IPv6 Ignorance

Mon Sep 17 15:04:45 UTC 2012

RIPE 552 (I think), allows you to request up to a /29 without additional
justification if needed.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Bool [mailto:aid at logic.org.uk]
Sent: 17 September 2012 15:55
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: IPv6 Ignorance

Hi,

On 17 Sep 2012, at 15:02, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:
> On 17/09/2012 14:37, Adrian Bool wrote:
>> It seems a tad unfair that the bottom 80 bits are squandered away
>> with a utilisation rate of something closely approximating  zero
>
> You are thinking in ipv4 mode. In ipv6 mode, the consideration is not
> how

> many hosts you have, but how many subnets you are dealing with.
> Instead of thinking of 128 bits of addressing space, we talk about 64
> bits of subnet space.  So your statement comes down to: "it seems a
> tad unfair that the bottom 16 bits are squandered away".  This is a
> more difficult argument to make.

I don't really agree with the "IPv6 think" concept - but let's put that
aside for now...

The default allocation size from an RIR* to an LIR is a /32.  For an LIR
providing /48 site allocations to their customers, they therefore have
16-bits of address space available to them to address their customers.

So, even in "IPv6 think", homes that typically have one subnet have an
equal number of bits to address their single subnet as an LIR has to
address all of their customers.

It seems illogical to me that we've got an 128-bit address space,
featuring numbers far larger than any human can comprehend, yet the
default allocation to an LIR allows them to address such a feeble number
as 65,536 customers - a number far smaller than the number of customers
for medium to large ISPs.

The default LIR allocation should be a several orders of magnitude greater
than the typical customer base  - not a smaller default allocation.

Regards,

Adrian

* At least for RIPE.