[address-policy-wg] ripe-589 question

Hi,

> We've ran into internal conflict assigning IPv6 address space. Anyone caring to provide independent view on this would be much appreciated.
> 
> Problem:
> LITNET (org: ORG-LA11-RIPE) has been comprised of two ASNs 2847 and 5479.
> Current IPv6 allocation is /29 (inet6num: 2001:778::/29).
> Current policy is to assign /32 per AS.
> Proposed new policy is to assign /30 per AS.
> 
> Arguments for new policy:
> - RIPE-589 3.4 (Aggregation) and 3.8 (Conflict of goals)
> 
> Arguments for current policy:
> - Two routes will be announced anyway. Different AS_PATH and routing policies, no aggregation.
> - /32 is 1200+ /64s per head of population of the country. Should be enough for any local AS for foreseeable future. Revise assignment planning if not.

I wouldn't count separate /64s as that will give you a distorted number. Count using the assignment size you are using, which I assume is a /48 per customer/university/research-institution/etc. That gives you a maximum of 65536 per /32. In a country with a population of 3 million that is probably enough to number all your customers :-) 

> - The same address space allocation will be preserved for future AS if any current end-user (university) would require independent routing policies.
> - We will not get any wider allocation. Next address range (if it will happen) will be far off from 2001:778

So why don't you announce 2001:778::/32 from one AS and 2001:77c::/32 from the other? If you need more space in one AS then you can grow to a /31 or /30, and if you don't need to grow them then you might, if at some point in the future you need a separate routing policy, announce the remaining space from a separate AS.

> I'm not in favor of wasting a long-term resource like IPv6 and rather deviate from the policy, but maybe I'm missing a point here somewhere ?

Well, you can get the /29, and nobody else is going to get it, so you might as well make the best use of it. I just asked the NCC to expand my /32 to a /29. I use the first /32 for a LISP-based ISP setup, and I'm going to use one or more separate /32s for training purposes for ISPs. The nice thing about IPv6 is that we can always get enough space for what we need (within limits of course ;-)

Cheers,
Sander