[arin-discuss] [arin-ppml] x-small IPv4 ISPs going to IPv6

[Gary Giesen]

> 1)  Is there any reason why i'm still being issued a Unique IPv4 on my
> home comcast?  you mean to tell me that every single household requires
> a unique IP address all the time?  99% of them could do with NAT.

One IP address per home is actually already pretty conservative when the
original goal of IP was an address per device. There are probably a lot more
than 1% of customers who would be unhappy with this, although it may be
unavoidable if IPv6 doesn't take off quickly enough. But NAT'ing everyone
with CGN solves the problem only temporarily, meaning months to a few years,
nothing more.

> 
> 2)  Give away IPv6 for existing IPv4 holders.
> 
This is essentially already being done. Everyone who has a direct allocation
from ARIN already gets an equivalent size IPv6 allocation for free. The big
debate is on the X-Small side, since ARIN doesn't appear to be issuing
X-Small IPv6 allocations (I won't speculate as to the reasons, but I think
there's general agreement in the community that /32 is the "accepted"
minimum prefix size for ISPs).


> 3)  Why do universities and even large companies need enormous
> allocations?  Ask for them back, offer a free ride for a couple of years
> to organizations that give them up and re-sell the IP space to those who
> can use it.

ARIN's been asking for them back for years, hence the creation of the Legacy
RSA. But with the murky legal status with regards to ARIN having
jurisdiction over those IPs (those legacy holders had their allocations
before ARIN even existed, and have no contractual relationship with ARIN),
it's a difficult road ARIN faces. We should not have the same problem with
IPv6 (anyone wishing to get IPv6 from ARIN will need to sign an RSA).
Besides, at the current rate of consumption, reclaiming even a significant
portion of the legacy /8's buys us months, not years.


> 4)  Most importantly, everyone should be paying similar costs per IP
> address.  The existing fee structure is simply ridiculous.

The fee structure is meant to reflect the cost of services for those block
sizes. ARIN works on a cost-recovery model (being a non-profit
organization). Obviously economies of scale come into play here, the larger
the allocation, the cheaper per IP it is to manage. I'm speculating here,
but even if it cost ARIN 100x as much to provide services (evaluating
requests, providing rdns delegation, whois, etc) for a /10 as for a /22, a
/10 has 4096 times the address space. And I'm willing to bet ARIN doesn't
incur 100x the cost. ARIN's fees are merely to recover the costs of
operating the registry, and to some degree the very large players are
already "subsidizing" the smaller ones if you look at what they're paying
per IP versus what ARIN's costs are per IP for these allocations. While I
agree IPv6 end users should really get a break on the fees, for an ISP that
makes money off providing IP services, it's simply a cost of doing business.
If it would make it easier for the X-Small if the fee waiver was extended
for a year or two, I would support that.

GG