In message <Pine.LNX.4.44.0309160816080.5651-100000@netcore.fi>, Pekka Savola w rites:
Did you even read what I wrote? I certainly didn't see a problem in having different IPv6 and IPv4 records, because, well, they have to be different anyway. I believe I gave a couple of points to consider as well.
If you have no issue with separate IPv6 and IPv4 records then the matter is resolved. There is no transition problem, nor is there any long term problem other than separate IPv6 and IPv4 records which may be a nuisance later at worst. As an aside, my guess is that we'll have older RPSL tools around for anywhere from 2-5 years or until IPv4 only networks become rare (which is likely to be longer the way things are going).
Its deployed so obviously it works. We're not talking about something no one has ever tried. This is documenting a set of extensions that are in use.
Being used by a few people and being used as widely as RPSL is used today
are two different things. It is obviously not being used widely if RIPE just got it's test version of the database and the tools out a month or something like that ago.
Larry could probably give you the lineage of this work better than I could. I think David Kessens was working on expressing IPv6 policy in RPSL as far back as 1997 or so.
Right.. but it has gotten nowhere in about five years if so.
The document you are reviewing is the result of the work expressing policy for IPv6, so it hasn't gone nowhere. I'm not sure whether David was working more with the IPv6 inetnum records used for address registry or policy back then.
RIPE uses its database mostly as a Internet address and AS registry. That you can express policy in RPSL for RIPE is just an added benefit for their customers. RIPE has had IPv6 inetnum records for a very long time for the purpose of address registry.
This is irrelevant: the fact stands that at least in the RIPE region (I don't know much of the others, but I guess the situation is pretty much the same), RPSLng has *not* been deployed at all. So, it seems to me that any statements of its wide use are quite questionable.
A lot of RPSL use is explicitly to express routing policy. While RIPE is a major user of RPSL and one of the major contributors to RPSL, their use of it is limited in this way.
-- Pekka Savola "You each name yourselves king, yet the Netcore Oy kingdom bleeds." Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
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