Where to buy Internet IP addresses

Sat May 2 05:42:21 UTC 2009

On Sat, 2 May 2009, Matthew Palmer wrote:

> Handing out an IPv6 /56 to a DSL or cable customer should be handled much
> the same way as giving them an IPv4 /29 is today -- ask, and it shall be
> provided, but it's wasteful[1] to do so by default.
>
> [1] Just because we've got a lot of it, doesn't mean we should be pissing it
> up against the wall unnecessarily.  A motto for network engineers and
> economists alike.

You can't be wasteful with something that you know is already extremely 
plentyful.

We currently have 72 million billion /56:es. If we do /56:es of the 
current /16 being handed out and then change our mind, we can still hand 
out 1100 billion /56:es before we can discover this was wasteful and 
then we will have spent one 65536th of the address space available.

Give people a /56 and if they only use one NOW, you still won't have to 
handle administration of the customer when they change their mind. Current 
NAT boxes solve the problem of people only getting a single IP address. 
People adapt to the conditions we give them. When IPv6 is readily 
available there will be products that use several subnets in the home, if 
we start to just give them a single /64 there won't be a market to solve 
it this way, and people will continue to use a single /64. You can say you 
were right, there was no need, but you killed the multisubnet solution 
before it was even born.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se