[6bone] proposal for transfer of 6bone address management responsibilities to RIRs

[Bob Fink]

Michel, and all 6bone Folk,

At 08:28 PM 8/20/2002 -0700, Michel Py wrote:
>6boners,
>
>Please keep in mind that the choice that we are facing is *not* between
>keeping the 6bone as-is and transferring it to RIRs.
>
>The choice we are facing is between transferring it to RIRs transferring
>it to v6ops.

Not so. Sorry I didn't clear that up earlier. I'll try to do so here.

The 6bone has been under the operational and policy oversight of ngtrans 
since a few months after it was formed in 1996 until recently. During the 
last year that oversight has diminished due to pressures of the primary 
work of ngtrans. When the ngtrans chairs started to re-charter ngtrans, 
Randy Bush (the ngtrans IESG AD) made it clear that he didn't think the 
6bone belonged in a new ngtrans charter. Note there was no discussion of 
where it might sit.

Then just recently discussions started about a new v6ops working group. 
There was no intention to include the 6bone oversight function in its charter.

Independent of 6bone operational policy oversight was the issue of the 
6bone being an address registry outside of the now agreed IPv6 address 
management and registry that the RIRs have developed (with very wide 
participation from the Internet community). This causes problems for two 
reasons:

One is that if the 6bone is allowed to be a high-level address registry not 
under the scrutiny and agreements of the Internet community registry 
processes (i.e., those of the RIRs), others can make the case that they 
should be as well. This will become more and more of a problem as time goes 
on and will likely cause the 6bone's address authority (over 3FFE://16) to 
be withdrawn earlier than might otherwise be appropriate.

Second is that the RIRs have oversight over the ip6.arpa reverse DNS 
registry. As IPv6 deployment evolves it becomes increasingly more important 
that 6bone networks can register in the ip6.arpa path. Note that this does 
not mean that you can't use ip6.int, just that ip6.arpa will become 
prevalent in usage and the 6bone must have access to it. It seems unlikely 
that the 6bone will be able to use ip6.arpa without some form of agreement 
with the RIRs.

A few other issues.

In the proposal there is emphasis on keeping the cost of getting 6bone 
prefixes from the RIRs as low as possible. The RIRs, as I, are sensitive to 
the fact that many are unable to spend much (or possibly anything) to 
participate. I would still like to see a way that those claiming they can't 
afford even a nominal/low fee be able to qualify for some special aid. This 
had been discussed briefly but there was no resolution on how it might happen.

The future of the 6bone 3FFE::/16 address block authority and its 
continuance will not be in RIR hands. Where it will be is not obvious yet, 
but I assume somewhere at the IETF policy level. This will be explored in 
the coming months.

Where operational and policy oversight will come from is an interesting 
issue. Although in theory it came, for a while, from ngtrans (as mentioned 
above), this wasn't really true in practice. It really came from the 
collective 6bone community and its own consensus about what worked and what 
didn't. I expect this will continue. The RIRs also expect that the 6bone 
community will continue to make decisions about its operations and policies.

On keeping the 6bone separate from the production IPv6 Internet, I believe 
that to be seldom if ever necessary, and that the decision to do so is a 
local one for any network based on what is being done. The 6bone is part of 
the greater IPv4 and IPv6 integrated Internet and must be for it to be of 
value. Just as we have poorly managed IPv4 networks that cause trouble for 
the greater whole, the 6bone has no monopoly on poor or perfect service 
among IPv6 networks. When we have problems with any IPv6 network we should 
all take steps to get them fixed or isolate them. This is not a 
6bone-specific issue.


We (me and RIRs) appreciate your comments as they do help us understand the 
issues. Keep them coming!


Thanks,

Bob