Re: moving to IPv6

[Vijay Gill <wrath () cs umbc edu>]

On 1 Nov 1997, Sean M. Doran wrote:

> No, with IPv4 space being managed better with CIDR we have
> had time to develop and deploy NAT on a continually
> growing scale, and have had the time to reflect that this
> scales better than a migration to IPv6.  What is not

The question of CPU comes in when talking about large scale NAT
deployments.  Anyone have concrete figures as to how much CPU this
involves on a large scale and with overloading multiple inside addresses
onto a few outside addresses? CPU speed is growing at a fairly fast clip,
but so is data traffic.  At current prices, a R10000 based cisco box
should be beyond reach of all but the most well heeled companies, given
cisco's current pricing.

As for IPv6, the main issue is with reducing routing complexity.  The
prefix can be made AS based entirely.  If people bite the bullet and adopt
an addressing scheme that does not allow for transferable address blocks. 
At this point the backbone routing tables become a set of mappings between
AS's and the relationships between the paths. 

BGP takes a hit and a simpler, kinder, gentler protocol comes into place.

vijay