Hi,

I thought I would share an extract from an email I sent off list to a peer.  My 
mail was a rather ramberly stream of consciousness exploring the issue, which 
worked its way to a potential solution... Hence why I am sharing an extract 
from it.  I am not sure how practicably implementable it would be with the use 
of communities and some extra filtering logic implemented by the router 
software to enable prefix matching on less specific.  I include for open 
discussion, I am sure there are things wrong with this idea, but maybe we can 
move towards a solution that works for everyone, rather than continuing in a 
straight line and having a bloated v6 route soup of indistinguishable /48s all 
over the place.  Maybe the below has some legs, I leave it for those clever 
than me to see if this can be incorporated into an emergent BCP that might 
address what we should be doing and give everyone clear guidelines and keep 
everything on track.

<snip>

As I said its not the content networks I have issue with, it the rest of the 
access networks and hosting networks that are going to abuse a relaxation 
policy of "you should only announce /32 and use communities and no export for 
TE to adjacent ASes, but because there are a lot of island networks that 
require /48 support yours will also get accepted but please don't do this for 
TE reasons."

What we need is a way to filter that says throw this prefix away if I can see 
it inside of another prefix.  Ie discard this /48 if it is part of a /32 (or 
bigger) that I also have in my RIB and then insert the /32 into FIB and discard 
the /48".  That would dump off all the TE nonsense, while keeping the island 
networks /48s.  This new functionality could be used in a route map so it could 
be augmented with community matching or AS filter lists.  That would solve the 
problem, all be it at the cost of the processing overhead to examine each /48 
in the table and recurse its route, versus simple application of a filter list 
based on net block and minimum allocation size.  I guess another thing that 
might work is if we all start passing communities and then we can tag some /48s 
as I am a TE prefix with a cover route and use a different community to tag I 
am an island prefix with no cover route, and then we can filter or permit those 
in a route map as the recipient sees fit and next the route map could filter 
everything left on RIR minimums for the block.  That might work a lot better, 
if everyone passed communities.... At least people would be incentivised to tag 
the island routes which would be guaranteed to be permitted, we might have to 
worry about some people tagging a TE route as an island route.  So I guess the 
logic becomes....

/48 Routes tagged with an island community permit as long as there is not a 
less specific covering route in the RIB.

/48 Routes tagged with a TE community can be permitted or denied as chosen by 
the recipient end AS but should be carried in the DFZ by transit providers.

/48 Routes that are not tagged should be assessed against RIR netblock minimums 
as being valid or invalid.

Future RIR assignments should rigorously explore if the assignment is intended 
to be going to have an aggregate route or not, so for island networks that will 
not be aggregated are moved to a separate /12 with a /48 minimum and /40 
maximum announced prefix size - rather than carried in the same block as "PA 
(Aggregated)" / "ISP" blocks that have a /32 minimum.

If we do that, it keeps the existing problem the size it is currently and 
solves it for future assignments, allows the island networks to work, prevents 
people cheating by trying to sneak a TE route in as an island route when there 
is covering /32 route, dumps off the rubbish from spurious announcements and 
hijacking, while allowing PI end user /48s to continue to work...  I think that 
would address the problem.

</snip>

Thoughts...?

Ben
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben S. Butler 
Sent: 15 November 2012 00:05
To: 'Michael Smith'; William Herrin
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: RE: What is BCP re De-Aggregation: strict filtering /48s out of /32 
RIR minimums.

Hi,

" Again, I thought the discussion was about PI, not PA.  I don't announce any 
PA."

My point, which I feel may be getting lost, and for which ARIN may already have 
policies in place for, is that an IP assignment is made out of a block with a 
defined minimum assignment size.

Now some people simply advertise the assignment that is made to them, some 
people chose to advertise more specifics with a covering route, I have no 
problem with any of this.  What I am saying, is if people chose to deagregate 
to create islands, for which I can completely understand the commercial and 
networking reason and why it is then by extension impossible for them to 
advertise the covering route. Then in these specific cases of "islands" then 
these assignments should be made by the RIR from a block with a minimum prefix 
size of a /48.  Then the application is submitted to the RIR it will justify as 
much space as it justifies, but at this point it should also be established - 
without any judgment positive or negative - if the intention is to advertise 
this unagregated or with a route for the aggregate.  The RIR would then be 
empowered to assign the requested amount of address space from a block which 
can be labelled with a lower minimum prefix size.

I am not judging any of these design practices.  What I am pointing out is that 
the designs are being implemented in assignment blocks that do not reflect the 
recipients implementations intentions and this is neither helpful for them or 
other AS operators when it comes to filtering.  If RIR policies establish this 
intention at the point of assignment then the "island" case will be catered for 
and we absolutely do not want to see an aggregate in the route table for 
assignments from that block.  IF it is TE then it can be made from a 
conventional block with a cover router and more specifics.

What I am seeing in the real world is island networks in address space with 
minimum /32 assigments.  It is my choice if I filter your TE, it is a stupid 
choice if you don't advertise the cover route because you are doing TE.  But 
what we need to facilitate are islands networks which for very sensible 
technical and commercial reasons are unable to advertise an aggregate.  
Policies may be in place to provide for this, however, what I am seeing in the 
route table is telling me that the policies are failing to identify people that 
want to implement their network in this fashion as they are coming from blocks 
with /32 min and they are advertising /48s.  If these announcements came from 
and address block to which they were assigned with a minimum of a /48 because 
of their design intentions then everyone is happy and can announce and filer 
accordingly and end points are reachable.

There is a reason that different blocks have different minimum sizes, I am 
advocating ensuring that we get assignments aligned with the blocks that are 
suit the intended implementation.

It is not my place to judge your business, nor is it anyone elses to expect the 
rest of us to accept TE routes without a coverall and expect to be reachable.

My 2c

Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Smith [mailto:mksm...@mac.com] 
Sent: 14 November 2012 23:32
To: William Herrin
Cc: nanog@nanog.org; Michael Smith
Subject: Re: What is BCP re De-Aggregation: strict filtering /48s out of /32 
RIR minimums.


On Nov 14, 2012, at 1:50 PM, William Herrin <b...@herrin.us> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Michael Smith <mksm...@mac.com> wrote:
>> I guess I'm confused.  I have a /32 that I have broken up into /47's 
>> for my discrete POP locations.  I don't have a network between them, 
>> by design.  And, I won't announce the /32 covering route because 
>> there is no single POP that can take requests for the entire
>> /32 - think regionalized anycast.
>> 
>> So, how is it "worse" to announce the deaggregated /47's versus 
>> getting a /32 for every POP?  In either case, I'm going to put the 
>> same number of routes into the DFZ.
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> If you announce an ISP /32 from each POP (or an end-user /48, /47,
> etc) then I know that a neutral third party has vetted your proposed 
> network configuration and confirmed that the routes are disaggregated 
> because the network architecture requires it. If you announce a /47 
> from your ISP space, for all I know you're trying to tweak utilization 
> on your ISP uplinks.
> 
Again, I thought the discussion was about PI, not PA.  I don't announce any PA.

> In the former case, the protocols are capable of what they're capable 
> of. Discrete multihomed network, discrete announcement. Like it or 
> lump it.
> 
> In the latter case, I don't particularly need to burn resources on my 
> router half a world away to facilitate your traffic tweaking. Let the 
> ISPs you're paying for the privilege carry your more-specifics.
> 

You have great confidence in the immutability of design and the description 
thereof.

Mike



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