[ppml] How many IPv6 bits do you get without public scrutiny?

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> In fact, I'm half tempted to propose policy that makes the 
> justification documents for any IPv6 allocation or assignment 
> shorter than /24 subject to public review.

Now there is something worth discussing on PPML unlike that ULA nonsense
which belongs in the IETF.

The fact is that we give ISPs a /32 because that seems big enough for
most service providers. For most of them it is more than enough. But we
currently have policy that gives really big ISPs more bits in one block
because this is less wasteful. But in IPv6 "wasteful" is defined
differently from IPv4. Perhaps the very concept of giving more than a
/32 is wasteful. Or perhaps there is another boundary such as the /24
which Owen mentions, beyond which we are being wasteful. If you stick
with the 4-bit nibble boundaries that came out of the /56 discussions,
then perhaps the RIRs should only have discretion to increase that /32
to a /28 but no larger unless there is a public discussion and some kind
of policy approval. After all, the IPv6 space is a public resource and
for one organization to grab a huge chunk of it, relative to everybody
else's chunk, seems to me to be a public policy issue.

I believe there is some precedence in this with the 126/8 allocation
that APNIC gave to Softbank. I know there certainly is some precedent in
the way the /24 was given to the cable industry.

So there are two questions. Is there a boundary beyond which an RIR
cannot allocate a single large block to one organization? And should we
allow the /32 boundary to be shoved up a bit at a time, or only a whole
nibble?

--Michael Dillon