Joao / Hans / Leo / Kurtis [consolidated answers] First, allow me to apologize for posting bogus numbers; I forgot to change the base and the increment. Below at the end are pasted the right numbers.

Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote: using countries as the delimiter for any sort of network design seems a bit strange. Isn't the natural boundary closer to be an ISP, wherever its network is?

I am not using countries as a delimiter for network design. What we are talking about here is allocation from the root to RIRs. Each RIR would be delegated a set of countries like today, and RIRs would assign prefixes to LIRs like today as well. The changes this induces for LIRs are: For small LIRs, this changes nothing. For medium LIRs, they might have a few prefixes instead of a single one. For large LIRs, it does mean a large number of prefixes to deal with in the short term, but not that big of a deal in the long run as a large LIR present in dozen of countries will need more than one /32 anyway.

You talk about colonising planets. I would think that is much more probable you would have to worry about some European countries merging in a few decades.

I would say a few generations. And then what? We'll have a few more prefixes than what would be really needed.

The opposite can also happen, as it has in recent history.

There is ample room for new countries.

Regional definitions also change. Form instance, would you care to explain the concept of Western Europe vs Eastern Europe, particularly beyond 2004?

It does not really matter, at least not for political reasons. The reason there are zones is to provide a higher level of aggregation than the country and also to provide some unused space. If you don't like the cutout, feel free to propose one.

Last time I checked, Hawaii was still part of the USA.

This was a voluntary decision given the unique geographical situation of Hawaii. Most other islands that are thousand of miles away from the mainland got promoted to the status of "country", look in the Central America zone there is a country called Netherland Antilles for example. This makes sense as obviously the fiber plant for these islands has nothing to do with the mainland they depend on.

Even if every user becomes multi-homed, as is a common scenario quoted by IPv6 visionaries, would the focus change from the ISP towards the user as the reference point for routing and network operations? I really don't think so.

Me neither. Remember that we are talking PA space here. This system is compatible with multihoming systems that use PI identifiers _and_ PA locators at the same time.

Just like today you would get to talk to your cable TV company, the electricity company, the gas company, the water supply company, etc. Each of them, and a few new ones, would operate some sort of IP network to read your meters, provide "extra" service, etc and each is likely to have different policies because that would be the factor providing them with a way of differentiating their service.

Agree, what is your point here?

Geography is not that important, network topology and autonomous policies are.

Agree too, what does my proposal change to these regards?

Hank Nussbacher wrote: Can you explain "%G Pop."?

% of the global population.

How is it calculated?

These are year 2000 numbers and they should not be (they should be a future projection some years down the road). I could not find a public data set with a projection for free. If this was to go real, I would need a better data set; however for the sake of the example these numbers are good enough.

I assume it has to do with GDP

Nope. These numbers are population only, so it considers that Ethiopia is granted the same numbers of IPv6 addresses than silicon valley per capita.

as well as the source of the numbers.

There are census numbers adjusted by predicted short-term growth as census are not taken in every country the same year. It means that for some countries the number might be actual 2000 census data while for other countries the numbers might be 1990 census data individually extrapolated to 2000.

(the exact UN stats page would help).

They took it away unfortunately and I can't find a cache.

Needless to say, your numbers do not seem to take in any socio-economic factors. Assigning a /12 to North America as well as to Northern Africa and India might make socialistic sense as well as being "politically correct", but from a reality standpoint, it just don't fly.

It's politically impossible to assign socio-economic factors such as wealth. Who am I to pick a number and decide that Ethiopia gets 16 times less addresses that the US? If it is true that in the short term it would work, this would generate endless debates, which is why I picked that an Ethiopian gets the same number of IP addresses than an American.

Leo Vegoda wrote: How would such a system cope with networks crossing international boundaries?

The general rule is that a multinational enterprise will obtain address space from the LIR that provides services to it in each country. Example: Enterprise Acme is present in 4 countries. In the Netherlands it receives connectivity from LIR A and LIR B. In France it receives connectivity from LIR C. In Japan it receives connectivity from LIR A and LIR D. It gets 5 /48s: Netherlands: - from LIR A's Netherland block - from LIR B's Netherland block France: - from LIC C's France block Japan: - from LIR A's Japan block - from LIR D's Japan block Also, it is clear that LIR A is a large multinational LIR so it has a /32 for the Netherlands and a /32 for Japan. Hope this answers the question, if not please be more specific.

Also, if an enterprise LIR moved from country A to country B, would they have to renumber?

I would say yes (doing otherwise would break the geographical aggregation we are discussing). In reality, this never happens though. A LIR does not pack their bags on a Friday evening, put the M160 in the plane and deploy the next day in another country. What happens is that the new network is deployed before the old one is taken down (in the real world with in-house spares :-( and that the two address blocks would be active at the same time, then if the LIR really completely moves out of a country the old block should be given back to the RIR.

...

Michel Py wrote: In other words, what we are looking at is one /32 prefix per country per large LIR, opposed to as many /32s a large LIR would need in the long run anyway.

Kurt Erik Lindqvist wrote: Actually what you are looking at is one /32 per LIR + one /32 per country per large LIR.

Of course, a small LIR still needs a /32.

Without tweaking routing, a more efficient way would be to use the fact that IPv6 blocks are a lot larger than IPv4 blocks and simply give one /32 to every LIR.

Then explain me how you achieve Gert's goal?

I guess this would only work with RIPE who have the concepts of LIRs but anyway.

I don't know how to parse this? All RIRs have the concept of LIR? Finally, here are the correct (I hope) numbers. Zone Population %G Pop. IANA ---------------- ---------- ------- --------- China 1284971000 20.91% 3000::/11 Continental Asia 673454413 10.96% 3020::/11 India 1025096000 16.68% 3040::/12 Northern Africa 565854163 9.21% 3050::/12 Asian Islands 488468000 7.95% 3060::/12 Western Europe 423412058 6.89% 3070::/12 North America 318243350 5.18% 3080::/12 South America 350724557 5.71% 3090::/13 Eastern Europe 307858000 5.01% 3098::/13 Middle East 258577000 4.21% 30A0::/13 Southern Africa 242566332 3.95% 30A8::/13 Central America 175719760 2.86% 30B0::/14 Oceania 30568053 0.50% 30B4::/16 ---------------- ---------- ------- --------- World 6145512686 100.00% 3000::/8 Example of one zone: Country Population %Z Pop. %G Pop. IANA ------------------- ---------- ------- ------- -------------- United States 285926000 89.85% 4.65% 3080:0000::/13 Canada 1015000 9.75% 0.50% 3088:0000::/17 Hawaii 1224398 0.38% 0.02% 3088:8000::/21 Bermuda 60000 0.02% 0.00% 3088:8800::/24 Greenland 12483 0.00% 0.00% 3088:8900::/24 -------------------- ---------- ------- ------- -------------- Zone: North America 318243350 100.00% 5.18% 3080:0000::/12 Michel.