[arin-ppml] A modest proposal for IPv6 address allocations

[Garry Dolley]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:46:25AM +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
> gdolley at arpnetworks.com (Garry Dolley) writes:
> 
> > While I like the effort to simplify the current policy, I don't
> > think this would actually work in practice.  To see why, I'd like to
> > point out the following:
> >
> >   1. RFC 3177, "IAB/IESG Recommendations on IPv6 Address Allocations to
> >   Sites" http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3177
> >
> >   2. RFC 5375, "IPv6 Unicast Address Assignment Considerations"
> >      http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5375
> >
> > Everyone who is participating in these policy debates should read these.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> > Basically, for organizations who are assigning IPv6 space to other
> > organizations, and aggregating that space to their upstreams, really
> > do need a /32 to begin with.  This is because all their downstream
> > assignments will be /48's (RFC 3177).
> 
> Not so fast.

What do you think the downstream assignment would be?  Perhaps we'll
see /56's also, we currently already are with some residential ISPs.
But I think the smallest we'll see is /64 since many sites will have
more than 1 subnet.

> > If they were only allowed to get a /48 to begin with, they couldn't
> > assign any further /48's.
> 
> Not everything that IETF has written about address allocation has worked
> out in practice.  (For example, classful addressing, or experimental or
> multicast addressing.)  It's reasonable for the RIR's to evaluate the
> "ground truth" when composing our allocation policies, even though it's
> also quite important to read everything the IETF has to say on the topic.

Right, I can agree with that.  But with having read many of the RFCs
pertaining to IPv6, reading posts in nanog and ipv6-ops list, as
well as here, and running my own IPv6 network, I tend to *agree*
with a lot of what RFC 3177 and 5375 have to say.

-- 
Garry Dolley
ARP Networks, Inc. | http://www.arpnetworks.com | (818) 206-0181
Data center, VPS, and IP Transit solutions
Member Los Angeles County REACT, Unit 336 | WQGK336
Blog http://scie.nti.st