Assigning IPv6 PI to Every INETNUM Holder

a. Arguments supporting the proposal

The community has recognised the importance of IPv6 deployment. During the RIPE 55 meeting in Amsterdam, the RIPE community also agreed to issue a statement on IPv4 depletion and the deployment of IPv6.

Under this proposal all End Users in the RIPE NCC service region will receive an IPv6 PI assignment. All holders of IPv4 address space in the RIPE region will also be proactively informed that they have been assigned a block of IPv6 address space and that it is ready for deployment.

An assignment size of /56 is specified in the proposal in an effort to keep the routing table free from /64 address blocks. The /56 assignment is seen as a balance between individual routing requirements and routing aggregation needs.

b. Arguments opposing the proposal

It might be argued that this activity will be a waste of address space.

This policy also has the potential to cause routing table growth.

Additional Information:

Note: In order to provide additional information related to the proposal, details of an impact analysis carried out by the RIPE NCC are documented below. The projections presented in this analysis are based on existing data and should be viewed only as an indication of the possible impact that the policy may have if the proposal is accepted and implemented.

A. Impact of Policy on Registry and Addressing System

Address/Internet Number Resource Consumption:

There are 2.25 million inetnum objects in the RIPE Database representing IPv4 assignments. We considered an extreme case where these objects are all held by 2.25 million unique organisations, which would then all receive an IPv6 /56 separately. The address space consumption for these 2.25 million extra assignments would then be a total of a /35 and a /37.

There were suggestions during the initial Discussion Phase of the proposal that the prefix size should be at least a /48. If this were the case, the address space consumption for these 2.25 million extra assignments would be a total of a /27 and a /29.

Fragmentation/Aggregation:

In the extreme case of 2.25 million new IPv6 Provider Independent assignments, there would be 2.25 million more entries in the routing system. It would not be possible to aggregate these entries.

B. Impact of Policy on RIPE NCC Operations/Services

Registration Services: It is unclear to which individual organisations Registration Services would need to make IPv6 assignments. This is because not all of the 2.25 million inetnum objects contain the necessary contact information for the organisation holding the address space. This is anticipated as a major problem in the implementation of this proposal.

RIPE Database: To support 2.25 million extra objects, the RIPE Database would need to be re-arranged significantly.

General: The RIPE NCC understands that the Address Policy WG Chairs would require the full implementation of this proposal only after the outcome of Policy Proposal 2007-01, which generally discusses direct End User assignments. This would be the case even if Policy Proposal 2008-01 concludes first.