[ppml] Version think... was: alternative to 2005-1

[Craig Huegen (chuegen)]

On , ppml-bounces at arin.net <mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net> wrote:

(I make no apologies for my quote header as this list tends to have a
strange re-write behavior unlike that of most lists...)

Both APNIC and RIPE have the following statement in their policies:

> "To qualify for an initial allocation of IPv6 address space, an
> organization must: a.  be an LIR; b. not be an end site; "

Down to technicalities...  If a large enterprise's IT department has
hundreds of sites (remote offices) around the globe and largely acts as
a service provider to its own organization, can it qualify as an LIR?
Each remote office could be considered a single site.

It seems completely backwards to me that companies the size of Cisco,
GE, HP, IBM, etc. cannot get IPv6 addressing except through service
providers, while Joe's Garage ISP with a couple hundred subscribers can
qualify for a /32.  These companies can have networks that are much,
much larger than most of the ISP's out there.

There are a few basic points that I think are important here:

1. For larger networks, PA space is a de-facto service provider lock-in
due to the cost of renumbering.  From an enterprise viewpoint, this is a
significant business risk.  Renumbering pain has a pretty significant
relationship with an increasing size of the target network, special
corner cases excepted.

2. Adoption of IPv6 in larger organizations will require that the
de-facto service provider lock-in be solved.  In the early days of IPv6
development, it was assumed that with the use of PA-only space, there
would be mechanisms available to make renumbering simple.  Proposals
such as 8+8 came forth.  In the end, IPv6 ended up as IPv4 with bigger
address fields, and allocation policies and the implementation details
of renumbering were considered out-of-scope.  There wasn't much
rejoicing in enterprise-land.

3. We must indeed be concerned about the long-term viability of IPv6.
Granting a "land rush" is inappropriate.  We must be measured about the
deployment; the good news is that the policy process allows us to start
conservatively and slowly open it up as we witness this growth and its
effects.  The last thing we want to do is give anyone with a class C
from the unjustified pre-CIDR days the ability to claim their IPv6
"land".  It makes sense to focus first on adoption by those who would
have the largest hardship related to renumbering.

4. We must not abandon long-term solution development:  we need to
continue to work at solutions that will permit smaller routing tables
for network scalability, and easy provider changes with very minimal
effort in renumbering for end networks.  The challenge is that adoption
of these long-term solutions will take some time, and the answer is not
"wait" -- enterprises have looked at IPv6 for several years and have
been "waiting" for a while already.

In essence, this spells out the requirement for a PI-based solution in
the near term that is conservative and time or space-limited.  I support
the alternative to 2005-1 that starts more conservatively over a policy
that grants IPv6 addresses to anyone with an IPv4 block.

Also, while fees are generally outside of the policy spectrum, we must
consider that there currently is no fee for IPv6 services -- will this
cause more of a land rush than if there were a fee in place?

/cah

---
Craig A. Huegen, IT Solutions Architect       C i s c o  S y s t e m s
IT - Intelligent Network Solutions                  ||        ||
Cisco Systems, Inc., 400 East Tasman Drive          ||        ||
San Jose, CA  95134, (408) 526-8104                ||||      ||||
email: chuegen at cisco.com       CCIE #2100      ..:||||||:..:||||||:..