[ppml] Policy Proposal 2006-4: IPv6 Direct PI Assignments for End Sites - Abandoned

[Member Services]

The ARIN Advisory Council (AC), acting under the provisions of the ARIN 
Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process (IRPEP), has reviewed Policy 
Proposal 2006-4: IPv6 Direct PI Assignments for End Sites. The AC 
abandoned 2006-4 after noting community preference for an edited version 
of Policy Proposal 2005-1: Provider-independent IPv6 Assignments for End 
Sites. The AC made this determination at their meeting at the conclusion 
of the ARIN Public Policy meeting on April 11, 2006. The results of the 
AC meeting were reported by the Chair of the AC at the member meeting. 
This report can be found at 
http://www.arin.net/meetings/minutes/ARIN_XVII/mem.html

In order for this proposal to be further considered the author must use 
the last call petition process as defined in the ARIN Internet Resource 
Policy Evaluation Process. This policy will be considered to be 
abandoned if the author of the proposal does not initiate a last call 
petition by 12:00 Noon, Eastern Time, April 21, 2006.

The current policy proposal text is provided below and is also available 
at http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2006_4.html

The ARIN Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process can be found at 
http://www.arin.net/policy/irpep.html.

Regards,

Member Services
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)

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Policy Proposal 2006-4: IPv6 Direct PI Assignments for End Sites
Policy statement

Policy Proposal 2006-4, version 2

Add new subsection to the NRPM:

6.5.8. Direct assignments to end sites

6.5.8.1. To qualify for a direct end site assignment, an
organization must meet all of the following criteria:

1. not be an LIR;
2. be an end site;
3. be currently multihomed using IPv4;
4. have a direct assignment from ARIN of at least a IPv4 /19 and
can show the current utilization of 80% of an IPv4 /19 equivalent.

6.5.8.2. Direct assignment size to end sites

Organizations that meet the direct end site assignment criteria are
eligible to receive a direct assignment of /48 out of a reserved
/44. Organizations with multiple ASNs may be assigned a prefix large
enough to permit a /48 to be assigned to each ASN.

Direct Assignments shall be allocated from a separate super-block to
allow for LIRs to filter.

6.5.8.3. Subsequent direct assignments to end sites

Organization's assignment size may be increased to the next larger
prefix (to a maximum of /44) when the organization demonstrates any
of the following criteria:

1. 50% of the assigned /64 subnets are utilized
2. 50% of the /48 subnets are assigned and utilized to unique
ASN assignments

Organizations which request and can justify assignments larger than /44 
shall qualify as LIRs and must make application for an allocation under 
policies applicable to an LIR, except that they shall be exempted from 
the requirement to assign addresses to other organizations.

Only one direct assignment may be made to an end site organization under 
Section 6.5.8

Policy Rationale

This policy is proposed as an alternative to the existing 2005-1 policy 
proposal. This policy is intended to be more conservative that the 
existing proposed 2005-1 policy. While this policy does allow PI 
assignments to end-sites, it limits the scope to current IPv4 holders 
with direct assignments. A more conservative policy is desirable as the 
first IPv6 PI policy.

Current ARIN policy does not permit an end-site from obtaining a 
Provider Independent IPv6 address block directly from ARIN. There is 
currently no viable IPv6 multihoming method available for these 
end-sites. Shim6 & other methods have been proposed as a possible method 
to meet multihoming requirements. Today, no implementation or 
alternatives exist to “traditional” IPv4 multihoming which announces 
unique address space from an ASN.

The largest end-sites (corporations & content providers) have the 
greatest to gain and/or lose by not having an available method to 
multihome. While IPv6 provides for stateless auto configuration for end 
hosts, no new methods for renumbering the infrastructure are available. 
The cost and complexity of renumbering these large organizations makes 
it essential to provide stable address resources which are not assigned 
from a LIR.

The lack of an end-site assignment policy is currently preventing the 
real planning and deployment of IPv6 networks in these organizations.

Other policy proposals (2005-1) addressing this issue have been 
presented at the ARIN 15 & 16 meetings. This policy proposal attempts to 
address the issues that were raised on the ppml mailing list and at the 
public policy meetings for 2005-1.

Specifically, the main issue surrounding the creation of consensus on 
this policy appears to be the criteria for which end-sites should be 
able to obtain an endsite assignment. Concerns have been raised about 
the creation of a new IPv6 “swamp” by having a policy that is too 
lenient. This issue is addressed in the policy by limiting the endsite 
assignments to current organizations with a modest IPv4 assignment.

The assignment of IPv4 resources is orthogonal to the assignment of IPv6 
addresses. However, the use of existing IPv4 assignments and ARIN 
membership are postulated as an appropriate regulator for the initial 
assignments under an IPv6 endsite policy. It is reasonable to consider 
changes to the membership and IPv4 assignment requirements in the 
future. This review should be conducted after the endsite assignment 
policy has been in place long enough to understand the demand for 
endsite IPv6 assignments and the development of IPv6 networks have matured.

This policy proposal does not attempt to address the assignment needs 
for endsites which currently do not have IPv4 assignments.