North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: shim6 @ NANOG
On 3/4/06, Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email protected]> wrote: On 4-mrt-2006, at 14:07, Kevin Day wrote: And given that any network big enough to get their own PI /32 has *zero* incentive to install/support shim6 means that all those smaller networks that are pushed to install shim6 are going to see *zero* benefit when they try to reach the major sites on the internet. What benefit does shim6 bring, if only the little guys are using it? This dog won't hunt. Move on to something useful. Yes, this is an issue. If we have to wait for a major release or even And no major company supports/allows automated software update mechanisms to run on their production machines--it adds too much of an element of randomness to an environment that has to be as much as possible deterministic in its behaviour. But again, it cuts both ways: if only two people run shim6 code, Cool. So let individuals make a choice to install it if they want. But that's a choice they make, and should not be part of a mandated IP allocation policy, because otherwise we're codifying a split between "big" companies and everyone else. The companies that can justify /32 allocations _aren't_ going to install shim6; they already have their multihoming options (for the most part) covered--so the little guys who install shim6 to "multihome" are going to discover it doesn't do diddly squat for helping them reach any major sites on the internet during an outage of one of their providers. You haven't preserved end-to-end connectivity this way, you've just waved a pretty picture in front of the smaller company's face to make them think they'll have the benefits of multihoming when they really don't. > Getting systems not controlled by the networking department of an Won't matter. shim6 on a middle box still won't be able to re-route to the majority of the large sites on the Internet during an outage on one of the upstream providers given that the large content players and large network providers aren't going to be installing shim6 on their servers and load balancers. > The real "injustice" about this is that it's creating two classes You failed to note that the smaller company, *even after spending money upgrading hardware and software to shim6 compatible solution* won't achieve the same reliability as their bigger competitors. (see above if you missed it). shim6 is _more_ anti-competitive than extending the existing IP allocation policies from v4 into v6, and is therefore not going to garner the support of the companies that actually spend money to create this thing we call the Internet. And without money behind it, the effort is a non-starter. > Someone earlier brought up that a move to shim6, or not being able But the smaller sites who enable shim6 don't gain any benefit when talking to the large sites on the internet--so they've gone through a lot of pain and effort for very little actual benefit, since they still aren't usefully multihomed. There's just no real benefit to shim6 unless you require *EVERY* site to support it; and I can tell you that the large content sites will simply stay on v4 rather than install the complexity that is shim6 on their production webservers. > If you could justify why shim6 isn't sufficient for your network, Consolidation will likely occur; those that need address space will find that buying less-fortunate companies in order to swallow their address space will become a normal, understood part of their business planning cycle. Competition will decrease, and the shift towards larger and larger companies will ensue, as smaller players gobble each other up in order to become large enough such that any needed migration to IPv6 can happen directly onto a PI /32. If we persist on following this path, we'll simply end up in a world where the large entities control the resources, and the barriers for entry turn out to be the very ones we set up in our own well-meaning bumbling. If we screw up the routing table real good on the other hand, we're I have more faith in our ability to deal with route table growth than I do in our ability to come up with a viable instantiation of shim6. > The question of IPv6 migration and IPv6 route size are *two IPv6 may be inevitable; but the way shim6 is pushing allocation policies, it will be in a world in which only big players multihome, and everyone else must buy from a big player and won't get to multihome. Yes, people will wave the shim6 flag around to make small startups think they can multihome and pretend to be a big player, but at the first outage, the little guy will discover his multihoming is a facade, and that none of the major sites on the Internet that he wants to talk to are interested in playing his shim6 games with his end hosts--and his customers will quickly realize that any independance from the upstream networks is all smoke and mirrors, and not worth the paper such claims may be printed upon. If that's the direction we're heading, let's just stop beating around the bush and say it plainly: Shim6 is just a handwaving panacea to make the smaller enterprises shut up and stop obstructing v6 deployment for the short term so that we can get more critical mass on the v6 networks and maybe justify getting some of the large players to start making useful material available via v6 which might finally show a few dollars of real revenue flowing due to v6 deployments. But it's insulting to keep pretending that shim6 is going to offer any level of real multihoming-style reliability benefit for the smaller players when talking to engineers. Save it for the marketing literature for the customers. Matt
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