[ppml] IPv6 assignment - proposal for change to nrpm

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Sun, Oct 21, 2007 at 11:37:54PM -0400, briand at ca.afilias.info wrote:
> I'm pretty sure the way I worded my proposal was the encouragement of,
> not the requirement of, ISPs allocating longer prefixes.

Here's the problem with "encouragement".

At the end of the day the rubber meets the road by an ISP coming
back to ARIN and asking for more space.  At that time staff takes
some look at their previous use of space and decides if it meets
the requirements to get more space.  The carrot is, do things right
and your request goes through quicker, the stick is, do things wrong
and you won't get more space until you fix your current problem.

In that context, guidelines don't work well.  Indeed, prior to IPv6
the last 10 years have been all about removing guidelines from ARIN
policy, and leaving hard and fast rules.

It's nice to say something like: "If you can, use a /120 for a small
customer."  However, when ARIN staff conducts there review the
current /requirement/ is that ISP's justify larger than a /48.  So
the ISP says "well, I think this guy may grow in 5 years, so I gave
him a /48", ARIN staff accepts it and moves on.

I ended up a bit at odds with Leslie while on the Podium, and we
talked after the meeting.  Being tired from two days of policy I
minced her words wrong and created some confusion.  I said "ARIN
staff does not use the guidelines,", which she jumped up and said
was wrong.  It was, they use them to inform people how they should
be doing things.  The correct statement was "ARIN staff does not
/enforce/ the guidelines."  They see no way to enforce a recommendation.
[Hopefully I got it right this time, sorry Leslie.]

It's useful to explain things like "you can use a /126 for a P2P
link between your routers where you want to statically address
things" to people so we're not wasting /64's for that job.  I guess
where I keep coming back to is that such items are not policy, they
are community education.  They should be in the NPOG (which I think
needs to be accelerated), or the glossy flyers ARIN produces; not
the policy manual which is our hard and fast rules that staff must
implement.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
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