Re: IPV6 renumbering painless?

["Kevin Oberman" <oberman () es net>]

> From: Michael.Dillon () radianz com
> Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 16:22:28 +0000
> Sender: owner-nanog () merit edu
>
>
> > I guess you also want to announce a /64 into the IPv6 BGP tables ?
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't IPv6 do away
> with the need to renumber when switching providers?
> So if RFC 2462 is right, and you use DNS outside
> your network and you update that DNS at the moment
> of switching providers, everything on your network
> automatically acquires new IPv6 globally routable
> addresses as soon as the gateway router is connected
> to the new provider. Seems to me that with a little
> bit of help from a "Change providers" tool, this
> would be virtually painless without the need to
> own or announce a small globally unique prefix.

We have renumbered IPv6 space a couple of times when we were developing
our addressing plan. (We have a /32.) Renumbering was pretty trivial for
most systems, but servers requiring a fixed address were usually
configured with an explicit prefix. This should not have been the case,
but most people configured IPv6 addresses pretty much like IPv4 and
specified the entire 128 bits. Of course, after a renumbering, this gets
fixed, so those systems are usually OK the next time.

DNS is an issue, but still pretty easy IF you set things properly. This
is more likely than having servers set up right as the right way is
usually what most people would tend to do without thinking about it.

On the whole, it's pretty fast and easy, but there are always a few
bumps in the road.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman () es net                       Phone: +1 510 486-8634