Re: Why is IPv6 a must?

[Geoff Huston <gih at telstra.net>]

> Your message is generally well put.  However, while it is possible to send
> the packets on the wire, the fundamental underlying scaling point, the
> routing system, has not been properly addressed.  Perhaps a solution can be
> retrofitted in, but then again, who knows?  This, I thought, was <largely>
> the point of multi6.

Scaling of the routing system is not the objective of multi6 - multi6 is 
working on the principle of attempting to do no harm to the scaling 
properties of the routing system while allowing complex edge connectivity 
scenarios.

Generally, scaling of the routing system requires the elimination of 
information from the routing domain. And, generally, the best you can do 
here is attempt to align deployment with some structural property of the 
syntax of the protocol elements you are using as routing objects, and 
eliminate information through aggregation of the routing objects 
(aggregateable address hierarchies). The alternative is to re-evaluate the 
routing domain and select some other attribute of the domain that does not 
have the same population / complexity / growth and attempt to route based 
on this attribute.

I'm unsure what IPv6 has to do with this - it seems to make the task of 
scaling routing about the same as it is in IPv4 - there appears to be no 
intrinsic property of the protocol that alters the situation to any 
appreciable extent.

  Geoff