Gert Doering wrote on 09/02/2023 08:28:
OTOH, without this clause, IXPs will notice "there is no more IPv4 space, so maybe we need to do something else", and then it will be a bit late to start researching - so maybe this is something people from the IXP community (EuroIX?) can start working on, *together with the usual vendors*, to make sure this stuff actually works when the IXPs need it, and there is good documentation for the IXP members "how to make it work on their gear"...
No doubt at some point in the future, this will work reasonably well. In the interim, it will be fertile territory for difficult-to-diagnose forwarding bugs, i.e. the class of bugs that gives the night terrors to both device software/firmware developers and network operators. We're no longer in a world where it's viable to deploy untested and experimental L3 packet forwarding features in IXPs. NISD2 is just around the corner, which will categorise all IXPs in the EU region as Essential Entities - the equivalent of Operators of Essential Services in NISD1. I.e. IXPs will shortly be regulated entities. If enabling rfc8950 caused an IXP to blackhole traffic for a couple of million people, how would it work explaining it to a regulator that the root cause for this outage was an experimental baseline forwarding feature, mandated by an addressing policy and enforced by the RIPE NCC? RFC8950 will have its place in the toolbox, but we're not there yet. Nick