[6bone] pTLA request by Euro6IX project for exchange experimentation - review closes 3 Sep 2002

[Bob Fink]

6bone Folk,

The Euro6IX Project has requested a pTLA allocation and I find their 
request consistent with 6bone goals and with merit. In specific, it is the 
first attempt to try the new type of exchange-based aggregation talked 
about in RFC2374, "An IPv6 Aggregatable Global Unicast Address Format". 
Please see their request below.

<http://www.euro6ix.org/>

There is to date no specific Euro6IX entity operational on the 6bone as the 
partners and participants in the Euro6IX project have all the IPv6 
experience from their own entities. I don't view this as a shortcoming as 
the Euro6IX folk are highly IPv6 experienced.

I would hope that this project would result in clearer understanding of the 
issues and practices involved with exchange-based aggregation for the 
future use in the IPv6-based Internet.

I would also appreciate discussion of any considerations that we should be 
aware of as a 6bone test project.

The open review period for this will close 3 September 2002. Please send 
your comments to me or the list.



Thanks,

Bob

===
From: "JORDI PALET MARTINEZ" <jordi.palet@consulintel.es>
Subject: pTLA request by Euro6IX project for exchange experimentation
...
Euro6IX is working on two IX scenarios, and is requesting a 6Bone pTLA in 
order to carry out the second scenario below:

The first scenario would be very similar to the classical conception of the 
IX where the providers' routers are directly connected to the second layer 
infrastructure. In this scenario, the router linking the IXs between each 
other belongs to the domain administratively managed by the Telco owning 
that IX. So an intra-domain routing protocol could be run on this router to 
exchange reachability information with those IX routers belonging to the 
same administrative domain. In this case, for our scopes, a /48 IPv6 prefix 
per IX could be enough to number the devices in each IX. The Telco owning 
the IX will manage the its pTLA or sTLA to number the IX devices.

The second scenario considers on a new conception of the IX based on the 
so-called "layer 3 mediation function". This new role is based on the 
possibility, from the IX to assign IPv6 prefixes independent of the 
provider. In this case, each customer accessing the IX chooses the provider 
(one or more) and the IX assigns them the IPv6 prefixes. If a customer 
decides to change the provider, it does not have to change IPv6 prefixes, 
because they are provider independent and are assigned by that particular 
IX. In this scenario, the router linking the IXs between each other can 
belong to a different administrative domain than that managed by Telco 
owning the IX. So an inter-domain routing protocol could run on this router 
to exchange routing information with the IX routers belonging to other 
administrative domains. In this scenario, the Euro6IX is the owner of the 
pTLA used to assign prefixes to each IX user.

-end