[ppml] 2005-1:Business Need for PI Assignments

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

> >   o but imprudent blow-out of any one (or more) of the dimensions
> >     in tension, at the expense of the others, will lead to articles
> >     in the nyt, wsj, and people who wear strange clothes.

> Create something like a "micro-LIR" category which is assumed to be
> mostly self serving but with a small allocation like /44. 

What is the point of this?

One of the "dimensions in tension" is the number of routes
in the global routing table. A dimension that is not in 
tension is the number of available IPv6 addresses in 2000::/3.
You suggestion is to conserve the dimension not in tension
but does nothing to conserve the dimension that is in tension.

If a company receives an AS number then they can announce
any number of prefixes into the global routing table. Why not
give them a /32 knowing that in 99% of the cases, this
company will never need an additional allocation and will
therefore only need to announce one route entry? That does
conserve a dimension in tension.

God help us if we start to hand out /44's and then 5 years
from now someone creates an IPv6 application that results in
large numbers of /48 assignments, causing all the /44 allocations
to run out and get a second one. Then, when we see the problem
and adjust that /44 boundary up to /32, these organizations will
once again overflow their 2nd /44 and get a 3rd /32 allocation.
And then we realize that it is virtually impossible to renumber
this application because it involves IPv6 addresses configured
into hardware devices that have no central management capability.
So now we have consumed 3 times as many global routing table entries
as we would have by BEING CONSERVATIVE AND GIVING EVERYONE A /32!

IPv6 is not IPv4. Being prudent and conservative in an IPv6
world involves different behaviors than being conservative 
in an IPv4 world.

I'd like to point out that my IPv4 DSL provider gives me a /32
for my home DSL connection and they never even asked whether
or not I had a router or a single PC. If this is justification
enough to get one 4.3 billionth of the IPv4 address space, then
why does a company need to go through contortions to justify 
one 4.3 billionth of the IPv6 address space?

--Michael Dillon

P.S. is anyone aware of an academic research organization that is
doing a global study to try to determine how many IPv6 addresses
might be needed in the various different regions of the world?
Either a high level study or something as granular as metropolitan
areas?