ipv6 addressing - non-routable equivalents?

[Antonio Querubin]

On Sun, 8 Oct 2000, Jonathan Guthrie wrote:

> The "magic", oddly enough, is contained in the part that isn't unique.
> What makes the scheme work is the fact that the routing information is
> embedded in the prefix.  IPv4 addresses aren't long enough for that to
> happen.  What that means is that you can send a packet to a particular
> destination one way by using one address and another way by using a
> different address.  That means that to achieve multihoming, all you have
> to do is make the 

Understood.  But "where's the beef?"  Ie. great idea but there's little to
nothing that implements this.  That being the case, the magic is just
vaporware at this point.  Working at an ISP that has thousands of
customers and IP addresses to manage I see the problems in integrating
MAC-based addressing as outweighing the 'potential' benefits for a long
time to come.

> I'm not talking about a globally unique IPv6 ADDRESS, I'm talking about a
> globally unique bottom 64 bits.  If you can guarantee that the bottom 
> 64 bits are unique, then you can tell if two different IPv6 addresses 
> (which ARE going to be globally unique, just like IPv4 addresses) are
> really from the same computer. There is no equivalent to this in
> IPv4.  There is nothing even close to this in IPv4.

Understood.  But see above.  

> Since you don't understand what a globally-unique interface identifier IS
> and how it's different from a globally-unique address, you probably won't
> understand why what you describe is not particularly useful, with respect
> to easy multihoming.

Bad assumption.  As a multi-homed ISP I do understand the issues.  I just
want to drive home the point that while some may think that MAC-based
addressing is some kind of holy grail, others may feel otherwise
especially when other management issues are taken into consideration.  
The widespread adoption of MAC-based addressing has some serious hurdles
to overcome.  In the meantime, I don't see why more traditional schemes
can't continue to be used or be discouraged in favor of MAC-based
addressing.