[ppml] Policy Proposal 2006-4: IPv6 Direct PI Assignments forEnd Sites - revised text

[Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com]

It would be really helpful if the IAB would comment on
the original thinking behind the IPv6 /48. There is
far more uncertainty about this issue than there should
be at this late date.

> 6.2.9. End site
> An end site is defined as an end user (subscriber) who has a business
> relationship with a service provider that involves:

> An end site is an organization that gets assignments and transit 
> from an upstream.  Under this definition, if an organization gets
> an (unaggregatable) PI assignment, it is not an end site.  A
> remote office could be considered to be an end site.

I think that is overly simplistic. For instance, consider
the case of a single human being who owns two homes, one in
the country and one in the city. How many service providers
would NOT open a second subscriber account if this individual
decided to buy IPv6 Internet access for their second home 
from the same provider? How many of these providers would
only supply a single /48 subnet for both locations?

I suspect that the answer is that NOBODY treats a single
human with multiple locations as a single subscriber. If
you look at a similar IPv4 situation with non-cable-TV
providers, I think you will find that both locations are 
assigned their own IPv4 address. Unfortunately, the term
"subscriber" is not used in the IPv4 policy except to
refer to a cable-TV subscriber special case.

So, in conclusion, I believe that it is more in tune with
IPv6 policy to say that an OFFICE of an organization is
considered to be an end-site. Remoteness is not an issue.
The issue is more one of discrete locations. If the office
is in a multi-story office tower, then it gets its own /48.
If the office is in a multi-block campus, then it shares
a single /48 with the rest of the campus. If this latter 
seems unfair for a large university or Microsoft in Seattle,
let's not forget http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#six9
which explicitly, in 6.9, notes that very large subscribers
are an exception to the /48 rule.

Large organizations are not monolithic creatures. They are
composed of multiple legal entities and they operate multiple
functions out of many different locations, often grouping
certain functions into certain locations. They regularly
dissect themselves and trade pieces around, i.e. merger and
aquisition. To force such organizations to live inside a single
/48 means to force them to undertake a tremendous amount
of renumbering churn that individual Internet users are not
subjected to. However, assigning a single /48 to each physical
location (discrete street address) will allow such organizations
to carry out a large percentage of M&A activity without absolutely
requiring renumbering. They may still need to do pure NAT
where their Internet connectivity is centralised or switches
providers, but the network architecture designed around an
interchangeable /48 network size, will minimize the changes.

--Michael Dillon