Re: IP network address assignments/allocations information?

[Jessica Yu <jyy at ans.net>]

You seem to disagree with my statement of "routing may not be adequate." 
in the Internet where majority of the hosts with multiple IP addresses.
 
Do you really believe that there is an adequate support for the routing 
issue described below in majority-hosts-with-multiple-ip-addresses
environment? 

						--Jessica 

Date:    Fri, 10 Dec 1999 12:49:57 EST
To:      Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld at orchard.arlington.ma.us>
cc:      Jessica Yu <jyy at ans.net>, Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu>,
         Christian Huitema <huitema at research.telcordia.com>,
         Sean Doran <smd at EBONE.NET>, ietf at ietf.org

From:    Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: IP network address assignments/allocations information? 

Return-Path: moore at cs.utk.edu 
X-URI:   http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 10 Dec 1999 12:32:18 EST."
         <199912101732.RAA16467 at orchard.arlington.ma.us> 
Sender:  moore at cs.utk.edu
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 913

> > There is also a potential scaling issue of using multiple addresses 
> > as general purpose multihomging mechanism. This is because if this 
> > is the case, most of the Internet hosts will end up with multiple 
> > addresses. 
> 
> I don't see why this is inherently a problem.

it's a problem because it's essentially asking the sending host to do
routing in the absence of any routing information.  

if multiple addresses are available for a host, the chances are good 
that the paths associated with some of those addresses are significantly
better, or worse, than others.  with IPv4 multihoming, the routing system 
sorts out which path to use.  this doesn't work perfectly but at least 
the decision is made in light of some information about the nature and 
current state of those paths.  with IPv6 multihoming, the sending host is 
just guessing.  it's difficult to believe that this will work well.