[ipv6-wg] Minutes from the IPv6 WG @ RIPE 83

Hola all,

I'll add something that I also mentioned in the WG chat during the call (but did not want to waste the call's time with) and that I told Nico before he copied the SixXS ULA list (Nico asked if he could btw and as the page says one can) and what has been told to many people in the background too over the last ~15 years:


>>>>> The SixXS ULA Registry was a practical joke !!!! <<<<<


Many people fell and are still falling for it, it was just a big test to see who and why and how many: ULA is so random (if done right) you will never collide with another /48.

The ULA RFC https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4193/#section-3.2.3 shows a nice table: even if you would make 10.000 connections to other networks, the probability that you have a collision is 4.54*10^-05 ...

Anybody want to play the lottery instead, because you will have better odds, or you know a plane crash would have better odds..
(See randomly first hit in elducky: https://www.thebalance.com/what-are-the-odds-of-winning-the-lottery-3306232)


The fun thing was, there have been multiple times that there had been a collision in the SixXS ULA registry: because people did not randomly generate their prefix, but just picked fd42:dead:f00d::/48 and similar things (most of those have been culled from the SixXS ULA registry, as they did not belong there... as they are not properly generated, if one did generate that, play the lottery and watch out for planes and sharks...)


The moment you want a 'check if the prefix is used' you got the RIR system: somebody needs to maintain that list of numbers.
That is why ULA-C went nowhere, as it would just be a new RIR.

The other thing is: everything that gets connected will want Internet access at one point or another.

Using RIR-provided address space solves all of that:
 - one does not have to route (all of) a prefix you get
 - one has a central unique registry with WHOIS for contact info
 - one has functional reverse DNS (but did people not want 'disconnected' networks!?)


Nevertheless, I also think this is an IETF matter, where over the years this has been discussed to death: ULA-C never went anywhere, because it is solved already with real addresses.


Any LIR could simply take a /32 out of their prefix and delegate it for "disconnected use"... seeing that there are bunches of LIRs doing that kind of 'business' already, .... solved problem all of it, not?

Greets,
 Jeroen