[address-policy-wg] Re: /48 or /56 to 'home' end-sites?

leo vegoda wrote:

[ Cut from the end, to reply on the former thread,
  replyers might want to snip this part ]

> On 6 Dec 2005, at 11:55, Tim Chown wrote:
>> Is this the
>> way it's meant to be, or should the ISP owning the /32 only need to
>> report usage when asking for more space itself?
>
> I think someone else mentioned that a sub-allocation would have worked
> quite nicely in a case like this. It's worth noting that the current
> policy does not require an LIR to get approval before making a
> sub-allocation of any size.

It's also the way SixXS gets assigned a prefix, usually a /40, for a PoP
from an ISP to be used for that ISP's PoP and manages this for that ISP,
allocating toward endusers. One could see this as if one is 'outsourcing
tunneled IPv6 end-user connectivity'.


[ New Thread ]

> On 6 Dec 2005, at 11:55, Tim Chown wrote:
<SNIP>
>> We noted one knockon effect of RIPE policy.   I don't know the full
>> details, but essentially for a tunnel broker service we wanted to offer
>> a /48 to end sites out of an existing /32, but were unable to do so
>> because the 'paperwork' to be sent on to RIPE-NCC for each /48 was needed
>> in advance for the ISP owning the /32 to allocate a (say) /40 to the
>> broker service, and that added a notable hurdle.   So we ended up using
>> a /48 for the broker and allocating /56 and /64 blocks.

/56's are most likely enough for most 'home end-site'. A single /56
provides 2^(64-56 = 8) = 256 /64's.

Let's introduce some terms:

end-site: a location where IP connectivity is delivered and managed by a
single "IT/IS staff"/person.
ISP: organization that provides connectivity to end-site.

Then we get two types of endsites:

'home end-site': a location (residence) where living
(fun,sleeping,eating) is the prime objective.

'work end-site': a location where work is the prime objective and no
sleeping  is done.

Of course there are a couple of nice things like hotels or resthouses,
but those are delivering work to let the people live there, people there
are being serviced to get living conditions (internet is a a requirement
for that don't you think? :) etc. Another one could be home-workers.
Maybe the city planning could determine it better, in many buildings you
are not allowed to spend the night as they where not planned to be used
for that.


Currently both kinds of end-sites get /48's. For the work end-site the
/48 should suffice all those sites as defined by the current policy.

For home end-sites I believe that a /48 really is way too much.
 I have to see, let alone dream up, a home where even 25 separate
networks would be used. Personally(*) I even ditched the routed network
thing completely even though I effectively could setup at least 4 links,
separately routed, thus 4x /64. Bridging seemed much easier in my case.
I personally don't home users ever go over the 256 /64's, thus a /56
should be sufficient. Of course future might change but still. Routing
implies that people would configure it or that it would be autonomicly
configured which is not available yet either. Prefix Delegation might
work, but on 256 levels?

There where before a couple of other people noting the change of HD
ratio, though I haven't seen much about that discussion recently, Tim's
note above reminded me of it. In SixXS we typically use a /40 for a PoP,
after 255 subnets (the first /48 is for tunnels) this assignment is
full. In Tim's case with the same amount of users he will only use a
single /48, which is 1/256th of what we just "burned". As noted above I
personally believe that a /48 for 'work' sites is good. They can then
always easily move between sites, and this will for certain be enough
for 99.99% (or so) of the endsites that fall in this category. For a
home-site situation a full /48 is IMHO really overkill, as noted above.

One of the reasons for saying 'all endsites a /48' was that all ISP's
would give everybody a /48, renumbering would then not involve
replanning onces network because one didn't get enough IP space.
Creating a difference for home and work sites could only cause a problem
when a work site becomes a home site, but I don't see that happening.
Home to work, in case that happens, would get more address space at that
point, thus that is not an issue either (except for the renumbering but
let's not think about that, that is a different ballpark ;)


Is it maybe time to look at this /48 policy and change it in the
direction of the above that home endsites get a /56 instead of a full
blown /48 which they will never use. Or do people think that it is fine
and that we should not bother here at all?

Greets,
 Jeroen

* = http://unfix.org/~jeroen/network/ in case one is wondering.

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