[ppml] 2005-1 status

Stephen Sprunk stephen at sprunk.org
Fri Feb 3 15:56:43 EST 2006


Thus spake <Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com>
>> So, I don't undestand why you think the entire McD business could
>> not justify a  need for more then a /47.
>>
>> With 31,000 sites today and ~2% annual growth, I don't see how they
>> could justify asking for more than a /47 unless they had a legit use
>> for more than three /64s per restaurant.  They could even fit into a
>> /48 without difficulty if they only needed one per restaurant (which is
>> what I'd expect).
>
> I don't understand this analysis. First of all, in the USA McDonalds
> has only 12,300 locations.

ARIN covers more than the USA.  And, typically, corporations based in the US 
use the same address space for their foreign operations even if they could 
(in theory) get space from a more appropriate RIR.  It's a moot point 
anyways; 12,300 is just as good a number to argue about as 31,000.

> Secondly, according to the existing IPv6 policy, if McDonalds were to
> go to an ISP and ask for IPv6 connectivity for their network of 12,300
> restaurants, the ISP would assign them 12,300 /48 address blocks.
> That is the policy ...

No, the current policy is that the LIR can assign a single /48 or forward 
the request for more (with justification) to ARIN.

You're confusing "end site" with "location".  According to the NRPM:

        6.2.9. End site

        An end site is defined as an end user (subscriber) [...]

So, a single end user organization counts as one "end site" regardless of 
the number of physical locations it has.

> and if you don't understand why each location qualifies for a /48 then
> you need to do some study on the fundamentals of IPv6 addressing.

I fail to see why "the fundamentals of IPv6 addressing" require a /48 to be 
assigned to a location with one or two subnets.  Ever heard of VLSM?

>> Still, quibbling over /47 vs /44 is a distraction.  I haven't heard
>> anyone say that a /32 would be reasonable for an end site under
>> any conditions.
>
> We are not discussing end sites here. We are discussing end users, in
> other words organizations which may have one or many end sites in their
> network.

See above about 6.2.9.

>> I have trouble conceiving any org on earth that has a real need for
>> _over eight billion_ internal subnets, hence my original argument with
>> the Kevin's draft proposal that would have given us such a policy.
>> It's since been improved.
>
> When you say "internal subnets" are you referring to /64 blocks? If so,
> then this is irrelevant to the discussion. /64s are only counted in the
> very unusual circumstance where an end site needs only a single IPv6
> subnetwork. This is unlikely to occur outside of industrial applications.

Presumably, /64s would be counted when determining if a single end site were 
justified in requesting more than a single /48.  The HD ratio could be 
easily used for this, though there's currently no defined threshold for this 
purpose.

S

Stephen Sprunk        "Stupid people surround themselves with smart
CCIE #3723           people.  Smart people surround themselves with
K5SSS         smart people who disagree with them."  --Aaron Sorkin 




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