IAB B. Carpenter Internet Draft Y. Rekhter August 1995 Renumbering considered unavoidable Abstract draft-iab-renum-00.txt Changes to addressing information (renumbering) associated with various network components are likely to become more and more widespread and common, and in many cases unavoidable. The IAB would like to stress the need to develop and deploy solutions that would facilitate such changes. Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.'' To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet- Drafts Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), nic.nordu.net (Europe), ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim). Table of Contents: Status of this Memo.............................................1 1. Motivation...................................................2 2. DNS versus IP Addresses......................................2 3. Recommendations..............................................3 4. Security considerations......................................3 Acknowledgements................................................4 Authors' Addresses..............................................4 Carpenter & Rekhter Expires February 1996 [Page 1] Internet Draft Renumbering considered unavoidable August 1995 1. Motivation A need to change IP addressing information associated with various network components is known as "renumbering". Voluntary renumbering may occur for a variety of reasons. For example, moving an IP host from one subnet to another requires changing the host's IP address. Physically splitting a subnet due to traffic overload may also require renumbering. A third example where renumbering may happen is when an organization changes its addressing plan. Such changes imply changing not only hosts' addresses, but subnet numbers as well. These are just three examples that illustrate possible scenarios where voluntary renumbering could occur. Increasingly, renumbering will be unavoidable and involuntary. Extended deployment of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) is vital to keep the Internet routing system alive and to maintain continuous uninterrupted growth of the Internet. With current IP technology, this requires the vast majority of Internet hosts and subnets to have addresses belonging to a single large block of address space that has been allocated to their current service provider. To contain the growth of routing information, whenever a subscriber changes to a new service provider, the subscriber's addresses will have to change. Occasionally, service providers themselves may have to change to a new and larger block of address space. In either of these cases, to contain the growth of routing information the subscribers concerned must renumber their subnet(s) and host(s). If the subscriber does not renumber, the subscriber may be faced with either (a) limited (less than Internet-wide) IP connectivity, or (b) extra cost to offset the overhead associated with the subscriber's routing information that Internet Services Providers have to maintain, or both. Currently, renumbering is usually a costly, tedious and error-prone process. It usually requires the services of experts in the area and considerable advance planning. Tools to facilitate renumbering are few, not widely available, and not widely deployed. While a variety of ad hoc approaches to renumbering have been developed and used, the overall situation is far from satisfactory. There is little or no documentation that describes renumbering procedures. While renumbering occurs in various parts of the Internet, there is little or no documented experience sharing. 2. DNS versus IP Addresses Within the Internet architecture an individual host can be identified by the IP address(es) assigned to the network interface(s) on that host. The Domain Name System (DNS) provides a convenient way to associate legible names with IP addresses. The DNS name space is independent of the IP address space. DNS names are related to the ownership and function of the hosts, not to the mechanisms of addressing and routing. A change in DNS name is generally a sign of a real change in function, whereas a change in IP address is a purely technical event. Carpenter & Rekhter Expires February 1996 [Page 2] Internet Draft Renumbering considered unavoidable August 1995 Expressing the information in terms of Domain Names allows one to defer binding between a particular network entity and its IP address until run time. Since Domain Names names are expected to be fairly long-lived, and more stable than IP addresses, deferring the binding avoids the risk of changed mapping between IP addresses and specific network entities (due to changing addressing information). Moreover, reliance on Fully Qualified Domain Names (rather than IP addresses) also localizes to the DNS the changes needed to deal with changing addressing information due to renumbering. 3. Recommendations The development and deployment of a toolkit that could facilitate and automate host renumbering is essential. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is clearly an essential part of such a tool kit. The IAB strongly encourages implementation and wide-scale deployment of DHCP. Support for dynamic update capabilities to the Domain Name System (DNS) that could be done with sufficient authentication would further facilitate host renumbering. The IAB strongly encourages progression of work in this area towards standardization within the IETF, with the goal of integrating DHCP and dynamic update capabilities to provide truly autoconfigurable TCP/IP hosts. The IAB strongly recommends that all designs and implementations should minimise the cases in which IP addresses are stored in non- volatile storage maintained by humans, such as configuration files. Configuration information used by TCP/IP protocols should be expressed, whenever possible, in terms of Fully Qualified Domain Names, rather than IP addresses. Hardcoding IP addresses into applications should be deprecated. Files containing lists of name to address mappings, other than that used as part of DNS configuration, should be deprecated, and avoided wherever possible. The IAB strongly encourages sharing of experience with renumbering and documenting this sharing within the Internet community. The IAB suggests that the IETF (and specifically its Operational Area) may be the most appropriate place to develop such documentation. The IAB welcomes the decision of the CIDRD working group to document existing methods of renumbering. 4. Security considerations Renumbering is compatible with the Internet security architecture. Carpenter & Rekhter Expires February 1996 [Page 3] Internet Draft Renumbering considered unavoidable August 1995 Acknowledgements This document is a collective product of the Internet Architecture Board. Authors' Addresses Brian E. Carpenter Group Leader, Communications Systems Phone: +41 22 767-4967 Computing and Networks Division Fax: +41 22 767-7155 CERN Telex: 419000 cer ch European Laboratory for Particle Physics Email: brian@dxcoms.cern.ch 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland Yakov Rekhter cisco Systems 170 West Tasman Drive San Jose, CA 95134 Phone: (914) 528-0090 EMail: yakov@cisco.com Carpenter & Rekhter Expires February 1996 [Page 4]