ULA and RIR cost-recovery

Wed Dec 1 06:41:37 UTC 2004

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Owen DeLong wrote:
> [snip a bunch of stuff where we finally appear to basically agree or at least
> understand each other]
>>> Actually, that fragmentation was primarily the result of being
>>> insufficiently stingy early on.
>> 
>> There are many kinds of fragmentation.  When you only get (e.g.,) a v4
>> /24 for a start, and when you need more, you'll have to get a new
>> non-adjacent /24, there's going to be fragmentation.
>> 
> I don't think you can equate v4 /24 allocation to v6 /48 allocation.
> A /48 gives an organization 65,536 unique subnets, each of which can
> accomodate enough hosts that _EVERY_ IPv4 possible host can have
> 4+billion addresses.

I was not referring to /48's -- that's sufficient for end-sites.  I 
was referring to giving less than /32 or the like for ISPs, and _that_ 
causing fragmentation of advertisements because the _ISPs_ would have 
multiple prefixes.

There is no need to be unusually stingy about the prefix lengths given 
to the ISPs.

>> It's not as we are carving out v4 /8's (1/256 of space) for early
>> adopters. Or even /16's.  More like the equivalent space of a host
>> address.  That's hardly too much.  In fact, it's way too little for those
>> ISPs which have home customers like DSL, and it's going to be a a pain
>> because they either must get a new prefix or give their customers a /64
>> instead of /48.
>> 
> I think that if an ISP can show that they have more than 65536 home DSL
> customers, they will not have a problem getting a /31 or larger as needed.
> However, I think that today, the bulk of DSL ISPs doe not have that many
> customers and aren't likely to in the near future.

Uhh, I'd say there are a thousand or two such ISPs in the world. 
That's not insignificant.  It isn't useful to be stingy when 
allocating prefixes to ISPs which _might_ end up needing more than a 
/32 for their customer /48 assignments.

And if such ISPs decide that rather than going through the process of 
justifying more space, they end up giving the customers /64's 
instead.. well, the result might not be pretty.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings