IPv6 addresses for Exchange Points

Hi Wilfried,

a few comments:

On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 02:23:30PM +0200, Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet wrote:
[..]
> =On Mon, May 07, 2001 at 05:35:11PM +0200, Mirjam Kuehne wrote:
> => An Internet Exchange Point was defined as follows:
> => 
> => 3 or more ASes and 3 or more separate entities attached to a LAN (the
> => same infrastructure) for the purpose of peering and more are welcome
> => to join.
> =
> =I suggest to change the wording to "a common layer 2 infrastructure"
> =- an exchange point might be some distributed thing peering over an
> =ATM/FR cloud or a SRP/DTP ring, which isn't really a "LAN".  Policy 
> =should not be tied to special implementation techniques.
> 
>   From a technical point of view, I fully support your suggestion.
> 
>   From an administrative point of view, I'd re-iterate that nobody is
>   going to be able to define an IX, much like we agreed eventually that we
>   would never succeed in defining an ISP.

Yes, we'll never be able to define with 100% perfection "this is an IX 
and that is not".

With Randys definition, we have something that should suffice to include
all forms of IXes, and maybe some other things that are not IXes in the
strict sense.  This is why I added the remark about "ok, we will waste
addresses on 'them' - but there's so much address space, so what".

*I* don't think we have a problem here, but yes, we need community
consensus here.

[..]
>   Talking to folks at one IX (close by :-) and listening to suggestions as
>   to why this approach is useful, I am having problems with the assumption
>   that any such IX would remain confined to a *single* subnet.

This was not part of the proposal :-) - it was "if they have only one
subnet, give 'em a /64, of not, give 'em a /48".

There is a point about interconnection between those subnets - yes, that
should not be necessary (if they are at L2 interconnected, one /64 will
suffice, if at L3 or not at all, handing out multiple /64s is just not
worth the effort - IMHO).

[..]
>   What is going to happen here is the creation of a TWD/PI environment.
>   And I do not claim that this is bad i itself, btw.
>   Just face the fact up front.

Yes.  This is why...

> >So I'd suggest another thing: add to this a big warning that this 
> >space is not "PI" (whatever that means) and that it is very likely that
> >it will never be routeable world-wide.  This should stop people wanting
> >to use such space for something different than an exchange point from 
> >applying for it.
> 
>   Why do we expect the v6-world to be different from the v4-world, in the
>   sense that it is the ISPs and the folks dealing with the routing layer
>   who decide about acceptiong routes, and *not* the address registries?

There is no difference, but we can avoid making one mistake, that has
been mentioned in the "PI" discussion: if a RIR hands out a chunk of
addresses, it is kind of "sanctioned" (because what good would that
subnet be if not routeable?).  Nobody has ever said "because this is
official PI, it will work", but people expect it to work nonetheless.

So this is why I think the warning label would do good: it might make
sure that this is *really* only meant as "multi-site-local" address
space and not to be routed on the whole net (which might work, or might
not, but it's not meant for that).

> PS: btw, who is going to do revDNS for those prefixes?

The IX themself - RIPE could delegate RR-DNS at /48 or /64 boundaries.

Gert Doering
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