[address-policy-wg] Status of 2011-02 Policy Proposal (Removal of multihomed requirement for IPv6)?

Hi Cagri, 
 
> I think multi-homing requirement is a good disincentive to get a PI
> space purely for portability and carrier independence reasons. 

This is where I have to disagree with you. Having portable IP space has
nothing to do with being multi-homed imho. 

>From what I see in our customer base, having portable IP space is a seen as
an insurance if you like.
Customers that apply for PI for different reasons, like building a VPN
structure for a car dealer-ship with 200+ outlets or an Iphone app delivery
system + apple sandbox that is linked to a specific subnet. Having to
renumber those kind of setups are a pain to renumber after the initial setup
and companies are hand-cuffed to the IP addresses and the LIR that holds
them hostage to it. 

As long as everything works fine and the ISP is performing as required,
everything is ok, however if that changes and other factors like network
performance, packetloss, price or constant downtime because other
customer(s) of their hoster is having DoS attacks, come into play, it is a
different discussion. 

The requirement for being multi-homed is a discussion about uptime
requirement. Sometimes this is driven by the end-customers business
regulation and in other situations it is because they want to be-able to
manage their own faith in regards of uptime.

The question of 'what is being multi-homed' is another discussion. There are
plenty of ISP's that provide fully redundant network setups from within
their own AS, however as the term 'being multi-homed' in itself isn't
clearly defined by this community, it is open for debate. For argument sake,
I personally refer to being multi-homed as being connected to more than 1
AS, using BGP. That leaves open, could the originating AS of the PI v6 be
the AS of a hoster or does the end-customer requires their own AS ?  

> If this change goes ahead everyone can simply go for PI and this is likely
to
> have route aggregation utilized less and less. 

If the change is approved, it allows end-customers to request PI for v6
(same as they could today apply for PI for v4.)
Today, if they can't apply for PI v6, because they are not planning to be
multi-homed, they could apply for a LIR membership, request v6, no questions
asked. Result: No multi-homing requirement and also the same growth of DFZ
as if the end-customer would request PI v6 without multi-homing.

> I don't want to start
> another "millions of routes vs router memory discussion" by any means
> however I believe we should encourage aggregation whenever possible for
> practical reasons.
 
The majority of the de-aggregation doesn't come from PI, but from PA space,
only a very small part of the PI IPv4 space is actually de-aggregated. 
And yes, I fully agree with you that aggregation should be done where
possible. 

> Reading recent postings;
> 
> 1. End-users making false multi-homing declarations to get PI. I think
> removing requirement is not the solution. Another option is to ask for
> an evidence to ensure there is a good justification for PI use.
 
There is no evidence to get for something that is not there yet. If an
end-customer doesn't have PI, how could one provide proof that it is
multi-homed ? It is the chicken and the egg problem. They don't have an AS
yet as they don't have PI yet. 
And checking after the fact, is that what we want ? And what if some prefix
isn't seen twice in the DFZ ? Are you planning to have RIPE NCC revoke it ?
All RIPE NCC can do currently is ask for the intention, but enforcing it is
just not possible. There are also a number of networks that are fully
functioning on actual unique IP's, but are not advertized into the DFZ, but
they are still multi-homed. 

> 2. Sending end-users to competitor? Why should this happen? I would
> expect an ISP to be able to offer direct feeds from different providers
> (this is an actual requirement if they would like to offer highly
> available services anyhow).

If an ISP only holds 1 AS and they have a customer who likes their service,
but that end-customer wants to run on PI IPv6, today, they would have to get
another AS involved to be able to meet the PI v6 requirement. I've asked
other ISP's and they stated that they have a secondary AS running for this
particular reason. People are creative and very protective on their revenue,
so why send customers to competitor X if you don't have to ? 
 
> 3. End-users paying for LIR to just to get PI space; again if there is
> a problem with LIR requirements justification, or RIPE membership is
> being used for a purpose which has not been intended for, removing
> multi-homing requirement is not the solution. We should rather look
> into relevant policies to ensure end-users become LIR when they
> actually need to further assign IPs to their customers.

I've seen end-customers in The Netherlands, apply for a LIR membership,
because they didn't receive the required IP addresses from their Telco.
The current discussion on XXS & XS sized LIR's on the membership mailing
list will only speed that up. I'm personally in favor for an increase in the
yearly cost (upkeep) for PI. (Both for IPv4 and v6) As this whole discussion
in reality is already a financial discussion and not a technical one. 

There are also legal issues for some end-customers that won't allow them to
become a LIR, but they have, at the same time, still the requirement to have
their own IP unique addresses. 

The policy proposal by itself is not technical, as the reality is already
providing 'creative' solutions for customers that really want to move ahead.

The policy is to make PI IPv6 the same as PI for IPv4. 

Regards,
Erik Bais