Re: Addressing plan exercise for our IPv6 course

[Jack Bates <jbates () brightok net>]

Karl Auer wrote:
> The "random" one allows for swift, bureaucracy-free self-allocation. The
> more important it is to you that your allocation be unique, the more
> careful you will be to choose a truly random one. 

If it is that important, you'd prefer a managed solution, not a truly 
random one.

> The chance that any
> random prefix will conflict with any chosen prefix is very, very small.
> The chance that two conflicting prefixes would belong to entities that
> will ever actually interact is even smaller. Makes it an interesting
> question as to whether the managed range is really necessary at all.

1) While the chance of conflict is small, it is not non-existent, and 
when the interaction does occur and a conflict does arise, there may be 
huge costs involved. Random is fine for small deployments. It is a 
horrifying prospect for a 500+ subnet network.

2) Managing non-globally routed addressing is easy and doesn't require a 
lot of overhead. IANA itself could manage it, as it does all other 
globally unique numbers. First come, first serve. Have a nice day. I 
enjoy my unique enterprise oid. Why shouldn't I enjoy my own unique 
non-globally routed address space identifier? There shouldn't be a need 
for justification of the identifier (or services such as whois), so 
pawning it off on a RIR seems silly.


Jack