[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2020-3: IPv6 Nano-allocations

[Owen DeLong]

> On Apr 18, 2020, at 14:11 , Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 18/04/2020 17:49, Owen DeLong wrote:
>> ...
>> It would depend on the nature of the fee waiver. If they perceived it as a temporary stall resulting in the same fee increase in 3-5 years, I think you’d get mixed results. If it was a permanent “we won’t charge you extra until your IPv4 holdings expand or 10+ years, whichever comes first”, I suspect you’d see a majority of takers.
>> 
>> As to /48s, hard to say… Certainly, with /40s, they are more likely to be hyper-conservative in their assignments than with /36s. I certainly would not mind making said waiver conditional on compliance with a /48 PAU.
> My view is that this type of waiver should not exist and this type situation should not be incentivized.
> 
> I see the mentioned "we won't charge you extra until your IPv4 holdings expand or 10+ years" as something more interesting.
> It is necessary to differentiate when an organization has really grown, justify for more space and is able to be paying a higher fee than when they just request more and more Ipv6 space because they are giving away /48 to everyone indistinctly which in my view is an exaggeration. We cannot base ourselves on future technology that maybe will make use of that for most cases, otherwise we will be treating the vast majority of exceptions as the rule.

Handing out a /48 to each end site is a core engineering design that was put into IPv6 for many valid reasons.

You continue to rail against it, yet you’ve provided no reason or basis for your claim that it is “an exaggeration” or that it is in any way detrimental.

I’ve provided you multiple reasons why /48s are a good and beneficial idea. There’s a great deal of IETF history behind the ideal of handing out /48s to all end sites.

In general, application and product developers create products for the broadest possible user base. This results in products being built to the lowest common denominator (or something close to it).

If we restrict networks of the future based on modeling the requirements of today, we will forever limit the probability of improvements.

If, on the other hand, we recognize the potential benefits of assigning shorter prefixes to end users, we create a future where innovation and creativity can bring us products not yet imagined.

In IPv6, it’s not about having enough bits to address each host. It’s not about the current model of every host at an end-site being on a single common subnet. This model is necessary in IPv4 residential environments due to the complexities of administering more sophisticated more capable topologies. In IPv6, using core technologies such as DHCP Prefix Delegation, SLAAC, etc. we have the foundation to build products that can automate and dynamically create and adapt these more capable topologies without requiring manual intervention by the user. Concepts which are in their infancy such as intent-based networking require wider bit fields to be able to optimally and automatically delegate prefixes. Simply put, a 4-bit wide subnet field for a site, even a residential site will be utterly and completely inadequate if this future is to be realized. An 8-bit wide subnet field will be quite limiting, but may allow some innovation. A 16-bit wide field provides a best guess at a good balance between the amount of address space consumed and an attempt to avoid limiting future innovation.

In terms of any concerns or fears about running out if we use such an address allocation policy, consider the following:

	1.	Current earth population is approximately 7,000,000,000 (7e9).
	2.	Let’s assume that within the lifetime of IPv6 we are somehow able to double that population to 14e9.
	3.	Let’s further assume that each individual resides in a solitary end site (average density is 2.3 humans per household).
	4.	Let’s also give each individual a separate /48 for their place of work and an additional /48 for their share of the various
		services and companies they communicate with as well as network infrastructure they use.
	5.	If we bake in all of those exaggerated assumptions, we need a total of 42e9 /48s.
	6.	There are 2^45 /48s in 2000::/3 (the current IETF/IANA designated IPv6 GUA pool (which can be expanded several times).
	7.	2^25 is 35,184,372,088,832 (more than 35e12).
	8.	So, in fact, without exhausting the current pool of address space, we can give every individual on earth 6 /48s and we
		still only consume 0.1% of 1/8th of the address space, leaving 99.9% of the current 2000::/3 still available.

There are two ways we can waste address space:

	1.	Distribute addresses for no practical purpose (I have shown some of the practical purposes of /48s above).
	2.	Place artificial limitations on people’s use of addresses in order to keep an unnecessarily huge supply of addresses
		on the shelf until long after the protocol’s lifetime has expired.

Owen