Why do some providers require IPv6 /64 PA space to have public whois?

Sat Dec 8 23:50:29 UTC 2012

On 8 December 2012 13:03, Mark Andrews <marka at isc.org> wrote:
> It's also more than likely a hold over of IPv4 think where, generally,
> only companies are allocated address blocks.  I would be ringing
> the ISP and talking to the staff escalating until you get to someone
> who understands the issue.  Also a /64 is ridiculously small for a
> company and it really too small for individuals so it very much
> looks like this ISP hasn't applied enough thought to this area.
> Trail blazing is hard work but someone has to do it.

This might be a good advice for a home or an office obtaining internet
connectivity with a dynamic IP address or at a location remote from an
he.net POP.  However, it's not something that I am, as an individual
renting a single server at a great price and only 5ms from Frankfurt,
an HE.net POP, is willing to go through.

Why go through all the hoops where HE's tunnelbroker.net already
provides the same service, but with shorter addresses and better
latency, and without any self-made RIPE-blamed headaches and extra
rules?  Also, specifically in regards to hetzner.de, if I'd like to
switch from one of their servers to another, a tunnelbroker.net-issued
address will let me have a seamless "failover", whereas a native IPv6
/64 from hetzner.de might have to be given up and obtained anew (and
one might again have to go through all the hoops in order to obtain a
new one).

I've tried contacting their support through their web-interface, but
they've repeatedly claimed that I've agreed to have my data provided
to RIPE. ???  But then, again, I don't speak any German; and they,
obviously, have to minimise their costs by a great deal of automation
in order to keep their prices low.  At this point, I don't see a
single good reason of why I should continue bothering them, instead of
simply using what already works great -- tunnelbroker.net.

Frankly, the more I think about this, the less it's clear why someone
like hetzner.de would actually want you to be using their native IPv6
support, instead of the one provided by HE.net through their free
tunnelbroker.net service.  HE has an open-peering policy (AFAIK);
which basically means that tunnelbroker.net traffic is free for
hetzner.de, whereas for native IPv6 traffic they might have to be
paying for transit costs, depending on the destination.  HE.net
probably wins, too; since being the place-to-go-for-IPv6 might make it
easier for them to have more settlement-free peering with big transit
providers such as AT&T (Bay-Area-wise, they still have IPv6 traffic
going through their peering in Los Angeles).

C.