IPv6 end user addressing

Thu Aug 11 12:25:55 UTC 2011

On Aug 10, 2011, at 8:29 PM, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

> 
> 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.
> 

I disagree. I think current policy in several RIRs (APNIC, especially) is far too conservative
and that we do need to rewrite it. That's why I submitted prop-090 which has taken the
feedback I received into account and become prop-098.

Owen