IPv6 end user addressing

Thu Aug 11 03:29:35 UTC 2011

On Aug 10, 2011, at 6:52 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> On 2011-08-11 12:45, james machado wrote:
> 
>> what is the life expectancy of IPv6?  It won't live forever and we
>> can't reasonably expect it too.  I understand we don't want run out of
>> addresses in the next 10-40 years but what about 100? 200? 300?
>> 
>> We will run out and our decedents will go through re-numbering again.
>> The question becomes what is the life expectancy of IPv6 and does the
>> allocation plan make a reasonable attempt to run out of addresses
>> around the end of the expected life of IPv6.
> 
> Well, we know that the human population will stabilise somewhere below
> ten billion by around 2050. The current unicast space provides for about
> 15 trillion /48s. Let's assume that the RIRs and ISPs retain their current
> level of engineering common sense - i.e. the address space will begin to be
> really full when there are about 25% of those /48s being routed... that makes
> 3.75 trillion /48s routed for ten billion people, or 375 /48s per man, woman
> and child. (Or about 25 million /64s if you prefer.)

It's not the humans that are going to soak up the address space, so it seems a little misguided to count up the humans a reference for the bounding properties on growth. That said I think 2000::/3 will last long enough, that we shouldn't be out rewriting policy anytime soon.

> At that point, IANA would have to release unicast space other than 2000::/3
> and we could start again with a new allocation policy.
> 
> I am *really* not worried about this. Other stuff, such as BGP4, will break
> irrevocably long before this.

We have a few problems to solve along the way. Running the current network is hard enough as it is.

>   Brian
> 