[arin-ppml] What is a "host"?

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> If you have an interface that is speaking IPv6, it should count as one
> host.
> If you have 20 interfaces speaking IPv6, they should count as 20 hosts.
> If you have 5 interfaces in a NIC-Team speaking IPv6, they should count
> 	as one host.

What is a NIC-Team and why do its interfaces not count as hosts?

> Really, counting up the number of things that require an IPv6 link
> local address is _NOT_ rocket science, nor is it technically complex.

It is still not clear whether virtual interfaces on virtual machines
such as XEN, VMWare, HyperV use a link-local address. Do they count or
not? It is also not clear whether or not this might be an implementation
detail, i.e. some implementations of virtualisation might use a link loca
per virtual interface and others might not. For that matter, it may even
be a configuration detail.

But let's go back to square one. A single /64 subnet has the capacity to
hold all the hosts that you or I might ever need, even if we expand to 
become a multinational business empire and implement virtual machines on
our virtual machines.

So why are we counting hosts? Shouldn't we just be counting subnets as the
most finely grained measure that an RIR is interested in?

--Michael Dillon