Cathy, I'm still quite surprised by the way in which the fully justified conservatism of the registries for IPv4 space is being over-extrapolated to IPv6 space. If you look objectively at the argument that Gert gives, and consider how the size of the IPv6 prefix space compares to the total IPv4 space, /32 just isn't risky, and it gets rid of yet another judgement call. (I wasn't at the RIPE meeting either, but I did hear Mirjam talk on this topic yesterday.) Brian CJ Wittbrodt wrote:
Since the events of the recent RIPE working group meeting have not been discussed at either of the other regional policy forums, proposing something here may be somewhat premature. I do not believe, although things never cease to amaze me, that this will reach any sort of consensus within the ARIN region. I am not sure about the APNIC region. Based on some meetings with the European Government Advisory Council (just after the RIPE meeting) it is clear that it is important that we have a global policy. Is there maybe some way that we could come up with a compromise that would reach consensus in all three policy forums? Something other than requiring no justification for a /32?
Thanks ---CJ Wittbrodt (ARIN Advisory Council and ASO Address Council member)
From: Gert Doering <gert@Space.Net> Subject: Re: [GLOBAL-V6] New draft available: IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment
Global Policy Hi,
from your comments, I gather you have not been to the RIPE IPv6/LIR policy meeting. So let's add a few comments (while waiting for James Aldridge to publish the "official" word on it):
On Fri, Feb 01, 2002 at 02:50:38PM -0500, Thomas Narten wrote: > > 5.2.1. Initial allocation criteria [..] > The goal was to give a site a /32 if it can justify it will use > it. The word "immediately" (as in demonstrate an immediate need) is [..] > So the real issue here (and this comes up again in later parts of the > document) is what is a reasonable way to objectively evaluate a > request for address space that requires some guessing as to whether a > proposed plan will actually be carried out. If the time frame is too > long, it becomes easy to make optimistic plans that won't pan out, and > then the RIRs get into a different problem.
Consensus on the IPv6/LIR policy meeting was "drop the criteria".
To be precise, I proposed the following:
- any LIR that is established (has done all the paperwork, paid their fees, and whatnot) and can document the need for one IPv6 address can get a /32. No further justification required.
- to avoid a horrible mistake, every region is permitted to allow only assigment of 2000 /32s per region. So the maximum wastage is 6000 /32s (out of 500 million /32s in the 1/8th of the space we're talking about), and 6000 additional routes. After that, we're going to reconsider policy.
There was concern from the other regional registries (ARIN and APNIC), but broad consensus from the people from the RIPE region.
Reasoning (shortened):
- why are we putting criteria there? To keep out "some that we do not want". Conservation is not an issue. Routing table growth might be influenced by this, or might be not, we don't know.
- do we want major national research networks connecting something like "50 universities"? YES
- will this research network meet any criteria based on "you must use up a big number of /48s, otherwise you can't get a /32"? NO, if you assign a /48 per university (which would be plenty!), because that means "you can only demonstrate a need for 50 /48s"
On the other hand, if you say "I connect lots of private customers over DSL lines, using fixed IP addresses, giving each user a /48 (which is OK according to IETF guidelines)", reaching over 50 /48s is very easy.
Does this mean the second example is "more worthy" to get a /32? Does it mean they will make "better use" of it?
So all technical criteria based on /48 usage must fail, and criteria based on single IP usage will fail as well (due to the /48 rule). If we can't propose criteria that work, drop them - BUT limit the amount of damage that can be done.
[..] > Or is it the 776 end site figure (i.e., too high)?
Think of the research networks. One /48 per university would be "according to the /48 rule: each SITE gets a /48".
Gert Doering -- NetMaster -- Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations: 71770 (72395)
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