[address-policy-wg] IPv6 Policy Clarification - Initial allocation criteria "d)"

Hi,

On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 06:20:14PM +0100, Sascha Luck wrote:
> On Monday 21 June 2004 17:20, Gert Doering wrote:
> > I tend to disagree with that statement.  Over 360 allocations have been
> > made, so I'd say (again) that the policy seems to be working fairly well
> > for a number of people.
> Well these 360 people have not (yet?) piped up and said "We're happy, leave it 
> as it is".

They don't need to - the policy has fulfilled their purpose for them.

> > *One* person is taking major offence at not being allowed to play with
> > the big boys. 
> 
> Condescension will get us nowhere. Ok, we're a small ISP in a small market. 
> Since we aim at the business/leased line market only, we may not have 200 
> customers, let alone 200 IPv6 allocations, within 2 years (I hope to be 
> wrong, of course). 
> Give me *one* good reason why we shouldn't be allowed to offer IPv6 
> connectivity? Give me a reason why we should lose *one*, otherwise happy, 
> customer because of an arbitrary "line in the sand"?

If you estimate that you will continue to be very small, you could use 
a /40 or such from one of your upstream ISPs (which is a problem *today*,
as there are not enough upstream ISPs, indeed).

If you are in good hope to reach more than 200 customers, you fulfill 
the criteria (as has been mentioned before).

> > This is to be expected if the community decides to draw 
> > a line at "who gets an allocation, who doesn't".  Democratic procedures
> > aren't necessarily *nice* to everybody.
> 
> When was this policy democratically decided? IIRC it was handed down from 
> IANA/ICANN (I may be wrong on this)

You are wrong on this :-) - the policy was discussed again and again at
various RIPE meetings in the past 5 years.  We had an interim policy, which
was bad, but better than none.  Then we had this policy, which is still
not perfect, but enabled us to make progress.

> Besides, there is no benefit to this rule as far as I can see. IPv6 space is 
> not a scarce resource. IPv4 is, yet is is easy enough to get.

I wasn't in favour of the 200-customer rule (which is in the archives :) ).

Quite a number of people from various regions insisted on it, at that time,
for fear of a "landrush" or "routing table explosion" (routing table slots
*are* a scarce resource indeed, but changing this policy to "every LIR
in existance today gets one" won't hurt *that* much).

> > I count that as "one member is very unhappy, and a few others have
> > sore spots", which is something different from "clearly, few members
> > are happy"...
> 
> If this is to be discussed, everyone who is happy with the existing rule is, 
> of course, free to say so. Silence does not, necessarily, imply assent.

The way people work, usually only those who are unhappy take the burden
to figure out *where* to voice their unhappiness...

But anyway, I agree that this side-track discussion isn't overly productive.  

In fact, I have not heard anyone stand up and say "WE MUST KEEP THE 200 
CUSTOMER RULE!" - most people voiced some sort of "well, it's there, it
doesn't do much harm, we can live with it", but nobody has actively stood
up in favour of it.  Has anyone?

So shall we abandon it?  In favour of *what* to replace it?

Gert Doering
        -- NetMaster
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