[arin-ppml] Rationale for /22

[bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 01:56:43PM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote:
> In a message written on Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 12:19:19PM -0500, George, Wes E [NTK] wrote:
> > To the question of "existing filters/inertia aside, is there a
> > justification for *any* minimum allocation size?"
> 
> While it is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum argument, consider what
> (could) happen if the minimum were a /32.


	kind of like what happens when we give out everyone a /32
	of IPv6 space.  your arguments are identical for either 
	an IPv4 or IPv6 /32.  

	and yet we find it acceptable to hand out /32's in one space...

--bill

> 
> Everyone with a computer can justify a single address.  There's no
> way global backbone routers can support a prefix per-user, even for
> a modest amount of users.  Many of these users would be single
> homed, taking the main advantage of a portable /32 as being a
> "vanity" IP address.  Presumably the price for a single address
> would be so low (see cost of domain names) a substantial number of
> people would not see the price as a barrier.  Even if direct providers
> wouldn't route these (e.g. Cable/DSL providers), it's likely tunnel
> brokers could offer services to end users for modest costs.
> 
> I think many folks miss the most important item though when considering
> the effects of minimum allocation size, or other polices that are
> likely to affect the size of the global table.  The single most
> important thing is predictability.  ISP's are buying equipment now
> based on growth assumptions.  They want that equipment to have a
> reasonable lifespan (3, 5, 7 years?).  If our policies and actions
> allow them to predict with reasonable accuracy that the table will
> be 500k routes in 3 years, and 700k routes in 5 years, and they can
> buy a 1M route box, well then all is good.
> 
> But if they bought that box yesterday, and today we change the
> policy such that in 3 years there are 1M routes then that ISP is
> going to be in a huge bind.  It's either going to have to spend a
> lot of capital early, or it's going to have to drop routes.
> 
> We've had a trend of lowering the minimum allocation nice and slowly
> over the past 5-7 years, and we've been carefully watching the
> results.  I think this is generally the prudent course of action,
> there is a huge penality for overshooting in terms of disruption
> to the global network.
> 
> -- 
>        Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
>         PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/



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