North American Network Operators Group
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Re: /48 for each and every endsite (Was: European ISP enables IPv6 for all?)

  • From: Owen DeLong
  • Date: Wed Dec 19 16:46:31 2007


So my wondering is basically, if we say we have millions of end users right now and we want to give them a /56 each, and this is no problem, then the policy is correct. We might not have them all IPv6 activated in 2 years which is the RIR planning horizon. I do concur with other posters here that the planning horizon for IPv6 should be longer than three years so we get fewer prefixes in the DFZ as a whole. Then again, *RIR people don't care about routing so I am still sceptical about that being taken into account.

So... I need to ask for some clarification here.

What, exactly, do you mean by "RIR people"?

Do you mean the staff at the RIR?

In that case, you're right, sort of. They care about following the policies set by their
respective constituent communities. In the case of ARIN, this would be essentially
anyone who cares to participate. However, if people who care about routing choose
to participate (which they seem to vigorously in ARIN), then, their views will be
reflected in policy as a result (they certainly are, at least to some extent in the
ARIN policies).

Do you mean the RIR Boards, Advisory Councils, or other representative governing
bodies?

In that case, you're also partially right. They care about representing their community
of users and the best fiduciary interests of the RIR. I don't know about the structure of
the other RIRs, but, at least in the case of ARIN, the Advisory Council is definitely
primarily concerned with shaping policy according to the consensus of the constituent
community and the board is concerned with insuring that the AC is following the correct
processes in policy adoption and the fiduciary best interests of ARIN as an organization.

Do you mean the RIR end users and customers who receive address resources from the
RIRs?

In that case, I think, actually that most of them care a great deal about routing.

Note, in these statements, I am speaking only as an individual, and, not as someone who
was recently elected to a future term on the ARIN AC or on behalf of the AC in any way.

you will be having. Unless you will suddenly in a year grow by 60k clients (might happen) or really insanely with other large amounts your initial planning should hold up for quite some while

We grow by much more than 60k a year, it's just hard to plan for it. If we project for the highest amount of growth then we're most likely wasteful (in the case of IPv4 space anyway), if we project for lowest amount of growth then we get DFZ glut.

IPv6 needs a much longer time horizon than IPv4 in my opinion. If nothing else, I would say
that you should be able to project your addressing needs for the next two years at least in the
ball-park of continuing your previous growth trends. If you added 100k customers last year and
80k customers the year before, then, I think it's reasonable, especially in IPv6, to plan for 125k
customer adds next year and 150k customer adds the following year.

If you're figures turn out to be excessive, then, in two years when you'd normally have to apply
for more space (I'd like to see this move to more like 5 for IPv6), you can skip that application
until you catch up. No real problem for anyone in that case.

We would also like to do regional IPv6 address planning since we're too often in the habit of (without much notice for the operational people) selling off part of the business.

Heh... Then you should force the new owners to renumber.

Then again, with a /32 we can support ~16 million residential end- users with /56 each, which I guess will be enough for a while.

So split the difference and ask for a /28. Personally, I think /56s are plenty for most
residential users. I'm a pretty serious residential end-user, and, I can't imagine I'd need
more than a /56 in terms of address planning. However, I have a /48 because that's the
smallest direct assignment available for my multihomed end-site.

Owen