[ipv6-wg at ripe.net] ICANN Board to implement IPv6 in root servers

Hi Johan,

I agree in general with all your points, but I've seen already a couple of situations where someone was asking me for a IPv6-only network, and the lack of IPv6 in the root server created a problem, that of course has been solved hosting the DNS somewhere else (even if IPv4 was not used !).

I can't provide more details, but there are real cases.

Regards,
Jordi

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Johan Ihren" <johani at autonomica.se>
To: "Iljitsch van Beijnum" <iljitsch at muada.com>
Cc: <ipv6-wg at ripe.net>
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 3:32 PM
Subject: Re: [ipv6-wg at ripe.net] ICANN Board to implement IPv6 in root servers


> Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch at muada.com> writes:
> 
> Hi Iljitsch,
> 
> >>> proceed with adding AAAA glue [name server] records to the
> >>> delegations  of those TLDs that request it,
> >
> >>> And what about the root servers themselves?
> >
> >> Well, what about them?
> >
> >> Not that I'm particularly against v6 transport to the roots, but I'd
> >> be curious to know exactly what problem you believe that you would
> >> solve that way.
> >
> > Well, what problem does having v6 glue records for tld delegations
> > solve?
> 
> The TLD has an "owner" that presumably has a wish for what transport
> it sees use for. If v6 is in that set I believe it would be wrong not
> to give out v6 glue from the parent (given some thought has been given
> to packet size issues and similar things, all covered in the RSSAC
> advisory).
> 
> Wrt to the root zone, though, in reality no one in a sane mind would
> want to run DNS without the ability to look up data regardless of
> whether a particular zone is served over v4, v6 or both. And that goes
> for the root zone just as any other zone.
> 
> In reality the major point in v6 transport for the root zone would be
> as a "show of faith" in IPv6 being "ready" (which is good), rather
> than any sort of short term technical necessity.
> 
> > If the whole chain is IPv6-capable that means you no longer have to
> > depend on v4 connectivity to reach v6 sites. Eventually we'll want to
> > switch off v4 because of the support costs, of course. But in the mean
> > time this means better protection against connectivity problems.
> 
> I agree that once it's time to turn off v4 (which will probably not
> happen during either your nor my active career) v6 roots are
> needed. Until then they are mostly a convenience that will possibly
> help a little now and then.
> 
> As to connectivity problems, I believe that to be mostly a red
> herring. If you lose your v4 lookup capability then you just lost
> 99.9% of the DNS hierarchy. That will cause you all sorts of
> problems. The very least of those problems will be the lack of access
> to the roots, since they serve a very small data set, all the relevant
> parts of which you have already cached.
> 
> The only folks that will have problems with a root access during a
> hypothetical v4 connectivity outage are the folks that either just
> flushed their cache (small percentage) or are broken somehow so they
> beat on the roots all the time (large percentage).
> 
> But, not to give a wrong impression, I want to point out that I'm
> *for* v6 transport to the roots, just as I'm for v6 glue for the
> TLDs. And I'm happy that the latter issue after an unbelievably long
> wait is finally over.
> 
> Johan
> 
> 


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