[ppml] Principles for IPv6 PI allocations to end sites

[Edward Lewis]

I haven't been able to read the 2005-1 thread, so this message is 
quite welcome.

At 17:00 -0500 2/8/06, Thomas Narten wrote:
>Here are some thoughts I have w.r.t. this topic. Generally, I'm in
>favor of coming up with a policy for granting PI space to large end
>sites. However, I am also very concerned that we do not open the
>floodgates and create a situation a few years down the road that we
>wish we weren't in.
>
>Some principles I keep in my mind as I evaluate various proposals.
>
>IPv6 space is a public resource, and we need to avoid having a policy
>adopted today turn into an "early adopter bonus program". That is, if
>5-10 years from now we have two classes of entities:

Are we truly concerned about "early adopters" when we have a hard 
time getting IPv6 rolling at all?  (That's my snicker-eliciting 
comment.)

"Early adoption" is already past tense in (at least) the APNIC 
region.  I understand the point here, perhaps the label "early 
adopter" is a misnomer though.

>Corallary: I don't buy the argument that "we can always change the
>policy later,

I have to disagree with this.  Coming up with a perfect policy is 
difficult.  We can have a "perfect" design of a technical system, but 
in a subjective environment such as address allocation policy I think 
we ought to strive for a perfect policy but realize that it's a dream.

>Multihoming: we don't have a "magic bullet" multihoming solution on
...
>One question that arises is fairness. Since we can't give PI space to
...
>prefix in the DFZ. Hence, I tend to lean towards giving PI space only
>to the largest end sites, i.e., those that will provide benefit to the
>largest communities.

I think the above is the crux of the problem.

I'll agree that we ought to forget about a technical solution to 
multihoming coming any time soon (snicker - one more broken promise 
by IPv6).  Fairness is what this is all about - but I don't think the 
size of the benefiting community is the metric.  (For example, if a 
site is in the US but plans to market to China and will have it's web 
site in the Chinese language, does that mean it caters to the 
"largest" community.)

>There may be other metrics that we should consider; in any case, I do

I would think that the metric ought to be tied to the level of pain 
of reacting to an event that would have driven a would-be PI user to 
PI.  I.e., if the reason to want PI space to be to avoid having to 
renumber out of a failed ISP's address range into another, then 
priority ought to go to PI-wannabes with the largest address need. 
(Or that have the largest number of firewalls which need to have 
addresses configured, etc.)

>I believe we need to allocate PI space out of specific prefix, so that

How would this differ from todays (IPv4's) swamp space?  I suppose 
that it would only be within one RIR (but across LIRs to manage), but 
it would be as painful to routing as the IPv4 swamp.

-- 
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Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
NeuStar

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