[ipv6-wg] New version (or followup) of RIPE-501 document...

On 6/21/11 8:08 AM, Ivan Pepelnjak wrote:
>> From the "outside" perspective, a load-balanced service implemented
>> with one or more redundant load balancers _MUST_ look like an IPv4
>> _OR_ an IPv6 address (where OR is not exclusive, but AND is not
>> strictly necessary) distributing sessions to IPv4 or IPv6 inside
>> nodes. It _SHOULD_ be able distribute sessions arriving to an
>> outside address (IPv4 or IPv6) to a mixed cluster of IPv4 _AND_
>> IPv6 addresses.

Hi,

OK, we need to get out to the mailinglist next revision od RIPE-501 
followup document somewhere in next week.

LB spec is the thing, that is not done yet, as there are N+1 opinions (N 
being the number of people I talk to about this matter :) )

Are there any RFCs describing the above requirements?

Question is - how "deep" we need to go with the mandatory part of the 
spec? As far as network is concerned, LB is a host that receives 
connections and magically re-distributes them to end hosts. It's not a 
router and it breaks end2end.

How to specify that? :)

>
> How a LB device implements its magic (L4 passthrough with NAT, L4
> termination, L7 proxy, whatever other tricks) is irrelevant (and
> seems there are no "obvious" RFCs documenting it). What is MANDATORY
> is that it supports connections from IPv6 clients to IPv4 and/or IPv6
> servers and from IPv4 clients to IPv4 and/or IPv6 servers (see last
> sentence in the previous paragraph) to enable all possible migration
> scenarios.

So this looks like "host" spec could be the starting point of new spec?

>
> However, I would recommend that for 6-to-4 functionality, we
> _RECOMMEND_ the load balancer adheres to the RFC6146 (stateful NAT64)
> - we should discourage (but not forbid) vendors from doing homebrew
> 6-to-4 translation when a standard exists specifying how to do it.

We could put all *NAT* and L4+ stuff in optional requirements. Probably 
the goal is to describe IPv6 load balancer, that would work in IPv6 only 
environment and IPv6 only clients and servers. Am I wrong?

All this "put the balancer to serve v6 clients from v4 servers" rubbish 
makes this task nearly impossible.

>
> On the IPv6 protocol side, the very minimum requirement is adherence
> to IPv6 host behavior. Some LB designs work without significant
> support for routing - single inside and outside /64 with RA-generated
> default route on the outside - or they could support some routing
> protocols. Those should (in my opinion) be made _OPTIONAL_.

So, "host" with added some routing options.

>
> Oh, and I never claimed I know anything about load balancers, so I
> might be totally wrong ;) Ivan

We know you ;)

Cheers, /jan