[ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv6 HD ratio

[Edward Lewis]

At 14:39 -0400 5/10/05, Leo Bicknell wrote:

>However, I'm concerned that so far it is a relatively select group
>making comments.

Good observation...

>As much as I enjoy a good debate, as an AC member I think it's
>critical we dig into what the ARIN membership, and public in general
>want.  In particular on this issue, I'd like to hear from people
>who are working for ISP's giving out IPv6 space at this time.  While
>there are a few, there are some, and they are the only real world
>experience we have to draw on at this time.

I don't work for an ISP, but have an interest in what's going on (and 
some time to devote to it).

I have some questions about HD rations.  At the last APNIC meeting 
there was a discussion about applying HD ration to IPv4 - in looking 
through APNIC's website I found this presentation (from a previous 
RIPE meeting):

http://www.apnic.net/community/presentations/docs/ripe/ripe-48-pres-pwilson-hdratio.pdf

Yes, this is about IPv4, but the background slides were enlightening to me.

One of the critical factors in efficiency is the depth of the network 
hierarchy.  For a cable system provider, the depth may be shallow, 
making it easy to fill up a stretch of addresses.  For someone that 
is a wide area backbone provider, filling up the same stretch of 
addresses with hosts is harder.

Question 1 - does the HD ratio inherently account for this? 
Regardless of the HD value that is.  It's a log ratio...so maybe yes. 
If so, maybe it's just a question of what setting to use.

Question 2 - should the hierarchy of the network design be something 
that the RIR ought to have to consider when judging which (if there 
is more than one) utilization metric to use?  There's obviously the 
problem of an ISP having to expose internals to the RIR - who would 
want that - and there's the problem of the RIR then having to 
consider a flood of information.  But, would this be worth it to get 
to squeeze out a few more bits?

I suppose that it wouldn't be manageable to categorize an ISP into a 
"kind" - like home consumer market, business market, WAN services - 
and use that to determine what ration to use.  Or would it?


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Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
NeuStar

If you knew what I was thinking, you'd understand what I was saying.