Re: Important IPv6 Policy Issue -- Your Input Requested

[Nils Ketelsen <nils.ketelsen () kuehne-nagel com>]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 03:00:04AM +0000, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Randy Bush wrote:
> > > In today's networks, printers do NOT need global addresses.
> > let me make sure i understand this.  in order not to have to
> > pay for the address space for a my enterprise's printers,
> > they are supposed to make separate ether runs to them
> > parallel to all the workgroup runs, so they can route them
> > funny.  then they are supposed to maintain all that routing
> > cruft, port(s) on the routers, ...
>
> not that it's a great plan, and excepting the popular router vendor
> 'features' with respect to multiple ip addresses per interface... you CAN
> put more than on broadcast domain on a single ethernet LAN.

As this is about IPv6: IPv6 devices MUST be able to handle
multiple Addresses on one interface. 

As this is a requirement anyway it is reasonably safe to
assume all devices on an IPv6 network are able to do that. As long as you
do not assume Vendors will build non-standard. If you start thinking
into that direction, anything is possible, so it would
be unplannable anyway.

> this does make for some 'fun' in configuration management and in
> deconflicting address space usages across larger enterprises as well. In
> general each ip device really ought to have a globally unique ip address,
> even if you never plan on connecting a network (something that would live
> more than a testing cycle) to the global internet. business plans change,
> partners come and go and technology is always making it easier to do
> things 'on the network' than off.

With IPv6 and autoconfiguration, you will at least have a link local
address. So even with your setup, you will have a link-local and a
globally unique address on each network interface.


Nils