[ppml] Revising Centrally Assigned ULA draft

[David Conrad]

Jeroen,

On Jun 16, 2007, at 11:42 AM, Jeroen Massar wrote:
>> a) RIR policies shouldn't be used to attempt to constrain (IPv6)
>> routing system growth
> This will be solved in time, when needed, with a Loc/Id split.

What do you see as the incentive that will be driving the shift to  
the "loc/id split"?

>> b) IPv6 PI space should be available to everyone who requests it
> Indeed, though with one teeny weeny important addition: Address  
> space is
> available on request based on justification of need.
[justification for more than a /48 clipped]

I'm not sure I follow this.

Theoretically, there are 281,474,976,710,656 /48s in the IPv6 address  
space.  However, taking only the address space that has been  
designated as "global unicast", there are 35,184,372,088,832 /48s  
available for assignment (actually less, since we've already been  
allocating out of that pool, but we're still talking about noise).   
This is still an insanely big number -- assuming equal distribution  
across the ~7 billion people on the planet (by the time IPv6 see  
significant deployment), each person on the planet could get 5,026 /48s.

Now, if, as you say, the "current yearly 'fee' for ARIN is only a  
$100 US for a /48" (is this actually the case?), it would seem  
"justification of need" would be superfluous -- there is plenty of  
financial disincentive preventing getting more address space than any  
organization would actually need, particularly given the minimum  
allocation unit can address 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176  
interfaces (or, if you prefer, 65536 LANs, each LAN capable of having  
up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 interfaces).

Given no need for RIR policies to try to constrain routing system  
growth and (at least one) /48 IPv6 PI available on request, wouldn't  
a more rational, vastly simpler approach be for the RIRs to simply  
set up a web page that charges $100/year per /48?

Further, the rationale for a /32 for ISPs no longer appears to make  
sense.  If everybody can get a /48, why would ISPs need 16 (or more)  
additional bits of address space than everybody else?  Since their  
customers would be bringing their own address space with them, why  
wouldn't they be like every body else and get a /48 and, if  
necessary, get more /48s (at $100/year) for their internal  
infrastructure as they need it?

I suspect I am missing something.

Curiously,
-drc