[ppml] [address-policy-wg] Those pesky ULAs again

[Iljitsch van Beijnum]

On 29-mei-2007, at 12:00, Shane Kerr wrote:

>> It troubles me that so many people are willing to deprive others of
>> something that those others consider useful just because they
>> themselves don't find that thing useful.

> If something is not useful to me, but might be useful to others, I
> generally don't oppose it.

> But I do not think ULA central is useful to anyone.

People have come out and said it's useful to them, so you are putting  
your judgment ahead of theirs.

> Even if ULA central is useful, I don't think it is something the RIRs
> need to be involved in.

On that, we agree.

> If you insist on ULA central, my preferred implementation is a web
> page where you click on a button that says "give me a ULA prefix" and
> it allocates a random prefix that is not in use, and prints it on the
> screen. The only implementation question I'm not sure about is whether
> the list of allocated prefixes would be public or not; I lean towards
> making it public, although there is a (small) privacy concern. I think
> the cost of this implementation is low enough you could find a group
> of volunteers to host the system.

I think a mechanism similar to IEEE MAC addresses would be good:  
organizations can buy a block for a price that's large enough to  
cover the costs of maintaining the IANA registry and also high enough  
to make sure people aren't going to buy unreasonable quantities ($/eu  
1000 - 5000 or so for a block of a million /48s seems about right)  
and then the block holders can then redistribute the individual ULA  
prefixes in any way they see fit. Presumably, end-users would buy  
their prefixes from distributors that have a good system for  
enforcing uniqueness in place, but this can be traded off against  
other needs.