[ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv6 Assignment Guidelines

[Iljitsch van Beijnum]

On 17-aug-2007, at 20:21, Member Services wrote:

> LIR's may assign blocks in the range of /48 to /64 to end sites.
> All assignments made by LIR's should meet a minimum HD-Ratio of .25.

> * /64 - Site needing only a single subnet.
> * /60 - Site with 2-3 subnets initially.
> * /56 - Site with 4-7 subnets initially.
> * /52 - Site with 8-15 subnets initially.
> * /48 - Site with 16+ subnets initially.

I don't support this policy.

Please note that at this time, there is rough consensus in the IETF  
that there is no technical reason to limit end-user assignments to  
anything smaller than a /48 block.

</ietf rough consensus>

Assuming 10 billion people on the planet, you can easily give them  
all a /48 from a /14, which is 1/2048th of the current IPv6 global  
unicast address space, which in turn is only a little more than 1/8th  
of the total IPv6 address space.

Only when you apply the HD ratio in different places, address space  
starts disappearing much quicker.

As someone who has filled out his share of address request forms, I  
can attest that it's extremely hard to predict address use in  
advance. As such, I would REALLY like to be able for ANY user who  
thinks he or she may possibly need it, to get a /48, no questions  
asked. If it's still deemed desireable to make the standard  
assignment for residential users smaller than that, I recommend a /60  
because this is large enough to accommodate a fairly big home network  
(I have 5 Cisco routers and 2 wifi base stations in my house and  
never used more than 4 subnets) but small enough that people won't be  
tempted to cram a corporate network in it, only to grow out of it  
anyway and needing a rather painful renumbering operation (which  
would be a significant risk with assigning /56s).