v6 subnet size for DSL & leased line customers

Fri Dec 28 02:08:10 UTC 2007

First, thanks everyone for the discussion.  I learned more from this than a LOT of other discussions on IPv6.  I now have a plan and I didn't before...

It looks to me that one really has to know his customer's needs to plan out the allocation of IPv6 space.  That leads me to believe that a /56 is going to work for everyone on this network because, at this time, only very, very few of our largest customers might possibly have a need for more than 256 /64 subnets.  In fact, almost all household DSL customers here only have one LAN and I could get away with /64s for them because they wouldn't know the difference.  But in an effort to simplify the lives of the network folks here I am thinking of a /56 for everyone and a /48 on request.

Now I just gotta wrap my brain around 4.7x10^21 addresses for each customer.  Absolutely staggering.

scott

--- randy at psg.com wrote:

From: Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
To: Joel Jaeggli <joelja at bogus.com>
CC: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: v6 subnet size for DSL & leased line customers
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:19:27 +0900

>> vendors, like everyone else, will do what is in their best interests.
>> as i am an operator, not a vendor, that is often not what is in my best
>> interest, marketing literature aside.  i believe it benefits the ops
>> community to be honest when the two do not seem to coincide.
> If the ops community doesn't provide enough addresses and a way to use
> them then the vendors will do the same thing they did in v4.

i presume you mean nat v6/v6.  this would be a real mess and i don't
think anyone is contending it is desirable.  but this discussion is
ostensibly operators trying to understand what is actually appropriate
and useful for a class of customers, i believe those of the consumer,
soho, and similar scale.

to summarize the positions i think i have heard
  o one /64 subnet per device, but the proponent gave no estimate of the
    number of devices
  o /48
  o /56
  o /64
the latter three all assuming that the allocation would be different if
the site had actual need and justification.

personally, i do not see an end site needing more than 256 subnets *by
default*, though i can certainly believe a small minority of them need
more and would use the escape clause.  so, if we, for the moment, stick
to the one /64 per subnet religion, than a /56 seems sufficient for the
default allocation.

personally, i have a hard time thinking that any but a teensie minority,
who can use the escape clause, need more than 256.  hence, i just don't
buy the /48 position.

personally, i agree that one subnet is likely to be insufficient in a
large proportion of cases.  so keeping to the /64 per subnet religion, a
/64 per site is insufficient for the default.

still personally, i think the one /64 subnet per device is analogous to
one receptacle per mains breaker, i.e. not sensible.

> there are three legs to the tripod
> 	network operator
> 	user
> 	equipment manufacturer
> They have (or should have) a mutual interest in:
> 	Transparent and automatic configuration of devices.

as you have seen from chris's excellent post [0] on this one, one size
does not fit all.  this is likely another worthwhile, but separate,
discussion.

> The assignment of globally routable addresses to internet
> connected devices

i suspect that there are folk out there who equate nat with security.  i
suspect we both think them misguided.

> The user having some control over what crosses the boundry
> between their network and the operators.

yup

randy

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[0] - <http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg04887.html>