On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Thomas Narten wrote:
However, there are a few reasons why we, even though IPv6 does not solve the problem, _can_ solve it:
1) organizations, however large, can be represented by one "dot", a /48. This enables us, at worst, to have O(organizations) routing table entries, not O(organizations * average number of nodes per organization). The former is too big still, but it is still good news and makes aggregation and address space estimations easier.
I don't understand this comment at all. An O(organizations) size routing table does not appear supportable in practice. How is one result (that doesn't work) any better than another result that also doesn't work?
Sorry for being unclear; I didn't mean global routing table here. What I meant is that /48 allocations make the job of an ISP much easier: the size of required address space is set by the number of customers, not their size; address space estimation is easier, and (hopefully) one block would suffice for an ISP for a long time, so global routing table would not be swamped by a number of prefixes per ISP either and aggregation would be easier.
One thing we want to be very careful about is putting in place policies that we know are risky for the long term and would be hard to reverse down the road without recreating a a haves vs. have nots situation again.
I feel that if we want results, we need more policies to cope with all the corner case.. 1) something like modified Gert Doering's solution. This would only be applied to _ISP's_ with _previous experience with allocations_ (e.g. with IPv4), and can surely be shown to be an ISP. If the fact that isp X applied for space was public, this could be put under public review too. 2) alternative policy for new players in the field which have no previous ISP experience with IPv4 or whatever. They would just have to show some plans how they propose to spend their /32, like with Narten et al's global suggested policy. There are not all that many of these. Do we need to tear our hair before we have to? 3) 1 and 2 which need a bigger space need to justify it with e.g. via mechanisms in suggested global v6 policy -- Pekka Savola "Tell me of difficulties surmounted, Netcore Oy not those you stumble over and fall" Systems. Networks. Security. -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords