[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2024-8: Restrict the Largest Initial IPv6 Allocation to /20

Tue Jun 25 17:45:14 EDT 2024

(Speaking on my own behalf)

I know I’m not the only person who didn’t even consider that an application for an IPv6 /16 would ever be approved by ARIN or any other RIR. But now that there is precedent, I can see a reasonable (although IMO misplaced) concern that now the dam will break and every large organization worldwide will request similar allocations, eating up IPv6 space faster than anyone expected before.

The question then becomes: how many organizations *are* there that would qualify for a block this size? While I think there are a decent number of them, I think it’s unlikely that there are 60,000+ of them. But we’ve made similar incorrect assumptions in the past about how slowly or quickly resources might be utilized, so the concern is understandable.

A potential middle ground here may be to declare a mask length where allocations no longer automatically jump to the next nibble boundary. Under current policy, anyone planning on using more than a /20 automatically gets a /16, and that’s where I feel that the current practice may get a bit wasteful. I think allowing ARIN to allocate a /19-to-/17 instead in these cases would go a long way towards alleviating community concerns (leaving the question of whether or not those concerns are *actually* justified as a moot point - if the community agrees it’s a concern, ARIN is more or less obliged to accommodate).

Thanks,

-Chris

> On Jun 25, 2024, at 14:15, Scott Leibrand <scottleibrand at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Why is this policy needed if "only a single IPv6 allocation exceeds a /20 in size"?
> 
> If we're about 10 years into serious use of IPv6, and have used one /16, then we have about 80,000 years before this becomes an urgent issue for ARIN, and 650,000 years before we'll run out. Yes, those extrapolations are dumb, but so is arguing over how many millennia of runway we have.
> 
> -Scott
> 
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 11:32 AM ARIN <info at arin.net <mailto:info at arin.net>> wrote:
>> On 20 June 2024, the ARIN Advisory Council (AC) accepted “ARIN-prop-335: Restrict the Largest Initial IPv6 Allocation to /20” as a Draft Policy.
>> 
>> Draft Policy ARIN-2024-8 is below and can be found at:
>> 
>> https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/drafts/2024_8/
>> 
>> You are encouraged to discuss all Draft Policies on PPML. The AC will evaluate the discussion to assess the conformance of this draft policy with ARIN's Principles of Internet number resource policy as stated in the Policy Development Process (PDP). Specifically, these principles are:
>> 
>> * Enabling Fair and Impartial Number Resource Administration
>> * Technically Sound
>> * Supported by the Community
>> 
>> The PDP can be found at:
>> 
>> https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/pdp/
>> 
>> Draft Policies and Proposals under discussion can be found at: https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/drafts/
>> 
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Eddie Diego
>> Policy Analyst
>> American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
>> 
>> 
>> Draft Policy ARIN-2024-8: Restrict the Largest Initial IPv6 Allocation to /20
>> 
>> Problem Statement:
>> 
>> In order to promote aggregation, the NRPM currently allows initial allocations up to a /16. However, the entire IPv6 address space only contains 65536 /16s, and the space allocated to IANA for globally routable purposes only contains 8192 /16s. Therefore, a /16 is a sufficiently large portion of the IPv6 address space that the goal of conservation starts to outweigh the goal of aggregation.
>> 
>> Policy statement:
>> 
>> 6.5.2.1b: Replace "In no case shall an ISP receive more than a /16 initial allocation." with "In no case shall a LIR receive more than a /20 initial allocation."
>> 
>> Comments:
>> 
>> A quick look at ARIN's stats shows that only a single IPv6 allocation exceeds a /20 in size:
>> 
>> grep "ipv6" delegated-arin-extended-latest  | grep allocated | cut -d '|' -f 5 | sort | uniq -c
>>       1 16
>>       8 20
>>      22 22
>>      39 24
>>       2 27
>>     127 28
>>      15 29
>>       6 30
>>      21 31
>>    4236 32
>>       1 33
>>       2 35
>>    1401 36
>>       1 37
>>       1 38
>>    1050 40
>>      11 41
>>      13 42
>>       9 43
>>     851 44
>>      16 45
>>      15 46
>>      26 47
>>    1754 48
>> 
>> Timetable for implementation: Immediate
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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