IPv6 internet broken, Verizon route prefix length policy

David Conrad drc at virtualized.org
Mon Oct 12 23:37:44 UTC 2009


Mark,

On Oct 12, 2009, at 3:40 PM, Mark Andrews wrote:
>> Verizon's policy has been related to me that they will not accept or 
>> propogate any IPv6 route advertisements with prefix lengths longer than 
>> /32.  Full stop.  So that even includes those of us that have /48 PI 
>> space from ARIN that are direct customers of Verizon.
> 
> Looks like Verizon doesn't want any IPv6 customers.  If a company
> has idiotic policies like this vote with your wallet.

Not knowing all the details, it is difficult for me to judge, however it is worth observing that provider independent addresses, regardless of where they come from or whether they are IPv4 or IPv6 simply do not scale.  In the face of everybody and their mother now being able to obtain PI prefixes from all the RIRs, any ISP that handles full routing is going to have to hope their router vendor of choice can keep buying more/bigger CAMs (passing the expense on to the ISP who will pass it on to their customers) and/or they'll start implementing the same sort of prefix length limitations that we saw back in the mid-90s.

And, of course, we have IPv4 runout in the near future with the inevitable market which will almost certainly promote the use of longer prefixes.

In other words, get used to it.

Regards,
-drc





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