RFC 3701 (rfc3701) - Page 2 of 6
6bone (IPv6 Testing Address Allocation) Phaseout
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 3701 6bone Phaseout Plan March 2004
allocation" of 3FFE::/16 in [TEST-NEW]. During the fall of 1998, in
anticipation of [AGGR], the 6bone was re-addressed under the
3FFE::/16 prefix with little problems.
From the fall of 1998, until the issuance of this note, the 6bone has
continued to successfully operate with Aggregatable Global Unicast
Address prefixes from the 3FFE::/16 allocation, using a set of 6bone
routing practice rules specified in [GUIDE], and later refined to
6Bone backbone routing guidelines in [PRACTICE].
During its lifetime the 6bone has provided:
- a place for early standard developers and implementers to test
out the IPv6 protocols and their implementations;
- a place for early experimentation with routing and operational
procedures;
- a place to evolve practices useful for production IPv6 prefix
allocation;
- a place to provide bootstrap qualification for production IPv6
address prefix allocation;
- a place to develop IPv6 applications;
- a place for early users to try using IPv6 in their hosts and
networks.
As clearly stated in [TEST-NEW], the addresses for the 6bone are
temporary and will be reclaimed in the future. It further states
that all users of these addresses (within the 3FFE::/16 prefix) will
be required to renumber at some time in the future.
Since 1999 planning for, and allocation of, IPv6 production address
prefixes by the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) community has been
underway. During 2002 more production IPv6 address prefixes had been
allocated than are allocated by the 6bone at the top level. It is
generally assumed that this is one reasonable indicator that planning
for a 6bone phaseout should begin.
It is generally assumed that there is still some remaining need for
the 6bone, at least for current usage that will take time to evaluate
and possibly move to production IPv6 networks when possible.
It is generally viewed that the 6bone is an IETF activity as it was
established by IETF participants to assist the IETF in developing
IPv6 protocols, and also to assist in the IPv6 transition. To this
Fink & Hinden Informational