[address-policy-wg] Proposal 2006-05 minimum /24 allocation

I see that the review phase for this proposal ends in a few days.

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/policies/proposals/2006-05.html 

I would like to speak in favour of allowing end users to get a minimum
of a /24 allocation when routing is an issue. For instance, a customer
with an application running out of a data centre has their own AS number
and wants to get PI space from RIPE. Since data centres typically hide
their architecture using RFC 1918 space behind NAT and load balancers,
etc., it doesn't make sense to allocate a longer prefix just because
their publicly visible machines fit in less than a /24.

For instance, if RIPE were to allocate a /26 (64 addresses) rather than
a /24 (256 addresses), the number of addresses saved is only 192 which
is such a small number that it cannot be considered significant on the
larger scale. The issue of routing table slots is irrelevant since the
End User intends to announce their prefix whatever its length is. I
don't believe that there is any advantage to conserving such small
amounts of space.

Instead of dancing around the issue and forcing people into creative
host accounting to justify a /24, let's just make it simple and offer
that as the minimum when, and only when, the End User can show that
routing is an issue. I would not be surprised to find that RIPE requires
such End Users to already have an Asnum or apply for one at the same
time. That seems reasonable.

-------------------------------------------------------
Michael Dillon
RadianzNet Capacity Forecast & Plan -- BT Design
66 Prescot St., London, E1 8HG, UK
Mobile: +44 7900 823 672 
Internet: michael.dillon at bt.com
Phone: +44 20 7650 9493 Fax: +44 20 7650 9030
http://www.btradianz.com
 
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