On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 01:21:52PM +0100, Carlos Friacas wrote:
I also didnt get the renumbering issue... renumbering from a /56 to a /48 should be painless...
It isn't. Making smaller default assingments like /56 makes only sense if you do NOT keep a whole /48 to grow the /56 to. So essetially you'll face networks with exceed 256 subnets which then need to renumber ALL of them. There isn't supposed to be _additional_ space, only larger replacement. And a network addressing plan designed to /56 and now approaching limits _does_ look different to a /48 plan, so people _will_ have to redesign their addressing plan while renumbering the whole network from the old /56 to the new /48. This is all the hassle (even more!) of IPv4... The whole point of /48 is to _avoid_ that as much as possible. But indeed, I don't see SOHO/home networks outgrow a /56 in the foreseeable future. If technologies come up which do mandate/foster high amounts of subnetting even in the SOHO/home space, the default SOHO/home assignment size can be raised again - which will introduce some pain, but not that much. Giving /56s to corporate networks is IMHO just plain wrong and "IPv6 not understood". And don't forget, upgrading your assignment from /56 to /48 WILL have a price tag attached to it. ISPs _still_ try to squeeze out revenue from artificial address space scarcity. As Tony pointed out, the business agenda of "product differentiation" is a/the big driver of this move. Providing better service than the competition is just too oldschool it seems. :-) Best regards, Daniel -- CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: dr@cluenet.de -- dr@IRCnet -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0