IPv6 Default Allocation - What size allocation are you giving out

Thu Oct 9 07:34:08 UTC 2014

On Oct 8, 2014, at 10:06 PM, Hugo Slabbert <hugo at slabnet.com> wrote:

> Mark,
> 
>>> >Only short sighted ISP's hand out /56's to residential customers.
> 
>>> 
>>> I am curious as to why you say it is short sighted? what is the technical or
>>> otherwise any other reasoning for such statement ?
>> 
>> 256 is *not* a big number of subnets.  By restricting the number
>> of subnets residences get you restrict what developers will design
>> for.  Subnets don't need to be scares resource.  ISP's that default to
>> /56 are making them a scares resource.
> 
> The excerpt Royce quoted from RFC6177 (requoted below) seems to back away from /48s by default to all resi users and land in a somewhat vague "more than a /64 please, but we're not specifically recommending /48s across the board for residential" before specifically mentioning /56 assignments.

Yes, but if you review the record as 6177 was rammed through against somewhat vociferous objection to this part, you should realize that that part really didn’t achieve near the level of consensus that should have been required for it to be accepted.

> The general push in the community is towards /48 across the board.  Any comments on why the RFC backs away from that?  Is this just throwing a bone to the masses complaining about "waste”?

It was a political maneuver to appease the IPv4 thinkers that were prevalent in that part of the IETF at the time. (Just my opinion).

Owen