Folks, The scope discussion is flawed, held in the wrong forum and should cease.
The charter -- according to the web page -- says: "The primary focus of the IPv6 w.g. is to complete the standardization of the IPv6 protocols." Consequently, the wg is an Internet Area working group; *not* an Ops WG. We have reached (albeit rough) consensus that the scoped addresses are to be limited to link-local only. But, as far as I can tell, the scope discussion has not terminated, but instead ended up in a swamp where implementors and protocol architects are trying to teach operators how to run their networks, by inventing useless management complications that neither will contribute to the simple, smooth operation of an IPv6 Internet, nor assist in securing hosts against evil-minded attacks. Let's look at the some of the core arguments: * "Non-routable prefixes are inherently safe". Perhaps. One could rewrite this to: "Non-routed prefixes are inherently safe". If I route a part of my /48 only in my IGP, and blackhole it in my border routers, I have created a non-routed prefix, as long as my border devices can throw packets. (There is overwhelming operational experience that says "routers can drop packets".) In terms of "scope" this so treated global prefix chunk walks like a site-local, talks like a site-local, is safe like a site-local[0] but lacks the need for extra scope- checking code. * "Renumbering is hard". Well, stop whining and help work on the renumbering drafts instead. I have not renumbered any v6 networks yet, but have done a fair bit of v4 network restruction. To me, the solution lies in abandoning the identifier overloading that takes place when people configure applications to use IP addresses directly, and instead apply suitable layers of abstraction. Allowing people to preserve the overloading by making it "convenient" to keep the address for long times is a step in the wrong direction. To me, this looks like material for an operational discussion, that should result in two BCP documents, "Practices for controlled limitation of node reachability in IP networks" and "IPv6 Network address plan design with renumbering in mind.", none of which look like Internet area documents but instead like Ops stuff. May I humbly suggest that the people so greatly concerned with how networks are to be operated go and write these BCPen in an Ops group, and leave the crippling featurism out of the IP protocol. Best regards, -- M�ns Nilsson Systems Specialist +46 70 681 7204 KTHNOC MN1334-RIPE We're sysadmins. To us, data is a protocol-overhead. [0] Maybe. I help run a pretty large multi-AS network, edge and core mixed, the uses more and more IPv6. We have tried, but can't come up with any reasons for inherently crippled prefixes (we are at times way too good at crippling the useful ones ourselves...), so we can't really tell whether they are useful, they just do not seem so.
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