[routing-wg] IPv6 Routing Recommendations

On 27/04/2010 03:18, Philip Smith wrote:
> Anyway, the doc would just be recommendations, along the lines of
> RIPE-399 being no more than recommendations. If folks think we are
> wasting our time putting together an IPv6 equivalent, let us know, and
> we can stop here. ;-)

... which gets back to the issue of vapour.  We have no viable, clever
multihoming mechanism in ipv6, but rely purely on the tricks that we used
in ipv4.  And the requirement traffic engineering hasn't gone away.

The problem we face today is that if we make a recommendation to say that
deaggregation is permissible on TE grounds, then we don't know what the
consequences of this decision are going to be several years down the line.
On the one hand, we lack a crystal ball to peer into the future; on the
other, we have no theoretical models for ipv6 prefix announcements.  All we
have is some idea about how ipv4 prefix announcements have worked out over
the last number of years, and also a list of differences between the ipv4
and ipv6 addressing models.

Which brings us back to vapour: we need to make a decision on this, because
deaggregation levels will have a dramatic effect on the future requirement
for large quantities of TCAM and related lookup.  Unfortunately, we have no
basis on which to make this decision other than opinions and gut feeling.
If we rely on the latter, then a highly conservative approach would be well
advised.

Nick