Re: IPv6 Deployment for the LAN

[bmanning () vacation karoshi com]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:35:18PM +0100, Nick Hilliard wrote:
> On 22/10/2009 11:30, bmanning () vacation karoshi com wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:20:11PM +1100, Karl Auer wrote:
> > > The RA contains a preference level... maybe that doesn't cut it if
> > > multiple routers are sending the same preference level, but presumably
> > > that would not happen in a well-tended network.
> >
> >     I point you to a fairly common Internet architecture artifact,
> >     the exchange point...  dozens of routers sharing a common
> >     media for peering exchange.
>
> Bill, could you explain how or why ra or dhcp or dhcpv6 have any relevance 
> to an IXP?  Being one of these "artefact" operators - and clearly stuck 
> with a very small dinosaur brain - I am having some trouble understanding 
> the point you're attempting to make here.
>
> Nick


        its been a few weeks/years/minutes since I ran an exchange fabric,
        but when we first turned up IPv6 - the first thing they did was try
        to hand all the other routers IPv6 addresses.  that pesky RA/ND
        thing... had to turn it off ...  RA preference would not work, since
        there was no -pecking- order - all the routers were peers.

        we did the manual configuration - no DHCP - it was the only way to
        ensure things would be deterministic.  Hence my comments to 
        Karl re his statement about "not happen in a well-tended network".

        the point.  RA/ND was designed to solve what some of its designers
        thought would be 80% of the problems.  It might just be able to 
        do that - for the limited scope that it has.  There are other, more
        robust, decomposable, resilient configuration tools out there that
        have capabilities people need that are not currently in RA/ND.

        and even then, not all architectures are ammenable to automated 
        configuration tools.

        RA/ND is not a panecea.  

--bill