IPv6 end user addressing

Fri Aug 12 00:21:08 UTC 2011

On Aug 11, 2011, at 5:08 PM, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

> 
> On 11/08/2011, at 1:33 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Aug 10, 2011, at 7:45 PM, Mark Newton wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> On 11/08/2011, at 8:42 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I suppose that limiting enough households to too small an allocation
>>>> will have that effect. I would rather we steer the internet deployment
>>>> towards liberal enough allocations to avoid such disability for the
>>>> future.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I see the lack of agreement on whether /48 or /56 or /60 is good for a
>>> home network to be a positive thing.
>>> 
>>> As long as there's no firm consensus, router vendors will have to implement
>>> features which don't make silly hard-coded assumptions.
>>> 
>> Yes and no. In terms of potential innovations, if enough of the market chooses
>> /60, they will hard code the assumption that they cannot count on more than
>> a /60 being available into their development process regardless of what
>> gets into the router. Sure, they won't be able to assume you can't get a /48,
>> but, they also won't necessarily implement features that would take advantage
>> of a /48.
> 
> 
> Abundance doesn't drive innovations.  Scarcity does.  IPv6 does not have a scarcity issue.  I assert that IPv6 addressing is not going to now or ever do anything particularly innovative that can't be done better at other, more relevant, layers.  
> 

Abundance won't drive innovation, but, scarcity can block it.

If enough providers limit their residential customers to /60s, then, that will become the defining limit to which vendors implement.

> The time for arguing about arbitrary things that make no difference to the end customers has passed.  The navel gazing must cease and we must move forward on IPv6 to the home rather than continuing the confusion about this and other IPv6 arbitrary bit obsession stuff.
> 

On that I believe we are in complete agreement. Let's deploy IPv6 to end users and give them /48s and move on.

> We need to stop spending our time on rearranging the Titanic's deckchairs and get the <profanity> on with stopping the crashing into the iceberg by providing clear leadership on getting IPv6 to the masses to enable their APPLICATIONS and EXPERIENCE without the impending doom of IPv4 CGN.
> 

Again, no argument.

> My name is Matthew, I HAVE given my customers the ability to get IPv6 and I don't give a flying one about the prefix length, I care about getting ANY prefix to the end users so they can use it and solve the issues at their end.  I AM enabling innovation just by doing that.  
> 

My name is Owen. I work for an ISP that gives IPv6 to our customers and anyone else who cares to connect.

We care about prefix length because we believe it will impact innovation for many years.

Yes, getting something to end users is more important than how big of a prefix we give them. On that, MMC and I are in complete agreement.

However, there are choices to be made in how we do it and giving out /48s costs virtually nothing and yields real potential benefits. There
is no meaningful advantage to placing arbitrary limits below /48 on residential customers.

Owen