CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Erik-Jan Bos/SURFnet Minutes of the Address Lifetime Expectations Working Group (ALE) Agenda Bashing Tony Li added one item to the agenda, IPng Timetable, at the request of the area director. Corrections to Models During the ALE BOF at the Houston IETF, models were presented to look at the expected lifetime of IPv4. The intention of this agenda item is to review the models currently used and make corrections if and when needed. The volume of the routing tables is still increasing. Lines on the graph show a million routes in several years time (Tony Li: ``This is scary''). The question is, what will the effect of CIDR be? Some curves are trying to show the effect of CIDR, but it is only guessing since no real data is available. The current curves are based on data beginning in September 1992. The coming weeks and months will be interesting starting points for new curves. Most of today's CIDR announcements are blocks of class C addresses, however, some blocks of Bs are already announced from Europe. Curtis Villamizar did a dump of his routing tables and analyzed the data. Tony Bates and Curtis will be looking into the routing table dump. The dumps will be made on a weekly basis. Regionals that are willing to make their dumps available should provide pointers to the appropriate FTP directory. Other people are encouraged to dump their routing tables and analyze the data. Efficiency Tony Bates reported that a look into the DNS was done for Europe to determine the efficiency (percentage of usage) of the assigned address space. There are good reasons why this is not accurate (e.g. firewalls, just not registering in DNS and other usage of IP like NetBIOS add to the inaccuracy). It is clear, however, that this is the only source available. Looking at improving efficiency is relatively easy for networks that are new, but ``renumbering'' is not a lost battle. Tools need to be developed so that organizations can grow their networks without needing more address space. People should be given the means to be efficient. Furthermore, there should be documents to help people. Currently there is no pointer to give to people. Havard Eidnes volunteered to start this effort from a draft document he wrote. There is software that Charley Kline wrote that allowed him to get approximately 30% efficiency in the assignment of host numbers at the University of Illinois. This should be made available at some common location (e.g., Merit) after some restyling for portability. Frank Solensky spoke with Charley a few minutes after the meeting. Charley had just completed some of the finishing touches on his software the previous week and was happy to make it available. RFC 1597 Marten Terpstra reported on RFC 1597, an Informational RFC. Although this is not a standards-track RFC, it is considered important because the numbers are now available and the issue is being discussed. It is now possible to use address space inside a company, without needing a review by another company to judge your efficiency. The basic idea is simple: assign network numbers that are non-unique, but that are never going to be connected to the Internet. The numbers are: o 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 o 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 o 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 Pros: o Save address space for the Internet o Use as much as you like o Perhaps some security advantage Cons: o Connecting to the Internet or other private Internet needs renumbering o Traffic becomes untraceable when leaking o DNS and other things need more thinking o Generally something for an ``experienced'' network manager If Network Address Translators (NAT boxes) are being used, this RFC might have a large beneficial impact on the Internet. This RFC is also useful for sites that are definitely not going to connect. The DNS consequences for deploying this RFC are not clear yet. There should be an additional RFC describing DNS consideration for RFC 1597. IPng Timetable The area director asked the working group to come up with a ``guesstimate of'' how long IPv4 will last. Hand grenade tossing: o IP addresses will be available until 2008 plus or minus three years. The assumptions should be clear, e.g., there are users out there that cannot be served right now. If they are connecting this will become different. o Core routers are already running out of memory. 64Meg routers will buy another two years (plus or minus six months). In an optimal CIDR world, there would probably be more time. From this, no firm date can possibly be given, it all depends on the success of CIDR and the cooperation of all service providers. NAT boxes might also help CIDR, since a service provider is then able to announce a non-CIDR-isable customer inside his own CIDR block. This will be studied further. Action Items Tony Bates and Curtis Villamizar Conduct and analyze routing table dumps. Havard Eidnes Brush up the document on improving efficiency. Attendees Juha-Pekka Ahopelto juha-pekka.ahopelto@ntc.nokia.com Mark Allyn allyn@netcom.com Susie Armstrong susie@mentat.com Bashir Ashrafi bashraf@chipcom.com Dennis Baker dbaker@wellfleet.com Fred Baker fbaker@acc.com Tony Bates tony@ripe.net Jim Beers Jim.Beers@cornell.edu Nutan Behki nebhki@newbridge.com Erik-Jan Bos erik-jan.bos@surfnet.nl Brad Burdick bburdick@radio.com Joesph Burrescia burrescia@es.net Frank Cannata cannata@cabletron.com Greg Celmainis gregc@newbridge.com Brett Chappell bchappe@relay.nswc.navy.mil Robert Christ rchrist@fhcrc.org Michael Collins collins@es.net Matt Crawford crawdad@fncent.fnal.gov John Curran jcurran@nic.near.net Sean Doran smd@use.net Kjeld Borch Egevang kbe@craycom.dk Havard Eidnes havard.eidnes@runit.sintef.no Nasser El-Aawar nna@ans.net H. Tom Fitzpatrick fitz@ddn.af.mil Vince Fuller vaf@barrnet.net Steve Fulling fulling@cs.orst.edu Eugene Hastings hastings@psc.edu Ian Heavens ian@spider.co.uk Jeff Hodges hodges@jessica.stanford.edu Matthew Jonson jonson@ddn.af.mil Sean Kennedy liam@nic.near.net Edwin King eek@atc.boeing.com So Young Lee sylee@hen.nca.go.kr Tony Li tli@cisco.com Kim Long klong@nysernet.org Jun Matsukata jm@eng.isas.ac.jp Gerry Meyer gerry@spider.co.uk Keith Mitchell keith@pipex.net Pushpendra Mohta pushp@cerf.net Dennis Morris morrisd@cc.ims.disa.mil Rina Nathaniel rina@rnd-gate.rad.co.il Phil Nesser pjnesser@rocket.com Ngoc-Lan Nguyen lnguyen@icp.net Michael O'Dell mo@uunet.uu.net Andrew Partan asp@uunet.uu.net Michael Patton map@bbn.com Rex Pugh pugh@hprnd.rose.hp.com Ron Roberts rgr@stanford.edu Robert Roden roden@roden.enet.dec.com Duncan Rogerson d.rogerson@nosc.ja.net Michal Rozenthal michal@fibronics.co.il Steven Schnell schnell@sprintlink.net Tim Seaver tas@concert.net Frank Solensky solensky@ftp.com John Tavs tavs@vnet.ibm.com Marten Terpstra marten@ripe.net Jerry Toporek jt@mentat.com Paul Traina pst@cisco.com Wendell Turner wt@arinc.com Gary Veum veum@boa.gsfc.nasa.gov Maria Vistoli vistoli@infn.it Justin Walker justin@apple.com Geoff White geoff@nexsys.net Jane Wojcik jwojcik@bbn.com