Hi, [...]
We still need to in the long term. IPv6 PI, ie keeping state for all end-users in all DFZ routers on the Internet, does not scale with billions of routes.
While this might be true indeed - in the long term - it also might be possible that - in the long term - it does scale by some magic trick of some very intelligent maths person and some cool vendor. So we're only guessing here. At the moment you're certainly right.
So yes, there is no solution right now, that doesn't mean IPv6 PI is any kind of long term solution. We know it's bad, we still use it because there is no better way right now. That doesn't mean we should give up.
It's again tragedy of the commons. For the individual user, PI is always the easiest way out. For humanity/Internet as a whole in the long term, not so much.
But let's get IPv6 implemented, a few hundred thousand more routes doesn't really matter, as long as they don't turn into many millions.
I think the problem is not (yet) the total amount of prefixes, but the rate of growth. As long as the tables don't grow too fast, i think there is not so much of a problem since the vendors can keep up with this and companies can plan for upgrades. If the tables grow too fast, this will be indeed a bigger problem, but there are no signs yet that this will happen (in the IPv6 tables at least, not so sure about IPv4 tables post depletion with all the expected fragmentations :-/ ). But again, just my 0.02EUR on this, also only educated guesses here based on the numbers we have seen. Bottom line: It's nothing we need to discuss or make into policy at this very moment. We just need to keep an eye on it, and i'm sure we will. I'm very certain that the majority of the community will agree to another policy as soon as the majority does have a problem with the size of the tables. For the moment, i just see the majority having problems with the current asymmetric IPv4 + IPv6 PI policies, and that's what this policy draft is about, nothing else. I'm a bit disappointed that this one is hijacked and used for general PI policy discussions over and over. I really would suggest writing another, general (IPv4+IPv6) policy draft for this and discuss these long-term issues there. -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind Regards Sascha Lenz [SLZ-RIPE] Senior System- & Network Architect