A crazy idea

Fri Jul 30 17:01:20 UTC 2021

> On Jul 29, 2021, at 22:23, Frank Habicht <geier at geier.ne.tz> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 30/07/2021 07:58, Owen DeLong via NANOG wrote:> ...
>> Consider this… I discussed this topic at length with JJB (COMCAST at
>> the time) and pushed hard on why they don’t give /48s to their
>> residential customers. His answer was that if they did so, they would
>> need to get a /12 from their RIR (ARIN). My question to him in
>> response to that was “so?”.
> 
> 
> I recently got this "so?" question asked [1] and I believe I follow you
> and see the point.
> 
> My response was along the line:
> - today (at least here in AfriNIC-land - sorry to get out of "NA")
>  the RIR charges membership fee depending on size of IPv4 allocations.
> - Will the RIR charge membership fee depending on IPv6 allocation size
>  in 5 years from now?
> 

I believe all RIRs charge by size for LIRs in some form or other. ARIN is by max_fee(IPv4,IPv6). 

In the case in question (COMCAST), they are already in the maximum fee category, so expanding their v6 allocation to /12 would not increase their fees. 

I would argue that since (at least in ARIN), you get 16x as much address space for 2x the fee, revenues from the expanded customer base should easily dwarf the cost of additional addresses to issue proper /48s to every customer. 

> And it's a genuine question.
> Does anyone know what the intentions or likelihood of options are?

I think COMCAST intends to continue subjugating their customers with limited address blocks for the foreseeable future. 

I am hoping that other IPSs will be more rational and eventually market pressure will bring about ubiquitous /48s. 

Owen

> Really interested.
> 
> Thanks,
> Frank
> 
> [1]
> by staff member asking why we don't replace the existing v6 /32 with
> something bigger.