On 14/11/2011 21:55, Leo Vegoda wrote:
Where does the /26 come from? Or to put it another way, assuming the basis for allocation policy is justified need, what need is considered so universal that no justification is required?
apparently 6rd. Or the latest transition mechanism, except that it's such a good address justification mechanism that you don't even need to mention which transition mechanism you're planning to use, or even if you are planning to use a transition mechanism at all. I'm struggling to understand how this proposal meets the Conservation section of the RIPE IPv6 allocation policy: "Although IPv6 provides an extremely large pool of address space, address policies should avoid unnecessarily wasteful practices. Requests for address space should be supported by appropriate documentation and stockpiling of unused addresses should be avoided." It hardly takes much effort to mention to the RIPE NCC that your LIR is applying for a /29 instead of a /32 because it intends to implement 6rd, does it? While I don't have a major problem with giving 3 extra bits of space to implement 6rd, I do have a major problem with: 1. making this the default configuration, even for those LIRs who have no intention of ever deploying 6rd or any other equivalent transition mechanism, 2. removal of the requirement to specify 6rd/other mechanism to justify the extra space, and 3. allocating /26 by default. 102 bits of address space is obscenely wasteful because it is very significantly more than most LIRs will ever require in the lifetime of the universe (yes, I have worked out the scales here). Look, I don't mean to sound like a party pooper, but let's not lose the run of ourselves here. 6rd has very limited deployment at present, and while it shows a lot of promise as a potentially useful transition mechanism, it's not yet at the stage where we should feel tempted to shower LIRs with ridiculous quantities of address bits just because we're feeling a bit inadequate about current ipv6 uptake. I'd like to suggest that 2011-04 be changed so that LIRs can expand their default /32 to a /29 iff they document a requirement for providing 6rd / {another specified ipv6 transition mechanism which requires similar bits of address space} to end-users. Otherwise, a /32 will be assigned by default, and the RIPE NCC can continue on with their current binary chop allocation strategy. Nick