[arin-ppml] IPv6 Allocation Planning

[William Herrin]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 7:14 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> On Aug 9, 2010, at 2:38 PM, William Herrin wrote:
>> The current v6 dogma is that we're going to provide ISPs with exactly
>> one allocation to the maximum extent possible, so we want to get that
>> one right and/or include reserve slack surrounding the allocation so
>> that the netmask expands. That's why we haven't organized things as a
>> slow start.
>
> Correct. I find it very interesting that out of one side of your mouth, you
> talk
> about concern for routing table growth, yet, out of the other side, you say
> we should return IPv6 back to slow-start so as to maximize the need to
> make additional allocations to ISPs as they grow.

Owen,

I'm going to let that one slide. Consider it repayment for the last
time I accused you of malfeasance.



>> One problem, of course, is that ISPs are used to planning address
>> consumption on 6 and 12 month scales, not decades. They have no
>> practical experience to guide them with longer range planning.
>
> While this is true, it's a relatively minor problem of education.

Let me put it to you this way: Looking forward ten years, at the IPv6
experience, knowledge and understanding you will have then, what
percentage of it do you already have today?

And for IPv4?

I'd bet many of us are past the 80% mark for IPv4. There are
refinements to learn and probably a few surprises, but we're already
highly knowledgeable.

If you claimed more than a single-digit percentage for IPv6 then you
either overestimate your current abilities or underestimate what
you'll yet learn. The events that define the shape, understanding and
use of IPv6 are still more in our future than in our past.

Any policy we write now will reflect that inexperience. And will
necessarily change as we gain greater skill.


> To prevent this from impacting the routing system, yes, providers
> should be discouraged from disaggregating this space. I believe
> that the community is, generally, quite capable of doing this through
> education.

Because "education" has been particularly effective at suppressing
disaggregation in IPv4?

As things stand, our policies partially usurp ISPs' ability to create
and enforce disaggregation policies amongst themselves. They've asked
us repeatedly to seek policy which at a technological level empowers
them to set routing policies independent of our address allocation
practices. In many ways it isn't even about how many routes there are
in the table, it's about giving the ISPs the power over routing policy
instead of keeping some of it for ourselves.

We can do much better than we're doing now and the sooner we start the
less of a legacy of our error they'll have to carry in their TCAMs and
TRIEs.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
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