[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs

[Jimmy Hess]

On 3/27/13, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> On Mar 27, 2013, at 7:52 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>   How many customers does an typical xx-small ISP have today?
>   (xx-small being those ISPs who hold a /22 of IPv4 space)

Well, logically they could have up to  approximately1000 customers,
assuming no NAT
and an average of one /32 per customer.

The IPv6 equivalent of  1000 /48s     =     a  /38

However,  if  ARIN restricts their assignment, with IPv6, they may be
tempted to seek ways of assigning their customers smaller IPv6
allocations such as /56 or  /128,  in order to prolong  their ARIN
IPv6 allocation and retain small  or x-small status.

Therefore, it is a very bad idea for ARIN to  be attempting to create
artificial IP address scarcity  by  billing more for "enough" IPv6.

It actually creates pressure to  forego IPv6 technical standards,  and
 attempt to deploy the protocol in a manner that may be less
successful in the long run.


What should happen, is... if ARIN wants to bill based on ISP size,
they should stop using number of IP addresses as a metric.

I would recommend switching to "Number of customers"   or   "Number of
dollars monthly subscription revenue"

And per-resource fees only for IPV4,  or providers with _very_ large
allocations (such as more than a /20 of IPv6),  but in all cases
technical justification still required.

Regardless of whether resources are IPv4 or IPv6.


This way, there are not artificial pressures created to excessively
conserve IPv6 through extreme tactics such as assigning each customer
a /128.

Because doing so does not cirucmvent ARIN fees, if the fees are based
on number of subscribers,  or number of network connections.


> /John
--
-JH