Hi @All, (in advance I'm sorry for the typo's and mis-chosen wordings as I'm not native English and just out of my favourite pub ...) I'm following this discussion for quite some time now, but to me it looks like many of you are going for a 'holy war'. Although I'm surely misunderstood, I've the impression (as for most discussions & votes) only the larger members here will get heard and/or will discuss this as the larger part of the members can't effort someone getting payed exclusively for community work. Let me start introducing a simple statement: Drop IPv6! No one (ok, nearly no one) is going to use IPv6. I'm speaking out of experience for de.mainzkom (a few months ago merger to de.citykom) being a regional ISP in Germany. Out of approx. 50 business customers I've spoken to TWO were interested in IPv6 trials. Only ONE of our transit customers explicitly asked for v6 (a university). How do you think a 'very large' member is going into the discussion for a lot more than a /32 ? Same way I stated need for our /32: let's count ANY end consumer (may it be a dynamic DSL account) a /64 and each business customer a /48. I had worries myself satisfying the 200-customer-rule - I solved it by assuming each of our DSL customers getting assigned a /48 ... regardless whether he needs/uses it. In the meanwhile applying this method the /32 is filled and to small ... could I argue for another one or maybe /30 or even more ? There's a point to the increasing number of IPv4 PI space allocated: Enterprise customers WANT to be independent f their ISP. Quite a number of them being governmental organizations or such HAVE TO open a Request for Proposal every few years (2-3) and change their ISP equivalently. Last time I had to explain that there's IPv4 PI but no IPv6 PI available. What do you think ? They dropped v6 completely! Surely, you'd have to recitate RIPE rules and deny the request for PI - but what would happen to your relationship towards your potential customer ? Can you afford dropping them - multiple a year ? Making v6 PI available may overload memory of current routers. And I'm the last ignoring this matter. There IS a limit any ISP can effort expenses on equipment. At least in Germany by the current market structure I'm glad of anybody NOT signing an end-consumer DSL contract. The 'the-cheaper-the-better' mentality is sooner or later killing all of us. By a 20 month ROI for a single DSL where do I get the money for upgrading routers from ? By not offering IPv6 so I can keep with my current routers ? Enterprise customers are asking (seldom enough, but they do) for Multicast and increasingly for v6 in addition to MPLS services - but these are the minority. Where's the point the average ISP is eaerning money ? Many of you (I've had no sense for looking up each one's approx. size specifically) sounds like one of these german (wanna-be)-monopolists: we're that large, customer have to come to us. You deny any small ISP their right for existence. Maybe there's need for an organized structure of the internet. Let's get the routing and address design be dictated by the known tier 1's & maybe 2's. You want that ? I think the mayority of attendents of these discussions do (as none of the smaller is able to effort time for RIPE-WG's, DECIX-WG's, AMS-IX-WG's etc...). When I get time for these I follow and sometimes response to WG's, but that's neither part of my job nor paid. You'd prefer a 200 pseudo-customer enterprise above a 100-customer ISP. To my personal opinion there're already too many non-ISP AS'es out there and much more - sadly mostly ISP - announcing nonsense (Gerd, I appreciated the discussion about aggregation some time ago) but HOW do you want to distinguish ? Maybe RIPE - and/or becoming a LIR in general - should be closed for non-ISP ... But where to draw the line ? Therefore I think we should go for IPv6 PI - with some constraints: - PI space (no matter whether v4 or v6) should be charged an annual fee - AS numbers should be charged an annual fee - a minimum size for PI assignments should be established I once got assigned a /24, /26, /27 of v4-PI. This satisfied the request made but when asked for routing we had to deny this as longer than /24 is simple pollution of the routing table. Why not go for v4 PI always being a multiple of /24 (if at least /25 is explained - any longer is nonsense by itself) and v6 being at most /40 (out of a 'dedicated' /32 or shorter) with more stringent criteria ? I always have a hard thought about equipment needs and cost - but do you remember the primary reason there's such a variety of ISP ? This reason are the variety of customer needs and the CUSTOMER's will. regards, Marcus PS: I'm sorry for the mix of thoughts above ... just had a '42' day .... :-|