be
> > production quality and I consider its IPv6 connectivity to be nearly as
> > critical as its IPv4 connectivity.
>
> Sure, we want production quality support for on-campus systems. But
> is a pTLA required to provide tunnels to anyone in the network
> neighborhood who asks? I'm not saying it would be a bad thing for us
> to do, I just think we should make sure before commiting to doing it
> with "production quality" support.
No, I don't see anything in RFC 2772 ("6Bone Backbone Routing
Guidelines") that indicates that a pTLA must accept tunnel requests, or
that it must "advertise" a willingness to do so. It's stated that a
site wishing to join the 6bone should contact an existing pTLA and ask
for a tunnel, but nowhere does it say that the pTLA has to so yes.
> >> a) support staff of two (preferably three) persons registered in the
> >> ipv6-site object info - Bill's the only one I saw in the registry
> >> when I checked; I might be willing to be a second, if I can get up
> >> to speed a little more on bgp4+ peering etc
> >
> > I'd be happy to register as a contact.
>
> That'd make three... Though I'm not sure if it'd be a good idea if we
> can't get you access to the v6 router in W20, and I don't think that's
Do you mean limekiller, or is there another IPv6 router?
> >> So what's the benefit of getting a pTLA over our current arrangement?
> > Well, we'd have our own provider-independant address space, right?
>
> Thus side-stepping the whole problem of doing routing better by making
> everyone advertise our address block? Sounds like more of our IPv4
> situation -- owning a way bigger chunk of the address space than we
> need and making everyone advertise it, because we can.
Remember that pTLAs are purely experimental and that the 6bone itself
with dissolve once the mainstream adoption of IPv6 reaches some
yet-to-be-determined critical mass. When it comes time for MIT to
officially aquire IPv6 address space from ARIN, then somebody with
official delegation will have to assess the addressing needs of the
institute. Until then, pTLAs and the 6bone exist to allow sites to
develop a working knowledge of IPv6 routing and to uncover potential
issues that will need to be addressed before IPv6 can be deployed
outside the experimental community.
Besides, when the RFCs require point-to-point IPv6 links to have their
own /64 prefix (see RFC 2373), a pTLA for MIT really doesn't seem like a
huge allocation. When non-ISPs like Microsoft and Nokia can get a pTLA,
I see no reason that it should be considered excessive for us to have
one.
noah
--
Noah Meyerhans
Computer Resource Services, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
