> Christian, as you are one of those who have lived the early history of > IPv6, do you know any *technical objection*, from any one, for the > following which, as new address formats are and will be defined, should > be more appropriate than the current text: > > "For all unicast addresses other than those that start with the > binary value 000, and that are used as destinations on IPv6 links having > /64 subnet prefixes, Interface IDs are required to be constructed in > Modified EUI-64 format.
First, let's have this discussion only in the 6MAN WG. The BEHAVE working group is supposed to deal with the network rules that we have, not try to change them. The opening of the can of worms lies in your statement, "on IPv6 links having /64 subnet prefixes." We gained a lot of simplicity from having a simple subnet+host format. There have been discussions in the past of changing that, but these discussions always felled flat, since there is no obvious advantage to subnet prefixes larger than 64 bits. More precisely, the justification always seems to try avoid some administrative rule, but the rules are not linked to the specific number 64. They derive from tensions between users and providers, providers and regions, between providers themselves. Changing the boundary would not reduce the tensions, merely displace them. I would expect some very serious pushback. Once you accept that you have a fixed boundary, then you realize that reusing an already existing allocation scheme is a very nice feature. The cost appears to be 2 bits out of 64, leaving 62 bits for innovative schemes. More than enough for any reasonable management system. -- Christian Huitema -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPv6 working group mailing list [email protected] Administrative Requests: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6 --------------------------------------------------------------------
