Re: [rrg] Renumbering needs work

Brian,

> A draft on this topic has been updated:
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-carpenter-renum-needs-work-01.txt
> 
> Comments and discussion are invited on the OPS Area list,
> [email protected]

I completely agree that renumbering needs more work. For IPv4, I guess
that this will always remain difficult.

For IPv6, as most networks have still not deployed IPv6 and there are
more addresses, there is still some hope. I think that a key point for
renumbering is that it should be planned from day one when the first
lines of the configuration of a network or network service are written.
Every IPv6 operator should expect that he will have to renumber his
network one day and should plan for this event. In most cases, there
numbering will be due to economic factors such as merging or acquisition.

An important recommendation in the draft (section 5.3.4) is that the
network configuration should be based on databases and scripts/automated
tools. The database stores all the information about the network and the
tools derive the configuration from the database. As you note, this way
of configuring networks is not the most widespread, but is being used by
more network operators.

It is also possible to prepare network configurations so that
renumbering will be much easier. We have recently proposed a tool based
on macros that allows to ease the reconfiguration of a network after a
renumbering event. We applied the tool on real DNS, firewall and DHCP
configuration as case studies, but it could also be applied to the
configurations of routers or other services. More detailed informations
about this work are available in
http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/preparing-network-configurations-ipv6-renumbering

Best regards,


Olivier Bonaventure

-- 
http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be , UCLouvain, Belgium