nanog mailing list archives

Re: Router ID on IPv6-Only


From: Crist Clark <cjc+nanog () pumpky net>
Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2022 23:27:01 -0700

As I said in the original email, I realize router IDs just need to be unique in
an AS. We could have done random ones with IPv4, but using a well chosen
address assigned to the router guarantees uniqueness as well as some other useful properties. I was wondering if people had some ways to do something similar with
IPv6.

But I think the most notable thing from the handful of responses (and thanks to all that responded) was that no one piped up who is actually doing it. I guess
most everything is still dual-stack.

And to get even a little more specific about our particular use case and the suggestion here to build the device location into the ID, we're generally not really talking about one ID per physical router here. I'm really talking about IPv6-only VRFs. The router (L3 switch, firewall, or whatever it may be) may have a mix of IPv6-only, IPv4-only, and dual-stack VRFs. I think multiple VRFs
per device is no longer exotic configuration and closer to the norm.

And before anyone suggests borrowing IPv4 addresses from other VRFs to use in the IPv6-only VRFs, that was something we discounted right away for what I think
are pretty obvious reasons.


On 2022-09-08 08:28, J. Hellenthal wrote:
Right!

Personally it just needs to be unique. Relying on a Id to be unique
when ascociated to an IP address that may be used on a failover system
seems really poor to me.

Assign a random ID and plug it into your IPAM!. If at anything assign
a router ID to a rack location and associate every bit of information
about that location in whatever you're tracking management can
provide.

Personally I prefer date originated generated numbers that allow me to
filter upon such and spill out the results to tell me where its at
what rack its in, slot number etc...

But then again this is from a failover system perspective...


BOL

On Sep 8, 2022, at 10:13, Randy Bush <randy () psg com> wrote:

During some IPv6 numbering discussions at work today, someone had a
question that I hadn't really considered before. How to choose 32-bit
router IDs for IPv6-only routers.

arbitrary 32 bit number unique in the autonomous system.  even in an
ipv4 world it does not need to match any configured interface address.

randy


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